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Thread: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

  1. #11
    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.
    Gill

  2. #12
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    Namaste Gill,

    Max Muller made the very first English translations of many Sanskrit texts, and even without any knowledge of Hinduism it is quite possible to make an accurate ‘word-for-word’ translation. Muller did not deliberately falsify any of his translations ~ they are literally correct, although often superficial and missing important details of interpretation.

    [Those modern “Hindus” who (following the lead of Christianity and Islam) require that scripture should be read absolutely literally to find the true message from God, which is expected to always be quite explicit, should be quite happy with Max Muller’s translation efforts!]

    In Sanskrit, Arya is synonymous with Brahma, and as mentioned above, the descendants from Brahmana Gotras have ALWAYS been assumed to have a paler complexion. It is no mere coincidence that “fair” means both “kind or noble” and “pale or light”.
    The whole theory is based on the “Indo-European” or “Aryan” language group, which arose from a common ancestral tongue.
    If we begin by accepting the idea that languages as apparently divergent as Gaelic and Gujarati are actually related, then we MUST begin by assuming that these languages have some common ancestral root. There is no reason to assume that this ancient parent tongue is still spoken anywhere exactly as it was originally, and the source must be inferred from the various commonalities of each language.

    Exactly as the relationships between different groups of living things may be inferred by considering their degree of similarity with regard to many varied characteristics, the same process may be applied to the problem of language relations to arrive at the most likely common ancestor ~ which in this case has been termed “Proto-Indo-European”.

    It is likely that the divergence began before the invention of writing, so it is unlikely that any example of the posited Proto-Indo-European will ever be discovered. But that should not prevent us from proposing the most likely nature of that tongue based on all kinds of other information.

    Even a cursory examination of any of the Indo-European languages will reveal many similarities ~ it really doesn’t require any great scholarship to notice that Sanskrit seems to permeate all of the languages grouped as “Indo-European”.

    Anyone who asks, “Was there a PIE language?” is automatically excluded from the whole debate, since they are doubting the very basis of the whole theory (i.e. that there is an intrinsic relationship between the various IE languages)!

    So, if one imagines that the original Aryan population was more dark skinned, none of the “Indo-European” language-group theory can make any sense! And if one does not accept the whole argument of an “Indo-European” relationship, it is foolish to use the same arguments to suggest an expansion of darker-skinned Aryans out of India, who were miraculously transformed into pale Europeans over a period of a few hundred years!
    Who has suggested that Iran is the original homeland for PIE? It has long been assumed that old Sanskrit and old Iranian are BOTH derived from an even more ancient common ancestor!

    The attached chart was abstracted from Grierson (1927) “Linguistic Survey of India” ~ see Peoples And Languages In Pre-Islamic Indus Valley.

    Perhaps you do not understand Witzel’s actual concerns about Talageri’s work, so I will repeat Dr Witzel’s words verbatim:

    “Talageri has still not read Oldenberg’s seminal work (1888) which describes the ordering of Rgvedic hymns and the way they were collected in several stages. Oldenberg’s work stands unopposed by modern scholars, Talageri excepted of course, but Talageri offers no systematic refutation.

    “This is best illustrated by Talgeri’s misunderstanding of the principle underlying the order of deity collections appearing after the usual Agni and Indra hymns that are found at the start of each Mandala. The various post-Agni/Indra collections (to Brahmanaspati, Visvedeva, Rbhu, etc.) are not a ‘second set consisting of other hymns ... placed at the end of the collection’ and later ‘inserted into the hymns of the first [collection]’ ~ how does he know all of this? Instead, their position simply depends on the number of hymns allotted to the deity in question.

    “This extremely simple fact can be checked by any grade-school reader of a RV edition or translation: deities with the most hymns come first (after Agni/Indra); others follow in numerical decreasing order. No Vedic mathematics is needed either to understand that. All additions to the original RV text are clearly visible on this and on similar grounds (e.g. later combinations of Trca and Pragatha sets, Oldenberg 1888, Witzel 2001).

    “The upshot is that Talageri’s RV is not that of the time of the RV authors, and any conclusion based on it also reflects the Brahmana era additions, made until Sakalya’s Padapatha.”

    Please give some reference to ANY serious academic who does not accept Oldenberg’s idea and has actually given some reason for ignoring it.

    Neither you nor Talageri have annoyed me in the least! I appreciate your interest in the subject, and I find Talgeri’s research very interesting; but I refuse to engage in the basically racist argument that has been raging among misguided fascists all around the globe.

