The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate 1st Edition

Edwin Bryant does an admirable job of presenting both sides of the debate over the origins of Vedic culture (Migrationists versus Indigenists), despite the fact that the debate is highly contentious, especially in India. He presents the evidence (linguistic and archaeological) and the ideology (Western and Indian) in separate chapters and concludes each chapter with a summary of the strengths and weaknesses of each case. Due to Bryant's scrupulous attention to all sides of the issue, his book is not an easy read, but anyone who sticks with it will have gained a very thorough understanding of 1) the current state of investigation into Vedic origins, 2) the reasons for the inconclusiveness of existing evidence, and 3) the techniques that various ideologically-motivated partisans have used to try to interpret the evidence in favor of their own premature conclusions. Because of the inability of the disciplines of archaeology and linguistics to resolve contradictions between the linguistic and archaeological evidence, the origin of Vedic culture remains one of the biggest mysteries of human prehistory. Unless the Indus Script can be deciphered, or undisputed remains of Proto-Indo-European culture excavated outside India, Vedic origins are likely to remain obscure.

The Indo-Aryan migration debate has been going on ever since European scholars claimed (in later part of 19 century) that the practitioners of the Vedic rituals and the authors of RgVeda were "Aryans" of European ancestry. Despite the images of tall blonde, soma belching Germanic supermen riding their chariots, hooting and tooting their trumpets as they trampled the inferior aboriginal dasas of ancient India, numerous Indian scholars have challenged this theory. This debate is not over since the evidence obtained from philology, archeology and internal evidences gleaned from RgVeda provides a forum for contrasting interpretations.

A brief summary of the book is as follows: This book may be broadly classified into two sections that deal with the discussions about the identity of the Vedic ancestors, and the date of the earliest writings of RgVeda. Scholars are divided over the earliest writings of RgVeda but some estimates put this date to be around 1500 BCE. At this time, the Indo-Aryans were a separate entity from Iranians that descended from a larger Indo-Iranian population. This conclusion is largely based on the similarities in the linguistics of RgVeda and Avesta (sacred texts of Zoroastrianism). The separation of two populations may have occurred as early as 2200 BCE. In contrast to this theory, some authors have suggested, based on astronomical data of RgVeda, the earliest writings to an earlier date of 2500 BCE. The references to the river Sarasvati in RgVeda makes the strongest suggestion that Vedic ancestors were present in the mature Harappan period.

With regards to the origin of Vedic people, more far reaching conclusions could be drawn based recent genetic studies and the origin of the Indo-European language (1). Most indigenous tongues spoken today, from Hindi to Italian, English to Russian and Spanish to Greek belong to one parent Indo-European language. This classification is based on shared features of vocabulary and grammar. To identify indigenous population in ancient Eurasia, archeologists used distinctive types of pottery and cultural practices associated with burials and settlements into individual "archaeological cultures". Significantly, animal grave offerings were made (cattle, sheep, goats and horse), a feature associated with Proto-Indo-Europeans, and later by the Vedic ancestors. However, it hasn't been clear whether there is a genetic basis for these group boundaries or whether they're just cultural. Recent genetic analysis reveal that this group of pastoralists with domestic horses and oxen-drawn wheeled carts were responsible for up to 75% of the genomic DNA seen in Indo- European cultures about 4,500 years ago. The study identified a massive migration of herders and farmers from the Yamna culture of the north of the Black and Caspian Seas (Ukraine). This is called the "Steppe hypothesis." This would have favored the expansion of at least of few of these Indo-European languages throughout the Eurasia. This "steppe" expansion explains the intriguing link of modern Indo-European languages to one mother language. It is also quite likely that the Indo-European languages spoken in India and Iran were probably diverged from those spoken by the Yamna people before they blazed a trail into Eastern and Central Europe. Recent archeological evidences also favor these findings. In 2009, a 6,000-year-old ancient 'cathedral' was discovered in Ukraine near modern-day Nebelivka. The place of worship contained altars and burnt bones of lambs as well as humanlike figurines (gods) shedding light on practices within a huge prehistoric settlement. Some of these practices were carried though the Vedic period in India. Another genetic analysis suggest that humanity's most recent common male ancestor, the "father" of us all, would have lived between 174,000 and 321,000 years ago (2). These studies give an overall picture of human evolution and population migrations. Perhaps in few short years to come, we can solve the puzzle of the ancestry of Indo-Aryans more precisely.

The author reviews the literature thoroughly and presents a contrasting picture that emerges in the ancient history of India and the roots of Vedic culture. This book is of great interest for those interested in the ancient history of India and the earliest period of modern Hinduism.

Reference:
1. Wolfgang Haak et al. Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-European languages in Europe. Nature, 2015; DOI: 10.1038/nature14317
2. Agnar Helgason, et al. The Y-chromosome point mutation rate in humans. Nature Genetics, 2015; DOI: 10.1038/ng 3171

This is a primer to study the Indo-Aryan problem. You can learn all the sources and their arguments for their pet theories, and their opposition, their criticism etc. The author also writes about the Indian scholars and their viewpoint of an Indian homeland. This is a very good book to learn about the arguments of the various parties involved and get a good idea from where to start with. Of course this book assumes that the reader has some background on the topic though. Read my full review at [...]

I recommend this book to everybody interested in Ancient history, Indian history, and historiography. The book is very well written, extremely informative, and also objective and neutral. Another book of the same calibre that I highly recoommend is Koenraad Elst's "Update on the Aryan invassion debate".

There are many other books in addition that one should read, including Talageri's "the Rigveda", Nicholas Kazanas' works, and the books by B.B. Lal on the topic.

It is not an easy task to summarize approximately two hundred years of research on the origins of Vedic Culture. It is an even more difficult task to dispassionately review the evidence on the history of the Indo-Aryans - given that participants in the debate have now degenerated to the level of squabbling school children. It is to Mr. Bryant's credit that he admirably succeeds in giving a comprehensive and balanced overview of the vast terrain. Archaeology, Linguistics, Astronomy - all these areas are covered, catering to the level of the general reader albeit without oversimplification. He terms his own position on the 'Origins Question' as 'agnostic'. He does however convince the (non-fanatic) reader that agnosticism is the rational position given the current state of knowledge. His position that only the 'final' decipherment of the Indus script will lead to progress in the debate is also well-supported by his analysis. Altogether, I think this book will remain the best entry point for this topic for at least the next 25-30 years.