History of Indic Languages
By K S Krishnan
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Contents
1 History of Indic Languages
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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2 Origin of the Indo-European languages
2.1 Linguistic Palaeontology or LP or Palaeolinguistics . . . . . . . .
2.2 Laryngeal Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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3 Indo-Aryan in South Asia in second millennium BCE
3.1 Horses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.2 Gobekli Tepe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.3 Further Evidences Against Arrival of Indo-Aryans in South Asia
in the Second Millennium BCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3.4 Acculturation A New Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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4 Genetic Evidence
4.1 Evidence of Studies Based on Y-DNA Haplogroups . . . . . . . .
4.2 Inconsistencies in the Models of Spread of IE Languages in Eurasia
4.3 Arrival of Indo-Aryan Speakers in South Asia - A new Perspective
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5 Conclusion
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
History of Indic Languages
1.1
Introduction
Indic languages or Indo-Aryan languages are the largest groups within the IndoEuropean language family; both in terms of the number of member languages as
well as the number of speakers. Geographically, these languages are spoken in the
northern parts of South Asia, including Bangladesh, parts of Afghanistan, and
also in southern parts of Sri Lanka. The history of this language group or how
it came to be in present geographic location is controversial, with discussions on
the subject distracted by inflexible ideological positions and emotional reactions.
This paper is an effort to look into the issues involved without being buffeted
by these as far as possible.
Languages belonging to the IE family are spoken by almost half the humanity
at present and are present as primary languages in all continents, except maybe
the two icy ones. The time and circumstances of this spread to other continents
is well known, but the circumstances and dynamics of its unusual spread all
over vast Eurasia in pre-historic times is still hazy. Many theories have been
proposed trying to explain this process, but none of them has been able to build
a respectable consensus in its favor. There are multiple pieces of evidence that
just do not add up with any of the models that are proposed at present.
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CHAPTER 1. HISTORY OF INDIC LANGUAGES
Chapter 2
Origin of the
Indo-European languages
There are two dominant theories of the origins of the Indo-European languages;
the Pontic-Caspian-Steppe hypothesis and the Anatolian hypothesis. The first
of these locate the original speakers of Proto-Indo-European somewhere on the
Russian steppes, north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea; and posits branching of PIE into daughter languages by around 2500 BCE. This model connects
the Proto-Indo-European language with the Yamna or Yamnaya horizon, in the
area around the Don River or between Dnieper and Volga rivers in South Russia, using a new approach of combining linguistics and archaeological data. The
Yamnaya horizon is an archaeological culture associated with kurgan cemeteries,
corded-ware pots, and a system of nomadic pastoralism. This model is known
as the ‘Kurgan hypothesis’ and was first proposed by Marija Gimbutas in the
1950s.
The alternative theory locates the Indo-European homeland (Urheimat) in
Anatolia in modern-day Turkey and suggests a point of divergence in around
c.7000-6000 BCE (the Early Neolithic). In this case, the socio-technological development spurring the spread of Proto-Indo-European is the development of
agriculture. The displacement of earlier non-Indo-European languages was facilitated by both the population increase enabled by farming and the prestige
attached to farming cultures. An advantage of this hypothesis is that the spread
of farming techniques has been well-documented by archaeologists. This theory
was propounded by the archaeologist Colin Renfrew and is known as the Anatolian hypothesis. The first is essentially based on linguistic evidence and the
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CHAPTER 2. ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
second on archaeological data.
The ”Indo-Aryan arrival in South Asia in the second millennium BCE” thesis is based on Kurgan or more generally ‘The steppe home-land’ model. The
Anatolian hypothesis also posits Indo-Aryan arrival in South Asia, but far back
in time; in about fifth millennium BCE. There are other models like Paleolithic
Continuity Theory and Out-of-India Theory among others, but these have only
limited support at present. There are also many variations of these proposed by
different scholars.
One important point of contention between proponents of these two theories
is whether ‘linguistic paleontology’ is a legitimate methodology.
2.1
Linguistic Palaeontology or LP or Palaeolinguistics
The practice of making inferences about the cultures of unattested proto-language
users on the evidence of reconstructed languages is called ‘linguistic paleontology’. It can be considered the interface between historical-comparative linguistics and archaeology. It aims at and is thought to be capable of correlating the
results of linguistic reconstruction with historical cultures identified in space and
time by archaeology.
It was argued that by establishing a bridge between historical-comparative
reconstruction and archaeology, linguistic palaeontology can take us closer to a
fuller picture of a reconstructed proto-language because it may provide a cultural
embedding for linguistic reconstruction, thus it can eliminate the sterility and
increase the reality of reconstructed etyma. By establishing the time-depth of
a proto-language we can set the temporal limits, while the ancient spread-zone
of the fauna and flora known from reconstructed terms defines the spatial limits
of the center of language dispersal. According to its defenders, it promises the
ability to see into the social and material cultures of prehistoric societies and
uncover facts about peoples beyond the reach of archaeology. Advocates of this
procedure claim that conclusions made based on reconstructed etyma about the
cultural background of a proto-language will relate not only to objects known
by the speakers of a proto-language but also to abstract phenomena that may
not be traced by material remnants accessible by archaeological investigations.
Most 19th-century linguists took it for granted that they were reconstructing
the actual word forms of some earlier language, that *dekm, (PIE reconstruction
for ‘ten’. PIE reconstructions have a star prefix as a convention) for example, was
a pronounceable Proto-Indo-European word. Many of their successors have been
2.1. LINGUISTIC PALAEONTOLOGY OR LP OR PALAEOLINGUISTICS9
more skeptical about the phonetic reality of reconstructed etyma. Many linguists
maintain that they are no more than formulae summarizing the correspondences
observed to hold between attested forms in particular languages and that they
are, in principle unpronounceable. According to Pulgram, “no reputable linguist
pretends that Proto-Indo-European reconstructions represent a reality”. The
reconstructed lexicon is not a reconstructed language. At best what can be said
is that different forms of these might have been in use in the dialects of the
proto-language.
When the shift is made, from phonological reconstruction to drawing inferences about the material and social culture of pre-historical societies, one
moves from historical linguistics to a discipline much more closely aligned to
archaeology. Its critics see it as essentially flawed and unscientific. The correct establishment of both the temporal and spatial limits in itself can be a
very difficult task; and if one of them is incorrect, the other is rendered invalid
and we miss the target of the identification of a homeland. The biggest issue
related to this procedure is that it is based on the assumed meanings of the
reconstructed terms. While we have near exception-less sound laws, there is
no equivalent ‘meaning laws’. Given the “vague and variable meanings” of the
cognates used to reconstruct Indo-European, conclusions about Indo-European
culture must be suspect. ‘A reconstructed meaning does not necessarily mirror
the exact reference in the protolanguage’. Furthermore, when dating the spread
of these languages, the presence of some reconstructed etyma, particularly of
terms referring to technological advances, does not tell us that the language or
community sprang into existence at the same point in time that the technology
did.
Some linguists find some of these methods and processes arbitrary. A. Fox
states “we are not necessarily able to establish unambiguously the original meaning of a particular word in the protolanguage, since meaning, as well as phonological form, are subject to change” (Fox 1995, 307). Although phonemes are
subject to change, sound changes are mostly found to be regular and therefore
recoverable as far as we can establish the laws governing sound changes. Semantic changes, however, are more elusive, and semantic reconstruction, as a result,
is not always as reliable as phonological reconstruction. These are often assigned
the currently understood meaning of the cognates used for reconstruction, which
could lead to serious errors. We cannot expect full semantic congruity of an etymon in descendant languages, just as we do not expect a proto-form to come
down to daughter languages without phonological alterations. Many scholars
have expressed doubts about this method. Linguist Stefan Zimmer says, “The
long dispute about the reliability of this ‘linguistic paleontology’ is not yet fin-
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CHAPTER 2. ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
ished, but is approaching its inevitable end with a negative result, of course.”
Gimbutas says when discussing the cultural change enforced by Indo-European
expansion: “These changes were expressed as the transition from matrilineal to
patrilineal order, from a learned theocracy to a militant patriarchy, from a sexually balanced egalitarian society to a male-dominated hierarchy, and from a
chthonic goddess religion to the IE sky-oriented pantheon of gods”.
These are quite clearly excessively strong conclusions to derive from linguistic
evidence. There were even more expansive claims about the magical efficacy of
the technique and as a backlash many people are now suspicious of the methods
of linguistics.
Words reconstructed for PIE used by Gimbutas and others in formulating
the Kurgan hypotheses are those for horse, cow, pig, goat, and sheep, as well as
words for piglet, lamb, and cattle; words for riding, milking, wool, and words
for the wheel, hub, axle, and transport by vehicle. All these would support the
idea of a pastoral society, who domesticated horses and lived during the Early
Bronze Age.
But there are also words for grain, barley, kernel, broad beans, axes, milling,
grinding, sowing, reaping, gathering, ploughing, and fields for ploughing in the
earliest layer of PIE, which suggest an agricultural society. Besides, missing
from Gimbutas’ analysis are the words for ducks, geese, cranes, salmon, and
eels, which are not typical steppes creatures. Words for ships and rowing are
unlikely in the language of a pastoral culture and words for ore, gold, and silver
also have been reconstructed, even though Gimbutas insists that the Kurgan
people only knew copper.
If such selective picking and choosing of terms in PIE in support of the model
is acceptable, it is also possible to rule out South Russian Steppe as a candidate
for PIE homeland, as it can be argued that PIE people were agriculturalists and
lived somewhere near the sea. Edwin Francis Bryant (2001) says about the horse
evidence; ”using such negative evidence, by the same logic used to eliminate
India as a candidate, ultimately any potential homeland can be disqualified due
to lacking some fundamental Proto-Indo-European item or another”. Edward
Sapir, N. S. Trubetzkoy, Antonio Tovar, Joseph Greenberg, Georges Mounin, and
others have criticized such shortcomings of conventional linguistics, including
its claim to reconstruct hypothetical languages of the distant past. Edmund
Leach (1990: 243) expresses his reservations thus “The origin myth of the IndoEuropean philologists calls for a lineage of wholly imaginary ancestral protolanguages.”