    My strong words are not intended to “flame” or pointlessly abuse, but some basic misunderstandings have led some otherwise reasonable people to make all kinds of quite unjustifiable remarks. Max Muller and Michael Witzel have been needlessly demonized, and then mindlessly attacked by “fundamentalist” Hindus over these matters.

    When Talageri actually makes some coherent refutation of Oldenberg’s relative chronology, then Witzel and other academics will take his new chronology seriously; but until then no amount of shouting or “hitting over the head” will make one iota of difference to the academic viewpoint!

    Quoting Witzel again: “Talageri does not say which Anukramani he used and how he reached the conclusion that it is coeval with the RV. Instead, and rather surprisingly, he now tells us that he did not use any Anukramani at all, but instead, the names of Rsis, deities and meters printed in the various RV editions before each hymn. Also, he does not want to take notice of the fact that his (now, indirect) source of the Rsi ascription in the editions, the Sarvanukramani, was not even fixed by 500 AD (Scheftelowitz 1922, Witzel 2001) ~ as was its counterpart, the Brhaddevata. In addition, Talageri simply neglects all other Anukramanis, Rgvedic or other.

    “In sum, Talageri uses one particular Late Vedic Anukramani to establish the history of Rigvedic times, and compares that with a Rgveda of equally Late Vedic redaction.

    “This is what I called ‘garbage in garbage out’: By using Late Vedic texts, what can one expect but the Late Vedic/Epic and Puranic point of view that differs from the truly Rgvedic one by the changes made over centuries?

    “Enough said.”

    So I think we should approach this subject with an open mind and listen to both sides of the argument.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by sarabhanga; 31 May 2006 at 10:13 PM.

  3. #13
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    Wink

    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    And since most Fundamentalist Hindus would deny that ANY “chronology” can be established for the Rig Veda, which was received as one complete divine utterance that has never been edited or adjusted in any way, any involvement in this particular debate is quite ridiculous!
    Quote Originally Posted by Gill
    So this would conflict with your view that it was “one divine utterance”.
    My views are orthodox, but I would certainly not class myself among the “fundamentalists”, who often do insist that the whole Veda “was received as one complete divine utterance that has never been edited or adjusted in any way”.

    These fundamentalist Hindus will generally also insist that the whole of Sanskrit language and Aryan Dharma was developed entirely within the land of Bharata (with borders as defined by comparatively late Hindu texts).

    So I would suggest that it is your own views that are actually more aligned with the fundamentalist camp!

  4. #14

    Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Namaste Sarabhanga

    I am going to have post my reply in two parts as the software won't let me post it all at once. So here we go:


    Namaste Sarabanga

    Good. I'm glad you're enjoying this debate. So am I. I don't know, though, if I can answer all your points here, though, as for some of them you've have to be a linguist, and a German speaker too boot, and I am neither. However, I'll make a stab at it.

    I certainly didn't mean to imply that Max Muller deliberately falsified anything. I think that he did the best that he could with the Vedic texts, coming from a Christian and imperialistic viewpoint. However,the road to hell. as they say, is paved with good intentions.

    I heard too, that Muller recanted the whole thing and admitted that there was no Aryan invasion into India at the end of his life, but no-one would listen to him. He is quoted as saying then:

    “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”

    Quote Originally Posted by sarabhanga
    Exactly as the relationships between different groups of living things may be inferred by considering their degree of similarity with regard to many varied characteristics, the same process may be applied to the problem of language relations to arrive at the most likely common ancestor ~ which in this case has been termed “Proto-Indo-European”.
    Yes, in fact that is what the linguists always say. However, language is a living thing and has a habit of going off and doing it's own thing. I say this as a writer and an editor. Even in my lifetime, I've seen the English language do some very odd things and the Oxford dictionary eventually has to accept them. This is why I don't think that linguistics can be considered a science. In my view, trying to force languages into a linguistic template is like trying to measure the ocean with a teaspoon.

    As the late AB Keith, a renowned Sanskrit scholar and author who was a professor of philology at Edinburgh University, said:

    “...taking the linguistic evidence too literally, one could conclude that the original Indo-European speakers knew butter but not milk, snow and feet but not rain and hands...”


    I don't think it's difficult to doubt the whole basis of the linguists’ theory when there's barely a shred of archaeological and absolutely no geneological evidence to back them up. Also, the basis of this theory was put together before the discovery of the Indus valley civilisation and the rediscovery of the river Saraswati, two more nails in the coffin of the "PIE in the sky" brigade, imho.

