28.04.09

We keep on trucking

Posted in Uncategorized at 2:34 pm by nemo

I hope we can dialectically zigzag a bit further on this AIT/OIT debate. One thing is clear, noone understands the linguistics. Everyone has a few tidbits of this and that, amounting to nothing.
Rereading Elst I fail to find his thinking as convincing as before. Exactly what is his case?
But I remain open.
It is my feeling that there is a confusion between the idea of the continuity of an ‘Hindu’ tradition, and the Indo-Aryan linguistic question.

And I have always been suspicious of the Vedic origin of the dharma traditions we see later in the Upanishads onwards.
It seems sometimes as if the Sanskritization of those dharmas was a later phenomenon applied to an outstanding Indian spiritual tradition.
As a greek scholar I am very hardpressed to see Vedic Sanskrit as much older that Homeric Greek. They are clear distant cousins. To say that the Vedas were written in this language several thousand years earlier is an absurdity.
That’s why alarm bells go off here. Perhaps this is misleading me. I don’t know.
In any case the more typical view, as in Empires of the Silk Road (Beckwith), isn’t the crackpot unproven thesis that the critics of AIT claim it is. That doesn’t make it correct.

We have clear evidence that IE speakers moved into (not invaded) Europe, Italy, Greece, Middle East, Iran, China (Tocharian, et al.), Yet the Indian history is to be an exception.
We see the IE’s moving from Eurasia into the general locus of civilization and invigorating the emerging system. Then we see several cases of flowering in the Axial period, from Italy to India. This symmetry is general evidence almost as convincing as the linguistic.

Whatever the case, the Beckwith book makes clear that there was, whatever its source, a characteristic Eurasian culture complex, with its own complicated cultural dynamic and PIE language, and we see the traces of this in the various cultures into which the IE’s moved. A good example is the comitatus, the servitors of a leader who swore an oath of fealty, and died when the chief died. etc,….
This Eurasian complex can’t just be dismissed by irate Indologists fuming over British colonialism.
And of course there remains the issue of the chariot, and the way in which the chariot-riding Indo-Europeans upset the balance of warfare in the major centers of civilization. The chariot technology was a very devastating invention for its time, and all in all it makes sense of the facts to see this as associated with the later phase of the Eurasian Culture Complex.
Beckwith’s view is that the IE’s did not invade, but moved into areas as hired mercenaries, who intermarried and produced creoles.
Thus he suggests that there is little evidence of differentiation of IE languages along the routes of their spread, remaining close to PIE until they reach their new homes, which occurred rather quickly. A somewhat startling claim.

I couldn’t find the passage mentioned on Vedic and OIT as the Google system denied access after a few pages.
In any case, we need to proceed with caution, especially on linguistic issues. Few of these scholars are competent in the linguistics. Beckwith’s summary of the issue of consonantal stops and their differentiation, as in yesterday’s post, is telling evidence.

I am delayed due to the expense of these books. But let’s keep going, and see if we can find a good case for the OIT. Otherwise…

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