One example of such misinterpretation is the word for salmon in PIE. It was
originally claimed that Indo-European term *laks denoted the North Atlantic
2.1. LINGUISTIC PALAEONTOLOGY OR LP OR PALAEOLINGUISTICS11
salmon which is found in the Baltic and North Atlantic. This was based on the
cognate etymology of the respective words for salmon in Germanic and BaltoSlavic languages. It was argued that since the term for Atlantic salmon in the
Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages could be derived from the common ProtoIndo-European root *laks, the Urheimat of the Indo-Europeans must be where
both the languages and the object it describes can be found: Northern-Central
Europe. This precluded the placement of the Indo-European homeland at any
real distance from this region or seemed to be a piece of strong evidence for a
PIE Home-Land in North Europe. This model also had strong political support
from the Nazi rulers of Germany. In later work though, it was argued that *laks
denotes the salmon Trout which is much more widespread and would allow for
homelands across Eurasia and that the term which originally denoted the salmon
Trout was only transferred to the North Atlantic salmon by later tribes of Balts,
Slavs, and Germans. This demonstrates how spurious models can be constructed
using tools of historical linguistics.
Many people hold that the idea of a PIE itself makes little sense, as the
regions variously identified with the PIE homeland never seem to have had
a high population density. These models assume large migrations from PIE
homeland in several directions within a short period; which is very unlikely
when the proposed regions had a sparse population. This was particularly so in
the case of South Russian Steppe.
Apart from such objections raised against linguistic paleontology, many linguists are also uncomfortable with the reconstruction of etyma in unattested
proto-languages using the comparative method. Leonard Bloomfield outlined
in 1933 the problems inherent in the comparative method. The comparative
method worked “only on the assumption of a uniform parent language,” one
without dialectal variation, and hypothesized abrupt separations of one speechcommunity from another. Such abrupt changes are unlikely and language separations are likely to be long-drawn-out processes. Furthermore, according to
Bloomfield, the likelihood of error increases with the length of time or breadth
of the area under investigation. Bloomfield was even more critical of linguistic
paleontology, which attempted to reconstruct proto-culture based on the reconstructed lexicon.
Linguistic palaeontology was once the great hope of the new ‘science’ of
linguistics. Linguists claimed they were able to re-create the Indo-Europeans
original environment, down to its flora and fauna. However, this field is now
largely discredited. Depending on the approach followed, one can equally well
arrive at a warm or a cold climate, the plains of Central Europe or the mountains
of the Caucasus; the PIE people can be portrayed as aggressive nomads or as
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CHAPTER 2. ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
peaceful sedentary agriculturists or as a coastal society of sea-farers or almost
as anything one fancies. This method gives anyone the freedom to choose the
‘Original Home-land’ and the cultural and lifestyle practices of the PIE people
based on their preferences or ideological leanings.
The popular chronology of the evolution of IE languages is almost entirely
based on this method. And ‘the arrival of Indo-Aryan language in South Asia in
the second millennium BCE’ model is again almost entirely based on this model
and its chronology, as it has little else to support it at the local level.
Linguists claim that the discipline fully qualifies to be treated as a science, as
its predictive power was demonstrated in many instances (though the uninitiated
might find some of its methods and procedures as based on subjective inferences).
This claim is primarily related to sound changes and one example usually quoted
is that of Laryngeal theory.
2.2
Laryngeal Theory
The laryngeal theory is the name commonly given to an assumption made about
the phonological system of an early stage of Indo-European language. It is
assumed that this system included some phonemes, usually called laryngeals.
It is hypothesized that Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) had a series of
phonemes beyond those reconstructed with the comparative method. These
phonemes, according to the most accepted variant of the theory, were ”laryngeal”
consonants of an indeterminate place of articulation towards the back of the
mouth. They have disappeared in all known IE languages, but is believed to
have affected their surroundings in typical and to a large extent predictable
ways. The hypothesis was first proposed by F. de Saussure more than a century
ago (1879), but was mostly rejected by most scholars at that time. It was
savagely attacked by many leading linguists of the time, including some senior
faculty members of the Leipzig University, which was the acknowledged leader
in Indo-European linguistics studies in 19th century. Because of this rejection,
the theory was more or less forgotten for the next fifty years.
But in a remarkable turnaround, it was accepted by mainstream scholars after
Hittite language was deciphered and seemed to contain some such phonemes.
The evidence for their existence is indirect, but the theory serves as an elegant explanation for some properties of the PIE vowel system that made no
sense until this theory came along. It creates greater regularity in the reconstruction of PIE phonology than from the reconstruction that is produced by
the comparative method. Thus it proved to be an exotic tool that supplemented
2.2. LARYNGEAL THEORY
13
comparative method in linguistics. Laryngeal Theory of Proto-Indo-European
is widely accepted nowadays, but with different degrees of ‘faith’. Many IE
linguists have expressed their doubts about different aspects of the theory and
there are many disagreements among those who support it. Linguists have found
inconsistencies in PIE Laryngeal Theory and many are completely against it. It
is not easy to find articles of these critics, even in mediums like Wikipedia as
they are generally ignored by the IE linguistics establishment.
One of these authors is the eminent Polish linguist Witold Manczak, who
has written a series of articles with strong criticism of the theory. According to
Maczak, the first problem is that Saussure’s proposal is untenable, for various
important reasons, among them the absurdity of proposing a language with
just one vowel. This would be enough to invalidate the whole edifice of PIE
laryngeals. In one of the articles, Manczak asks himself why it is that the
Laryngeal Theory has been so successful among linguists. According to him,
there is a general lack of validity criteria in historical linguistics. The important
thing is the ‘authority’ behind the theory, not the validity of the theory itself.
It seems strange that linguistics has to depend on such a theory (about a
sound nobody has heard) to establish its scientific credentials, when there are
such serious disagreement between scholars regarding its validity and applicability.
Similarly, R. Jakobson (1957) argued that, in the PIE system reconstructed
by use of comparative methods, the existence of the aspirated voiced stops without the presence of the corresponding voiceless aspirated stops was questionable.
In short there are serious disagreements among scholars regarding many aspects
of PIE reconstruction.
The suggestion is not that linguistics is a fake science; it is only that conclusions based on it should not be treated as conclusive in themselves that can
override any adverse findings in other disciplines.
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CHAPTER 2. ORIGIN OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES
Chapter 3
Indo-Aryan in South Asia
in second millennium BCE
The principal reasons for many to argue for an ‘Indo-Aryan arrival in South Asia
in second millennium BCE’ model are (in the words of Michael Witzel, Professor
of Sanskrit at Harvard University; one of the most vocal supporter of the model)
1 The linguistic evidence ‘so clearly speaks for it’
2 “If RV is to be dated before 2000 BCE, it should not contain evidence of
the domesticated horse (not found in the subcontinent before c. 1700 BCE) and
of the horse drawn chariot developed only about 2000 BCE in S. Russia”.
“The horse-and chariot-rich Vedic texts are characterized by small tribal
units of late Bronze Age pastoralists roaming around the Punjab (Witzel 2001a)
that must be dated after 1900 BC, given the invention of the spoked-wheeled
chariot around 2000 BC and the importation of the first domesticated horses
into South Asia by c. 1800 BC.”
‘The linguistic evidences that speak for the model’ include the conclusion
based on reconstruction of PIE and linguistic palaeontology that its original
home was in an area with temperate climate and that the people who spoke this
dialect were nomadic pastoralists who domesticated horses and had horse drawn
chariots for transport. Words for flora and fauna found in the ‘home land’ also
have been reconstructed. These seem to exclude South Asia as the home of PIE.
Since Indic languages are branches of IE, this implies that Indo-Aryan language
came to South Asia from outside.
It was also similarly concluded, again based on linguistic palaeontology, that
PIE evolved in bronze-age and began to branch into separate daughter languages
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16CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
in middle bronze-age, as chariot construction requires at least middle bronzeage technologies. Since it was also concluded that PIE home was in the South
Russian Steppes and the middle bronze-age in that area was in the middle of
third millennium BCE and since Indo-Iranian was a later branch of PIE, it could
not have reached South Asia before the middle of second millennium BCE.
Witzel finds many substrate words in RV which he believes came from the
local language spoken in NW India when IA speakers entered the area. There
are also many names in RV which he finds are neither possible in Vedic nor
Indo-Iranian or Indo-European. Witzel believes this to be evidence for arrival of
IE language in South Asia. But some linguists have pointed out that the identification of some of these as substrate may be on account of “wilful imposition by
the researching scholar, of the inferred structure of a majority of lexical roots,
on a minority of them”.
It is difficult to concede that the above linguistic evidences ‘so clearly speaks
for’ an ‘Indo-Aryan arrival in South Asia in second millennium BCE’ model,
as it is based on linguistic palaeontology, which has been judged as extremely
frail and unreliable by many scholars. And without the assumed insights provided by this method, the steppe home land model, including its chronology,
loses much of its glamour and credibility. The chronology is mostly dependent
on the reconstructed words in PIE related to technologies like use of metals
(bronze, copper), chariot construction and horse domestication. But in most of
these cases the cognates in the attested languages could be adaptations of terms
inherited from their earlier forms with meanings that have nothing to do with
these new technologies. The English word ‘internet’ is a combination of two
words, inter + net. Both have nothing to do with ‘internet’. If future linguists
managed to reconstruct the word internet’, they would be wrong to infer that the
English language came into existence around the turn of the second millennium.
If words like computer and Android are also reconstructed, and if the linguists
follow this logic, it would be treated as final proof that English language could
not have existed before twentieth century.
The PIE related evidence of chariots and horses are also not entirely reliable.