    There is a school of thought that believes that the original Aryans were the Iranians and that the Aryans (writers of the Vedas) came from Iran into India. They say that 'Iran' means 'Aryan' but of course a) it's only recently been called Iran, and in Sanskrit, I'm told, Iran means 'barren salty land." So that's why I was answering that point about there not being archaeological evidence in Iran pre 800 BC - another nail in the coffin for that theory.

    Quote Originally Posted by sarabhanga

    Perhaps you do not understand Witzel’s actual concerns about Talageri’s work, so I will repeat Dr Witzel’s words verbatim:

    “Talageri has still not read Oldenberg’s seminal work (1888) which describes the ordering of Rgvedic hymns and the way they were collected in several stages. Oldenberg’s work stands unopposed by modern scholars, Talageri excepted of course, but Talageri offers no systematic refutation.
    Sarabhanga, I do understand that Witzel believes that no-one can have a view on the Rig-veda unless they've read a book called Prolegomena which was published in 1888 by a contemporary and colleague of Max Muller (who edited some of his books) and is only available in German (I've checked). Witzel, conveniently, is German.

    It always amuses me when the linguists say “Oh, we’ve come a long way from Max Muller. It’s all much more scientific now.” when they’re basing their whole “science” on a theory of one of his chums – both post “Enlightenment” thinkers to a man.

    As Witzel would say, "Enough said!".

    Quote Originally Posted by sarabhanga

    Please give some reference to ANY serious academic who does not accept Oldenberg’s idea and has actually given some reason for ignoring it.
    There are many eminent academics that don't believe the Western linguists' view of an Aryan invasion or migration into India gleaned through study of the Rig-veda, although whether they pinpoint the source of their disbelief to Hermann Oldenberg’s theories, I couldn’t say.

    Anyway, here is a selection, starting with my favourite from James Mallory, Indo-Europeanist archaeologist and professor at Queens University, Belfast and editor of the Journal of Indo European Studies:

    “We call the people who spoke this ancestral language the Indo-Europeans or Proto Indo-Europeans. But although we can give them a name, they are unlike almost any other ancient people we are likely to encounter. As the linguistic ancestors of nearly half the planet’s population, they are of one of the most important entities in the prehistoric record – and yet they are also one of the most elusive. No Proto-Indo-European text exists; their physical remains and material culture cannot be identified without extensive argument; and their geographical location has been the subject of a century and a half of intense yet inconclusive debate.

    “...This quest for the origins of the Indo-Europeans has all the fascination of an electric light in the open air on a summer night: it tends to attract every species of scholar or would-be savant who can take pen to hand. It also shows a remarkable ability to mesmerise even scholars of outstanding ability to wander far beyond the realm of reasonable speculation to provide yet another example of academic lunacy...One does not ask “where is the Indo-European homeland?” but rather “where do they put it now?”

    Here's another:

    Koenraad Elst, a PhD at the Catholic University, Leuven, Belgium:

    “...what is this linguist evidence? In the 19th century, the Indian Urheimat theory was gradually abandoned because a new linguistic insight, known as linguistic palaeontology (though political fashions, especially nationalism and Eurocentric colonialism, may have contributed).

    “But many assumptions at the basis of linguistic palaeontology have been questioned and are not taken seriously any more. Furthermore, the type of lexical exchange between IE and Dravidian do not fit the "Aryan Barbarians conquered Dravidian Harappa" scenario ... nor do they necessitate any other invasion scenario.

    “Wherever we look, we cannot find the clinching "linguistic evidence" for a European Urheimat and an Aryan invasion into India. An Indian Urheimat has not been firmly proven either, but at any rate, linguistics has not disproven it, so that other types of evidence (such as literary indications of migrations from rather than into India) must now be given a fair and serious hearing.”

    Lord Colin Renfrew, Cambridge Professor of Archaeology, says in his book: Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins:

    “As far as I can see, there is nothing in the Hymns of the Rig-veda which demonstrates that the Vedic-speaking population were intrusive to the area.”.



    end of part 1 - please go to next post.
    Gill

  5. #15

    Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Here is part 2 of the previous post.

    And here's Edwin Bryant, who I quoted earlier, professor of Rutgers University.

    “...linguistic paleontology has not provided much uncontroversial data to exclude an eastern homeland that cannot be reversed to support the same. Neither has evidence of loanwords, nor dialect geography, nor arguments based on homogeneity versus heterogeneity. Philology and linguistics can actually offer surprisingly little to compel disenchanted Indian scholars to modify their suspicions of the ability of those disciplines to make authoritative pronouncements of the Indo-Aryan peoples in pre-history...

