I. A Detailed Reply to a Joker’ (Arnaud
Fournet)'s “Review” of my Book.
Shrikant G Talageri
19/5/2010.
[Foreword:
I wrote my third book book, "The Rigveda and the Avesta―The Final
Evidence" in 2008. Arnaud Fournet, one of the most third-grade
"scholars" I have ever encountered, wrote a "review" of the
book. This man, by his own testimony, received my book for review from Koenraad
Elst on 18/5/2009. Within four days, he had "read"
the whole book, written and completed a cheap and abusive "review" of
the book, consulted with Elst, and then posted it on the internet on 22/5/2009.
This third-rate person makes it clear that he had not read any of my earlier
books, knew nothing whatsoever about Indo-Iranian studies or the Rigveda before
this, had never heard about the OIT, and yet (in spite of the clear evidence
that he had not bothered to read the book under "review" either) he
managed to produce and post this "review" in four days!
This
whole exchange had five parts:
1.
His "review" on 22/5/2009.
2.
My reply to it on 19/5/2010: "A Detailed Reply to a Joker (Arnaud Fournet)'s
'Review' of My Book".
3.
His "review 2" on 29/5/2010: "Review of Talageri 2
Unassailable".
4.
My reply to his "Review 2" on 1/6/2010: "More Jokes from
Fournet".
5.
His post on Indology List dt. 11/6/2010 and my post dt. 12/6/2010.
The
whole exchange, started by him, is tedious, ugly and messy. I am posting nos. 2, 4 and 5 above, today on
6/5/2020, since I see that my posts are completely missing on the internet
while his posts are very much there. It is not pleasant or very readable,
but it is necessary that my replies to his bile should also be on record].
Niraj
Mohanka has, on 10th April 2010, sent me, presumably to elicit some
reaction from me, the following comments by Arnaud Fournet made during the
course of a discussion on an internet discussion site IndiaArchaeology@yahoogroups.com.:
“This book
proves nothing but that Talageri still has a very long way to go before he
understands what the issues are about and how to write a book…. I suggest you
read again the review I wrote nearly one year ago. I read it again recently and
I see little to change… For the time being, nobody addressed the real issues
contained in the review and keeps on dreaming on never-exist fairytales”.
Fournet
refers here to a “review” he had published on www.scribd.com
on 22nd May 2009 ─ that is nearly a year ago, of my third book “The
Rigveda and the Avesta ─ The Final Evidence” (Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 2008). I had
read this “review” at that time itself; but, after the initial reactive indignation
that I naturally felt after reading a pointless and pompous diatribe against my
book written in a jeering and sneering tone, I soon realized that there was
really nothing to “reply” to in that “review”: it was so utterly pointless and
irrelevant. [Later, I was informed that another, even more vicious and
vindictive, review had been written in a Bangalore
journal by an Indian writer who has had his knife in me since quite some time.
I did not think that other review even worth procuring and reading]. I decided
at that time that I really could not waste my time replying to every Tom, Dick
and Harry of a writer who chose to vent his spite and venom on my book or on
myself just to satisfy his itching fingers, unless
he really had something concrete to say about the data, facts and evidence contained
in my book. Sad to say, Fournet’s
review had nothing concrete at all to say about my book, and did not really
merit any serious reply.
But
it appears Fournet is under the impression that his “review” has silenced me
and others like me who choose to keep on “dreaming
on never-exist [sic] fairytales”.
And perhaps friendly readers would like or expect me to give some reply. So I
am writing this “reply” in order to clarify once and for all as to what would constitute a genuine review
of my book which would merit a reply from me; and the best way of doing
this is by giving a counter-review of Fournet’s “review” of my book, to
demonstrate how there are absolutely no
“real issues” at all “contained in the
review”, however fondly Fournet, egged on by the Farmer-Witzel pack of
jokers, may be under the impression that he has managed to fool everyone into
believing that there are. In fact,
Fournet’s review really shows him up as being a joker par excellence.
First,
let me clarify what my book is all about. The
core heart of this book is the first section which presents absolutely new and absolutely conclusive evidence about the chronology (relative,
internal and absolute) and the geography of the Rigveda and the Avesta. This
evidence itself is enough to smash the AIT into smithereens and to prove the
OIT; or, at the very least, to make it clear that it would require complete and
extremely radical amendments to the AIT to produce a new version of an AIT
which would try to accommodate all these chronological and geographical factors
into a non-Indian homeland theory. The second section of the book only dots all
the “i”s and crosses all the “t”s (often repeating material from my second book
along with an array of new evidence and logical arguments) in order to show how
the OIT alone fulfils all the requirements and solves all the problems of the
IE Homeland question. Any discussion on the second section can only follow a discussion on the first section of my book.
The
first section of my book proves beyond
the shadow of any doubt that 1) the period of composition of the latest
parts of the Rigveda (latest not only according to my criteria but according to
the internal chronology accepted by consensus among western academicians) goes
back into the late third millennium BCE at the latest, 2) that the
proto-Iranians and the proto-Mitanni emigrated from India during the period of
composition of these latest parts, and 3) that the proto-Iranians and the
pre-Mitanni Indo-Aryans, in the periods preceding this late period, i.e. in the
periods preceding the late third millennium BCE at the latest, were inhabitants
of areas to the east of the Sapta
Sindhava region with little or no prior acquaintance with areas to the west.
This
is proved, not on the basis of empty
rhetoric of the kind which characterizes Fournet’s pathetic “review”, but on
the basis of pages and pages and pages
of detailed and complete (i.e. non-partisan) data, facts and evidence ─
concrete evidence which can be verified or else can be exposed if false.
Only and only after this evidence in the first section of my book
is discussed, and either conclusively proved wrong (with the help of an
alternate, and equally detailed and complete, analysis of the chronological and
geographical data in the Rigveda and the Avesta), or accepted but within an
attempted alternate AIT hypothesis, can any discussion spill over into the
second section of the book.
This
reply to Fournet’s “review” of my book will have three sections:
I.
The Real Issues contained in the first section of my book.
II.
The “Real Issues” in Fournet’s “review”.
III.
Postscript: How to write a review.
First,
let us see how Fournet deals with the core “real issues” contained in my book.
I. The Real Issues contained in the
first section of my book.
The
first section of my book is loaded with detailed masses of concrete data
covering all the possible occurrences of a large number of categories of words
in the Rigveda, relevant to the historical analysis of the Rigveda and the
Avesta, complete with hymn and verse numbers. This is solid data, arranged
systematically in tables, charts and lists, the
veracity of which can be verified or disproved with very little effort. The
text of the chapters very systematically explains the logical significance of
the detailed charts and lists, and the very precise conclusions that can be
drawn from this data. This data, and the conclusions
which automatically and logically flow out from it, constitute the crux of the
first section of the book, but Fournet totally fails or refuses to even
glance at this data and evidence: in fact, he finds that there are “frequent interruptions of the text by
copious references to the hymns and verses of the Rig-Veda and by lists of
names or nouns. Many of these references should have been preferably dealt with
otherwise, so that the reasoning and the text of the author would not be
constantly chopped […] All these
textual and typographic features are hindrances for the reader to understand
what the writer wants to say and sometimes to find the text itself amidst the
references” (notwithstanding that “the reasoning and the text of the
author” and “what the writer wants to say” are based solely on these copious references and wordlists rather than on
empty rhetoric!). And, again, about chapter 1, “About half the pages are references which could be synthesized and
organized otherwise as annexes”, and about chapter 2, “Most of this part is references or tables”.
But,
in spite of having all these concrete masses of references and data, along with
detailed explanations about their meaning and import, virtually thrust on him in the main body of the
text rather than in extraneous and avoidable annexes, Fournet resolutely
ignores it all, and sums up his conclusions about the chapters on the basis of
vague, impressionistic and opinionated comments which totally fail to make even
the pretence of an examination of any part of the data or even to take it into
consideration:
Chapter
1 gives a complete analysis of the
names and name elements common to the Rigveda and the Avesta, and shows how the
major body of these names and name elements (and, incidentally, even various
categories of compound word types which form these name elements), which form
the common cultural elements in the two books, are found right from the earliest hymns of the Avesta (the
Gathas) but are found in the Rigveda only
in the Late Books and hymns:
precisely, in 386 hymns in the Late
Books I, V, VIII-X, but in only 8 hymns in the Early and Middle Books
II-IV, VI-VII (all 8 of which are classified
by the western scholars as Late hymns
within these earlier books!). Fournet
sweeps aside this overpowering data, without examination, with the remark: “We have no particular opinion about the
conclusion and the method used to reach it. We tend to think that this point is
not as crucial as the author seems to believe”;
Chapter
2 gives a complete typological
analysis of all the meters used in the Rigveda, along with an analysis of the
chronological evolution of the meters, and shows how the meters used in the
Gathas, the earliest part of the
Avesta, are meters which in the Rigveda had evolved only by the time of the Late Books of the Rigveda. Fournet,
again sweeps aside this concrete data, without examination, with the remark: “This chapter is abstruse and it is hard to
figure what these statistics actually prove”.
Chapter
3 examines the geographical data in
the Rigveda in complete detail, and shows how the Vedic Aryans in the periods
of the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda, i.e. in the periods before the development of the common
Indo-Iranian culture which took place in the period of the Late Books of the Rigveda, were located to the east of the Punjab, with little, if any, knowledge of areas to the west. Again, without examining any of
the copious data given, Fournet dismisses the inevitable conclusions arising
from this data with the evasive remark: “Ultimately,
the conclusions drawn from the Rig-Veda depend on the relative chronology
chosen or determined for the books. Circularity is a permanent risk”.