It is said that PIE had words for both horse and wheel and thus it is evident that
the people who spoke this form of the dialect had domesticated horses and had
wheeled chariots. But many authors have pointed out that the word for horse
might have been used for wild horses at the PIE stage. Similarly even if the
term wheel was present in Proto-Indo-European, it is uncertain that it denoted
the wheels on vehicles rather than potter’s wheels or even the sun disk. It is
important to remember that coining an entirely new word for a new concept was
always rare. What usually happens in such cases is adaptation of an existing
3.1. HORSES
17
word for the new concept or borrowing it from another language.
3.1
Horses
In 1930, Sir John Marshall first suggested that Aryans introduced the horse into
South Asia as part of the Aryan Invasion Theory. Since then, it has been near
taboo in the academic circles to go against this thinking. But there are multiple
reasons to suspect that this conclusion was hasty and ill-informed.
When Falconer and Cautley documented equus from the Indian Subcontinent
(1858), they named three species: equus sivalensis; bones of which were discovered in the Siwalik Hills, part of outer Himalayas and equus namadicus and
equus palaeonus. The last two were mostly native to Narmada Valley. Within
the stratigraphic range of E. sivalensis, remains of a smaller horse with slender
metapodials have also been found. Thus, it is possible that South Asia had
many sub-species belonging to equus sivalensis and E. namadicus.
Equus sivalensis is the oldest known true horse. The Arabs, barbs and the
thoroughbred horses might have evolved from equus sivalensis or at least may
have ancestry elements from it. It could be the largest of the old world fossil
horses. Until early twentieth century, equine specialists studying the taxonomy
of horses favoured the idea that equus sivalensis and the probably derived equus
namadicus of India were ancestors of modern domesticated horses. But most
palaeontologists now hold that the Indian species (E. sivalensis and E. nomadicus) became extinct, and that E. stenosis through E. robustus, gave rise to the
modern breeds.
It may be noted that the generic term Equus caballus included many varieties
or races of horse. India had sivalensis and namadicus, while in Europe it was
generally the stenonis. During the glacial peak between 25,000 and 19,000 years
ago, and then again between 12,700 and 11,500 years ago, there was extreme
cold and aridity in the northern latitudes of Eurasia. This could have resulted in
mass extinction of horses in these areas, as all kinds of fodder would have withered. But horses might have survived the glacial period in the southern locations
of Eurasia. West Asia and Iran were extremely arid cold deserts, and were not
habitable for horses during this period. But horses in South Asia could have survived this period. Given this, the consensus that horses in India became extinct,
while those in the steppes, Central Asia and West Asia survived during this period, seem illogical. I have not come across any explanation why horses became
extinct in South Asia, except that horse remains have not been found anywhere
in South Asia after 10000 BP. If equus sivalensis became extinct in South Asia
18CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
during this period, it could not have been due to adverse climatic conditions in
India. There is a possibility that these species became extinct much later. The
presence of similar physical features in the Java, Sulu Archipelago, and Borneo
horses make it appear that some modified descendants of E. sivalensis survived.
Similarly, there are indications that Indian caballus horse breeds like Marwari,
Spiti, Bhutia, Manipuri and Zanskari have substantial local ancestry.
Wild true horse bones were found from 20,000 BP strata of Bolan and Son valleys (G.R. Sharma:110 ff.; Kazanas 1999:33-34), and domesticated horse bones
from dates 7500 BP and 3500 BP of the Bolan and Son valleys (Sharma:110
ff.). R.S. Sharma (1996:17) too noted domesticated horse bones from Mahagara
Neolithic complex in district Prayagraj, UP of 7000 BP and Bagor (Rajasthan)
6500 BP. Many of these finds are dated to c.4500 to 3500 YBP. But artifacts
from a few deeper trenches yielded dates of c.7500 BP.
Many equine-like terracotta figurines found from Harappan sites were initially considered as depicting the horses. Later as the horse-riding Aryans versus
equid-ignorant non-Vedic Harappan binary became dominant; these began to be
treated as being ambiguous. The identification of a terracotta figurine from Mohenjodaro as that of the horse could be doubtful. But those from the Harappan
levels at Nausharo have yielded terracotta figurines of horse. Also, the middle
Harappan levels at Lothal have yielded a couple of terracotta figurines.
The Bhimbetka Rock Paintings are usually dated between 30000 BCE to
early historical period. According to one report, out of the 428 animal figures
found among these, 185 are of horses. This should normally mean that horse
was the animal most familiar to the painters. Some of paintings are quite crude
and fading. At least one of a horse is more detailed and colourful. The cruder
paintings among them should be older. For example, one painting of fighting men
with club-like weapons on horse-back should be quite old and was earlier thought
to be from Mesolithic period (6000 to 8000 YBP). But the paintings have now
been dated later than 3,500 BP because the general view of the historians does
not accept horse in India before the assumed Aryan Invasion. This would mean
that aboriginal inhabitants of Central India were riding horses just as Vedic
Aryans were bringing them into NW India for the first time. (It is possible that
the aborigines had observed other people fighting on horse-back and painted
the figures.) Cave paintings cannot be dated directly. Dating these to 3500
YBP or later is based on extraneous reasons or historians’ stubborn resistance
to considering an earlier date. Given the findings of the domesticated ‘true’
horse bones from the Central India (Mahagara, Bolan and Son Valley), the
pre-agricultural Mesolithic paintings depicted in the Bhimbetka Rock Paintings
(petroglyphs and pictographs) can well be dated 5,000 BP or earlier.
3.1. HORSES
19
Then there is the case of Surkotada horse bone findings. The late eminent
Hungarian archaeozoologist, Sandor Bokonyi, was in India to attend a workshop
and later he spent some time in Delhi where someone showed him six samples
from Surkotada, which consisted of mostly teeth. After examining the artifacts,
he concluded that they were not of a half-ass, but a real ‘domesticated horse’.
In 1994, archaeologist (Zooarchaeology) Richard H Meadow examined the
same remains and came to a different conclusion. He thought the samples came
from an onager and not the true horse. Meadow believes that horses could have
come to the region, maybe by 2000 B.C.E since there is figurine evidence and
painted shreds in Swat, but the find from Surkotada was not that of true horse.
Richard Meadow raised his objections to Sandor Bokonyi during a conference in
Konstanz, Germany, but Bokonyi was not convinced.
With so many reports of archaeological finds of horse bones, terracotta figurines of horses and the Bhimbetka paintings of horses, one cannot simply reject
the possibility of presence of domesticated horses in South Asia before second
millennium BCE. Surprisingly this rejection seems to be on very thin grounds. It
is said and rhetorically repeated that there is no evidence for presence of horses
in South Asia, until it was brought here by the Vedic Aryans, using the same as
argument, evidence and conclusion. The logical course would be not to use the
‘horse argument’ in the context of ‘Aryan’ debate until we have more clarity in
the matter. Colin Renfrew (1999) remarked, ”The significance of the horse ...
has been much exaggerated”.
As regards as chariots, earliest dates of archaeological evidence for spoke
wheeled horse driven chariots is from c. 2000 BCE. But there are evidences for
wheeled vehicles from at least mid 4th millennium BCE from many parts of the
world, including Harappan settlements. In any case, it seems implausible that
small bands of nomadic pastoralist could have brought true chariots into South
Asia in the second millennium BCE. Consider the following
1 The Indian chariots described in Vedas and Itihasa/Puranas were very
different from the steppe or West Asian ones in style as well as materials used.
Rigvedic chariots are described as made of the wood of Kimsuka and Samali (RV
10.85.20), Khadira and Simsapa (RV 3.53.19) trees. These trees are mentioned
in various texts/treatise on Ayurveda. Some of these trees are also mentioned
in Buddhist and Jain texts. These are still found, though rare, in some parts of
South Asia, Burma and South East Asia, but not found in Central Asia or the
steppe.
2 It would have been very difficult for a few nomads to bring chariots from
Central Asia crossing the difficult Hindu Kush. It might have been possible in the
case of a larger ‘Aryan invasion’. But since most scholars have now abandoned
20CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
such a model, we will have to discard the chariot related arguments also.
3 Constructing chariots locally would have required an ecosystem that included identification and availability of the required types of wood and metals,
implements to fashion these as required and trained artisans experienced in such
work. This would have taken generations of the nomads to collect together. By
this time the locals would have been familiar with it and it would hardly have
the value of a ‘status kit’. And Witzel believes that ”the composers of RV were
small tribal units of late Bronze Age pastoralists roaming around the Punjab”.
It is argued that since archaeology has not found evidence for chariots, domesticated horses and iron in South Asia before 1900 BCE and since there are
references to these in RV, the text cannot be dated before that date. Such an
assertion can be made only if the entire area (Eurasia) has been thoroughly investigated and we can confidently say that nothing more is likely to be found.
Besides, there is no archaeological evidence for presence of horses and chariots
in South Asia in the second millennium BCE also. These begin to appear only in
the first millennium BCE. Should we then conclude that Aryans came to South
Asia in the middle of first millennium BCE?
Absence of archaeological evidence is not evidence of absence of artefact
found and the technology used to create it at any time before it. It can just as
well be that we have failed to find it so far. It is best to reserve judgement in
such cases. The instance of Gobekli Tepe may be an example.
3.2
Gobekli Tepe
Mainstream consensus on reports of civilizations that flourished before 5000 BCE
is that these are ‘idiocracies of mystery mongers’. But the archaeological finding
of Gobekli Tepe seems to challenge this consensus.
Gobekli Tepe means ‘belly hills’ in Turkik. It is located in the Southeastern
Anatolia Region of Turkey. Under what was for long a small hillock, archaeologists have uncovered a strange group of structures dated to 12000 YBP. We
believed that at the time these were being built, human beings were roaming
about in small groups as hunter gatherers. The tools they had were just sharp
stones, wooden clubs and pieces of bone. Based on everything we know about
how modern civilization got its start, Gobekli Tepe should not exist. However,
exist it does.