    “...The one-way borrowing of Indo-Aryan (or Indo-Iranian) loans into the Finno-Ugric language might enhance the possibility that the Indo-Aryans were migrating out of the north-west of the subcontinent towards such regions, and not emigrating away into the subcontinent. "

    Finally, here's an extract from an abstract fromRam Swarup Sharma, Ph.D. a reader at the department of Hindi at Delhi University.

    "For the last two centuries, the Western scholars have been busy in establishing a theory that Aryans were the invaders of pre-historic ages from Central Asia to Indian soil. A good number of unthoughtful Indian historians have also fallen in line with them. The net result is that the theory finds place in the curriculum of Indian educational system at all levels and this misinformation is being passed along through generation after generation among Indian masses.


    "Efforts have also been made to substantiate the hypothesis through archeaological and linguistic material. It is high time to analyze the whole doctrine on an objective platform and prove that Aryavarta-- India is the original homeland of the Aryan race. The present paper is an effort in this direction through linguistic methods. Following are the prime features of the paper :

    (1) With the full respect to the school of historical linguistics, it is submitted that the operative part of the 'Comparative Method and Reconstruction' (including Phonetic Laws of Grimme and Wherner) is not based on sound footings, because in these theories Sanskrit, Greek and Roman have been treated as contemporary languages, which is far from being true.


    (2) The whole dogma of a pre-historic language (Hittite) is uncalled for. It is deliberate attempt to establish that Vedic Sanskrit is not the oldest language on earth.


    (3) The idea that north Indian languages and European languages are constituents of the same family, i.e. Indo-European languages and South Indian languages belong to separate family (Dravidian languages), is totally misconceived according to syntactic structures and semantic shades of these languages. Structural analysis of Indian languages and their socio-cultural frames prove beyond doubt that India is one linguistic area all along.

    "With examples from a number of ancient languages, it may be proved that the whole of the Indian people belong to Aryans and that the so-called Arya-Dravid conflict tale is a creation of vested interests to cause unnecessary tension between North and South India. It is about time to reject this age old fiction."


    Sarabhanga, thank you for posting your tree of PIE languages. However, I have seen many such diagrams, all differing slightly as the linguists move their goalposts.

    I have to say, though, I don’t understand Witzel’s reference to “Garbage in, garbage out” with reference to Talageri’s Anukramanis. (Interestingly, that they’re even called Anukramanis tells us a lot. The Bhrigus, who Talageri says compiled the Rig-veda later on, and went on to compose much of the Puranas, were Anus.) I disagree with Witzel’s view that:

    “By using Late Vedic texts, what can one expect but the Late Vedic/Epic and Puranic point of view that differs from the truly Rig-vedic one by the changes made over the centuries.”

    I think this a misunderstanding on Witzel’s part and typical of someone who doesn’t really understand the mythological understory of Rig-veda, but just uses the Rig-veda to further his own interests and career.

    In my understanding and experience, you cannot compare the two (the Rig-veda and the Puranas) because you’re not comparing like with like.

    The Rig-veda comprises the hymns that the aryas and sages sung while carrying out sacred and ritualistic ceremonies at auspicious times of the year which were worked out by astrologers.

    The Puranas – I’m thinking here of the Srimad Bhagavatham, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata etc – are given over to an entirely different medium. The Puranas are pure storytelling at its very best, with stories designed to do what stories originally were meant to do. Not to entertain, but to teach the spiritual adept spiritual truths and appeal to his subconscious in the form of allegory to help him make the metaphysical journey from darkness to light.

    Having said that you cannot compare them, I do believe however that you can see that the thinking in the Puranas is hardly different to that of four core books of the Vedas, including the Rig. The names of most of the gods may be different, or they may have slightly altered their function, but the inner core story is just the same. So instead of having Sarama being rescued from the caves of the Panis by Indra (in the RV) you have Sita being rescued by Rama from Ravana and the Rakshasas (in the Puranas). Or Krishna (who is often described as “dark as a thundercloud or rain cloud” in the SB, thereby keeping the Indra thunder-god motif going) rescuing so many princesses from their evil king husbands that he ended up with over a 1,000 wives.