Thus,
Fournet sweepingly dismisses the copious data in chapters 1 and 2, without examination, on the ground that
it is not “crucial” or that it is “hard
to figure out”.
Worse,
he dismisses the copious data in chapters 1, 2 and 3 on the additional ground
that the conclusions drawn are not acceptable since the veracity of these
conclusions “depend on the relative
chronology chosen and determined for the books”, and that different
scholars have proposed different chronological orders for books II-VII from the
one proposed by me in my books (which is VI, III, VII, IV, II, V). Fournet
simply refuses to examine, or even to consider, all that copious data, and
simply dismisses my conclusions with a contemptuous Gallic shrug, and the
escapist remarks: “We do not have the
expertise to determine which order (or if another one) should be preferred.
[….] These philological technicalities
should be addressed and discussed by competent specialists of the field”,
Here,
he deliberately ignores the fact that Chapter 4 of my book makes it very
clear that the veracity of the conclusions drawn by me in the first section of
my book does not in any way depend on
my own chronological order for books II-VII. The conclusions actually stand
confirmed purely on the basis of the consensus
among academic scholars (the “competent specialists of the field”)
that the family books II-VII are older than the non-family books I VIII IX X,
and that, of books II-VII, book V is closer to books I VIII IX X than to the
other family books, so that we get two
distinct groups of books on the basis of a near consensus among academic
scholars: an earlier group consisting
of books II III IV VI VII and a later
group consisting of books V I VIII IX X. Fournet himself confirms the major part of this consensus classification: “All agree that the books I VIII IX X are
the most recent and disagree about the order of the other six ones, admittedly
the oldest”. And the fact is that all the “copious references to the hymns and verses of the Rig-Veda” and all the “lists of names or nouns” which Fournet regards as “frequent interruptions of the text” in
my book, and as data to be ignored or dismissed, fall into two distinct and
clear cut categories in their patterns of distribution in the Rigveda in line
with these very two groups of books.
Therefore, even without the help of “competent
specialists of the field”, even Fournet should have been able to verify
whether my conclusions are right or wrong by simply checking the veracity of my
data.
Fournet’s
remarks on Chapter 5 are even more surprising. In Chapter 5, I have
clearly shown how all the Mitanni name types are found only and exclusively in
the later group of books (V I VIII IX
X in 112 hymns) and missing in the earlier
group of books (II III IV VI VII, except in 1 hymn classified by western academic scholars as a late hymn in these earlier books). Fournet does not just find my conclusion (that the
data shows that the Mitanni IA language is younger than the earlier parts of
the Rigveda) unconvincing, but he finds that “If any conclusion can be drawn out of these data, we would conclude
that they prove the Rig-Veda, as a whole, is younger than this Mitanni
Indo-Aryan-oid language, contrary to the author’s claim”! How on earth,
given that even he accepts that “all agree” that books I VIII IX X are “the most recent”, does he find that “these data” ─ which clearly show that
the “Mitanni Indo-Aryan-oid” names
are found only in this “most recent” group of books, and are totally missing in the books which are “admittedly the oldest” ─ without any
examination to disprove the veracity of the data, lead to the conclusion that “the Rig-Veda, as a whole, is younger than
this Mitanni Indo-Aryan-oid language, contrary to the author’s claim”? Just
how does this joker’s brain function?
So
far, discussions on the Indo-European question have been based only on rhetoric
and airy assumptions. When references from the Rigveda have formed any part of
the evidence presented by either the OIT side or the AIT side, they have
consisted mainly of stray references picked up from the text, interpreted by
adding all kinds of values absent in the actual words, and made the starting
points or first links of chains of similar interpretations one leading to the
other and ending in momentous conclusions which bear no direct connection with
the original references cited. Many of the astronomical interpretations of
Vedic references cited by OIT writers fall in this category. The textual
“evidence” for the AIT as a whole is almost entirely based on such
interpretations: the most telling example is the way one stray word, anās, occurring just once in the whole
of the Rigveda and never again after that in any other text, was taken as a-nās rather than an-ās which it actually was, translated as “nose-less” and further
interpreted as “snub-nosed”, and consequently treated in countless scholarly
works over two centuries of western Vedic scholarship as evidence that the
alleged native non-Aryan Indians, whom the alleged Aryan invaders/immigrants
encountered when they allegedly entered India, were “snub-nosed”.
The
data and statistics which fill the first section of my book to the overflowing
― the “copious references to the hymns
and verses of the Rig-Veda” and
all the “lists of names or nouns”
which Fournet regards as “frequent
interruptions of the text” in my book ― form the very crux of my book and
of the evidence presented by me. They consist of complete lists of concrete
words (i.e. words taken in their accepted literal meanings, rather than with
symbolic or value-added meanings) of different categories (including personal
names, and names of animals, rivers, etc.), and the particular picture
consistently depicted by the very regular
pattern of distribution itself, of these words (as also of other data like
meters), forms the crux of the evidence.
The
summary of this evidence is spelt out so clearly (in the section entitled “What
the Evidence Shows”, pp. 43-49 of my book) that even a half-witted person, if
he took care to actually read the section instead of writing an abusive
“review” based only on his predetermined agenda, should have been able to
understand it. And the inevitability of the conclusions drawn by me from this
evidence is also spelt out so clearly (in the section entitled “Can this
Evidence be refuted?” on pp.135-142 of my book) that any reviewer without sand
in his brains (if, of course, he had
bothered to read and understand what I have written) would have thought ten
times before being so summary in his dismissal of the evidence without
examination.
There
is only one Rigveda (as there is only one Avesta, and one known and limited
treasury of Mitanni words), so it is not really possible to challenge this
evidence by citing alternative
equally complete lists of words showing a different
regular pattern and therefore a different picture; but a genuine critic would have examined the actual lists given by me in
detail to check the extent to which they are genuine and complete, and to which
they do indeed show the pattern of distribution claimed by me and justify the
historical and geographical conclusions reached by me, and would have based any
criticism on such an examination. However, Fournet completely shuns
examining this copious data which conclusively establishes the chronology of
the composition of the Rigveda as going back into the late third millennium BCE
and beyond for the beginnings of the latest parts, and, almost like a joke,
merely reiterates the incredible (in view of all the data in the first section
of my book) proposition: “The standard
traditional time bracket from -1500 to -1000 BC for the composition of the
Rig-Veda disqualifies the OIT as constructed by the author”!
Fournet,
like Witzel before him in his criticism of my earlier book, shows the same
utter contempt for concrete references, data and statistics, and the same total
reliance on mockery and on empty rhetoric. What Fournet proves in this review,
as we shall see in detail, is that the only
way in which writers like him, including Witzel before him and other likely
critics after him, can afford or dare
to deal with my book is by completely
ignoring the copious references, data, statistics, and other hard evidence
actually presented by me, and the conclusions which unavoidably proceed from
this material, and by substituting jeering rhetoric for analytical reasoning. The
fact is not that “nobody addressed the
real issues contained in the review”; the fact (to put it crudely but
accurately) is that polemicists like Fournet and Witzel just simply do not have
the guts in their balls to address the “real
issues” in my book.
Any
review which steadfastly avoids dealing with the concrete data overflowing on
every page of the first section of my book ─ avoids examining all the data and
either showing that significant portions of that data are false, or showing
convincingly that the data leads to conclusions other than those drawn by me ─
is a Big Zero, howsoever much the
reviewer may pat himself on the back (and have his back patted by like-minded
jokers) that he has effectively made mincemeat of my book merely on the basis
of a barrage of rhetoric, polemics and derision. Fournet’s “review” is nothing
but a joke played by a sick joker to win the gleeful applause of other
like-minded jokers.
It
is up to the reader to read both my book (the reading of which Fournet claims
his review renders unnecessary) as well as Fournet’s “review” and to decide for
himself:
a)
what exactly the “real issues contained
in the review” are, and whether they really require to be addressed at all;
and also whether or not Fournet himself has in fact addressed the very real issues in my book in his “review”, and
b)
whether it is I who do not understand “how
to write a book” (and have to learn “how
to write a book” from this joker), or whether it is Fournet who does not
understand how to read a book, or how to understand what he is reading even
when it is set out in plain English.
II. The “Real Issues” in Fournet’s
“review”.
Fournet
steadfastly refuses to examine the masses
and masses of concrete, complete and verifiable data in the form of references,
data, facts, statistics and evidence given in the first section of my book,
presumably on the ground that they do not constitute “real issues”. So what exactly are the “real issues” he is “reviewing” in his “review”?
The
“real issues” in Fournet’s “review”
are all purely pedantic and polemical
issues, and the review by and large consists of a series of monologues consisting
of long, convoluted and extremely
confused polemical discussions on different subjects: e.g. the phrases
“AIT” and “OIT”, the concept of “Indo-Iranian”, the concept of “Indo-European”,
the phrase “develop”, and the concept of cultural change and transformation. The
rest of the “review” is devoted to a pedantic criticism of the book as a whole.
The monologues, as well as the rest of the “review”, consist mainly of detailed
semantic discussions on the meanings of different words and concepts and Freudian
psycho-analyses of my alleged basic misuse or misunderstanding of these words
and concepts.
Before
examining the “real issues” raised
by Fournet, it is necessary to understand two
very basic aspects of Fournet’s “review” which become clear from every word
and line written by him:
First
of all, it is clear that Fournet’s “review” is not written with the intention
of seriously examining what I have written in my book: it is written with the sole and only aim of sneering and
jeering at anything and everything written in the book, and ridiculing and
deriding my hypothesis and my person. This will become clear as we proceed with
our examination.