These structures are made of huge carved megaliths of limestone arranged in
circles. Each circle has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large Tshaped stone pillars, encircled by slightly smaller stone pillars. The tallest pillars
3.2. GOBEKLI TEPE
21
tower 16 feet and weigh between seven and ten tons. This circle is surrounded
with a stone wall, with a corridor or passage extending outward towards what
could have been an entrance. The whole structure might have been covered with
a roof, but there is no trace of such a roof at present. Beyond, on the hillside, are
four other rings of partially excavated pillars. More than 200 pillars in about 20
circles are currently known through geophysical surveys. The surrounding area
contains of lot of archaeological remains of the period, so we are dealing with
a lot more than just one site. Yet another find in Boncuklu Tarla, some 300
kilometres east of Gobekli Tepe is at least 1000 years older than Gobekli Tepe.
It has some similarities with Gobekli Tepe.
The pillars are not roughly hewn blocks but are cleanly carved limestone
ones, splashed with bas-relief of animals; a cavalcade of gazelles, snakes, foxes,
scorpions, and ferocious wild boars.
Amazingly, the structure’s builders were able to cut, shape, and transport
16-ton stones hundreds of feet without any wheels, tools or beasts of burden.
The work also would have required cutting, carving, transporting for distances
of hundreds of meters of huge stone blocks weighing 8 to 10 tons and erecting
them in rock pits cut to the exact size. The fit was so exact that the pillars stood
as they were erected for 12000 years, many thousands of years more than any
other man-made structure. All these would have called for designing, planning,
supervising and managing capabilities of a very high order.
If our understanding of the hunter gatherer life style and technological capabilities is correct, the building of Gobekli Tepe would have been simply impossible. It would have been impossible to collect together a large work-force
and feed them for long periods, as hunter-gatherers would have lived in small
groups. They also could not have generated food surpluses. Another incomprehensible aspect of it, among several others, is how the hunter gatherers cut
and carved hard rock so cleanly. It would have been impossible without some
metallic tools. Our understanding so far was that the earliest date for bronzeage anywhere in the world was about 3300 BCE. The structure at Gobekli Tepe
was built 7000 years before that. Hence, it now looks far more logical to admit
that we just do not know when human being learned to make metal tools, rather
than adamantly insisting that any date before 3300 BCE is impossible as there
is no archaeological evidence for it. Archaeology could tell us if a particular
pre-historic community used certain innovations. But claiming that it has to be
the earliest such use might be being dump-headed. This could well apply to our
present understanding of domestication of horses and use of chariots, as also the
dates of evolution of PIE.
To sum-up, the evidence for presence of horses and horse drawn chariots in
22CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
South Asia is ambiguous. Evidences for the former seem to be evenly matched.
As for the chariots, I will opt for a 7:3 verdict; 7 parts for the absence of it in
South Asia before 2000 BCE. But the arguments of the opposing side cannot be
just rubbished and rejected. It can at best be used as a debating point, but it
is hardly conclusive evidence.
3.3
Further Evidences Against Arrival of IndoAryans in South Asia in the Second Millennium BCE
Apart from the above, there are multiple reasons why a large Indo-Aryan migration or invasion could not have taken place in the 2 MBCE. Some of these
are listed below.
1 After the discovery of IVC in the first half of twentieth century, there were
a series of archaeological discoveries in the Urals, Central Asia, Afghanistan,
NW India and places to the east. All these were immediately declared as evidences of Aryan migration from the Steppe towards South Asia. This was mostly
because the estimated dates of these appeared to coincide with the time-space
expectations of linguists of where the Indo-Aryans might have reached at that
time. But later closer scrutiny of the evidence by well-known archaeologists
concluded that all these were more likely to be local developments. These include Sintashta, the BactriaMargiana Archaeological Complex, Gandhara grave
culture, Ochre Coloured Pottery culture (OCP), Cemetery H culture, Black and
Red-ware culture (BRW) and Painted Grey Ware culture (PGW).
In the last thirty years, linguists realized that archaeological evidence do
not support a large Aryan migration or invasion of South Asia in the second
millennium BCE. Witzel says, “So far, clear archaeological evidence has just
not been found. Yet, any archaeologist should know from experience that the
unexpected occurs and that one has to look at the right place”.
“If the so-called ‘invasion’ of IA speakers is not (yet) visible in the archaeology, it must be stressed that such movements rarely leave clear physical traces.
– It is just a matter of time before such small camps are also discovered in the
north-west of the subcontinent.”
It is twenty years since Witzel wrote this and we still do not have any archaeological discovery of ‘such small camps’.
2 In the absence of any such evidences, linguists have abandoned the invasion/large migration model and fine-tuned it as trickling in of small groups of
3.4. ACCULTURATION A NEW APPROACH
23
nomads and a process of acculturation that resulted in language substitution
by the locals as well as major changes in their culture, life-style and religious
practices. “The horse-and chariot-rich Vedic texts are characterized by small
tribal units of late Bronze Age pastoralists roaming around the Punjab”.
“For the past five decades or so, the best specialists have no longer seen
the influx of IA speakers as an ‘invasion.’ Linguists first, and archaeologists
somewhat later, have stressed that such a scenario is too simple-minded and
largely wrong. Evidence for the so-called massacre of the population of MohenjoDaro (Wheeler 1966) was actually found in several archaeological layers, and the
irregular arrangement of skeletons may very well be due to flooding that swept
the corpses into a street corner and buried them here and there. Linguists and
philologists have now proposed to re-evaluate the mode of influx of IA speakers
into the subcontinent. The immigration of such fringe groups visible in Near
Eastern written sources turns out to be a combination of various scenarios:
there is imperceptible influx of pastoral people, there are clashes with the settled
agriculturalists over water and grazing rights, there is cattle raiding, there is
a gradual influx into the cities (often by hired soldiers, with palace coups),
and there is outright invasion by motley groups of border peoples, who are not
necessarily ethnically homogeneous.” Witzel.
3.4
Acculturation A New Approach
Many authors are now of the opinion that it was a process of acculturation that
resulted in a language substitution in North-India in the second millennium
BCE. Some go further and suggest that it might have happened even without a
demographic change or that the change could have occurred owing to cultural
exchanges alone without population admixture.
Acculturation is a process of social, psychological, and cultural change that
stems from the balancing of two cultures or is a process in which an individual
adopts, acquires and adjusts to a new cultural environment. It is defined by
Brown. H. Douglas as “the process of being adapted to a new culture” which
involves a new orientation of thinking and feeling on the part of an individual.
It also results in changes to culture, religious practices, health care, and other
social institutions. There are also significant ramifications on the food, clothing,
and language of those becoming introduced to the overarching culture. It occurs
when individuals adopt the cultural norms of a dominant or host culture.
Acculturation occurs when a minority culture, in contact with a dominant
one, changes but still retains unique cultural markers of language, food and
24CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
customs. This type of change is much more likely to happen in an instance
of voluntary migration or peaceful coexistence, rather than as a result of the
conquests or forced coexistence that typically characterize assimilation. If this
was the process that happened in the present case, we should have two or more
distinct groups with some cultural similarity. The authors who support such a
model in the present case probably believe that the higher and lower castes in
India represent such distinct groups (I have not come across such an assertion
so far, but assume such may be the case, as I do not see any other option).
But in such cases, it would be the cultural markers of the dominant group
that will prevail. In the two way exchanges, the target group will borrow far
more of the markers than its reverse flow. In the present case, a few illiterate
nomads could in no way be the dominant group. The locals would have been
incomparably larger in demographic size and culturally advanced and they are
unlikely to change their mother tongue, religious practices and beliefs and own
names in such an exchange. Thus, it is likely that the common language that
evolved after the process was closer to the language of the locals rather than
that of the new migrants. If his was indeed the case, the language of the locals
before the process must have been an early form of Indo-Aryan.
Witzel further fine-tunes his acculturation model as follows, “Ehret (1988)
underlines the relative ease with which ethnicity and language shift in small
societies, due to the cultural/economic/military choices made by the local population in question. The intruding/influencing group bringing new traits may
initially be small and the features it contributes can be fewer in number than
those of the pre-existing local culture. The newly formed, combined ethnic
group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of ethnic and language
shift. The material record of such shifts is visible only insofar as new prestige
equipment or animals (the ‘status kit’, with new, intrusive vocabulary!) are
concerned. This is especially so if pottery; normally culture-specific; continues
to be made by local specialists of a class-based society.”
“Just one ‘Afghan’ Indo-Aryan tribe that did not return to the highlands
but stayed in their Panjab winter quarters in spring was needed to set off a
wave of acculturation in the plains, by transmitting its ’status kit’ (Ehret) to its
neighbours.”
Such a model could be valid in isolated small societies. But NW India, ‘The
Land of Five Rivers’ and the Gangetic Plaines were probably far more thickly
populated compared to any other part of the world at that time. In such a
population, living in more or less continuous habitations, such a model simply
cannot work.
”We actually do know that one group after the other has entered the Indian
3.4. ACCULTURATION A NEW APPROACH
25
subcontinent, as immigrants or as invaders, in historical times. They include
tribal groups such as the Yue Ji (Tukhara), Kushana, Abhira, (The Abhira tribes
were a people mentioned in epics and other texts, including Vedas. They were
probably some tribal people of Afghanistan) Gurjara as well as large armies, such
as those of Dariu’s Persians, of Alexander’s and the Bactrian Greeks in the first
mill. BCE, of both the Chinese via Tibet, Ladakh and Nepal, and the Arabs into
Sindh in the 7-8th c. CE; further the Ahom Tai in Assam, and the Huns, Turks,
Moguls, Iranians, and Afghans via the north-western passes in the first and
second mill. CE. In addition, small-scale semi-annual transhumance movements
between the Indus plains and the Afghan and Baluchi highlands continue to this
day (Witzel 1995: 322, 2000). Why, then, should all immigration, or even mere
transhumance trickling in, be excluded in the single case of the Indo-Aryans,
especially when the linguistic evidence so clearly speaks for it?”