    If Western Indologists (who are mostly either Christian, Jewish or secular) could for just one moment extricate themselves from specialising down ever decreasing lines of enquiry, they would notice that the motif story that is common to both the Vedas and the Puranas also runs right across the pre Christian sacred literature of most of civilised world in the last couple of millennia in the BCs. In Mespotamia we had the Descent of Ishtar, in Greece - Demeter and Persephone and Orpheus and Eurudice, then there’s the Norse legends of Scandinavia and the Celtic countries that are also based on three worlds, including an Underworld.

    In this common story, there is usually an underworld (or cave) that a goddess falls into or goes into, and she has to be rescued and brought back up by the male god figure. This is the famous Mystery story used before an initiation into the Eleusian Mysteries.

    You might think this a bit of a detour, but in my view, it’s not. Because once you understand the core story, and what it represents, you can extract it and then probably what you have left (as the backdrop) is history and geography. But it is purely there as a backdrop – these books are not history books as such.

    I'd better stop now before it tells me I've got too many characters again!

    Best wishes to you
    Gill

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    Post Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Namaste Gill,

    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    Exactly as the relationships between different groups of living things may be inferred by considering their degree of similarity with regard to many varied characteristics, the same process may be applied to the problem of language relations to arrive at the most likely common ancestor ~ which in this case has been termed “Proto-Indo-European”.
    Quote Originally Posted by Gill
    Yes, in fact that is what the linguists always say. [However] I don't think that linguistics can be considered a science.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    Anyone who asks, “Was there a PIE language?” is automatically excluded from the whole debate, since they are doubting the very basis of the whole theory (i.e. that there is an intrinsic relationship between the various IE languages)!
    By denying the validity of Linguistics, you have (once again) excluded yourself from any debate over the details of PIE expansion!

    iraNa means “desert” or “salt or barren (soil)”. The term, however, is derived from iriNa, which in later texts (e.g. Mahabharata) refers to “a desert, an inhospitable region, a bare plain, barren soil or salt soil”.

    The original understanding (as in the Vedas) knows iriNa (from irA) as “a water-course or rivulet” or “a well or any excavation in the ground”.

    irA is closely related to iDA and iLA , indicating “any drinkable fluid, a draught (especially of milk), food, refreshment, comfort, enjoyment, water, speech or the goddess of speech (Sarasvati)”.

    Quote Originally Posted by Gill
    I have seen many such diagrams, all differing slightly as the linguists move their goalposts.
    Whatever variations you may have seen, EVERY such diagram is the same at its root!

  7. #17

    Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Namaste Sarabhanga

    It's very good to hear from you again. My reply today will have to be fairly brief as I'm at work.

    I have never doubted that there is a link between all the so-called IE languages, and I don't think that I have ever expressed a view to the contrary here. If I have given that impression, I apologise for misleading.

    What I've done in the last two posts is to quote eminent academics (as requested by you) who doubt the logic of the linguists argument that there was an invasion/migration of Aryans from the north or northwest. That is not the same thing as doubting that there was a common language. Far from it. It's just that the Western linguists are determined, to a man, that it cannot be Sanskrit - but never give their reasons for saying so. However, Sanskrit is the only language that runs through all IE languages.

    In fact, I'm having some wonderful realisations at the moment, working with the Norse mythology and spotting commonalities not only in the stories that make it up, but also the language. I was particularly pleased the other day to find the root of the "fire"(as used in sacred rituals in the Edda) is "bhri". I cannot help suspect that this comes from the Bhrigus. Talageri tells us that they were the original fire priests who were mainly responsible for Book 10 of the Rig-veda, and that they were Anus. As we know, the Anus migrated out of the Indian subcontinent via the west and northwest. It's been obvious to me for some time that the Norse mythology is too similar to the Vedic not to be linked. But this is the closest I've come to identifying the link. Historians call these people the Proto Celts.

    Thank you for your interpretation of Iran - it agrees with my assessment (mentioned in a previous post) that the word "Iran" is not derived from "Aryan" but from the nature of the land they inhabit.
    Last edited by Gill Harley; 21 June 2006 at 06:37 AM.
    Gill

  8. #18

    Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Quote Originally Posted by Gill Harley

    I have never doubted that there is a link between all the so-called IE languages, and I don't think that I have ever expressed a view to the contrary here. If I have given that impression, I apologise for misleading.
    Namaste Sarabhanga

    I think we’ve got a bit stuck in this discussion – possibly in the same way that there appears to be a stand off now in the academic world between the archaeologists, who can find no evidence of an Aryan invasion or migration, and the linguists, who believe that there was one.

