Hindu civilizational continuum-- linguistic, textual and limited archaeological evidences

Book review: S.G. Talageri, 2008, The Rigveda and the Avesta – the final evidence, Delhi, Aditya Prakashan

The theses of Shrikant G. Talageri, presented in this book, are:

1. Early Rigvedic people (Puru/Paurava) were settled to the east of Sarasvati river in 3rd millennium BCE and started migrating, expanding westwards.

2. Proto-Iranians, Proto-Greeks, Proto-Armenians and Proto-Albanians (Anu/Anava) were settled in areas to the west of the Rigvedic people and started expanding westwards around that period.

3. Areas to the west and north of Anu people were Proto-Anatolian, Proto-Tocharian, Proto-Italic, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Germanic, Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic (Druhyu tribes) who started expanding northwards into Central Asia.

4. Yadu/Yadava, Turvasus/Turvas’as settled to the south of Rigvedic people included Indo-European groups – whose speech forms were not included in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European linguistic paradigm for lack of detailed records) and other linguistic groups (Proto-Dravidian, Proto-Mundas etc.)

In Section I of the book, Talageri finds a large body of classes of names and name elements found both in Rigveda (mainly in386 hymns in late books) and in Avesta-Mitanni-Kassite data. “Name elements shared with Avesta consist mainly of a few restricted types of compound names with a few prominent prefixes of a basic nature (Su-, Deva-, Puru-, Vis’va-), which are found in the names of important historical personalities of the Early Period. However, these name-elements are found in even greater profusion in the Late Books…In short: the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda are earlier than the Avesta, and the Late Books of the Rigveda are contemporaneous with the Avesta; and the common ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture visible in the two texts is a product of the Late Rigvedic Period.”

Dealing with the evidence of chronology of the meters used in the two texts, Talageri concludes: “The evidence of the Avestan meters confirms to the hilt the conclusions compelled by the evidence of the Avestan names: namely, that Zarathushtra, the first and earliest composer of the Avesta, is contemporaneous with the Late Period and

books of the Rigveda (notably with the non-family Books), that the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda precede the period of composition of the Avesta, and that the ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture common to the Rigveda and the Avesta is a product of the Late Rigvedic Period.”

Geography of the Rigveda is closely linked with River Sarasvati. Talageri notes: “The importance of the Sarasvati in Indian historical studies has multiplied manifold since archaeological analyses of the Ghaggar-Hakra river bed, combined with detailed sattllite imagery of the course of the ancient (now dried up) rigver, conclusively showed that it had almost dried up by the mid-second millennium BCE itself, and that, long before that, it was a mightly river, mightier than the Indus, and that an overwhelming majority of the archaeological sites of the Harappan cities are located on the banks of the Sarasvati rathern than of the Indus. This has lethal implications for the AIT, which requires an Aryan invasion around 1500 BCE after the decline of the Harappan civilization, since it shows that the Vedic Aryans, who lives ‘on both banks’ (Rigveda VII.96.2) of a mighty Sarasvati in full powerful flow, must have been inhabitants of the region long before 1500 BCE and in fact may be identical with the indigenous Harappans.”

On relative chronology of the Rigveda, Talageri cites Edward W. Hopkins (1896, Pragathikani, pp.23-92 in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 17: 74-81): “…most of these Avestan words preserved in viii, withal those of the most importance, are common words in the literature posterior to the Rik…Take for instance, udara or ushtra or mesha, the first is found only in viii.i.x; the second in viii.i; the last in viii.i.ix., x. Is it probable that words so common both early and late should have passed through an assumedly intermediate period (of ii-vii) without leaving a trace?...We must, I think, suppose that the Avesta and RV viii are younger than RV ii., vii; or else that the poets of viii were geographically nearer to the Avestan people, and so took from them certain words, which may or may not have been old with their Iranian users, but were not received into the body of Vedic literature until a time posterior to the composition of ii-vii.” Talageri notes that the second alternative is not correct since these words are shared by the Atharvaveda and later texts, geographically much further to the east and ‘the common factor is late date, and not close geographical location’,

Talageri dares to provide a’the absolute chronology of the Rigveda’: Early period – Books 6,3,7 early I: 3400 – 2600 BCE; Middle period – Books 4,2, middle 1: 2600 – 2200 BCE; Late period – Books 5,8,9,10, rest of 1: 2200-1400 BCE.

