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Autochthonous Aryans? the Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts

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Volume 7 (2001), Issue 3 Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts. Michael Witzel ISSN 1084-7561 http://dx.doi.org/10.11588/ejvs.2001.3.830 Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts. Michael Witzel Harvard University INTRODUCTION §1. Terminology § 2. Texts § 3. Dates §4. Indo-Aryans in the RV §5. Irano-Aryans in the Avesta §6. The Indo-Iranians §7. An ''Aryan'' Race? §8. Immigration §9. Remembrance of immigration §10. Linguistic and cultural acculturation THE AUTOCHTHONOUS ARYAN THEORY § 11. The ''Aryan Invasion'' and the "Out of India" theories LANGUAGE §12. Vedic, Iranian and Indo-European §13. Absence of Indian influences in Indo-Iranian §14. Date of Indo-Aryan innovations §15. Absence of retroflexes in Iranian §16. Absence of 'Indian' words in Iranian §17. Indo-European words in Indo-Iranian; Indo-European archaisms vs. Indian innovations §18. Absence of Indian influence in Mitanni Indo-Aryan Summary: Linguistics CHRONOLOGY §19. Lack of agreement of the autochthonous theory with the historical evidence: dating of kings and teachers ARCHAEOLOGY §20. Archaeology and texts §21. RV and the Indus civilization: horses and chariots §22. Absence of towns in the RV Electric Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS) 7-3 (2001) pp.(1-93) (2) Michael WITZEL §23. Absence of wheat and rice in the RV §24. RV class society and the Indus civilization §25. The Sarasvatī and dating of the RV and the BråhmaÍas §26. Harappan fire rituals? §27. Cultural continuity: pottery and the Indus script VEDIC TEXTS AND SCIENCE §28. The ''astronomical code of the RV'' §29. Astronomy: the equinoxes in ŚB §30. Astronomy: Jyotiåa VedåÌga and the solstices §31. Geometry: Śulba Sūtras SUMMARY OF RESULTS §32. The autochthonous theory ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE 'TRADITIONAL' IMMIGRATION THEORY The* ''Aryan question'' is concerned with the immigration of a population speaking an archaic Indo-European language, Vedic Sanskrit, who celebrate their gods and chieftains in the poems of the oldest Indian literature, the gveda, and who subsequently spread their language, religion, ritual and social organization throughout the subcontinent. Who were the 'Aryans'? What was their spiritual and material culture and their outlook on life? Did they ever enter the Indian subcontinent from the outside? Or did this people develop indigenously in the Greater Panjab? This, the 'Aryan' question, has kept minds -- and politicians -- busy for the past 200 years; it has been used and misused in many ways. And, its discussion has become a cottage industry in India during recent years. In this paper, it will be attempted to present the pros and contras for the (non-)occurrence of a movement of an 'Aryan' population and its consequences. First, a summary of the traditional 'western' theory, then the recent Indian counter-theories; this is followed by an evaluation of its merits; the paper concludes with some deliberations on the special kind of 'discourse' that informs and drives the present autochthonous trend. §1. Terminology At the outset, it has to be underlined that the term Ārya (whence, Aryan) is the self-designation of the ancient Iranians and of those Indian groups speaking Vedic Sanskrit and other Old Indo-Aryan (OIA) languages and dialects. Both peoples called themselves and their language årya or arya: The Persian King Darius (519 BCE ) was the first who wrote in ariya and a Late Vedic text, Kauåītaki ĀraÍyaka 8.9, defines the Vedic area as that where åryå våc "Ārya speech" (i.e. Vedic Sanskrit) is heard. The ancient Eastern Iranians, too, called themselves airiia: their assumed mythical 'homeland',1 airiianąm vaẽjah, is described in the Avesta (Vīdẽvdåd 1); and the name of the country, Irån, is derived from this word as well. Speakers of Aryan (i.e. of the IIr. languages) occupied, e.g. in * A first, shorter version of this paper was written in 1997 and was to be published that year in a special issue of a science journal in India; this has mysteriously not materialized and was in fact abandoned in 1999; this paper has been constantly updated in light of recent indigenist discussions; it has been revised now (Dec. 2000), especially in the linguistic section, as H. Hock's discussion (1999) of "Out of India" scenarios has relieved me of a detailed treatment of several such theories (Misra 1992). 