Secondly,
it is also clear that Fournet’s “review” is based on the principle that
“ignorance is bliss”; or rather, that “ignorance is power”, since it removes
all ethical, moral and logical inhibitions and constraints in criticizing and
deriding.
Thus,
Fournet sees no need to acquaint himself with any of the basic background
material behind the book, and proudly proclaims his ignorance almost as a
qualification: to begin with, he has not only not read my earlier books, but he
finds that “The book does not require
any prior reading of the two other books by the same author, which were on the
same topic”. In the same vein: “We
are not a specialist in Vedic or Indo-Iranian studies”; “Before reading the book, we had about no
expertise on the OIT, apart from the vague idea that the OIT tries to promote
India as a possible homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language”; “we would have appreciated to see what
evidence in the Rig-Veda substantiates the claim of ‘a mighty Sarasvatī in full
powerful flow’. Be it right or wrong, and we have no opinion, such a claim
requires to be duly documented and proved by a philological analysis, and this
analysis is lacking”; “the tribe
names, Druhyus, Anus and Pūrus ― we have not checked that point ― […] The pages (258-273) are dedicated to an
outpour of considerations on typically Indian cultural items, among which the
Druhyus, Anus and Pūrus ‘tribal conglomerates’. We are not familiar with these
items and we cannot describe what added value this section of the book might
bring.”; “The book ends with the
evocation of the ‘Battle
of the Ten Kings’ (p.370). We must confess to having never read or heard what
this epical event is”.
Can
a person who has not read the two earlier books “on the same topic” by me, who knows little about Vedic or
Indo-Iranian studies, who knows virtually nothing about the OIT, who knows so
little about the Rigveda that he does not know that the Rigveda speaks of a
mighty Sarasvatī in full powerful flow, and has never heard about Druhyus, Anus
and Pūrus, or about the Battle of the Ten Kings, presume to write a review of my third book
which claims to be the Final Evidence on the subject of Vedic and
Indo-Iranian history (within four days
of receipt of the book: he received it on 18/5/2009, while the “review” was first
posted on 22/05/2009) ― a “review” claiming to be so accurate (“accurate enough for people to assess what
the book is, when they have not read it themselves”) that it can eliminate
the need for his reader to expect anything more substantial or illuminating
from a direct perusal of the book?
As
we proceed with our examination of his critique, it will be clear from his
criticism not only a) that he is proudly ignorant about all the background issues which form the topic of my three books,
b) that he has not read what I have
written in my two earlier books with which this third book forms a continuum,
and c) that, even as far as this third book itself is concerned, he has
completely ignored all the masses of “frequent
interruptions of the text” in the form of references, data and statistics;
but also, d) that he has not bothered or seen the need to really read even the
“text” of this third book, beyond
searching for passages for quotation, or scouring the text to count the number
of times I have used certain words, or checking out which words are “missing”
in my book, or hunting out words which he can subject to a long discussion in
order to allege a semantically wrong use of those words by me ─ the most telling testimony to this is the
fact that he comes across any reference to the Battle of the Ten Kings for the
first and last time only in the last paragraph of my book (p.370)! e) that
even the portions he has quoted often include only parts of sentences, wherein
his criticism shows that he has not read the other parts of the very sentences
that he is actually quoting, and f) that even when he quotes full sentences, he
is not able to understand what he has read and quoted.
All
this makes it all the more of a joke when he tries to copy Witzel’s tactic of
listing out things which I “do not
know” and “have not mentioned” in order to show my alleged ignorance about the subject or my alleged failure to
understand the issues involved.
Now
an examination of Fournet’s “real issues”,
which will help us to understand his agenda and his methods, as also to comprehend
the psychological and intellectual level of his “review”:
1.
The smell and colour of my book:
The first “real issue” for Fournet, is
the smell and colour of my book: “The
first contact with the book has reminded us of a Sanskrit grammar we bought in
China some years ago and which is our main source on that language: Fan Yu
KeBen. The size, the smell, the pages, both whitish and yellowish, have kindled
the same impression”. The smell and colour of the book (which I at least do
not find notably different from the smell and colour of the books published by
any normal western publishing house: if anything, Aditya Prakashan books are notably
better than most of them) are obviously “real
issues” more worthy of notice and comment than the copious “interruptions” in the form of
references, data and statistics.
2.
Review-politics: Even the
very fact that the book was sent to him for review by Koenraad Elst is a “real issue” worthy of snide comment.
Fournet takes care to inform us at the very outset of the “review” that the
book has been reviewed more or less as a favour to Koenraad Elst: “The copy, received 05/18/2009, was sent by
Koenraad Elst, a personal friend of the author, after we accepted his proposal
to (try to) review it. For the sake of courtesy, we had proposed that our
review could be read by the author before being made public, but this proposal
has been rejected by K. Elst. We have never had direct contact with the author.”
Fournet ends his “review” with the remark: “We are still wondering why K. Elst has proposed that we (try to) make a
review of Mr. Shrikant Talageri’s book. We are not sure that our review is what
they have expected.”
Koenraad
Elst, at my own general request in the first flush of publication of the book,
proposed sending my book for possible review to various people. That is the standard
procedure when a new book is published, when a debate or discussion is sought
to be initiated on the contents of the book. The proposed reviewer, naturally,
always has the right, for whatever reason or even without assigning any reason,
to refuse to review the book; or, if he reviews it, to criticize it in all
legitimate terms (and even, I suppose, if that is his nature, in illegitimate
terms). What distinguishes Fournet is his unique and peculiar code of “courtesy” whereby he reviews the book,
but at the same time takes care to suggest in the body of his review a) that
the review is more or less being undertaken almost as a favour, b) that the
author was indirectly offered the chance to read the review before it was made
public (perhaps in the expectation that the author would be so terrified on
reading his devastating critique that he would desperately plead for a kinder
review, and this plea could also then be jeeringly publicized in the body of
the “review” when finally published?), c) that the author and his friend
confidently expected a glowingly favourable review and would probably be
embarrassed at it turning out to be a critical one after all, and d) that he
himself is ultimately mystified as to why he was ever approached at all to do
the review (but not, apparently, about why he did ultimately review it!). In
truth, I am equally mystified on this point. On being asked, Koenraad told me
that Fournet was a writer with “unconventional” ideas, and therefore he
(Koenraad) felt that he would be more receptive to “new ideas”. Apparently
Koenraad felt that having “unconventional” ideas was a qualification of an open
and honest mind, and also that this assumed qualification was sufficient to automatically
eliminate the need to have the ability to read and the brains to understand
what one is reading!
3.
Fournet’s mental trauma: The
tumultuous emotions that raced through Fournet’s breast as he ploughed his way
through the book is also another “real
issue” eloquently placed before the readers. A sample: “[…] In the course of reviewing the book, in the
middle of the reading of section 2, we realized that the self-imposed goal of
remaining neutral made increasingly no sense. We erased neutral and chose
empathetic, because this word expresses open-mindedness without hostility or
assent. After that, a deeper understanding of the way the author uses some key
words and of their real meanings and implicit presuppositions made it clear
that the word empathetic may be misinterpreted as a kind of implicit assent. We
then opted from the somehow psychoanalytical anamnetic, which expresses our
distantiated conviction that we have reached deeper and deeper layers of the
mental construction of the author’s OIT: the explicit contents, the implicit
framework, the key words and the political vested interests. During that
process of anamnesis of the author’s version of the OIT, we have been
successively disconcerted, assiduous, amazed and frightened [...]”.
The
above, incidentally, is a representative sample of the style of the entire
review, like that of an essay written by a school student for an elocution
competition: pedantic and flowery language, with verbose and pompous words,
phrases and sentences to be delivered with the right melodramatic pauses,
intonations, expressions and gestures.
4.
Pedantry in academic writing:
After his outpourings on his feelings while reading my book, Fournet turns to
my bibliography, followed by my preface. A little later, he turns to the
textual organization of the book and the fonts used by me. Still later, he
refers to the maps in my book. At the end of his review, he refers to my index.
We will take up these issues here ─ bibliography, preface, textual
organization, fonts, maps and index ─ as they all fall in one broad category of
incidental aspects of the book as distinct from the direct subject matter of
the book in the form of data, facts, evidence and conclusions.
Since the facts, data, statistics and
evidence given by me are to be ignored as non-issues, these become the “real issues” in his review. As in Witzel’s “review” of my second
book, every failure on my part to follow the
reviewer’s views on the proper table manners and etiquette of academic
writing (i.e. academic equivalences,
in my writing, to a failure to use the right knife, fork or spoon while eating
different dishes, to keep the cutlery and napkin in the right place, to start
and to stop eating a particular course at the correct moment, to open and close
my mouth in the right manner while eating, to chew the food the requisite
number of times, to follow the correct rules of table conversation, to sit in
the right position and at the correct angle, etc.) becomes a major “real issue”, and every comment by the
“reviewer” on each of these “failures” becomes a devastating indictment of my book, of my theory, of the evidence
presented by me, and of the OIT itself. It shows not only that I do not know “how to write a book”, but automatically
also that I do not “understand what the
issues are about”!
Since
the criticisms are mainly pedantic or polemical, my reply to them will be on
the same level:
My bibliography: Fournet begins by
noting that the bibliography is “very
short for such an issue as the PIE homeland”. This comment is superfluous
since I have made the following clear statement in the preface: “I have not adopted, and will never adopt,
the fraudulent system of providing long bibliographies containing the name of
every single book ever read by me (not to mention books not read by me but
culled from the bibliographies of other books). The only books in my bibliography are those books actually quoted by
me, and those referred to in any significant context”. Fournet quotes only
the last part of this statement, and takes comfort in thinking he has
discovered the following which gives the lie to my claim: “It must nevertheless be noted that Oldenberg. 1888. Prolegomena, are
discussed and cited in the chapter 4 but do not appear in the bibliography”.
