The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate

416 Pages·2004·27.24 MB·english

by  Edwin Bryant

The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture
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The Quest for the Origins
of Vedic Culture
The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate
EDWIN BRYANT
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2001
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Cape Town
Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Murnbai
Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 2001 by Edwin Bryant
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bryant, Edwin
The quest for the origins of Vedic culture :
the Indo-Aryan migration debate / Edwin Bryant.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographicall reference and index.
ISBN 0-19-513777-9; ISBN 0-19-516947-6 (PBK)
1. Indo-Aryans—Origin. 2. India—History—To 324 B.C.
3. Indus civilization I. Title.
DS425.B79 2000
934'.02-dc21 99-086274
First published as an Oxford University Press paperback 2003
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To my father and sister
for all their support.
And to Fran, Ted, and Jack
for making this possible.
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Acknowledgmentss
To Fran Pritchet, for taking me under her wing right from the start; Ted Riccardi, for
always encouraging me to pursue my intellectual interests; and Jack Hawley, for making
sure that I came up to standard. To Gary Tubb, for his comments, meticulous as al-
ways, and to Michael Witzel, for being so generous with his time and vast learning. To
James Mallory, for extensive comments, and to Kim Plofker, for valuable criticisms. To
Richard Meadow, Hans H. Hock, Hermut Scharfe, Peter Rahul Das, Jay Jasanoff, and
Thomas Trautmann for providing feedback on various chapters or sections of this work.
To Fred Smith, Carl Lamberg-Karlovsky, and Vasudha Narayanan for their help. To
the many scholars whom I had the good fortune to meet in India, and who were so
generous with their time and hospitality. Needless to say, the views represented herein
are my own and not necessarily of those who have been kind enough to point out the
most egregious errors in previous drafts of this work. Special thanks to Matthew Ekstrand-
Abueg for doing a great job with the maps and diagrams despite the last-minute time
constraints, and to Martin von Wyss from the Harvard map room; to Fritz Staal for his
assistance in obtaining the photograph for the cover; to Pia Bryant for her extensive
editing; to the American Institute of Indian Studies for providing me with a research
and travel grant, and to the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation for offering me a Ph.D
write-up grant.
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Contents
Introduction, 3
1. Myths of Origin: Europe and the Aryan Homeland Quest, 13
Biblical Origins, 14
India, the Cradle of Civilization, 18
The Aryans and Colonial and Missionary Discourse, 21
German Aryanism, 30
Two Centuries of Homeland Theories, 35
Present-Day Homeland Hypotheses, 38
Conclusion, 43
2. Early Indian Responses, 46
Hindu Nationalist Responses, 47
The First Reactions: Hindu Religious Leaders, 51
Conclusion, 56
3. Vedic Philology, 57
The Racial Evidence, 59
The West-to-East Geographic Shift in Sanskrit Texts, 63
Conclusion, 67
4. Indo-European Comparative Linguistics: The Dethronement of Sanskrit, 68
The Law of Palatals and the Discovery of Hittite, 69
Objections from India, 72
Conclusion, 73
5. Linguistic Substrata in Sanskrit Texts, 76
Linguistic Innovations in Sanskrit, 78
Evidence of the Loanwords, 84
Terms for Flora in Indie Languages, 90
Place-Names and River Names, 98
Indo-Aryan, or Dravidian and Munda Migrations?, 102
Conclusion, 105
6. Linguistic Paleontology, 108
Flora and Fauna, 109
The Horse, 115