1 On this question see now Witzel 2000; see below § 9, end. Autochthonous Aryans? (3) the first millennium BCE, the vast area between Rumania and Mongolia, between the Urals and the Vindhya, and between N. Iraq/Syria and the Eastern fringes of N. India. They comprised the following, culturally quite diverse groups. (a) North Iranians: Scythians in the vast steppes of the Ukraine and eastwards of it (surviving as the modern Ossete in the Caucasus), the Saka of Xinjiang (Khotanese and Tumshuq, mod. Sariqoli) and western Central Asia, the Saka tigraxauda (the "pointed cap" Saka) and the Saka haumavarga (''the Soma pressing Saka''); (b) West Iranians: the ancient Medes (Måda of Rai and Azerbaijan), the mod. Kurds, Baluchis, and Persians (ancient Pårsa of Fårs) as well as the Tajik; (c) E. Iranians in Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan: speakers of Avestan, Bactrian, mod. Pashto, the mod. Pamir languages, Sogdian (mod. Yaghnobi), and Choresmian; (d) The recently islamized Kafiri/Nuristani group in N.E. Afghanistan with the still non- Islamic Kalash in the Chitral valley of Pakistan; to this day they have preserved many old traits, such as the c. 2000 BCE pronunciation of '10' (duc) and the old IIr. deity Yama Råjå (Imrā); (e) The speakers of Indo-Aryan: from Afghanistan eastwards into the Panjab, and then into the north Indian plains. By the time of the Buddha, the IA languages had spread all over the northern half of the subcontinent and had displaced almost completely the previously spoken languages of the area. Linguists have used the term Ārya from early on in the 19th cent. to designate the speakers of most Northern Indian as well as of all Iranian languages and to indicate the reconstructed language underlying both Old Iranian and Vedic Sanskrit. Nowadays this well-reconstructed language is usually called Indo-Iranian (IIr.), while its Indic branch is called (Old) Indo-Aryan (IA). An independent third branch is represented by the Kafiri or Nuristani of N.E. Afghanistan. All these languages belong to the IIr. branch of the Eastern (or Satem) group of the Indo-Euroepan (IE) languages which differs from the phonetically more conservative western IE by a number of innovations. The IE languages (which, confusingly, sometimes were also called ''Aryan'') included, in ancient times, the vast group of tongues from Old Icelandic to Tocharian (in Xinjiang, China), from Old Prussian (Baltic) to Old Greek and Hittite, and from Old Irish and Latin to Vedic Sanskrit. However, the use of the word Ārya or Aryan to designate the speakers of all Indo-European (IE) lan- guages or as the designation of a particular "race" is an aberration of many writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and should be avoided. At least from Neolithic times onwards, language had little to do with "race"; language also cuts across ethnic groups and cultures,2 and had little to do with ancient states or with nationhood, as the use of Aramaic in the Persian empire, Latin in Medieval Europe and Persian in much of the Near East and in medieval India may indicate. It is clear that in the India of the oldest Vedic text, the gveda (RV), årya was a cultural term (Kuiper 1955, 1991, R. Thapar 1968, Southworth 1979, 1995) indicating the speakers of Vedic Sanskrit and the bearers of Vedic culture and Vedic ritual; it simply meant 'noble' by the time of the Buddha and of the early Sanskrit drama. It is also clear that the poets (Ýåi, brahmán, vipra, kavi) of the gveda and their aristocratic patrons regarded themselves and their followers as arya/årya. (Thieme 1938). In the sequel, I will carefully distinguish between the following usages: first, the årya/ariya/airiia languages, which I will call by their technical name, Indo-Iranian (IIr).3 When referring to their Indian sub- branch, I will use Indo-Aryan (IA, or Old IA). However, the tribes speaking Vedic Sanskrit and adhering to Vedic culture, I will call Indo-Aryan or Ārya. (In common parlance in India, however, Aryan is used both to refer to IA language as well as to the people speaking it and belonging to the sphere of Vedic culture, or even to an Aryan '"race'"). 2 See, however, such early and clear statements against an "Aryan race" as those by M. Müller 1888, H. Hirt 1907: 6-7, Franz Boas 1910 [1966]. 3 Confusingly, linguists sometimes use "Aryan" as a shortcut designation of IIr. because both Iranians and Indo-Aryans call themselves and their language arya/årya (see below). (4) Michael WITZEL § 2. Texts Since most of our evidence on the ancient 'Aryans' comes from the texts and from the linguistic and cultural data contained in them, it is necessary to give an outline what kind of texts we have for the early period. For India, we have the Vedas, a large collection of texts, orally composed and orally transmitted well into this millennium. Tradition has taken care to ensure, with various techniques, that the wording and even tone accents, long lost from popular speech, have been preserved perfectly, almost like a tape recording. This includes several special ways of recitation, the Padapåéha (word-for-word recitation) and several complicated extensions and modifications (vikÝti).4 They contain mainly religious texts: hymns addressed to the gods (RV), other mantras in verse or prose (YV, SV, AV SaÇhitås) which are used in the solemn Vedic (śrauta) ritual and the ''theological'' explanations (BråhmaÍas and KÝåÍa YV SaÇhitås), composed in the expository prose of the ritual, and the Mantras used therein.
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