While it is true that Oldenberg’s Prolegomena not being included in the bibliography
is an omission, it does not really give the lie to my claim: if Fournet had
understood English, he would have realized that what would have given the lie
to my claim is not omissions, but inclusions in my bibliography of books
neither actually quoted by me nor referred to in any significant context.
Fournet
continues: “it contains very few works
with a real linguistic content. Paradoxically, (historical) linguistics is
nearly completely absent in a book that claims to deal with the issue of the PIE
homeland”. Here we see the familiar tactic of continuously demanding what
is not in the book instead of
examining what is actually there! Fournet shows clearly that he has totally
failed to understand what my book is all about: the very title of the book
indicates that the central topic of the book is a textual exegesis of the Rigveda and the Avesta, and this is the
subject matter of the first section, which constitutes the bulk of my book.
There is hardly any place for general linguistic discussions in this section.
The second section of my book also has little place for books containing general discussions on linguistics, even
Indo-European linguistics (indeed, the writings on every single technical
aspect, and item of data, concerning every single branch of study of
Indo-European linguistics, could fill out a number of encyclopaediac volumes or
even a small library), except where they contained
data, discussions or arguments pertaining to the debate on the geographical
location of the Indo-European homeland, and relevant to the subjects under
discussion. So, in view of my ethical refusal to fraudulently list out in
my bibliography long lists of books read and unread just to show my erudition
(take any article or paper by Witzel, for example, and see how many of the
endless number of books listed in the bibliography really have any place in the
concerned article), my bibliography contains just the right number of books
dealing with (the relevant aspects
of) linguistics.
After
a critical reference to the book by Chang, 1988, quoted by me, Fournet resorts
to the following year-wise analysis of the books in my bibliography: “the years of publication of the 73
references listed in the bibliography are: before 1906 7 books, between 1907
and 1985 14, after 1986 52. We cannot believe that so little worth quoting has
been written during the 80 years from 1906 to 1986 on the issue of the PIE
homeland. What is more, 23 out of the 52 modern references are from Talageri
himself or from Witzel”. Fournet clearly has no idea at all what my book is
about, not having seen the need to read it before reviewing it. Naturally, the
majority of the books quoted are after 1986, since it is in the last twenty
years that the Indo-European homeland question has hotted up, and all the
various pros and cons of the AIT-vs.-OIT debate have been vigorously debated
(and the linguistic aspects mainly by Witzel and myself, and also Hock as
quoted in my book), including points and
arguments made in earlier publications. The early foundations of
Indological study go back mainly into the late nineteenth and early twentieth
century, so again some books of that period are likely to be quoted. Given the
subject matter of this book, very little indeed “worth quoting has been written during the 80 years from 1906 to 1986 on
the issue of the PIE homeland”. In any case, I was not aware that scholarly
etiquette demands that when quoting from different books, a writer is supposed
to meticulously allot an impartial quota of an equal number of books for every
year or decade!
Further:
“some books have been selected and
quoted more or less extensively because they agree with the author. From the
textual and argumentative point of view, this practice adds nothing real and
could be avoided. It amounts to pro domo propaganda”. Nothing exposes the
bias and hostility behind this fake “review” more than these comments. To begin
with, not one single OIT writer has
been quoted by me throughout the entire book: all the quotations without exception are from the scholarly writings
of AIT scholars i.e. scholars who would implicitly or explicitly be on the AIT
side in any debate (although I have given due credit to two OIT supporting
writers, on pp.102 and 338, when I have made certain points; but I have not
actually quoted these two writers, both of whom are non-Indian and both hostile
to me, and nor are they a part of the bibliography under criticism). If the
writings of these AIT scholars “agree with the author”, surely it is something
for Fournet to ponder over seriously instead of branding it as “propaganda”. But these “agreeable” quotations are not the only
ones quoted by me: I have also quoted and exposed the fallacy of almost as many
AIT arguments which do not “agree with”
me (Witzel, Hock, Lubotsky, etc.). All this is apart from the fact that the
overwhelmingly largest number of references in my book are not from any
writers, AIT or OIT, but directly from
the original sources: the Rigveda and the Avesta ─ and it is these original
references that polemicists like Fournet and Witzel dread the most and avoid
like the plague.
My
preface: The first thing Fournet
points out about the preface is the following: “The Preface (21 p) actually starts on page XVIII and not XV as
indicated in the contents”. Obviously, I cannot answer for this printer’s
or publisher’s error.
He
then notes: “the preface includes a
listing of ‘errors’ and ‘mistakes’ made in the author’s previous works […] This could have been preferably located
somewhere else, after the bibliography for example”. So far, this criticism
is legitimate: I, in hindsight, would go further and say that this list of
errors was really an unnecessary “interruption”
not only in the preface but in the book itself, and could even have been
dispensed with altogether. But Fournet does not stop here; he goes on to make
the following pointless and petty comment: “The meaning of these errata in the preface seems to be that the author
has made his own mea culpa and that other people, presumably non OIT
supporters, should do the same”! Freud? Holmes? No, it’s Hercule Fournet!
[Fournet tells us a little later on that the book “can be read in a [sic] several
ways: a surface reading of what the writer writes explicitly and deeper
readings of what he assumes and thinks but does not write”. Clearly, this
master psychologist cum detective has no place for the explicit data given on
the “surface” and his whole “review”
is based on these brilliant “deeper”
pieces of Hercule Fournetian mind-reading, as we will see many times in his
review!].
About
my claim in the preface that my book would prove conclusively that India
was the original homeland of the Indo-European family of languages, Fournet
makes the following profound observation: “It
can be underlined that the wording is ‘homeland of the Indo-European family of
languages’ and not ‘(Proto-)Indo-European homeland’”! In continuation of
this diversionary play on words, Fournet continues: “The author mentions the word ‘Proto-Indo-European’ only once, when
referring to Hock’s works: ‘the Proto-Indo-European language (as much ancestral
to Vedic as to the other ancient Indo-European languages)’ (p.210). This hapax
word is not listed in the index. The author claims to have found the location
of something that he about never describes by its name” (note again the
profundity of the last sentence!). Apart from scouring my book to find out
which words are missing in my book which he feels should have been there, or in
examining the semantic sense in which I have in his opinion misused certain
other words, one more aspect of Fournet’s “review” consists in counting the
number of times I have used certain words. But he does not seem to have been
very meticulous even in this utterly pointless venture: the phrase
“Proto-Indo-European” is found at least 25 times in my book in this full form,
and at least 40 times in the form PIE, and the word “Indo-European homeland” is
found at least 8 times (notably even in the very title of the second section of
the book)!
Fournet’s
criticism of my preface also includes a polemical monologue on the phrases AIT
and OIT, apparently provoked by my references to the AIT-vs.-OIT debate in my
preface. This we will examine separately.
The
textual organization of my book: Fournet
tells us at the very beginning of his review: “The book does not have an explicit conclusion”. Later, he goes into
more details about how “the textual
organization of the book is unusual and defective”:
“There is no explicit conclusion, the
preface includes errata for previous books and transliteration conventions. The
section 1 includes subchapters with titles like Appendix 1 and 2 and Footnote
that are in fact incorporated in the body of the text. […] The book does not begin with a programmatic
presentation of what the author plans to state or prove in the section 1. […] The multiple goals, compounded with the defective textual organization
of the book, contribute to the opacity and lack of fluidity of the section”
He
writes that it is difficult to know “what
the author plans to state or prove in the [sic] section 1” since I do not “begin
with a programmatic presentation” of it, but immediately tells us that his own “understanding is that he wants to clear several issues at the same
time: one is the relative chronology of the books and hymns of the Rig-Veda,
another is their absolute chronology, another is the relative chronology of the Rig-Veda and the Avesta, another is to
argument [sic] in favor of the
supposed westward movements of the Rig-Vedic Indo-Aryans, one more is to expose
the perceived fraudulences of the so-called Western scholarship, as exemplified
by Witzel”. Now obviously Fournet does not
get all this “understanding” from
his brilliant detective abilities but from the very title of the section
itself, as well as from the titles of the chapters and sub-chapters and
headings and sub-headings, quite apart
from the fact that the first few paragraphs of every chapter state very clearly
what “the author plans to state or prove”
in that chapter, and the conclusions arising from the data in each chapter and
sub-chapter are repeatedly hammered into the readers’ attention throughout the
concerned chapters and sub-chapters.
Each
chapter is a step-by-step progression from one point to the next: the first two
chapters show that the common “Indo-Iranian” culture originated in the Late Rigvedic period; the third shows us
where the Indo-Aryans and proto-Iranians were (i.e. deeper inside India, and
not in Central Asia) in the period preceding
this period of development of a common culture; and the fourth clarifies how
the chronological basis behind all these conclusions is not just the internal chronology of the books postulated by me but
the one agreed upon by a consensus of western scholars from Oldenberg through
Witzel to Proferes. The fifth chapter analyses the Mitanni Indo-Aryan names and
shows how this analysis parallels the analysis of Avestan names in chapter one;
and the sixth one shows how this Mitanni data now allows us to arrive at a
rough absolute chronology for the Late books of the Rigveda. And, as Fournet
himself puts it, “repetitions and
refinements of some key points provide a helpful guideline as to where the
author is ultimately going”. Obviously, no amount of (more) spoon-feeding
could have sufficed to prevent these determinedly querulous complaints.