What is denied is not the possibility of a migration or invasion, but the
wholesale substitution of the language, culture, and religious practices in South
Asia on account of such an event. None of the events mentioned by Witzel had
resulted in such a change. Many of these were quite successful and in the case
of the Muslim invasions, the invaders dominated life in South Asia for next 1000
years. These invaders/migrants also had their own ‘status kits’, probably far
more substantial than that of the illiterate nomads. Yet they had only marginal
impact on the languages, lifestyle and religious practices of the majority of the
locals. Yet we are told that a few illiterate nomads caused a wave of acculturation
in South Asia in the second millennium BCE that resulted in a complete language
substitution and even change of personal names. The possibility of such changes
should be considered negligible, if not non-existent.
The argument about ‘status kits’ also needs to be taken with a pinch of
salt. The status kit of the Indo-Aryans was said to include horses, chariots
and some early RV hymns, which the locals came to believe had some magical
effects. The locals were unlikely to be impressed with horses, as they would have
been familiar with it on account of their close interaction with Central Asia and
Mesopotamia, if it was not common locally. Central Asia was always known
for excellent horses as well as for the horsemanship of the people. According to
Surahmaniam et.al., (2019) people from NW India were migrating into Central
Asia in large numbers in third millennium BCE. As for chariots, as mentioned
earlier, it would have taken many generations for the small bands of nomads to
begin construction of chariots locally and by that time the locals would have
been quite familiar with it. Given the enormous difference in the population
size, it is likely that the locals would adopt and adapt these ‘status kit’ from
the new-comers. I have nothing to say about the belief of locals in the magical
26CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
powers of RV hymns. Speculation has a habit of taking flight because of its
seductive appeal.
The whole issue thus boils down to whether such small groups of illiterate
nomads can dominate an incomparably larger population who were far more
culturally and technologically advanced and who would have looked down upon
the nomads as vagabonds. My firm answer would be ‘NO!
3 If the steppe nomads had a dominating presence in North-West India in the
subsequent centuries, it would certainly be reflected in the culture and lifestyle
of the locals. But what is apparent in the area has nothing in common with
those of second-millennium steppes. But there are many similarities between
the culture and life style of IVC settlements and those in the Ganga Yamuna
Doab and areas further east in later centuries. There are obvious signs of cultural
continuity between IVC and these later settlements and many of these can be
found even in present-day Indians.
4 The Rgvedic pantheon have different layers of ‘Devas’ or divinities, which
include ‘nature gods’ with human-like attributes like Indra, Varuna, Vayu and
Agni, and Gods who maintain universal order like the Adityas. Above all these,
there are abstract concepts like ‘Rta’ and ‘Dyauh’. Others which are possibly
of this genre are ‘Sat’ and ‘Soma’. Particularly Rta seems to be very close
to ‘laws of nature’. Everything in the universe, including humans and gods
function in accordance with Rta. It is often considered as identical to later
Hindu concept of ‘Dharma’, but this seems to be an incorrect interpretation. It
is inconceivable that a supposedly nomadic pastoralist culture like Vedic Aryan
could think up such a deeply philosophical and abstract concept. Nomads usually
have simple ‘nature gods’ or ‘hero gods’. In more advanced settled societies,
creator gods, who are compassionate and keeps universal order evolved. All
these divinities have human attributes or even form. But Rta and Dyauh have
no human attributes. No other known culture, (except Zoroastrians, who also
had a similar concept, as have many things in common with Vedic Culture) had
such abstract concepts as Rta (and Dyauh), which is the ultimate controller of
nature as well as divinities. Pre-historic nomadic pasteralists could not have
developed such abstract concepts.
5 The examination of human remains from the IVC settlements by wellknown anthropologists has come to the conclusion that “the anthropometric
and cranial variables of the people of the area have remained the same from the
third millennium BCE to the present”. This seems to rule out the possibility of
a large migration of steppe nomads into the area during this period and their
subjugation and domination of the locals in subsequent centuries. A recent
paper by Won Joon Lee et.al published in Japanese Association of Anatomists
3.4. ACCULTURATION A NEW APPROACH
27
2019 reports details of first ever craniofacial reconstruction of the Indus Valley
Civilization individuals found at the 4500 year old Rakhigarhi cemetery. These
were of a male of 16-18 years age and a female of 35-50 years. The cranium
and the facial features are very similar to present population of the area. These
people were unusually tall for the period; the young man was almost 6 feet and
the woman was 5 feet 8 inches in height.
6 Most words for flora and fauna, names of rivers and mountains in Indic
languages have clear Indo Aryan/Indo European etymologies. This would mean
that if Indo Aryan languages had first reached South Asia in the middle of
the second millennium BCE, the new migrants forced a complete change in
these names, which is very unlikely. We have the parallel cases of Americas,
Australia and many others, where the new migrants had overwhelming military,
technological and organizational superiority over the locals and yet most river,
mountain and place names were adopted from those used earlier by the locals.
Even more unlikely, in the case of most of South Asia, even personal names were
changed to Indo Aryan ones. The most plausible inference that can account for
the above would be that Proto Indo Aryan language reached North India at a
time when these areas were sparsely populated by very primitive communities,
which should be before sixth millennium BCE.
There is no reference in Rgveda to any flora and fauna that is not found in
India. Some probably later hymns seem to be aware of the geography of parts of
Afghanistan. But there is no indication of knowledge of Northern Afghanistan
and areas further north or west. This should mean that Vedic Aryans did not
know lands beyond Hindkush.
7 Illiterate nomads are unlikely to have the kind of rich vocabulary found in
RV. Rgveda uses about 15000 to 18000 separate words and roots. This would
make it one of the richest languages that were in use before Common Era.
Languages of nomadic pastoralists are unlikely to have more than 3000-5000
words. The inference one can draw from this is that Indo-Aryans were a settled
people for a very long time with a developed literary tradition. Many of the
hymns of Rgveda are highly poetic, musical and often philosophical. Many
words have multiple synonyms. For example RV uses four synonyms for ‘horse’.
8 There are many references in Rgveda to River Sarasvati. Many hymns
describe it as a very large river. RV 10.75 says it flowed between River Yamuna
and Satlej. A palaeo-canal that fits the description is now visible in the area.
But this river had become a small rain-fed one by 3000 BCE and dried up by
2000 BCE, just about the time Harappan civilization was disintegrating. There
is no reason to deny that this canal is what remains of the legendary River
Sarasvati, except that it will be against the currently popular South Russia
28CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
Homeland model of Proto IE language. The river had completely dried up by
1500 BCE (the hypothetical time of arrival of Vedic Aryans in South Asia)
that the migrants would not have seen anything that looked like a river in the
area. Thus, it could be argued that the references to a large full-flowing River
Sarasvati in Rgveda actually rules out the possibility of arrival of Vedic Aryans
in South Asia in the second MBCE. If River Sarasvati had had become a small
river by 3000 BCE and dried up by 2000 BCE, Rgveda will have to be dated to
the fourth millennium BCE or earlier.
9 Many ancient Vedic texts describe an unmoving star in the northern sky
which was called ‘Dhruva Nakshatra’. The meaning of the word ‘Dhruva’ itself
is ‘fixed’ or ‘unmoving’. The Brahmanda Purana uses the simile of “a lump of
clay at the center of the potters wheel” to describe all celestial bodies in the sky
circling ‘Dhruva’. Many ‘Grhya Sutra’ and other texts talk about and describe
it in detail.
There were only two instances in the last 10000 years of a star close enough to
north celestial pole (NCP) to be considered as ‘fixed’ or all celestial bodies to be
seen as circling it; Thuban or α Draconis in about 2900 BCE and Polaris in the
last three hundred years. But many authors assume that either Polaris (α Ursa
Minor) or Kochab (β Ursa Minor) was the Dhruva Nakshatra mentioned in the
Hindu texts, for no reason other than the fact that these were the visible stars
closest to NCP in the first millennium BCE. But Kochab was 80 and Polaris 170
away from NCP in 800 BCE (at the time the ‘Brahmanas’ were being composed
as per the popular chronology) that it could not have been perceived as a ‘fixed’
stars or entire sky as circling either of these stars.
Many of these texts describe the position of Dhruva in detail. It is said that it
was in ‘Simsumara’ constellation. The constellation is stated to have 14 stars and
all are named after various Vedic Devas and demigods, though the names often
differ in different texts. Dhruva was the last in the tail of Simsumara or Dolphin.
This description matches that of what we now call the Draco constellation in
every respect. Draco or dragon also has 14 visible stars. Thuban is the last in the
tail of Draco. Kochab and Polaris do not match this description in any way. For
example Kochab is in the middle of Ursa Minor constellation or is in the middle
of the body of the ‘small bear’ close to its neck. There can be no doubt about
this identification, as some Grhya Sutra texts explain how to identify Dhruva in
the sky. Thus identifications of Simsumara as Draco and Dhruva as Thuban are
on very firm ground and if Dhruva was Thuban, there can be no doubt that the
originals of these texts were composed in the first half of third millennium BCE.
There are several astronomical references in the Vedic literature texts that
point to very deep antiquity to these texts. Western authors mostly rubbish
3.4. ACCULTURATION A NEW APPROACH
29
these as unreliable. But these form a consistent set of data with its relative
chronology fully in agreement with the currently accepted chronology of these
texts; that is RV first; followed by other Vedas followed by Brahmanas and then
the Sutra texts. It is difficult to see haw this consistency is possible unless these
references were based on actual observation.
10 There is no reference to a migration event from the North West in any texts
of Vedic literature or Itihasa/Puranas. As Pargiter has pointed out, the northWest frontier never had any ancient sacred memories and was never regarded
with reverence. On the contrary, it was thought of as land of barbarians or as
‘Mlecha’ country; a very unlikely attitude if their ancestor’s home-land was in
that direction. These people had retained their old memories for a very long
time in the form of stories in these texts and if their ancestors had undertaken a
very long, difficult and dangerous migration from the South Russian Steppe or
Central Asia to North West India, some version of it would certainly be found
in some of these texts. The only ‘migration myth’ mentioned in Vedic literature
is the one by the first man; Manu, from the south; across the seas. The absence
of any such reference can only mean that, if a migration from the Central Asia
had indeed taken place in the second MBCE, it had little impact on the local
languages, religious practices or culture; an impact significant enough to find at
the least a passing mention in some of these texts.
