I’m so sorry, Sarabhanga, if I have irritated you with my beliefs in this thread. It certainly wasn’t my intention.
I have had a genuine interest in this subject for years and long before I came across Talageri’s views, which was only recently. I have been studying this subject in the hope of writing a book about it. And I’ve had to do my best to chart a course between, as you put it, the “facist Europeans and facist Indians” and because of this, I have developed something of a ear for the sound of the grinding of axes and usually know when to make a quick exit!
For the above reasons, I’d hoped that we could avoid the flaming language of the extreme camps in this argument and look at the facts head on. I still hope we can do that.
According to my research, the person who invented the Aryans was Max Muller who misunderstood the term “arya”. As mentioned earlier, the Monier Williams dictionary, which is highly respected, does not mention anything about “arya” meaning “fair or pale skinned.” Of course, as you say, “kind” can also mean “fair”, but this is a different sense of the word. We have to ask ourselves, why did Monier Williams not include “pale” or “fair-skinned” in his definition of the word “arya”? I would suggest that it is because of mistranslation, which, in my experience, is rife when it comes to the Rig-veda.
Max Muller was a contemporary of a certain Sir William Jones who, at around the same time that Max Muller was finding these invading Aryans in the Rig-veda, discovered that the language of Sanskrit seemed to permeate many different languages.
Then another German linguist, Augustus Schleicher, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Schleicher) took on this work on and came up with the following chart:
This is the first chart to show the imagined Proto Indo European language, of which, as it shows here, Sanskrit was just part of one branch. As you can see, without any of the sophisticated logistics of what modern linguists tell us this “science” has now been developed from, Schleicher immediately decided that Greco-Roman combined with Proto Indo European was the parent language to all the other languages, including Sanskrit.
So this is the work that modern-day linguists have been building on. In my experience, they have not been asking the question: “Was there a Proto Indo European language?” but “Where is the Proto Indo European homeland?”
So although you say: “This whole theory is based on the “Indo-European” or “Aryan” language group, which arose from a common ancestral tongue that existed perhaps as early as 4,000 BC, somewhere around the Aral and Caspian Seas.” this is still pure speculation. This PIE or even IE homeland, or even its ancestral language, has never been found. In fact, according to my research, there is about as much evidence for a Proto Indo European homeland that spawned a race of pale skinned Aryans who invaded the Indian subcontinent as there is for the Loch Ness Monster. In fact, there might be slightly more evidence for the Loch Ness Monster, as some people claim to have seen it...which is more than can be said of the Proto Indo Europeans, or indeed, any trace of them.
As far as the homeland for the Indo Iranians being Iran, and then a branch splitting off to migrate into the Indian subcontinent, there is also no evidence for this. The earliest archaeology they have for Iran is somewhere around 800 BC. That’s not to say that there wasn’t an Indo Iranian homeland in Iran. Just that there is no proof or evidence that this was the case.
And I believe that you’re incorrect in your statement that Witzel’s methods are accepted by all academics. He would have you believe that, and he’s very good at smoke and mirrors. But this argument has been going on for centuries, even within the Western establishment itself, and I could quote eminent academic after eminent academic who point out, with the good reason, that the emperor has no clothes on, or at least is very flimsily attired.
What you (and Witzel) found annoying Talageri’s methodology was what I found most refreshing about it. He ignored the whole white towered edifice built on sands of Proto Indo European industry, and went back to the drawing board. He’s not a raving nationalist nutter (although Witzel and his pals would have us believe that he is). He just looked at the indices to see who wrote the hymns and from that, compiled the family trees of various families, particularly the main composers, the Bhrigus and the Angirasas. This, in my view, is a perfectly legitimate methodology and it should be condemned just because it’s not based on linguistics.
From the indices, we can see that various rishis, or their families, wrote these hymns at different times. So this would conflict with your view that it was “one divine utterance”.
The language of the 10th book too, is very different to the rest. As BK Gosh puts it:
“On the whole ... the language of the first nine MaNDalas must be regarded as homogeneous, inspite of traces of previous dialectal differences... With the tenth MaNDala it is a different story. The language here has definitely changed.
Talageri has also gathered from these indices that the process of formation of the Rigveda took place in four stages, and it was only after these that it was “frozen” so to speak, and passed down, word for word, syllable by syllable.
So I think we should also approach this subject with an open mind and listen to both sides of the argument.
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