About
my preface, yes, I could have included the transliteration conventions
elsewhere, and, as already stated, dispensed altogether with the errata. But,
my inclusion of a Footnote as a subchapter in chapter one, and Appendices 1 and
2 as subchapters in chapters 3 and 4, was very logical: those subchapters
pertained only to the particular chapters concerned and not to the section as a
whole. And yet, they needed to be distinguished from the main point of the
chapters concerned: e.g. the main point of chapter 4 was that the internal
chronology of the Rigveda, on the basis of which one inevitably arrives at the conclusions reached in the other chapters
of section 1, is based on the consensus
of western scholars, and that these conclusions simply cannot be rejected without rejecting altogether this
consensus of two centuries. The matter in the appendices consisted merely of
additional discussions on this internal chronology, so they were distinguished
as appendices. The failure of a pedantic critic to understand this logic cannot
be construed as a failure or shortcoming on my part.
The
fonts used by me: “another feature is the letter fonts, sizes
and cases which often vary within any given page.” This is counted as “one of the hindrances for the reader to
understand what the author wants to say”. Now, Fournet cannot be referring here
to the “fonts” used for writing
Vedic and Avestan words, since those are absolutely essential. He is therefore
obviously referring to my use of italics and bold letters.
I
have used bold letters only in titles and sub-titles and also in two special
circumstances: one, in every quotation from other writers, to distinguish what
is being quoted from what I myself am writing, and two, in distinguishing the
hymn number from the verse number in giving references from the Rigveda. Also,
in chapter one, they are statedly used to highlight names common to the Rigveda
and the Avesta. I think all these uses of bold letters should in fact be useful in helping the reader to
understand better what I want to say.
Likewise,
the different “sizes” of the fonts
are also used only in titles and sub-titles; and as for “cases”, capital letters are likewise used in titles and sub-titles,
and in giving references of books, e.g. WITZEL 1995b:35. Italics are also often
used for specific purposes: in chapter one, they are used to distinguish the
common (to the Rigveda and the Avesta) half of the names from the other parts.
Again, all this should be useful to
readers, rather than a “hindrance”.
In
the case of italics, perhaps I have the habit of using them a bit too much to
emphasize words (apart from the fact that the printers have wrongly used
italics in subtitles in chapters 2 and 3 where I had indicated bold letters),
but that happens to be my style of writing, and I think, like every other
writer, I too have the right to my own way of writing. Some of it may be very irritating
to many readers; but if any of this actually prevents the reader from
understanding what I want to say, it can only be if the reader, like Fournet,
has set out determined not to understand what I want to say.
My
maps: About the maps in my book: “the pages (p.213-258) are dedicated to a
detailed description of the scenario proposed by the author, with 6 maps and
their related comments. At the first look, we have not been able to understand
what the area on the low-quality maps was. The maps are centered on Afghanistan with present-day borders of the
different states surrounding Afghanistan”.
To
begin with, if he is able to immediately tell us that the “maps are centered on Afghanistan
with present-day borders of the different states surrounding Afghanistan”, what was the need
to first claim that he was not able to understand what the area on the maps was?
He
describes the functional maps as “low-quality”,
and earlier in his review, he jibes that “a
map like the one Talageri’s book displays on p.226 could have been printed in
Pictet’s book in 1859”. (Complete with the borders of post-1947 India,
Pakistan and Afghanistan, and with the inclusion of Anatolian and Tocharian,
both identified as Indo-European only in the early twentieth century)?
The
above comments are not only cheap, they are also cowardly: would Fournet have
had the guts to say the same thing about, for example, the map depicted on
pps.294-295 of H. H. Hock’s article “Historical Interpretation of the Vedic
Texts”, in the Volume “The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and inference in
Indian history”, Routledge, London and New York (Indian edition), 2005? They
are not only as functional (“low-quality”)
as my own maps, they are also much, much less accurate: in the maps, the Indus throughout seems to flow from well within the
borders of present-day India before flowing out through Gujarat, to the east
and south of the gulf of Kutch, rather than through Pakistan and out through
Sind. Further, Fournet complains: “The
borders of the former Soviet republics (Uzbekistan,
Kirghiztan, Kazakhstan) are missing” on my
map. All borders are missing in Hock’s map, including those of India, Pakistan
and Afghanistan.
My
index: “The Index is divided in two: a General Index and a Sanskrit Word Index.
Some words are conspicuously absent from the index: AIT (but not OIT), PIE,
proto-language, PreRigVedic (but not PostRigVedic). K.Elst is cited in the
index in bold type with no page number.”
Criticisms
of structural things, like the preface, bibliography, maps, fonts, index, and
the names and arrangements of the chapters and sub-chapters (sections) of a
book, must, in general, necessarily be subjective, since in most of these
matters the author must be the natural person to decide what is best suited for
his purpose in each of these respects.
Moreover,
such criticism is always grossly disproportionate and dishonest (besides being
totally inadequate as a substitute for criticizing the actual data and logic
presented in the book). About his petty criticism of my index: I can genuinely
say my index is the most complete index possible necessary for any analytical study of the material presented in my book,
unlike my two earlier books whose indices had not been prepared by me and in
which many key words in those books are missing in the index. Of course words
like “AIT (but not OIT), PIE,
proto-language, PreRigVedic (but not PostRigVedic)” are absent from the
index, but so are words like Aryan (but not ārya), Indo-European, Rigveda and
Rigvedic, and most of the (Rigvedic and Avestan) personal names in the book
except those discussed or mentioned in the book in a distinctive or important
context. Words which refer to the central theme of the entire book and are
therefore not reference-specific, as well as words not mentioned in my book in
any important quotable or referable context, are obviously excluded from my
index. Such criticism for the sake of criticism can be made of any book: I
challenge Fournet to send me a complete book written by him, and I will produce
a long, and much more relevant (than
the words cited by him) list of words from his book which are “conspicuously absent from the index”.
[Incidentally, Elst in the index in bold type with no page number is a
printer’s or publisher’s error for which I am not answerable].
5.
AIT-vs.-OIT: Included in the
preface is a polemical monologue on the terms AIT and OIT which contains many
profound gems. But first, a look at two instances in this monologue where
Fournet tries to show up my ignorance, by citing things of which I am supposed
to be “unaware”, and only ends up
showing his own ignorance:
One:
“[…] there are several competing
theories about the PIE homeland, other than the OIT, which differ both in
datation (from the Paleolithic to the early Neolithic to the late Neolithic)
and in location (from the North Pole to the Balkans to Southern Russia to Anatolia). What the author (and presumably the other OIT
supporters) calls the AIT is to be understood as one of the mainstream
theories: the one which describes a homeland in the Pontico-Caspian area in Southern Russia and a dispersal of the original community
around -4000 BC. The bibliography includes two books: from Mallory, who
supports this Pontico-Caspian homeland, and from Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, who
support Eastern Anatolia as original homeland.
Talageri seems to be unaware that his short bibliography includes two works
proposing two theories”. If Fournet had done his homework, he would have
seen repeated references in this book, as well as in my second one, to
Gamkrelidze’s Anatolian homeland theory as a distinct one from the
Pontic-Caspian homeland theory: in this very book, notably on p. 222-23 (where
in fact, in a sense, the Anatolian theory
is even bracketed together with the OIT rather than with the Pontic-Caspian
theory!) and on p.246. This is apart from the different homeland theories
referred to in my first book, and the detailed analysis of Tilak’s Arctic
theory in my second one.
Two:
“The author seems to be unaware that the
OIT has nothing revolutionary at all and that the OIT theory is one of the
first theories developed by European scholars in the XIXth century and one of
the first to have been dismissed”. Again, if Fournet had done his homework,
he would have known that this fact, that the Indian Homeland theory was one of
the earliest theories which was later dismissed, is one of the favourite talking
points for those writers from the OIT side who, like Fournet from the AIT side,
concentrate only on polemics and rhetoric, and therefore only a particularly
naïve or stupid person would assume that I could be “unaware” of it. It is, moreover, referred to by me in my first book
which discusses the history of the homeland debate. As for the word
“revolutionary”, it does not simply mean “new” or “for the first time”; it
means “something which introduces radical change”, even if it is the revival of an old idea or system; and the OIT,
when it is accepted, will certainly introduce a radical change in the writing
of world history.
Fournet
objects to the word “revolutionary” above, and later on also to the phrase “new
hypothesis”: “the OIT is not a ‘new hypothesis’
(p.XIX) but one of the oldest theories dismissed more than a century ago”,
and even quotes in detail two eighteenth-nineteenth century European writers
who need not concern us here (incidentally, for some unknown reason he chooses
to quote a writer who advocates the “vast
plateau of Iran” rather than India as the homeland!). Here Fournet
deliberately obfuscates the meaning of what I have written: I have not claimed
that the OIT itself is a “new hypothesis”
but that the particular OIT
hypothesis presented in my book is one: the full sentence used by me on p.XIX,
which Fournet does not quote, is as follows: “it is easier to attack the
nonsensical notions and wishful writings of more casual or biased OIT writers
than to deal with a logical and unassailable new hypothesis backed by a solid
phalanx of facts and data”. My hypothesis (as opposed to the
“Sanskrit-origin” hypotheses of most OIT writers) is a new “PIE-in-India” hypothesis backed by a completely new and unassailable range of data,
evidence and arguments.
The
monologue on AIT-vs.-OIT contains many such “time pass” comments and objections
[It also contains a longish illustration of the writings of some eighteenth
century French writer, which we can safely ignore]:
Fournet
basically objects to the very terms OIT and AIT. He attributes this “creation of an alternative between OIT or
AIT” to the OIT writers: he calls the AIT a label “created by the OIT supporters”, and refers to the OIT as “what is called the ‘Out of India
Theory’ by the author and the other OIT supporters. It can be added that the
same name is used by the non supporters to describe the OIT”. So far as the
term OIT is concerned, it was actually coined by the AIT writers themselves
(perhaps to rhyme with AIT): it was not used by me even once in my two earlier
books. So I cannot answer for this term.
