The Indo-Europeanization of the world from a Central Asian homeland: New approaches, paradigms and insights from our research publications on Ancient India (original) (raw)
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In this paper, we bring together the concepts put forth in our previous papers and throw new light on how the Indo-Europeanization of the world may have happened from the conventional Central Asian homeland and explain the same using maps and diagrams. We also propose the ‘Ten modes of linguistic transformations associated with Human migrations.’ With this, the significance of the proposed term ‘Base Indo-European’ in lieu of the old term ‘Proto Indo-European’ will become abundantly clear to most readers. The approaches presented in this paper are somewhat superior to existing approaches, and as such are expected to replace them in the longer run. Detailed maps and notes demonstrating and explaining how linguistic transformations might have taken place in South Asia are available in this paper as understood from our previous research papers, and scholars from other parts of the world are invited to develop similar paradigms with regard to their home countries as far as the available data or evidence will allow them. This will help piece together a gigantic jig-saw puzzle, and lead to a revolution of sorts in the field, leading to a ripple-effect that will strongly impact several other related fields of study as well. We also re-emphasize our epigrammatic catch-phrases ‘The Globalization of Science’ and ‘Scientific Progress at the Speed of Light’, and attempt to show how the former will inexorably lead to the latter. This is done in a respectable level of detail, as zany and theoretical concepts gain respectability only if corroborated with real-world data from across the world. The end-result will be a transformation and a revolution in human knowledge, with inevitable cascading changes in cultural and social paradigms and relationships across nationalities and cultures, and rich rewards for scholars and students of Indo-European studies across the world.
Indo-Europeanization – the seven dimensions in the study of a never-ending process
Documenta Praehistorica, 2007
This contribution focuses on the multifaceted process of Indo-Europeanization which started out, in the Pontic-Caspian region, with the formation of a distinct ethno-cultural epicenter, the Proto-Indo-European complex. Since the late Neolithic, the Indo-Europeanization of Europe and parts of Asia produced various scenarios of contact and conflict. Altogether seven dimensions are highlighted as essential for the study of the contacts which unfolded between Indo-Europeans and non-Indo-European populations (i.e. Uralians, Caucasians, ancient populations in southern and central Europe). Selective aspects of cultural and linguistic fusion processes during the Neolithic and subsequent periods are discussed, and the controversial term ‘migration’ is redefined.
Journal of Indo-European Studies 18, 1990
After a critical survey of previous Indo-European Cultural Studies methodology, the author demonstrates the usefulness of recent anthropological and linguistic theories for the development of a modern hypothesis on Proto-Indo-European.
Indian and Oriental studies in a Euro-Indian perspective for the 21st century
Acta Orientalia Vilnensia
Collegium Civitas; University of WarsawThe basic presumption is the need in Oriental studies to go much further than mere description of different civilisations. They should be compared with our own, and the question of whether the concepts evolved by those civilisations can help us better understand the reality in which we actually happen to live should be asked. For the adoption of this approach to the study of South Asia, it is suggested that European and Indian civilisations are ‘twins-unlike’. The paradox is intended since certain—so to say—general structural aspects of both civilisations are similar (geographical magnitude, variety of climate, size of population, and its anthropological, ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity), but as far as content is concerned they are of course very much unlike each other. The conclusion of our comparison is that Indian traditional civilisation is that of sustenance and containment while the European one is that of progress, development...
In our previous papers, we had dealt with the Aryan problem, the identity of the Harappans, the origin of Brahmi and the Indus script, besides other related topics. We had also observed that the autochthonous Aryan theory and the Vedic Indus theories were untenable, and that the conventional theory that immigrants speaking the PIE, or one of the constituents of the PIE, now to be known as Base Indo-European, migrated to India from Central Asia would still hold good. We had proposed that the Dravidian and the Paramunda Indus theories would be untenable, and that the Harappans were intensely multi-lingual, speaking languages that were remote ancestors of the Prakrits of the Gangetic plains. We had shown how linguistic transformations had taken place: this issue was studied as an interplay between two language groups: an ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit spread in a part of India, died out as a spoken language, and became a liturgical language, and a lingua franca of the elite. The speakers of IE languages then took on the languages of the descendants of the Indus for everyday use due to the transfer of populations to the Ganga-Yamuna doab. Sanskrit then re-influenced the languages of the region, even after it disappeared as a spoken language. We had also discussed the origin of the term ‘Aryan’ which had a cultural connotation in the Rig Veda. We had also proposed that the migrations into India perhaps took place in around 2750 BC, long before the Rig Veda was compiled. In this paper, we discuss the importance of modernizing Indology for various fields of science and the need to replace the now effectively dead Mid-Nineteenth Century school of Indology and Marxist historiography with modern paradigms. We also explain why inaction could be fraught with disastrous consequences. This paper may therefore be construed as a clarion call to scholars from all over the world to take up research on Ancient India, and to raise awareness among scholars of related fields of study. The scientific and the intellectual rewards associated with such an endeavour would be enormous. We also attempt to lay out the contours and identify the key drivers for Twenty-first century Indology.
Among the overwhelming majority of linguists, the accepted model for the genetic affiliation of the Indic languages (Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Bengali, etc.) is what can be called the Indo-European model. According to the Indo-European model, Indic languages are all descended from a single language that no longer exists (sometimes referred to as Proto-Indo-European), which is also the ancestor of the languages of Iran and most of the languages of Europe. In this paper I will offer a brief presentation of the assumptions underlying the Indo-European model and I examine two separate critical appraisals of it by the linguists Angela Marcantonio and Nikolay Trubetzkoy. I show that neither of their criticisms succeed in casting sufficient doubt on the Indo-European hypothesis, and neither offers an adequate explanation of the existing linguistic data. In the second half of the paper I shall draw a distinction between the hypothesis of a reconstructed Indo-European parent language, and the reconstruction of the culture and homeland of its original speakers. Acceptance of the hypothesis of the Indo-European model of language relationship need not entail acceptance of any single hypothesis about the prehistoric migrations of speakers of Indo-European languages or about their original culture.
Methodological issues in the Indo-European debate
Journal of Biosciences, 2019
The Indo-European debate has been going on for a century and a half. Initially confined to linguistics, race-based anthropology and comparative mythology, it soon extended to archaeology, especially with the discovery of the Harappan civilization, and peripheral disciplines such as agriculture, archaeometallurgy or archaeoastronomy. The latest entrant in the field, archaeogenetics, is currently all but claiming that it has finally laid to rest the whole issue of a hypothetical migration of Indo-Aryan speakers to the Indian subcontinent in the second millennium BCE. This paper questions the finality of this claim by pointing to inherent limitations, methodological issues and occasional biases in current studies as well as in the interpretation of archaeological evidence.