Author: Prof. B. B. Lal
Publication: Bharatiya Pragna
Date: March 2002
Introduction: Paper presented at
a seminar organized by the Indian Council for Historical Research on the
same theme in Delhi on 7-9 January 2002
There is an academic tradition that
while discussing the origin of the railway engine one has perforce to get
back to the story of the water-filled kettle which, when heated, emitted
hot vapours and the person watching it got the brilliant idea that from
the steam thus produced, one could invent a steam engine that could propel
very heavy weights. Though this simile is not an exact one in the present
context, one must nevertheless go back to 1786 when a Calcutta High Court
judge, Sir William Jones (1788), sprang a surprise by declaring in his
Presidential Address to the Bengal Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin had so much in common that it was difficult
to view these as mutually exclusive entities. Little did the poor judge
realize that his innocuous judgement will lead to an unending cut-throat
debate for centuries to come.
The observation that Sanskrit, Greek
and Latin were very close to one another led to a series of formulations.
Thus, it was argued that if these languages were so very similar there
must have been an earlier language from which these emerged. To this hypothetical
language the name given was "Indo-European", since the three languages
just mentioned belonged, on the one hand, to India and, on the other, to
Europe. It was further argued that there must have been some common people
who spoke this ancestral language, and they were called "Indo-Europeans".
And the final corollary was that there must have been an "original home"
of these people, and thus began the hunt for this "Urheimat" - an exercise
that knows no ending in spite of sustained efforts of hundreds of scholars
for over two hundred years.
Initially, some scholars opined
that India, being the home of the earliest extant literature (viz. the
Vedas) of the Indo-European group of languages, must have been the original
homeland of these languages. However, soon the canvas got enlarged so as
not to limit it to India but to include a large part of central Asia. Thereafter
the scenario was taken to Europe and, not surprisingly, almost every part
thereof was declared to be the homeland: Scandinavia, Finland, south-west
Russia, the Baltic area, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, the Danube valley
and so on. In fact, the rat race was so much that no part of Europe was
left out. In a very sarcastic comment on this race, Jean-Paul Demoule (1980:120)
averred: "We have seen that one primarily places the IE's [Indo-Europeans]
in the north if one is German ... in the east if one is Russian, and in
the middle if, being Italian or Spanish, one has no chance of competing
for the privilege."
However, in the course of time this
Eurocentric approach began its climb-down and many new regions were upgraded.
As of now, the more important claims to the Indo-European homeland pertain,
in their geographical locations from west to east, to:
(I) the Anatolian region of western
Asia;
(II) the Black Sea-Caspian belt;
(III) the steppes of southern Russia;
and
(IV) Sogdiana in south-central
Asia.
We shall deal with these claims
first, after which the possibility of North-west South Asia having been
the homeland will also be considered.
The first question that has to be
addressed while looking for the original home of these Indo-Europeans is
at what cultural level were they: hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads or
sedentary agriculturists? An attempt in this direction was made by trying
to find out the common words pertaining to agriculture, animals, plants,
climate, etc. in the various Indo-European languages and thereby to determine
the techno-cultural level and the geophysical surroundings of these hypothetical
Indo-Europeans. Since the reconstructed terms in many cases are faulty,
no consensus on this issue could be arrived at. Thus, some scholars would
like to visualize these Indo-Europeans as nomads roaming about on steppes
in cold climate, whereas others would regard them as sedentary agriculturists,
living in an area with a moderate climate and endowed with wild cereal
plants and animals that could be easily domesticated.
The Anatolian homeland: The noted
proponent of the Anatolian homeland is Collin Renfrew who believes that
the Indo-Europeans are first identifiable in Anatolia where they practised
agriculture around 7000 BC. And it was from here that one of their groups
moved westward to Europe, crossing the Bosporus and another -group, moving
eastward, via the region south of the Caucasus mountains and the Caspian
Sea, into Iran from where it must have subsequently entered Afghanistan
and India. In an alternative scenario, Renfrew thinks that the Indo-Europeans
split up after entering Europe and then the eastern branch went to south-central
Asia, via north of the Black and Caspian Seas, whence it moved on to northeastern
Iran, Afghanistan and India.