But,
the phrase “Aryan Invasion Theory” ─ shortened to AIT again by the AIT writers
themselves ─ was first used, in the present debate, by me in the title of my
first book in 1993, “The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism”. So let
us see Fournet’s querulous objections to this term:
Firstly,
Fournet objects to this alternative between OIT and AIT since it lumps together
all the other homeland theories other than the Indian homeland theory “as if there were only one non Out-of-India
Theory”, clearly because it gives the Indian homeland theory a special
position vis-à-vis the other homeland theories. But he deduces the answer to
this objection himself in his Hercule Fournetian manner: “A plausible explanation is that the author lumps together all these
divergent theories into ‘the AIT side’ because they all share the feature of
having Vedic and its present day daughter languages come from somewhere else
than the present-day borders of India”. Fournet does not realize how valid
this explanation is (although his use of the phrase “daughter languages” shows he has not read pp.281-288 of my book,
and is unaware of or oblivious to the complexities of so-called “Indo-Aryan”
linguistics): while the homeland debate on the linguistic side is primarily
concerned with linguistic change and development and not with geography-specific
data, the debate on the textual and inscriptional side is based primarily on
the data in the Indo-Aryan Rigveda and the Iranian Avesta and secondarily on
the data in the Hittite and (again Indo-Aryan) Mitanni-Kassite records, all of
which are geography-specific. The Rigveda has been interpreted throughout as
the record of the Vedic Aryans moving into the Vedic territory from the
northwest/north/west. In this alleged movement, whether they originally, before they allegedly entered this territory
from the northwest/north/west, came from South Russia, Anatolia, Eastern Europe or the North Pole, or somewhere else, is a
negligible point in the data analysis, so all these homeland theories fall in
one category. But if it is shown that they actually moved into this territory from the east/southeast, then the only
homeland theory indicated, i.e. the Indian homeland theory, or OIT, obviously
falls into a distinctly second alternative category.
But
Fournet also objects to the term AIT because of the word “invasion” inherent in
it. He tells us the AIT label “created
by the OIT supporters” is “not far
from being a libel” when it is “used
to describe present day scholarship”, since “this kind of invasionist schemes
was very much fashionable in the good old days of European colonialism […] it has become unpalatable to everybody at
the beginning of XXIst century”. This kind of objection is only to be
expected from Fournet, who has clearly not read the numerous internet debates
in which the tendency of AIT writers to use terms like “migration” and
“trickling-in”, even while they describe blatantly invasionist scenarios in
detail, has been repeatedly exposed. He could read pps.317-322 of my book, for
starters, very, very carefully ─ particularly p.322.
Like
a naïve child, Fournet also puts forward this objection: “India did not exist thousands of years ago as a
state and did not have (its present-day) borders”, so we cannot describe an
invasion “of India”
in that remote period, nor perhaps talk of an “Indian” homeland. So until we
can specify with documentary proof what exactly every place in the world was
named in the remote period under discussion, every geographical statement by us
about that period using present-day geographical terms becomes redundant and
wrong! If we prove that the original homeland was within India, we are of course wrong because there was
no “India” with “(its present-day) borders” at that
time. Of course, when Fournet talks about “Southern
Russia”, “Anatolia”,
“Balkans”, and so on, all these
territories existed since eternity with their “present-day” borders and
names!
Fournet
further fine-hones his objection: “the
concept of invasion, i.e. an instantaneous and conscious trespassing of an
established state border, is absurd when dealing with Vedic times and the
Antiquity (of whatever place)”. How innocent and idyllic! Fournet is of
course, unaware that the recorded history of West Asia ─ even before the date
of 1500 BCE postulated for the alleged Aryan invasion ─ is full of descriptions
of established states (Egypt,
Assyria, Persia, etc.) invading the
territories of other established states. Or of the detailed descriptions in the
Bible of the Jews coming from Egypt
and invading established states in Palestine.
And, certainly, of the fact that the Rigveda itself, in the description of the
battle of the ten kings (which Fournet only encounters on the last page of my
book), describes Sudas’ invasion of the established states of the Anus. The
city-states of the Indus
Valley, whatever their
identity, were certainly “established states” before 1500 BCE, and it is their
alleged invasion that the AIT definitely describes.
Fournet
uses the word “libel” to describe
the use of the term AIT by the OIT writers; but indulges in genuinely libelous
allegations himself without any compunctions: “the reader is faced with the Orwellian threat that all the researches
on the PIE homeland for centuries amount to an attempt to ‘stifle the truth’
(p.XXXIV) […] or ‘an all-out
Goebbelsian campaign’ (p.116)”. Actually, on p.XXXIV, I have written: “however
much the entrenched AIT scholarship may succeed in stifling the truth today,
they will not be able to do so for too long”. I am talking of the present day pack of jokers like Witzel
and Farmer (and now Fournet) and the entrenched political “scholars” in Indian
and western academia who will try to stifle the truth written in my present book (published in the year
2008). And, on p.116, I am talking about the all-out Goebbelsian campaign (a
very mild term in the circumstances) in present
day India to deny the
very existence of a Sarasvati river which flowed through ancient India.
Neither of the two instances refers to “all
the researches on the PIE homeland for centuries”. The second expressly
cannot, since I expressly point out on p.116 that this Goebbelsian campaign
goes against what “all the researches for centuries” have unanimously upheld!
Further,
I have not only never accused two
centuries of scholarship of trying to “stifle
the truth”, but I have frequently expressly dissociated myself from the
tendency of many OIT writers to see a colonial conspiracy in the writings of
the early AIT scholars. In my first book (1993), I have given the history of
the AIT without even hinting that it was anything but a purely academic theory
in its origins. In my second book (2000), I have expressly pointed out that the
western Indological scholars “were, by and large, reasonably honest; and
although they were often wrong, they were naturally
wrong and not deliberately so”
(p.404). In fact, I am quite certain that most of these Indologists, if they
had been alive today, would not only have been deeply interested in, but even
genuinely excited about, the masses
of original data and conclusions given in the first section of my third book
under discussion; and many would have accepted my conclusions and treated my
book as a starting point for new lines of research. Even if this sounds
unlikely to the reader, it should at least be clear from all this that
Fournet’s accusation that I have claimed that “all the researches on the PIE homeland for centuries amount to an
attempt to ‘stifle the truth’” is nothing but pure libel.
6.
The Mitanni evidence: After the
above monologue on the terms AIT and OIT, Fournet takes up his casual dismissal
of the massive data and evidence in the first section of my book, already dealt
with in the first section of this reply. We will only take up here some
specific grouses about the Mitanni
evidence.
Fournet
dismisses the unassailable evidence of the Mitanni names in chapter five, which fits in perfectly with the identical
evidence of the Avestan nanes in chapter one, with the hypocritical and
escapist charge that these are “limited
lexical items written in a fairly obscure graphic system”. Typically, he
expects to get away with a vague and unsubstantiated objection, and does not
have the guts to point out exactly which, and how many, of the Mitanni names
and name types listed by me are not
actually there in the Mitanni data, and have only been invented by me or have
been wrongly imagined as IA names by various western academic scholars due to a
wrong reading of the “obscure graphic
system” in which they were written.
Fournet
tells us: “One of the few clear features
is /azda/ attested in -1500BC in this Mitanni Indo-Aryan-oid language
versus /eda/ attested one thousand years later in Vedic”. He later adds: “The phonetic change from Indo-Iranian
*/azda/ to Rig-Vedic /eda/ was already completed when the Rigveda was composed”.
Apart from Fournet’s new implied dating of the Rigveda to 500 BCE, this
statement shows that he has not read my chapter very carefully. Unlike Fournet,
who must have traveled back in time in a time machine to observe the Rigveda as
it was pronounced when it was being composed, most other scholars believe that
the Rigveda underwent phonetic changes between the time its various parts were
composed and the time the text received its final form. Witzel puts it
succinctly: “certain sounds ─ but not
words, tonal accents, sentences ─ have changed”. Therefore, it is the “limited lexical items” in Mitanni, and not the sounds written in “a fairly obscure graphic system”, which
can help us in placing the chronological position of the ancestral Mitanni
“Indo-Aryan-oid language” vis-à-vis
the Rigveda.
Fournet
has one more grouse: “Moreover, the
author does not address the issue of how Indo-Aryans coming from India could have moved through Iranians until
reaching eastern Anatolia”. Fournet is
apparently unaware of the fact that, in the history of mankind, countless
peoples and tribes have migrated from one part of the world to another, “moving through” countless other peoples
and tribes in the process. It is not clear exactly how and why this joker wanted
me to “address” this “issue”. But, in the process, Fournet
provides an alternative answer to his main objection about the /azda/ in Mitanni: this phonetic feature may, alternately,
have been borrowed by the Mitanni
ancestors from the Iranians during the period of sojourn and interaction with
them as they “moved through” them.
[Yes, phonetic features are borrowed
by languages from other languages, although Fournet may act naïve and innocent
on this point as well. Even very unlikely features can be borrowed even from
unrelated languages, like the tonal accents borrowed by the Vietnamese branch
of the Austric languages from neighbouring Sino-Tibetan, or the clicking sounds
borrowed by some non-Khoisan languages of South Africa from the Khoisan
languages].
The
lexical evidence, if “limited”, is total and uni-directional, and is supported by the exactly identical and massive evidence of the Avestan names in
chapter one. And it is unassailable
evidence. And no amount of blustering can change this fact.
7.