This thundering statement is based on ‘Mitanni evidence’, citing J.P. Mallory and Witzel. Citing Mallory (1997, Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture, Mallory J.P. and Adams D.Q., Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, London and Chicago), Talageri concludes: “…the actual Mitanni IA language must have been present in the area (northern Iraq/Syria) as a living language, influential enough to influence its neighbouring languages, only centuries before 1460 BCE ” Then, Talageri cites Witzel: “the Kassite language belongs to an altogether unknown language group…the vocabulary of their largely unknown language hardly shows any IA influence, not even in their many designations for the horse and horse names.” (Witzel, 2005, Indocentrism: autochthonous visions of ancient India. Witzel, Michael, in: ‘The Indo-Aryan controversy – evidence and inference in Indian history’ ed. Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, Routledge, London & New York: 362,380) and adds: “Therefore the Kassites (whose conquest of Mesopotamia is dated by Witzel to 1677 BCE, though earlier dates have been suggested) probably acquired their few IA words some time earlier from the original Mitanni IA language which was probably already a dying language by the time the Kassites conquered Mesopotamia around 1677 BCE…” Talageri concludes that “Mitannia IA language, which became the Mitannia IA language in West Asia, was a culture which developed in northwestern India in the period of the Late Books of the Rigveda; and these proto-Mitanni speakers must have migrated from India well after the development of this common culture at some time in the Late Rigvedic Period.” (p.188).

In Section II of the book, Talageri locates the Indo-European homeland in India, based principally on the evidence of isoglosses discussed by Hock (1999: a.Out of India? The linguistic evidence. Hock, Hans H., pp. 1-18 in: “Aryan and non-Aryan in South Asia: evidence, interpretation, and ideology” (proceedings of the International Seminar on Aryan and non-Aryan in South Asia, Univ. of Michigan, October 1996; b. Through a glass darkly: Modern ‘racial’ interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on arya and daasa/dasyu in Vedic society. Hock, Hans H., pp. 145-174, ibid.).

“An isogloss is a special linguistic feature which develops in any one language and then spreads to other languages and dialects over a contiguous area. Thus, the distinction between dental sounds and cerebral sounds (i.e. between dental t,d and n as opposed to cerebral T,D,N) is an isogloss peculiar to the Indian area: it is found in all kinds of languages not genetically related to each other: Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Austric (Kol-Munda) and Burushaski.” (p.215)

Talageri notes that Hock’s evidence “is deliberately partial and selcctive: not only does Hock fail to take into account many important

isoglosses linking together different branches, but he even pointedly excludes from his arrangement one crucial branch, Tocharian, on the plea that ‘it is difficult to find dialectal affiliation’ (Hock 1999a: 16) for it…In no reasonable dialectological arrangement of Indo-European dialects can these three (Hittite, Tocharian and Italic) be shown to be sharing these important isoglosses with each other in contiguous areas and then ‘maintaining their relative positions to each other as they fanned out from the homeland’ to their respective earliest attested areas. So Hock, simply ignores the concerned isoglosses, and excludes Tocharian from his arrangement, and crosses his fingers in the hope that no-one notices.”

Discussing the evidence of contacts between the European Dialects of Indo-European and various non-Indo-European languages of Eurasia, Talageri concludes: “…there is no linguistic evidence for any assumed movement of the main body of Indo-Aryans and Iranians of the south through Eurasia in any direction at any time in the past.” And adds that “Indo-Aryan is the dialect which remained in the homeland after all the others had left.”