30CHAPTER 3. INDO-ARYAN IN SOUTH ASIA IN SECOND MILLENNIUM BCE
Chapter 4
Genetic Evidence
4.1
Evidence of Studies Based on Y-DNA Haplogroups
Unravelling of the pre-history of IE languages has evaded the determined efforts
of hundreds linguists, historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists for the past
hundred and fifty years. But in the coming days we might get better insight into
it through genetic studies; particularly those from ancient-DNA research. (But
many archaeologists consider results of a-DNA studies as the ‘work of the devil’
as it seems to upend and rubbish many established conclusions and consensus
built after many decades of hard work.)
It all started from the turn of the century from advances made in our ability to
identify mutations in Y-DNA and compare these with those present in different
individuals. It is based on the fact that human Y-DNA and Mitochondrial DNA
(Mt-DNA) preserves a written record of their mutations for thousands of years
because neither gets mixed up or randomized as they are not involved in meiosis
and gene crossover, as genes in other chromosomes in nucleus do. Any mutation
to the Mt-DNA is passed on in a strict maternal line; and mutation in the Y
chromosome is passed down in a direct paternal line of descent. Furthermore,
the historical sequence of these mutations can also be inferred. Technology is
now available to estimate the time when such a mutation occurred. Thus, it is
now possible to determine the present descendants of a person who lived in the
very distant past, and as those descendants may be found all over the world, it
is possible to trace human migrations and its chronology since the time of the
31
32
CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
ancestor. This technique has now emerged as a very powerful tool in the study
of ancient pre-historic human migrations. I have listed here findings of some of
the early studies that are relevant to our subject.
*It is found that majority of individuals all over the world whose mothertongue belongs to the IE family, have Y-DNA mutations termed as Haplogroup
(HP) R1 and its subclades. We now have two major sub-groups of HP R1;
R1a mostly found in the Central and Eastern Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and
South Asia; and R1b mostly in Southern and Western Europe. Also, those with
R1a ancestry mostly speak ‘Satem’ branches and those with R1b the ‘Kentum’
branches of IE languages.
*Many studies based on y-DNA mutations have concluded that there was
no large scale genetic input into South Asia for the past 10000 years or more.
Several studies have concluded that the data is at least consistent with South
Asia as the likely original point of dispersal of what is believed to be the IndoEuropean Haplogroup; namely HG R1. For example, Kivisild et al. (2003),
Mirabal et al. (2009) and Underhill et al. (2009), Sharma et al. (2009) have
come to such conclusions.
*The most frequent mtDNA haplogroups in South Asia are M, R and U.
Stephen Oppenheimer in his book (2004) titled “The Real Eve” says that it is
highly probable that nearly all human maternal lineages in Central Asia, the
Middle East and Europe descended from only four mtDNA lines that originated
in South Asia 50,000-100,000 years ago.
The major South Asian Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups are H, J2, L, R1a1
and R2. Innumerable sub-clades of these are present in the Indian population.
Geographical origin of Y-DNA HP H and R2 is probably South Asia. J2 probably
originated in West Asia. Opinion about R1a, the probable IE marker, is divided.
Most studies place it in Iran, South Asia or Central Asia.
*It was the colonial historians, anthropologists and ethnographers who introduced the thesis that the Indian caste system is based on racial differences and
this was treated as a historical fact until recently. But the admittedly limited
genetic studies on Indian population groups have failed to find clear, consistent and statistically significant variations at the sub-continental scale between
different castes.
According to Sanghamitra Sahoo et al (2006 National Academy of Sciences,
USA) “Even though more than one explanation could exist for genetic differentiation between castes and tribes in India, the Indo-Aryan migration scenario
rested on the suggestion that all Indian caste groups are similar to each other
while being significantly different from the tribes. Using a much more representative data set, numerically, geographically, and definitively, it was not possible
4.1. EVIDENCE OF STUDIES BASED ON Y-DNA HAPLOGROUPS
33
to confirm any of the purported differentiations between the caste and tribal
pools. Although differences could be found to occur within particular regions,
between particular caste and tribal groups, consistent and statistically significant
variations at the sub-continental scale were not detected.”
Today almost 50% of the South Asian population carries what is known
as Ancestral North Indian (ANI) ancestry that include every population segments even in remote areas of the sub-continent. For example, tribal groups
like the ‘Chenchus’ of Andhra Pradesh and the ‘Saharias’ of Madhya Pradesh
show anomalously high proportions of R1a. The Chenchus speak a Dravidian
language, and the Saharias probably spoke an Austro-Asiatic one not long ago.
Most population groups in South Asia were practicing strict endogamy for the
past c.3000 years. Thus, such deep population admixture must be a legacy of
many thousands of years. It is unlikely that this could have happened in the
last 3500 years, which will give only about 500 years for such deep admixture.
Sahoo et al. (2006) and Sengupata et al. (2006) suggest that Indian caste
populations have not been subject to any recent admixtures. Sanghamitra Sahoo concludes his study thus, “It is not necessary, based on the current evidence,
to look beyond South Asia for the origins of the paternal heritage of the majority of Indians at the time of the onset of settled agriculture. The perennial
concept of people, language, and agriculture arriving to India together through
the northwest corridor does not hold up to close scrutiny. Recent claims for a
linkage of haplogroups J2, L, R1a, and R2 with a contemporaneous origin for
the majority of the Indian caste’s paternal lineages from outside South Asia are
rejected, although our findings do support a local origin of haplogroups F* and
H. Of the others, only J2 indicates an unambiguous recent external contribution,
from West Asia rather than Central Asia.”
Studies by Watkins et al. (2005) and Kivisild et al. (2003) based on autosomal markers also conclude that Indian caste and tribal populations have a
common ancestry.
* Mait Metspalu et al (2011) makes the following observation “Here we report
data for more than 600,000 SNP markers genotyped in 142 samples from 30
ethnic groups in India. Our simulations show that one can detect differences
in haplotype diversity for a migration event that occurred 500 generations ago,
but chances to distinguish signals for older events will apparently decrease with
increasing age because of recombination. In terms of human population history,
our oldest simulated migration event occurred roughly 12,500 years ago and predates or coincides with the initial Neolithic expansion in the Near East. Thus,
regardless of where this component was from (the Caucasus, Near East, Indus
Valley, or Central Asia), its spread to other regions must have occurred well
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CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
before our detection limits at 12,500 years. Accordingly, the introduction of k5
to South Asia cannot be explained by recent gene flow, such as the hypothetical
Indo-Aryan migration.”
Another study that searched for West Eurasian groups most closely related
to the Ancestral North Indian (ANI) ancestors of Indians, failed to find any
evidence for shared ancestry between the ANI and groups in West Eurasia within
the past 12,500 years.
* An increasing number of studies have found South Asia to have the highest
level of diversity of Y-STR haplotype variation within R1a1a. Most societies
are found to demonstrate a high level of genomic differentiation between cohorts
and different signatures of natural selection. This is particularly so in the case
of South Asia. On this basis, several studies have concluded that the data is at
least consistent with South Asia as the likely original point of dispersal of the IE
marker R1a1. Top-level Haplogroups like R*, R1and R2 based SNP individuals
are found in some pockets in Pakistan and NW India. These markers are rarely
found in other parts of Eurasia. The only logical explanation for this is that the
locus of origin of HP R is somewhere in this part of Eurasia.
A 2015 study by Peter A. Underhill et al., using 16,244 individuals from over
126 populations from across Eurasia, concluded that “there was compelling evidence that the initial episodes of haplogroup R1a diversification likely occurred
in the vicinity of present-day Iran. The split of R1a (M420) is computed to ca.
22,000, or 25,000 years ago.” “Whole Y-chromosome sequence analysis of eight
R1a and five R1b individuals suggests a divergence time of c.25 000 (95% CI: 21
300-29 000) years ago”
“Of the 1693 European R1a-M417 samples, more than 96% were assigned
to R1a-Z282, whereas 98.4% of the 490 Central and South Asian R1a lineages
belonged to hg R1a-Z93.”
“The corresponding diversification in the Middle East and South Asia is more
obscure. However, early urbanization within the Indus Valley also occurred at
this time (4600 years before present (YBP)) and the geographic distribution of
R1a-M780 may reflect this.”
“We estimate the splintering of R1a-M417 to have occurred rather recently,
c.5800 years ago (95% CI: 48006800). The slowest mutation rate estimate would
inflate these time estimates by one-third, and the fastest would deflate them
by 17%.” So the slowest mutation rate estimate can take the date for M780 to
about 9000 YBP.
“We caution against ascribing findings from a contemporary phylogenetic
cluster of a single genetic locus to a particular pre-historic demographic event,
population migration, or cultural transformation. The R1a TMRCA estimates
4.2. INCONSISTENCIES IN THE MODELS OF SPREAD OF IE LANGUAGES IN EU
we report have wide confidence intervals and should be viewed as preliminary;
one must sequence tens of additional R1a samples to high coverage to uncover
additional informative substructure and to bolster the accuracy of the branch
lengths associated with the more terminal portions of the phylogeny.”
The report says that the splintering of R1a-M417 into z282 (European clade)
and z93 (Asian clade) may have occurred in around 5800 YBP, but warns us
about possible large error in the estimate of the time of the event. Besides, it
warns us against “ascribing findings from a contemporary phylogenetic cluster of
a single genetic locus to a particular pre-historic demographic event, population
migration, or cultural transformation.
Dr. Chaubey says that ‘there is a common ancestor for the European branch
of R1a (Z282) and Indian branch of R1a (M780) but neither is a parent of the
other’.
Some researchers have pointed out that ‘Phylogenetically M 780, the subclade of R1a mostly found in South Asia, is not nested under any other R1a
branch in the world or it evolved from some early stage of R1a’.