“Indo-Iranian”: Next in line
in Fournet’s review is a longish monologue on the term and concept of
“Indo-Iranian”. It starts with a rejection of my 2000 year period for the
composition of the Rigveda. Now the western scholars and I are both in
agreement that the final point of
composition of the Rigveda was somewhere in the mid-second millennium BCE. But
the western scholars place the beginnings
of the composition of the Rigveda also somewhere in the same period, and have a
total span for the period of composition as a few centuries in the second half
of the second millennium BCE. I have shown in Section I of my book that the beginnings of the composition of the
hymns of the Late Books of the Rigveda go back deep into the third millennium
BCE: I will not repeat all the data and evidence here since it is unassailable
evidence which has been presented in full detail in my book for anyone to see.
The composition of the Middle Books and before that of the Early Books must
therefore go back much further. My period of 2000 years is therefore closer to
the truth than the few centuries of the western scholars. There is no sense in
bandying polemical arguments on this subject with a polemicist like Fournet.
The
rest of the monologue is a vicious and mindless diatribe against what Fournet
wants his readers to believe is my “fixist
and anti-evolutionist” portrayal of the “Indo-Iranians” [Taking a leaf out
of Fournet’s book, I counted the number of times this picturesque polemical
phrase is used in the review, and counted no less than seven occurrences, in
which my “mind-set” (twice), my “framework” (thrice), my “stance” (once), and my “approach” (once), are all classified as
“fixist and anti-evolutionist”]. His
main claim is that I deny both the existence of the Indo-Iranians as a “unique ethnocultural community” as well
as the inherited Indo-European heritage. But all this repetitive ranting and
raving is best read in his own colourful words:
“What is constructed in the section 1 is an
“Indo-Iranian period’ (just a period not a unique ethnocultural community) and
two ethnocultural entities, the ‘proto-Iranians’ and ‘the Vedic Aryans’, which
have been in ‘continuous interaction’ (p.3) during that particular and specific
period, but, as we will see, were previously completely independent. What the
Avesta and the Rig-Veda share and have in common originates in this punctual
rather than continuous interaction. From the very first page, the implicit
model used by the author to account for the linguistic and cultural features
shared by the Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages is an areal diffusionist model.
The key words are ‘interaction’, ‘shared(d)’, “common’ and ‘spread’.[…] In other words, as far back as ‘originally’
may go, Proto-Iranians and Vedic Aryans have never been one ethnocultural
community and everything is the result of contacts and ‘continuous interaction’
(p.3) limited to a specific and late period and nothing has ever been inherited
from common ancestors.[…] the author
negates the very fact that the ethnocultural Indo-Iranian community could ever
have existed […] the key point
stated by the author is that Vedic Aryans have been something different from
(and as we will see hostile to) Proto-Iranians as far back as ‘originally’ may
go. In the fixist and anti-evolutionist mind-set of the author, they have no
shared ancestors, they have no shared homeland, they have no shared
ethnocultural heritage.[…] What the
author calls heritage and common tradition are ethnocultural features recently
acquired because the two entities: Indo-Aryans and Proto-Iranians have lately
come to interact. But before they came in contact, i.e. ‘originally’, they were
completely isolated and disconnected […] the concept of proto-Indo-Iranian as a proto-language spoken by
proto-Indo-Iranian people as a unique prehistorical human community is
completely negated by the theory of the author. What the author has in mind is
an ethnocultural sandglass model: at a late period, after they had already
started composing the Rig-Veda, Indo-Aryans, who originally had always been on
their own in the east, came in contact, for whatever unknown reasons, with
others, who were their north-western neighbours, i.e. Proto-Iranians, and they
then acquired what they have in common and subsequently retained those late acquired
features, the product of late contacts, which the author labels ‘a common
culture’ and a ‘heritage’ resulting from ‘continuous interaction’ in a spurious
and misleading fashion. A fortiori, the concept of Proto-Indo-European as a
proto-language spoken by a unique prehistorical human community does not exist,
because the sandglass model of the author is a one-shot sandglass model. […]
There is three instances of the word
‘heritage’ on p.258-259. But this changes nothing to the fact that ‘Indo-Aryans
and Iranians have been neighbors to this day’ (p.258). Neighbors and nothing
more”. Phew!!
Now
what has provoked all this passionate ranting and raving? The fact is that
Fournet is totally unacquainted with the Indo-Iranian question (“We are not a specialist in Vedic or
Indo-Iranian studies”). And at the same time he has certain dogmas on this
matter installed in his brain. Like all people with half-baked knowledge and a
dogmatic disposition, any blasphemy against his accepted dogmas drives him into
a frenzy of passion; and facts and data which go against his dogmas, even more
so. And when you add, to all this, his tendency to “review” and condemn without reading, the effect is
explosive.
His
main dogma is that the Proto-Iranians and Proto-Indo-Aryans were one “unique prehistorical human community” rather than “two ethnocultural entities, the
‘proto-Iranians’ and ‘the Vedic Aryans’, which have been in ‘continuous
interaction’”. I have quoted two scholars who have stated the facts very
clearly: Meillet in 1908, who pointed out that “Indic and Iranian developed from different Indo-European dialects,
whose period of common development was not long enough to effect total fusion”,
and Winn in 1995, who also pointed out that there are “ten ‘living branches’ [….] Two
branches, Indic (Indo-Aryan) and Iranian dominate the eastern cluster. Because
of the close links between their classical forms ― Sanskrit and Avestan
respectively ― these languages are often grouped together as a single
Indo-Iranian branch. [….] a period
of close contact between the Indic and Iranian people brought about linguistic
convergence, thus making the two languages misleadingly similar”.
[Incidentally, note the word “developed”/“development” as used by Meillet above,
which is also a word which drives Fournet into a frenzy of passion, as we will
see later]. Even Witzel’s partner in his BMAC theory, Lubotsky, concedes in
2001: “In the case of Indo-Iranian,
there may have been early differentiation between the Indo-Aryan and Iranian
branches, especially if we assume that the Iranian loss of aspiration in voiced
aspirated stops was a dialectal feature which Iranian shared with Balto-Slavic
and Germanic (cf. Kortlandt 1978:115)”. Apart from this feature mentioned
by Lubotsky, there are other important isoglosses which separate Vedic
Indo-Aryan and Iranian, and place Vedic Indo-Aryan as distinct from a dialect
group consisting of the other “Last Dialects”, Iranian, Greek and Armenian: the
conversion of certain particular positions of <s> into <h>, and the
change of PIE *tt to ss.
Childish
outbursts like “everything is the result
of contacts and ‘continuous interaction’ (p.3) limited to a specific and late
period and nothing has ever been inherited from common ancestors”, and “they have no shared ancestors, they have no
shared homeland, they have no shared ethnocultural heritage” are also
totally unwarranted. If I point out, with
data and evidence, that the common cultural heritage in the Rigveda and the
Avesta represents mainly the culture acquired in a late period, i.e. in the
Late Rigvedic period, it cannot be interpreted to mean that I say that they had
no common ancestors etc. at all,
except by a myopic polemicist like Fournet. Of course, as two branches of
Indo-European languages, they have inherited a basic vocabulary and culture
from the ancestral Proto-Indo-Europeans in common with the other branches; as
geographically particularly close branches, they have developed many other
features in common separate from the other branches. But these common features
did not all come into being in one go at the time of the Big Bang: different
periods saw different common features.
It
is this myopia that provokes pathetic digs like “What the author calls heritage and common tradition are ethnocultural
features recently acquired because the two entities: Indo-Aryans and
Proto-Iranians have lately come to interact. But before they came in contact,
i.e. ‘originally’, they were completely isolated and disconnected”, which are
totally out of place. As I have pointed out in detail in all my books, the two
“entities” were always in contact:
the proto-Iranian priests, the Bhrgus, introduced fire-rituals to the Vedic
Aryans in the pre-Rigvedic period, and Soma rituals in the early Rigvedic
period. The two shared a common history in the Kurukshetra region, and as components
of the broad “Indo-Iranian” Harappan culture, in the Early and Middle Rigvedic
periods. By the Late Rigvedic period, the centre of the Proto-Iranians had in
fact shifted westwards to Afghanistan,
but it was the period in which they developed a common name-culture; and the
evidence of this name-culture, among other things, shows that this Late Rigvedic period was the period in
which the earliest parts of the
Avesta were composed. And, even post-Rigveda, the two cultures continued to
develop common features like the upanayana/navjot ceremony and other ceremonies
common to the Vedic and Zoroastrian religions, as well as some mutually
antagonistic mythological or theological concepts (like the deva-asura
opposition), all of which, as Humbach, quoted in my book, points out, “suggests a synchrony between the later
Vedic period and Zarathustra’s reform in Iran” (i.e. eastern Iran or Afghanistan).
Fournet’s
has objections on more specific aspects of the Indo-Iranian evidence analysed
by me:
To
begin with, he complains: “Something
that the author does not state in his summary is that the Indo-Iranian culture
inherited a considerable number of ethnocultural and mythological items from
the original PIE community, apart from words and grammar”. Here, Fournet
arbitrarily opens up the book, and then examines the page on which it opens up
to see if he can find on that particular page any statement to the effect that
“the Indo-Iranian culture inherited a
considerable number of ethnocultural and mythological items from the original
PIE community, apart from words and grammar”; and when he does not find it
this means, of course, that I know nothing about these things. Since Fournet,
as we know, has not done his homework, he is “unaware” that both my earlier books contained separate chapters on
mythology which deal with this common mythological heritage in detail. The
question of discussing this mythology, or any other common Indo-Iranian “ethno-cultural items” (like
fire-worship, soma, the thread ceremony, etc., whether “inherited from the original Indo-European community” or developed,
i.e. “created ex-nihilo”, by the
Indo-Iranians) just did not arise in this book in the context of discussing the
chronology and geography of the texts based on the distribution of different
categories of names and words, although some of the “items” are mentioned in
the second section.