The Anatolian hypothesis, however,
falters on at least two major counts. In the first place, if the Europeans,
on the one hand, and the Indo-Iranians, on the other, had once lived together
as agriculturists in Anatolia, they ought to have a common vocabulary for
agricultural items, which unfortunately is not the case. Secondly, the
Hittite language of Anatolia, on which this commonness has been perceived,
was a "minority" language, probably of the elites, whereas the basal language
was non-Indo-European. This is hardly tenable with the concept of the Indo-Europeans
having been the original inhabitants of this area. On the Anatolian agricultural
setting vis-a-vis the Indo-Europeans there comes a bitter comment, from
across the Atlantic, by Lamberg-Karlovsky who snaps: " [The whole issue
has been simplified by Professor Renfrew to the ludicrous formula 7000
BC Anatolia farming = Indo-Europeans"].
The Caucasus Region: Shifting the
focus a little to the east, Gamkrelidze and Ivanov place the homeland in
the region between the Black and Caspian Seas. Their thesis is based primarily
on linguistic paleontology, applying which they aver that the homeland
was a mountainous terrain, replete with lakes and fast-flowing rivers,
which their proposed region, they argue, has in ample measure. In an attempt
to add further weight to their thesis, they argue that since the reconstructed
Indo-European language has a number of Semite loan-words, the homeland
could not have been far away from the Semitic world. However, the thesis
of there being a large number of Semitic loan-words in the Indo-European
language has been shown by many a scholar as a misplaced belief. Besides,
there is another linguistic incongruity in the thesis, viz. that the Armenian
language, which is spoken in the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian
Sea, is replete with a strong element of non-Indo-European vocabulary,
suggesting that there was a sizable population substratum and consequently
the Indo-European could not have been the original language of the area.
The "Kurgan" Homeland: In yet another
scenario, the venue is shifted to the steppes lying to the north of the
Black and Caspian Seas. Over here archaeological remains of a culture typified
by burial barrows (called "Kurgan" in the Slavic language) have been met
with. The chief proponent of this thesis is Maria Gimbutas. According to
her, the reconstructed linguistic evidence suggests that the Indo-Europeans
were horse-riding warriors who used thrusting weapons and could easily
overrun other areas, and did do so in so far as central Europe is concerned,
around the fourth-fifth millennia BC. On the techno-cultural level, the
Kurgan people were essentially at a pastoral stage. Discounting this equation,
Renfrew holds that on the European scene mounted warriors appear only as
late as the turn of the second-first millennia BC and these could in no
case have been Gimbutas's Kurgan warriors predating the facts by some 3,000
years. On the linguistic turf, there comes a severe attack by Kathrin Krell
who finds a great incongruity between the terms found in the reconstructed
Indo-European language and the cultural level met with in the Kurgans.
For example, Krell holds that the Indo-Europeans had reached an agricultural
level whereas the Kurgan people were just at a pastoral stage. There are
others, like Mallory and Schmitt, who are equally critical of Gimbutas's
hypothesis.
The Sogdiana Homeland: Descending
to the southeast, another homeland has been suggested, namely that in Sogdiana,
by Johanna Nichols. From this homeland, Nichols holds that there was a
spread of the Indo-European language to the area surrounding the Aral Sea.
From there a two-fold spread has been envisaged: A major one to the areas
lying to the north of the Caspian and Black Seas, and a comparatively minor
one along the southern side of these seas. However, a more noteworthy point
in Nichols's schema is that there was only a language-spread and not a
migration of people. While such a stand absolves the proponent from producing
proof in terms of the material culture as well, one has yet to be fully
convinced of the hypothesis that a language can keep on spreading from
area to area, without involving the language carriers, viz. the people
themselves.