Taking the reports of Kivisild et al. (2003), Mirabal et al. (2009) and Underhill et al. (2009), Sengupata et al. (2006), Sharma et al. (2009), Mait Metspalu
et al (2011), Underhill et al.(2015) mentioned above and also Shinde.et.al.(2019)
together, it can be concluded that HP R1a-M780, often described as the steppe
ancestry element, reached South Asia before 10000 YBP.
I have not come across any major reports of Y-DNA based studies after this,
as the emphasis seems to have shifted to autosomes and a-DNA data.
4.2
Inconsistencies in the Models of Spread of
IE Languages in Eurasia
The current majority view is that groups with Y-DNA Haplogroups R1b-M269
and R1a ancestry expanded from the West Eurasian Steppe (Yamna horizon),
along with the Indo-European languages sometime in the middle of third MBCE
into different parts of Eurasia. The people with R1b ancestry travelled to South,
West and North-West Europe as speakers of Kentum branches of IE languages
and those with R1a based ancestry spread into Central and Eastern Europe as
well as places like Iran and South Asia as speakers of Satem branches. This pattern is apparent all over the world at present, with majority of people with R1b
ancestry speaking Kentum languages and majority of those with R1a ancestry
speaking the Satem verity.
Further, it is found that incidence of R1b is near 100 % in many places in
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CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
Western and Southern Europe. Similarly, in many areas of the eastern parts of
Eurasia R1a ancestry is substantial, but incidence of R1b is very low or often
completely absent. This leads to the inference that when these two groups
began their expansion into various parts of Eurasia as speakers of Satem or
Kentum dialects of IE, their ancestry profile was near 100% of either HP R1a
or R1b. Entropy can only increase. If incidence of R1b is 90% in parts of
Ireland and Northern Spain now, it must have been higher earlier. Genetic
bottlenecks arguably could have limited the gene pool of the migrating groups,
but it is impossible that it could have eliminated R1a or R1b selectively in many
different locations, and that too most R1a from Western and Southern Europe
and R1b from eastern parts of Eurasia.
There is yet another aspect of the issue that just does not seem to add-up.
Underhill et al. (2015), mentioned above, report that the split between R1a and
R1b occurred some 25000 YBP in the vicinity of present-day Iran. Given this,
Kurgan hypothesis will require that some 20000 years later, elements from these
two branches came close to each other and were living in geographic proximity
in the steppes. They then must have jointly developed PIE. (The idea of joint
development of a language, with its basic words, grammatical, and phonetic
forms itself is problematic, as it is unclear if it is possible at all) This scenario
forces us to reconcile a paradox. Such a co-development of PIE would require
very intimate social/cultural contacts between the two groups, and such close
contacts would surely result in some mutual gene flow. But as mentioned in the
preceding paragraph, ancestry profile of the groups must have been near 100%
of either HP R1a or R1b as the groups again separated and moved away.
After the split between R1a and R1b some 25000 YBP, it is apparent that
the two groups moved to many parts of Eurasia in the subsequent millennia.
Reports based on a-DNA tell us that these reached many areas of Europe and
Anatolia by late Paleolithic and Mesolithic. But the two groups seem to have
remained separate in most places. “Villabruna 1”, who lived c.14,000 YBP in
north-east Italy, had R1b-L-754 and samples from central Germany dated to
5,800 to 5,350 YBP were found to be HP I and R1a. Such reports are available
from other areas like Anatolia, The Caucus and areas around Zagros Mountains.
The oldest forms of R1b (M343, P25, L389) are found dispersed at differing
frequencies from Western Europe to India. What is relevant here is that there
were many pockets in Eurasia with population with these ancestry profiles; and
not just in the steppes.
After the two groups separated in steppes, they moved away as speakers of
Kentum and Satem branches of IE. Magically, they went only to places where the
population had similar ancestry. That is; R1a groups went to places where other
4.2. INCONSISTENCIES IN THE MODELS OF SPREAD OF IE LANGUAGES IN EU
R1a people lived and R1b groups also did the same. Also, both groups forced
the locals to change their mother-tongue and become speakers of IE languages.
This inference should follow from the fact that, at present the vast majority of
people with R1a ancestry all over the world are speakers of Satem languages
and those with R1b ancestry are speakers of Kentum languages. Also, people
with these ancestry profile, but who are speakers of non-IE languages are only
a fraction of the former. It was as if these people had some divine inspiration
and knew exactly where to migrate.
It is of course possible that everyone with R1 based ancestry, except those
who were in the steppes died out. But a more reasonable inference would be
that such groups were present in different areas of Eurasia at that time.
The spread of IE languages in Europe also is not as clear as it is often made
out to be. One of the pivotal unresolved issues of the Indo-European Urheimat
or ‘Home land’ problem, is the origin and dispersal of Corded Ware culture, also
often termed as Battle Axe culture. It comprised a broad archaeological horizon
of Europe from the Rhine on the west to the Volga in the east between c. 3000
BCE -2350 BCE; from the late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending
in the early Bronze Age. The earliest radiocarbon dates for Corded Ware come
from Kujawy and Lesser Poland in central and southern Poland, which point to
a period around 3000 BCE. The characteristic shared elements of Corded Ware
groups include their burial practices, pottery with ‘cord’ decoration and unique
stone-axes.
There is sharp disagreement between archaeologists regarding the origins of
Corded Ware. Some archaeologists believe it is local in origin and sprang from
central Europe while others saw an influence from nomadic pastoral societies
of the steppes. In favour of the first view is the fact that Corded Ware coincides considerably with the earlier north-central European Funnel beaker culture
(TRB 4500 -3000 BCE) and lobular Amphora culture (3400-2800 BCE). Corded
Ware could be a continuation of these.
Haplogroup R1a is the most common paternal haplogroup among males of
the Corded Ware horizon, and has earlier been found among Eastern HunterGatherers (EHGs) of the Mesolithic. A November 2015 genetic study of the
Funnel beaker culture published in Nature reports two male samples, which
were found to carry the paternal haplogroups I and R1b1a or L754. Other 5,800
to 5,350 YBP samples from central Germany were found to be HP I and R1.
(Due to poor quality of a-DNA, it is often impossible to tell whether or not the
ancients carried the mutations that define subclades.) Subclades of HP I can be
found in most present-day European populations, with peaks in some Northern
European and South East European countries. Its origin could be somewhere
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CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
in the eastern parts of Eurasia and might have reached Europe c. 20000 YBP.
Thus it appears that the Corded Ware people had IE related ancestry (R1a,
R1b, I) long before the steppe nomads could have reached these areas, as Kurgan
Hypothesis chronology posits split of PIE into daughter languages in the middle
of third MBCE.
Similarly, archaeological evidence shows that most of Southern, Western and
North-West Europe had what is known as ‘Bell Beaker culture’ at the beginning
of the late Neolithic and early European Bronze Age in about 3000 BCE till
about 2300 BCE. These people had ancestry based on Y-DNA HP R1b and HP
I and its subclades.
The earliest find of R1b anywhere is what is known as ‘Villabruna 1’, who
lived c. 14,000 YBP in north east Italy and it had Y-DNA HP R1b-L754. R1bM269 is now the most common Y-DNA lineage in European males. L754 is a
basal or ancestor clade of M269 Phylogenetic tree. There are several other finds
from Southern Europe, Balkans and Anatolia which are also mostly L754 or its
subclades that are dated to Mesolithic and early Neolithic periods.
The steppe nomads could not have reached Southern and Western Europe
before the middle of third MBCE, and it appears that the Beakers had IE
related ancestry long before that. There is little clear archaeological evidence for
influence of migrants from the steppe in Southern, western and North-Western
Europe during the third millennium BCE. Thus ‘The beaker phenomenon’ could
well be a local development, just as Corded Ware in Central and Eastern Europe.
A-DNA studied so far from the steppes of Yamna period belonged to R1bM269 or R1b-L23, which are similar to the present European clades. But this
in itself may not be enough to argue for a migration from there to Southern and
Western Europe in the third MBCE.
Besides, nobody seem to have any clear idea of how this 5000 KM journey
from areas around River Dnieper, north of Black Sea to Southern Europe was
undertaken 4500 YBP; the exact route followed by the migrants; whether it was
a large wave or migration by small groups; whether it was a few quick movement
or of many small groups that lasted many centuries and how it was completed
without much mutual genetic transfer with the people whom they might have
encountered along the route. Such a movement also would surely have resulted
in a series of clashes with local communities along the route.
Some authors seem to be eager to deny that IE related ancestry was present in
Europe before the arrival of steppe nomads in the third MBCE. They propose
some complicated models for this purpose. It is said that those people with
R1b ancestry migrated from Southern Europe through Anatolia, The Caucus
and reached the steppe. After the development of PIE, they again migrated to
4.2. INCONSISTENCIES IN THE MODELS OF SPREAD OF IE LANGUAGES IN EU
Western and Southern Europe as speakers of Kentum IE languages. There are
at least two problems with this model. First, there is no evidence for the first
part of the migration from Europe to the steppes. Secondly, it will still leave
out the presence of I and R1a based ancestry found in Northern and Central
Europe from at least the Mesolithic.
It is said that archaeology has “documented a massive migration into the
heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery” in the third MBCE. But at
least part of this interpretation of archaeological data is because archaeologists
were looking for evidence for such a migration. They were trained to assign
migrations, invasions and population displacements as reasons for differences in
one archaeological layer and the next. But many of these could just as well be
due to gradual changes of cultural practices and subsistence strategies. These
might also be the result of innovations or borrowing and adaptations from other
groups with which they were in contact. It is often very difficult to determine
what resulted in the apparent cultural differences between two archaeological
layers.
Invasions, battles and ‘heroic’ victories have a masculine, romantic appeal,
but we forget that these have often ended in mass genocides. In contrast, an
inference of local innovation may be mundane and have a lot less appeal. Many
such changes all over the world were declared as the result of invasions and
‘great’ victories in the past. But there is now rethinking in many such cases.