    It has to be said, though, that the linguists, who are currently being led by Michael Witzel’s, have modified their views, in the light of the archaeological evidence (or lack of it!). The current linguistic theory is that Aryans invaded, from the north, the Bactria-Margiana region south of the Aral sea, and passed their culture and language on to those who were already living there (“Indic types”, whatever that means) and then eventually moved off west.

    Here’s a map of the BMAC area.


    Then, so MW’s theory goes, these “Indic types” with their new culture and language adopted from the Aryans, slowly migrated east and infiltrated their Vedic ideas and language into the subcontinent of India.

    This is from Witzel:

    "These new “Vedic people” (ie. people belonging to the racial stock of the original non-Aryan inhabitants of Bactria, but with language, mythology and culture of the Indic people who had earlier migrated into Bactria from further outside) “later on… moved into the Panjab, assimilating (‘Aryanising’) the local population”.

    “By the time they reached the Subcontinent… they may have had the typical somatic characteristics of the ancient population of the Turanian/Iranian/Afghan areas, and may not have looked very different from the modem inhabitants of the Indo-Iranian Boderlands. Their genetic impact would have been negligible, and… would have been ‘lost’ in a few generations in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people. One should not, therefore, be surprised that ‘Aryan bones’ have not been found so far (Kennedy, this volume; Hemphill, Lukas and Kennedy, 1991).


    I have to say though, this all sounds a bit to me like the dragging noise goal posts make when they’re being moved.

    However, my main area of study is mythology and it is in this area – plus the experience of my own spiritual practice – that has convinced me that the “Aryans-out” thesis is AT LEAST AS likely as the “Aryans-in” one.

    As Talageri points out in Chapter 7 of his book:

    “What Witzel, like other scholars who suggest similar scenarios, is doing, is suggesting that the Aryans who migrated into India were not the original Indoaryans, but groups of people native to the areas further northwest, who were “completely Aryanised” in “language and culture”, and further that they were so few in number that “their genetic impact would have been negligible” and “would have been ‘lost’ in a few generations in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people”.

    "The scholars thus try to explain away the lack of archaeological-anthropological evidence by postulating a fantastic scenario that is totally incompatible with the one piece of solid evidence which is available to us today: THE RIGVEDA.

    “The Rigveda represents a language, religion and culture which is the most archaic in the Indo-European world. As Griffith puts it in his preface to his translation: “As in its original language, we see the roots and shoots of the languages of Greek and Latin, of Celt, Teuton and Slavonian, so the deities, the myths and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of Christianity. As the science of comparative philology could hardly have existed without the study of Sanskrit, so the comparative history of the religions of the world would have been impossible without the study of the Veda.”

    “Vedic mythology represents the most primitive form of Indo-European mythology: as Macdonell puts it, the Vedic Gods “are nearer to the physical phenomena which they represent, than the gods of any other Indo-European mythology” . Vedic mythology not only bears links with every single other Indo-European mythology, but is often the only link between any two of them (as we will see in Appendix Three, Chapter 10)”

    So Sarabhanga (and anyone else who would like to join in) I am proposing that it might be a good idea to now leave behind the wranglings of the linguists and the archaeologists and pursue this discussion in the light of mythology...

    Do you agree?
    Gill

  9. #19
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    Post Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    The two traditions, languages, etc., were successfully merged over time, and it is partly due to this great ancient merging of apparently opposite cultures and natures that India and Hinduism are what they are today.

    From India’s point of view, the so-called Aryan Invasion is only a trans-Himalayan migration, and it is the same Aryans who invaded Europe at about the same time.

    When the poetic and philosophical Aryan nomads entered the ancient cultured settlements of Sindh, an even greater nation eventually arose from the ecological disasters and social turmoil that plagued the region after 2000 BC.

    But when those same nomads entered the dark forests of totally uncivilized Europe, the effect was quite different. It took Europe another 1,500 years to even begin to get civilized, and their knowledge was either re-invented or (mostly) imported back from the East!

    Today, all that remains obvious is the close linguistic connexion of all Indo-European cultures; and if the untruths of Nazi fascists and British imperialists are removed from the “theory of Aryan migration and cultural integration” then it becomes quite an innocuous theory that is actually very helpful in understanding both the Aryan and the Mleccha.

    There are some northern European languages that seem to be near the root language of “original Sanskrit”, but Sanskrit itself (especially Vedic Sanskrit) is extremely close to the root.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    It has long been generally accepted by serious scholars that the original Aryan homeland was somewhere around the Aral Sea, which is only a little north of modern Afghanistan.