Trying to delineate the linguistic roots of India, Talageri cites George Erdosy, whom he calls ”an AIT writer”: “we reiterate that there is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya’s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension of migrations.” (Erdosy 1989, Ethnicity in the Rigveda and its bearing on the question of Indo-European origins. Erdosy, George pp.35-47 in ‘South Asian Studies’ vol. 5, London: 40-41).

Concluding ‘a complete linguistic case for the Indian Homeland or Out-of-India theory”, Talageri notes: “Isisore Dyen, in a paper presented in 1966 and published in 1970, makes out a case showing the similarities between many basic words reconstructed in the proto-Indo-Eropean and proto-Austronesian languages, including such basic words as the first four numerals, many of the personal pronouns, and the words for ‘water’ and ‘land.’ (Dyen, 1970, The case of the Austronesian languages. Dyen, Isidore, in ‘Indo-European and Indo-Europeans’, ex. By George Cardona, HM Hoenigswald and Alfred Senn, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia: 439).” Talageri cites SK Chatterjee for the ultimate origins of the Austronesian family of languages in an Indian homeland hypothesis: “India was the centre from which Austric speech spread into the lands and islands of the east and Pacific (Majumdar ed. 1951/1996, The Vedic Age. General Editor Majumdar R.C., The History and Culture of the Indian People. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. Mumbai: 156).” (p.289)

Referring to archaeology, Talageri notes: “So far as the archaeological evidence is concerned, the only possible conclusion that can be

reached is that the undisturbed archaeological and anthropological continuity in the Harappan areas between ‘the 5th/4th and … the 1st

millennium BCE’ constitutes formidable, and lethal, evidence against the AIT (Aryan Invasion Theory), which just simply cann not be explained away. ” He goes on to see the possibility of matching Harappan civilization with ‘Indo-Iranian’/Rigvedic phase and PGW (Painted Greyware) culture for the post-Rigvedic phase.

To conclude this précis of Talageri’s work which logically follows his earlier works on Rigvedic history (1993, The Aryan invasion theory and Indian nationalism, Voice of India, New Delhi; 2000, The Rigveda: A historical analysis, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi), we may say that relying upon isoglosses and name-elements are simplistic enterprises. Languages are far beyond these elements traceable in phonetic peculiarities or names which occur in a few texts. The major omission in Talageri’s work is a failure to trace the cultural markers in the civilizations of the periods he is dealing with. In a recent address, BB Lal noted that Sarasvati is the mother of Indian civilization and cited many examples of cultural continuity from Vedic times evident in modern India: to name just two: 1. finds of Shivalingas in Harappa; 2. the practice of wearing sindhur at the parting of the hair. Many more have been cited in e-books, links and references at http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/sarasvati-hindu-civilization Beyond phonetics, place names, river names and name elements is the cultural substratum which defines the world-view and self-identities of people. This is an area which is as substantive as semantics of language while superficial phenomena such as phonetics and building up isoglosses may be only a mechanistic explanation for a complex cultural phenomenon called the origins and evolution of civilizations. For example, one of the theses developed in the e-books cited is that the the so-called Indus Script has been decoded as 1) Sarasvati hieroglyphs read rebus and related to the semantics of mint/smithy, with particular reference to minerals, metals, alloys, furnaces, smelters invented by early artisans – vishwakarma of the Hindu tradition and 2) the underlying language as mleccha vaacas as distinct from arya vaacas (lingua franca or spoken dialects as distinct from grammatically correct written form). The mleccha vaacas and arya vaacas may explain the indigenous formation and evolution of Munda-Dravidian and Indo-Aryan in the Indian Homeland; this requires further investigation by language scholars with special focus on general semantics in a linguistic area called Bharatam (cf. Vishwamitra’s famous line: Vishwamitrasya rakshati brahmedam bharatam janam: Rigveda 3.53.12).

Since Talageri’s work is a point-by-point refutation of two proponents of AIT: Witzel and Hock, one hopes that both of them will read and respond to the evidence marshaled superbly by Talageri.

S. KalyanaramanDirector, Sarasvati Research Centre.18 November 2008 kalyan97@gmail.com