Also, the Sogdiana model does not
fall in line with the normative model wherein there is a centre-to-periphery
spread, like the centre-to-periphery ripples created when an object is
dropped on the surface of placid water and the ripples start moving in
circles towards the periphery. In the Sogdiana thesis, one might well ask:
"Why was there no movement towards the east?" The matter requires an in-depth
study, but a provisional answer may well be that if there is an obstruction
on one side, say the wall of the water pool close to the centre from where
the ripples start, the obstruction will not let the ripples go in that
direction. Maybe a very strong presence of an altogether different language,
in terms of both its lexical content and structural behaviour, stood as
a buffer against any penetration of the Indo-European language to the east.
Nichols's model, proposed only recently, has yet to be fully evaluated
by linguists. However, as of now there are no noteworthy dissenting voices.
In the preceding pages we have seen
the "Kurganization" (i.e. burial under burrows) of three of the four theses,
viz. those relating to Anatolia, Caucasus and the Russian steppes. Also,
as already mentioned, the Sogdiana one has yet to stand some rigorous tests.
We have also noted that in the case of all the three aforementioned theses,
for each proponent there are at least half-a-dozen opponents. (For the
sake of the brevity of this paper, I have referred to only one or two instances
in each case.) A very interesting point that emerges from these controversies
is that the dispute is not merely between archaeologists on the one hand
and linguists on the other, who flaunt their own discipline as being superior
that of the other, but amongst archaeologists themselves and similarly
amongst linguists, indicating that not even two practitioners of the same
discipline see eye to eye. Completely disillusioned with such a scenario,
Mallory rightly observed: "One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European
homeland?' but rather 'where do they put it now?'
North-west South Asia: On my part,
however, I would not like the search to be given up and would only indicate
the region to go to now. Let us move full circle and try out the Indian
homeland thesis which was proposed at the end of the eighteenth century,
but could not hold the ground. I am aware that there would be an instantaneous
uproar at this proposal, but why be allergic to the very idea itself? The
reason for a fresh examination of this proposal is that in those early
days there was a total absence of any archaeological data from north-west
South Asia, which we now have in abundance. Let me also make it clear that
I want the north-west South Asian region as a whole to be re-examined and
not merely what is now left over as north-west India. Let it also be emphasized
that the present-day political boundaries did not exist during those ancient
days we are dealing with here. The evidence from the excavations at Mehrgarh
(Jarrige) has demonstrated that the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent
had reached a neolithic, i.e. settled agricultural stage, by the seventh
millennium BC.
Here it may also be emphasized that
the Mehrgarh neolithic complex stands in marked contrast to that of Western
Asia. For example, whereas in the West Asian neolithic there is the domination
of sheep and goat amongst the domesticated animals and of wheat amongst
the cultivated cereals, in the Mehrgarh context the cattle dominated over
other animals and barley over other cereals. Thus, the Mehrgarh neolithic
has its own identity, having no generic relationship with its West Asian
counterpart. In other words, the Mehrgarh people were the "the sons of
the soil".
Further, there is a continuous story
from the succeeding chalcolithic level onwards, taking us through various
evolutionary stages to the Early Harappan from which there emerged the
Harappan Civilization itself, around the middle of the third millennium
BC. Again, after a thorough study of the human skeletal remains, Hemphill
and his colleagues have shown that there was a biological continuity right
from 4500 BC to 800 BC. A question may now be posed: "What language did
these chalcolithic people speak?" Though the Harappan script has not yet
been deciphered, in spite of so many tall claims, we have yet another way
of tackling the issue.