    The Oxus (or Amu Darya ~ cf. Arya) flows directly from Afghanistan into the Aral Sea, and it has been an important trading and migration route for many thousands of years.

    There is little objection to including the regions now covered by Pakistan and Afghanistan as integral to ancient India; and if the neighbouring areas of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are also included then the Aryan “Invasion” Theory is merely suggesting an ancient radiation of Aryan culture from the north-western corner of Arya-desha (i.e. from around the Aral Sea, just north of Afghanistan).
    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    If we begin by accepting the idea that languages as apparently divergent as Gaelic and Gujarati are actually related, then we MUST begin by assuming that these languages have some common ancestral root. There is no reason to assume that this ancient parent tongue is still spoken anywhere exactly as it was originally, and the source must be inferred from the various commonalities of each language.

    Exactly as the relationships between different groups of living things may be inferred by considering their degree of similarity with regard to many varied characteristics, the same process may be applied to the problem of language relations to arrive at the most likely common ancestor ~ which in this case has been termed “Proto-Indo-European”.

    It is likely that the divergence began before the invention of writing, so it is unlikely that any example of the posited Proto-Indo-European will ever be discovered. But that should not prevent us from proposing the most likely nature of that tongue based on all kinds of other information.

    Even a cursory examination of any of the Indo-European languages will reveal many similarities ~ it really doesn’t require any great scholarship to notice that Sanskrit seems to permeate all of the languages grouped as “Indo-European”.
    Note that in PIA.jpg the term Aryan indicates Sanskrit.
    Quote Originally Posted by Sharabhanga
    The original understanding (as in the Vedas) knows iriNa (from irA) as “a water-course or rivulet” or “a well or any excavation in the ground”.

    irA is closely related to iDA and iLA, indicating “any drinkable fluid, a draught (especially of milk), food, refreshment, comfort, enjoyment, water, speech or the goddess of speech (Sarasvati)”.
    This understanding dates from before the desertification of the Aryan homelands and the disappearance of the original Sarasvati river (i.e. pre-2000 BC).

    The map you have provided is exactly the same as the image I have already provided in Attachment 51, which supports what I have been saying all along.

    I would be pleased to move on to a discussion of mythology.

  10. #20

    Re: Original Indo Iranian Homeland

    Namaste Sarabhanga

    It’s good to hear from you. Yes, let’s move on to mythology. But first, I’d like to answer your last post.

    I see that you have repeated a number of points from some of your previous posts. Perhaps you thought that I hadn’t heard you, or misunderstood you. But I had heard you, and understood. All contributors to this debate are pretty much unanimous in their belief that there was a settlement around the BMAC/Aral Sea area. There is much evidence to support it. So it’s a given. But what there isn’t evidence for is a migration east and then south into India. There is, however, archaeological evidence for (if we look at the “Kurgan wave” or “Corded ware” culture, dated around 4500 BC) a westwards expansion from the area today known as Turkmenistan (just west of the Aral Sea) and into Europe.

    So here it is in a nutshell. All we have is two facts. a) That there were human settlements in the BMAC/Aral Sea area and b) That there was an expansion westwards around 4500 BC. These two facts may or may not be linked. But we definitely have no evidence of any expansion either north and east, or south and east, or east. It’s only the linguists who think that they’ve found one. But they’ve found it based on the rules of a game that they’ve have invented themselves. And even when one of their own rules is found to work against their theories, they still maintain their position.

    Here is one small example, and it also has the benefit of getting us into mythology at last.

    I’m sure you’ve heard the children’s fairy tale entitled The Sleeping Beauty.

    The story starts when a beautiful baby girl is born to a king and queen who had been childless for many years. So when Aurora ((for that is what they named her) was born, there was much rejoicing up and down the land. Flags and multi-coloured bunting was hung out, the streets were strewn with flowers, and the people danced well into the night at street parties and festivals held in Aurora’s honour.

    The king then sent out a decree. He ordered that a great party should be held at which Aurora would be christened and blessed. All the great and good up and down the kingdom received gold-embossed invitations. And the invitees included Aurora’s three fairy godmothers, Freda, Almeida and Breda.

    However, Breda’s invitation got lost in the post.

    Freda and Almeida tried to comfort about this, saying that it must surely be a silly error and that her invitation would arrive any day soon. But Breda was not so sweet- natured as Freda and Almeida. In fact, she could be downright evil on occasions.