The reason why most people insist on an influx of steppe migrants into
Europe in third MBCE is that they believe the Kurgan Hypothesis and its
chronology is a fact of history. It is treated as a maxim which by definition
needs no proof and is unquestionable. But it should be kept in mind that the
chronology is mostly based on linguistic paleontology, which is suspected to be
quite fragile and not entirely dependable. Thus it may be prudent to take a
closer look at the entire model.
It is difficult to see how such an unlikely series of events described above is
possible. The only rational explanation could be that PIE is much older than
what is assumed now and the founder group of Y-DNA HP R1 spoke an early
form of PIE 25000 Years before Present, before the split into R1a and R1b. But
such a conclusion will destabilize “the co development of PIE in the steppe in
the third MBCE” part or even the ‘steppe home land’ model itself.
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4.3
CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
Arrival of Indo-Aryan Speakers in South Asia
- A new Perspective
The followings quotes are from two recent (2019) a-DNA based studies; the first
based on hundreds of samples from sites in Southern Central Asia (BMAC sites)
and parts of Afghanistan. The second is primarily based on one 4500 year old
sample from Raghigarhi; an important Harappan settlement. These bring out
some very interesting results.
Narasimhan et.al. “The primary ancestry source of all these ancient samples
from Central Asia and Eastern Iran was the Iranian farmer related ancestry, the
same ancestry type which was also the main ancestry component of IVC people.
This Iranian farmer related ancestry was the main ancestral source in Central
Asia even in Chalcolithic period (4000-3000 BC) which means that already by the
Chalcolithic period the populations of Central Asia and NW South Asia had a lot
of shared ancestry before the IVC migration into Central Asia during the Bronze
Age. How old is this shared ancestry should be a matter of future research.”
An interesting finding of this report is that there were many people from IVC
settlements living in Central Asia and BMAC in c.2500 BCE. But there is no
evidence of a reverse flow.
Shinde.et.al. (2019) “Our evidence that the Iranian-related ancestry in the
IVC Cline diverged from lineages leading to ancient Iranian hunter-gatherers,
herders, and farmers prior to their ancestors separation, places constraints on
the spread of Iranian-related ancestry across the combined region of the Iranian
plateau and South Asia, where it is represented in all ancient and modern genomic data sampled to date. The Belt Cave individual dates to c.10,000 BCE,
definitively before the advent of farming anywhere in Iran, which implies that
the split leading to the Iranian-related component in the IVC Cline pre-dates the
advent of farming there as well. Even if we do not consider the results from the
low-coverage Belt Cave individual, our analysis shows that the Iranian-related
lineage present in the IVC Cline individuals split before the date of the c.8000
BCE Ganj Dareh individuals, who lived in the Zagros mountains of the Iranian plateau before crop farming began there around c.7000-6000 BCE. Thus,
the Iranian-related ancestry in the IVC Cline descends from a different group of
hunter-gatherers from the ancestors of the earliest known farmers or herders in
the western Iranian plateau.”
The relative figure given in the report shows that the Iranian-related ancestry
found in the IVC as well as most parts of South Asia at present separated from
the parent body well before 10000 BCE. Mait Metspalu et. al. (2011) mentioned
4.3. ARRIVAL OF INDO-ARYAN SPEAKERS IN SOUTH ASIA - A NEW PERSPECT
above also comes to similar conclusion. An interesting conclusion of Shinde.et.al.
is that this separation was well before agriculture was invented in the Fertile
Crescent or areas east of Zagros Mountains in Iran. Because of this, the report
concludes that agriculture was invented in South Asia independently; and not
through migrating farmers from these areas. It also suggests another possibility
that it might be a case of ‘knowledge transfer’ through trade/stray contacts.
Thus, primary ancestry source of IVC, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Eastern Iran were the same from very ancient times, although the South Asian branch
separated from Iranian branch before 10000 YBP as per Shinde.et.al.(2019).
This common ancestry was unrelated to those from Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia
or the steppe. We also find that later most of these people in Iran, Afghanistan
and South Asia were speakers of closely related IE languages and had very similar cultural and religious practices. Since we are now told by Peter A. Underhill
et al. (2014) that “the initial episodes of haplogroup R1a diversification likely
occurred in the vicinity of present-day Iran before 25000 YBP”, this could well
be the source of the R1a based ancestry found in these areas at present.
The straightforward conclusion should be that the ethnicity and languages
of the area did not undergo substantial changes after 10000 BCE. There is no
reference either in the Avesta or Vedic texts of a migration event from the NW.
Avesta seems to be unaware of lands north of southern parts of Central Asia.
Greek chroniclers mention that Iranians were unaware about the Aral Sea, just
about 1000 KM north of North Eastern border of Iran, in the Uzbek/Kazakh
border. For Vedic Aryans, Aryan home-land or ‘Aryavarta’ was in the Gangetic
plains (Interestingly, the highest incidence of R1a in South Asia is in ‘Aryavarta’
or areas east of River Ganges) and for Zoroastrians, the home-land of Aryas or
’Airiya’ was in ‘Airyanem Vaejah’; the location of which is uncertain and controversial. Neither had any retained memory of a distant home-land in the
north-west. This is unlikely if the ancestors of Vedic-Aryans and Zoroastrians
had come from that direction. The vast area that had this similar ancestry and
languages also has some of the remotest locations in the world and it would
have been difficult to completely replace the language, customs and even ethnic
identity from the entire area, with little trace of the original. Any model that
assumes complete substitution of languages, culture, religious practices, apart
from ancestry in the area during this period will require many special pleadings,
particularly as there is no firm evidence for such a change, except for some controversial linguistic hypotheses. Besides, complete demographic displacements
or language substitution could occur only in very special circumstances, particularly when large population size and vast geographical area are involved. We
should be skeptic of any models suggesting or based on such changes.
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CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
Some studies have also found evidence to support substantial steppe genetic
input into South Asia in the second MBCE. “aDNA study indicated the Steppe
MLBA and not the Steppe EMBA genomes to be the plausible source of Steppe
ancestry among South Asians genomes”. Narasimhan et al., 2019
“However, a natural route for Indo-European languages to have spread into
South Asia is from Eastern Europe via Central Asia in the first half of the 2nd
millennium BCE, a chain of transmission that did occur as has been documented
in detail with ancient DNA. The fact that the Steppe pastoralist ancestry in
South Asia matches that in Bronze Age Eastern Europe (but not Western Europe
[de Barros Damgaard et al., 2018; Narasimhan et al., 2019]) provides additional
evidence for this theory, as it elegantly explains the shared distinctive features
of Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages” Shinde et al., 2019.
But other studies (Underhill et al.) have found that z286 (European R1a)
and z93 (Asian R1a) had separated in around 6000 YBP. Z282 is rarely found
east of Urals and z93 is rare in Eastern Europe. From this it was concluded that
there was no gene flow from South Russian Steppe towards Iran and South Asia
after 6000 YBP.
The first only talks about a “plausible source of Steppe ancestry among
South Asians genomes” and second report is not based on data from within
South Asia, except one sample from IVC (Raghigarhi). Besides, large migration
is now ruled out by most linguists and archaeologists. These also contradict
many other reports, some of which I have quoted above. Nicole Boivin offered
this critique of genetic studies: “In reading the genetics literature on South Asia,
it is very clear that many of the studies actually start out with some assumptions
that are clearly problematic, if not in some cases completely untenable. Perhaps
the single most serious problem concerns the assumption, which many studies
actually start with as a basic premise that the IndoAryan invasions are a well
established (pre)historical reality.” (Boivin, 2007: 352)).
It should also be kept in mind that the findings mentioned in such papers are
the best possible subjective inferences based on the data analyzed, but might
fall short of being rigorous objective conclusions, the reason being that we are
only just beginning to unravel the complexity of the structure of DNA. Errors
can occur due to quantity and quality issues of the data acquired, and also interpretation of it. Space for subjective Interpretation can become less as quantity
and quality of the data improves and it acquires the ability to speak for itself.
For example, U. Esposito et.al. (Biorxiv preprint) make the following remark
“Half of all published ancient human genomes lack reliable and direct dates,
which results in obscure and contradictory reports.” But we are now witnessing
exponential growth in related research, which is also leading to improving tech-
4.3. ARRIVAL OF INDO-ARYAN SPEAKERS IN SOUTH ASIA - A NEW PERSPECT
niques and technologies. Hopefully these should result in more robust results in
the days to come.
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CHAPTER 4. GENETIC EVIDENCE
Chapter 5
Conclusion
To sum-up, there are compelling evidences to conclude that a wave of migrants
belonging to Y-DNA Haplogroup R1a or its subclades, who spoke an early form
of Proto-Indo-Aryan language arrived (or were present) in South Asia before
10000 BCE and these migrants provided a major component of the present South
Asian ancestry. It would then follow that Harappan and Vedic civilizations as
well as Hindu religion were the result of the gradual cultural evolution of the
admixed population of these migrants with local communities. This is not a
perfect model, as it does not explain many adverse facts and data, but I find
other models discussed at present even less acceptable. Critics might revile the
model I am proposing, as none of the evidences/issues I have discussed above
can be treated as clinching or conclusive, but the combined effect of all these
should be considerable, if not decisive. It may be just one of the possibilities,
but one of the better ones. In the end we should have the humility to admit that
at present there are serious gaps in our knowledge of how Indo-Aryan dialects
came to be the languages of people living in the northern parts of South Asia.
Discussion on the subject at present is often like those related to ‘flat Earth
theory’ in some parts of the world - anyone who tries to propose a new model
or a variation in a model with a large following, is often shouted down by a
chorus of believers. But it is a common human failure that we are always quite
sure that our own opinions and beliefs are always correct and any contrary view
must be on account of ideological bias, untenable or dubious logic or deficient
scholarship or simply ignorance. Such bias tends to creep in without one being
aware of it. It may be that I am also a victim of the bug.
45