In the Rigveda, the Sarasvati has
been stated to be a mighty river flowing from the mountains to the sea
(RV 7.95.2). By the time of the Panchvimsa Brahmana (XXV. 10. 16) it dried
up. When did this drying up of the Saraswati take place? The answer is
provided by the evidence from the excavations at Kalibangan which stood
on the bank of the Sarasvati, now going by the name of the Ghaggar. Radiocarbon
dates indicate that the Mature Harappan settlement at Kalibangan had to
be abandoned around 2000-1900 BC. And, as the hydrological evidence indicates,
this abandonment took place on account of the drying up of the Sarasvati.
This latter part is duly established by the work of Raikes, an Italian
hydrologist, and of his Indian collaborators. Raikes has very significantly
titled his paper, "Kalibangan: Death from Natural Causes". Thus, an in-depth
study of the literary-cum-archaeological-cum-hydrological-cum-radiocarbon
evidence duly establishes that the Rigveda (which, to recall, speaks of
the Sarasvati as a mighty river) must antedate ca-2000 BC. By how many
centuries, it can be anybody's guess.
We may now take up the geographical
evidence yielded by the Rigveda itself. The famous Nadi-stuti hymn (RV
10.75.5-6) refers to the then familiar rivers in a serial order from the
east to the west, beginning with the Ganga and ending up with the Indus
along with its western tributaries such as the Kabul, Kurram, etc., encompassing
eastern Afghanistan as well. One might now pose another question: "Which
archaeological culture/civilization was there in this very area during
the period preceding 2000 BC?" The inescapable answer will have to be:
"The Harappan Civilization". In other words, the entire circumstantial
evidence points to a correlation between the Vedas and the Harappan Civilization.
A final seal on this, however, can be put only when the Harappan script
is satisfactorily deciphered. Lack of time prevents me from dealing right
here with the various objections raised against the Harappan-Vedic equation.
These have been dealt with in great detail in my just-published book, The
Sarasvati Flows On.
Putting together the various parts
of this jigsaw puzzle, it would mean that if the Vedas reflect the literary
counterpart of the Harappan archaeological complex, the Harappans spokes
a language called Sanskrit. And since the Harappan Culture had its roots
going deep at least into the fifth millennium BC, it would imply that the
Sanskrit-speakers were there in this area as early as that. Further, had
the Sanskrit-speaking people not been the original inhabitants of this
region, we would have got evidence thereof in terms of a substratum language,
which we really do not have. The presence of a few Dravidian words in the
Vedas can be explained by an adstratum and not necessarily by a substratum.
As explained elsewhere by the present author (in press), the Harappans
came in lateral contact with the Southern Neolithic people who, in all
probability, were speakers of the Dravidian language.
We now turn to yet another important
piece of evidence. The Boghaz Kuei inscription, dating back to the fourteenth
century BC, refers to Indra, Mitra, Nasatya and Varuna as witnesses to
a treaty between the Mitanni king Matiwaza and the Hittite king Suppiluliuma.
There is also the evidence furnished by a text on the training of horses,
which uses typical Sanskrit terms like ekavartana, trivartana, etc. Further,
there are many Indian names in the region going back to circa seventeenth
century BC. After a thorough examination of the entire evidence, the renowned
scholar T. Burrow came to the conclusion: "The Aryans appear in Mitanni
from 1500 BC as the ruling dynasty, which means that they must have entered
the country as conquerors." If so, from where could have these conquerors
come? Around 1500 BC there was no other country in the entire world except
India where these above mentioned gods were worshipped. (As we have shown
earlier, the Rigveda is datable to at least 2000 BC, if not earlier.) Putting
two and two together, it is clear that the immigrants to Anatolia were
from no area other than India. This movement is likely to have taken place
along the belt lying south of the Black and Caspian Seas.
The above model is not much different
from that of Nichols. The shift of the "original homeland" from Sogdiana
to a few hundred miles to the south - i.e. to the region now comprising
eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan and north-west India should not upset anyone,
since the archaeological-cum-sliterary evidence from this area is more
positive than that from Sogdiana.