    So when the day of the party dawned, and her invitation had still not arrived, Breda was beside herself with rage.

    Frieda and Almeida had to leave their sister in high dudgeon as they picked up their presents and proceeded to the palace. When they got there, they walked into the enormous ballroom, where all the court was assembled around the cot of Aurora. They quickly flew over to her, and started giving her their presents and blessings (long life, good health, happy marriage, that sort of thing).

    But suddenly, a loud noise made everyone jump. The enormous doors of the ballroom had been flung open with a thump. Breda had arrived. She stormed into the ballroom, stomped up to Aurora’s crib and then muttered over the baby the darkest curse:

    “This child will never see it’s 16th birthday. She will prick her finger on a spinning wheel and die”

    The king, queen and the whole court were completely devastated. They burst into floods of tears.

    But Freda and Almeida quickly looked at each other meaningfully. Then they stepped forward. They told the king and queen that they couldn’t revoke the curse, but they could mitigate the worst of it. Instead of her dying before her 16th birthday, Aurora would instead fall asleep for 100 years.

    Well, I’m sure you know the rest of the story. How, despite the king ordering that every spinning wheel in the kingdom be banished, Aurora, on the day before her 16th birthday, managed to find one, prick her finger on it, and fall into a sleep for one hundred years.

    And how, after that time had elapsed, she was awoken by the kiss of a prince. And they fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.

    But where does this story come from? What is really about? And how is it relevant to this discussion?

    What it’s about should be fairly obvious to students of Vedic mythology. How we cannot avoid the dictates of our karmic inheritance. How the atma gets covered by the sleep of Maya, and we only wake up to the true reality by divine love, etc etc.

    Where does it come from? Most of the English-tongue fairy stories come from old folk tales that were gathered by the German brothers Grimm and the Dane, Hans Christian Andersen in the late 18th/early 19th century. They were developed, orally, from the original Norse and Icelandic mythology. They gradually spread into Germany, and eventually the UK, as the tribes migrated south and over the North Sea. In the last century, J R Tolkein based his Lord of the Rings on them and to this day, JK Rowling is plundering this rich seam for mythical characters and ideas to use in her Harry Potter series.

    I’ve only told this story briefly. But when it’s told well, it’s a rich, multi-layered cake of Vedic allegory, of which I’m sure that you will be able to supply even more examples. There is so much in mythology of Scandinavia that resonates with Vedic mythology, not least that Skanda was a Vedic god. Even their numerology is based on 432,000. And we know that Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are Indo-European languages. So, so far so good. Nothing too controversial there.

    In the Norse sagas, the three fairy godmothers are known as the three Sisters of Wyrd, or the Norns, who sit at spinning wheels, spinning our destiny at the root of the World Tree, Yggdrasil. They are a favourite staple right through Anglo-Saxon and English literature. Shakespeare used them in Macbeth as the three witches stirring the cauldron and casting the fate of Macbeth.

    So I think the question is, did the Scandinavian mythology come from Vedas, or vice-versa? Well, we don’t know. We just have a few clues scattered around. But let’s try to work it out through one of the linguists’ own rules.

    Most linguists believe that those in original PIE homeland used something they call the “voiced aspirated stop” (this means “bh”, “dh” and “gh” — as opposed to “voiceless aspirated stops” which are ‘ph’, ‘th’ and ‘gh’) Their opinion is that as the language spreads from the homeland, these aspirated stops convert into unaspirated stops (‘b’, ‘d’ and ‘g’).

    Well, we know that the fire priests of the Anus were called the Bhrigus. And we know that the fire priests of the Scandinavians were called ‘brisingrs”. In other words, India did (and still does) retain the voiced aspirated stop while the Norse converted to unaspirated stops. Therefore, by following this linguistic rule, India should be the homeland or at very least, should not be ruled out as such.

    Now you might think that this is a petty point. But the linguists’ whole case is based on lots of petty points like this one. This means that in order to unravel their case, you have to take one point at a time. Yet they never answer this point.

    Sot it's my view that the original three witches/sisters/fairy godmothers were the three Rig-vedic goddesses who are always referred together: Ila, Saraswati and Mahi.

    The linguists have also found that the Greeks and the Indians share the most linguistic commonalities among the PIE family. The Greek Gnostics carried on this idea of guardian goddesses being emanations from the ultimate Godhead, and spinning the fates, in the form of Sophia and Achamoth.
    Last edited by Gill Harley; 02 July 2006 at 06:10 AM.
    Gill

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