Even
in respect of the words and grammar, Fournet finds that I have been lax in
detailing the Indo-European “heritage”:
after some diligent checking of my book with a magnifying glass (e.g. “a careful search has made nearly sure the
[sic] section 1 never uses the word
inherit(ed)”), which must have taken up the major part of the four days which
it took him to read my book and complete and upload his review, he writes: “The book starts with an analysis of the
person names found in the Avesta and the Rig-Veda, as listed by Mayrhofer.
[…] It should be noted that many of
these name-elements are morphemes obviously inherited from PIE but a
conspicuous feature of the book is that it contains nearly no mention of any
reconstructed PIE protoform. Most basic words generally appearing in the works
and articles dealing with the Proto-Indo-European issues, like cognate word,
change, phonetic, correspondence, proto-language, etc. are absent from the
book.” It is not clear why Fournet wants to find words “like cognate word, change, phonetic,
correspondence, proto-language, etc.” This book is not an introductory book
to the Indo-European problem ─ Fournet can not complain about the fact that I
have not reproduced the entire contents of my two earlier books in this one
just for his benefit (and not that he would have read it if I had). And nor is
it an etymological dictionary of the Proto-Indo-European language or a
comparative dictionary of the Indo-European languages. I am analyzing the
chronology and geography of the Rigveda and the Avesta in the first section of
this book, and the various strands of evidence for locating the original
homeland in India
in the second. Technical discussions on the etymologies
of words have no place at all in this analysis. But for these gutless
“reviewers”, keeping up a litany of querulous complaints about things I have
not mentioned or written about is a clever and diversionary polemical
substitute for having to deal with things that I have actually written about in detail. There was no reason for me to
include unnecessary words, data or subjects in my book, unless as a pastime, or
to increase the bulk of my book, or just to show my erudition.
In
this particular case cited by Fournet, for example, the “reconstructed PIE protoforms” of the common Indo-Iranian name
elements were totally irrelevant: the relevant issue was not even whether the
individual names were Indo-European or not, whether as “inherited from PIE” or as unique “Indo-Iranian” words developed (=“created ex-nihilo”) by the
Indo-Iranians, or whether they were borrowed from some supposed BMAC language
or some supposed “language X” of the Indus Valley or from Semitic, Burushaski,
Sino-Tibetan, Munda or Dravidian. The relevant issue was that this overwhelming
mass of common name-culture, whatever its
individual origins, is found among the Mitanni as the remnants of a dead ancestral heritage, and is found right
from the oldest parts of the Avesta,
but is found only in the “most recent”
parts of the Rigveda and is completely
missing in the parts which are “admittedly
the oldest”. Clearly, there is method behind this joker trying to divert
the discussion from the relevant issue.
Fournet
shows his total inability to comprehend what is placed before him, or even to
use his brains and think, when he complains: “Person names built with the same Indo-European components appearing in
the Avesta and the Rig Veda are not inherited but ‘came into vogue’ (p.188) or
‘have gone out of vogue’ (p.44)”. It is clear that this joker cannot even
comprehend the difference between inherited roots and inherited names. Is it
Fournet’s contention, for example, that the Rigvedic name Shyavashva
(patronymic Shyavashvi, Avestan Siauuaspi) is actually a personal name
inherited from the Proto-Indo-European community: i.e. that the
Proto-Indo-Europeans had a personal name like *khy-e-H-ekhwos, which has been “inherited” by the Indo-Iranians? Since
the components of the words tele-phone and tele-vision are also traceable to
their Proto-Indo-European roots through Greek and Latin, are these words and
concepts “inherited” from our
Proto-Indo-European ancestors? Personal names do indeed come into existence, “come into vogue”, and “go out of
vogue”, even if the root component parts of those names may have been in
existence from long before. Fournet’s objection only shows up the pointlessness
and inherent stupidity of his review.
8.
The Evidence of the isoglosses:
Fournet next moves on to the second section of my book, and starts out on his “review”
of chapter seven, “The Evidence of the Isoglosses”. This part of his review
covers three full sheets out of less than twelve sheets which constitute his
review. Here Fournet is in his element since he does not have to face massive
masses of unassailable data and references, and this leaves him with greater
scope for glib polemical bluster and semantic hair splitting. Having abused the
first section of the book all he can, Fournet now tells us: “On the whole, the section 1 of the book can
be rated as decent, in spite of its negation of the basic concepts of
historical linguistics and of its inadequate textual organization, especially
when compared to the section 2”.
Chapter
seven contains seven sections (or sub-chapters as Fournet calls them), of which
the first five sections deal with the main subject embodied in the title: the
first two A and B deal with Hock’s case for the evidence of the isoglosses (of
which B deals with my examination of Hock’s case), and the next three sections
C, D and E present my case for the evidence of the isoglosses. We will deal
with Fournet’s “review” of this main part of the chapter here, and will examine
his “review” of sections F and G, which represent two different aspects of the
linguistic evidence, separately.
These
five sections of chapter seven deal primarily with the evidence of the
isoglosses, and I show very clearly and logically that Hock’s case for the
evidence of the isoglosses is wrong, and that the Indian homeland theory alone
can explain all the isoglosses. Further, all the corroborating evidence is also
detailed in full: the fact that the earliest historical locations of the Early
Dialects (Hittite and Tocharian) are most logically explained by the OIT, the
fact that the Early Dialects and the Last Dialects both share isoglosses with
the European Dialects but not with each other, the fact that the linguistic
evidence detailed by Johanna Nichols (ancient loanwords from Semitic and
Sumerian words in Indo-European, the geography of the centum-satem split, etc.) show that the locus of the IE spread was
in ancient Bactria-Margiana, the evidence of Chinese, Yeneseian and Altaic loanwords
in Germanic, the one-way traffic of borrowings from Indo-Iranian into
Finno-Ugric, etc., apart from literary evidence from the Rigveda and Avesta.
Fournet
completely ignores all this evidence, and resorts to his usual tactics. To
begin with (after a brief discussion of the maps in my book, and some polemical
comments we will examine presently), he chooses to discuss the word “isogloss”
rather than the actual evidence of the isoglosses: according to him, my entire
scenario is underlined by “an inadequate
approach of the notion of isogloss. According to the author, ‘an isogloss is a
special linguistic feature which develops in any one language and then spreads
to other languages and dialects over a contiguous area’ (p.212). The regular
definition is ‘a line on a map that represents the geographical boundary
(limit) of regional linguistic variants’. The erroneous definition of the
author confuses a shared innovation, a shared conservation and an areal
feature, among other things. An isogloss is a line on map that illustrates
existing variants of a particular phenomenon. The author transforms that
descriptive tool into a kind of permanently inheritable and transportable
feature: ‘when, in some cases, some of the dialects or languages sharing the
isogloss move geographically away from each other (into non contiguous areas),
and continue to retain the linguistic feature […]’ (p.214).”.
Fournet
is probably successful, so far as his “review” goes, in diverting the
discussion from the evidence of the isoglosses to the meaning of the word
isogloss. But he also succeeds in showing up his stunted intellect, and the
fact that he never sees the need to go beyond the most basic one-liner
commonest-meaning dictionaries meant for primary school children. Yes, most
dictionaries would definitely define the word isogloss merely as “a boundary line between places or regions
that differ in a particular linguistic feature” (Merriam-Webster’s Online
Dictionary). But it also means the
area enclosed by this line: “In dialect
geography, an area within which a feature is used predominantly or exclusively […] more commonly, the line on a dialect map
which bounds the area of a certain usage” (Concise Oxford Companion to the
English language, 1998, Tom McArthur). And finally, it also means the feature itself:
“An isogloss refers to a specific type
of language border […] Within the
field of linguistics (including historical linguistics), the term ‘isogloss’
describes a distinctive feature of a language or a dialect (see volumes such as
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s
Ancient Languages, ed. Roger D. Woodard).” (absoluteastronomy.com).
In
any case, Fournet realized that I at
least have used the word isogloss in the sense of “a shared innovation, a shared conservation and an areal feature”
(and therefore naturally also “a kind of
permanently inheritable and transportable feature”). So he could have
examined my analysis of the evidence of the isoglosses on that basis. But he
escapes doing so by claiming that I have misunderstood Hock’s representation of
isoglosses, and that therefore my case makes little historical or linguistic
sense. But Hock also describes “shared
features”, and the whole point of his representation is that these “shared features” in the homeland were “a kind of permanently inheritable and
transportable” features, which were inherited and transported by the
various IE dialects from their common homeland to their various earliest
inhabited historical locations. So basically, apart from the diametrically
opposite conclusions, and the more complete range of “shared features” presented by me, there is no difference at all in
what Hock represents and what is represented by me. The only difference is in
name: Hock uses the word isogloss in its most common sense as a line
demarcating areas with shared features (“a
dialectological approach that maps out a set of intersecting ‘isoglosses’ which
define areas with shared features” in his own words) while I use it in the also valid sense as the feature itself (not,
as Fournet suggests, from an “erroneous
interpretation” of Hock’s use of the word, but because I had already used
it in that sense in my second book in 2000). Conveniently, Fournet uses this as
an excuse to avoid having to deal with the evidence of the isoglosses as
presented by me.
Fournet
compounds his discussion on the word “isogloss” with a discussion on the words
“development” or “to develop”. The climax of Fournet’s “review” of chapter
seven is his passionate monologue on my use of the words “development” and “to
develop” in my book, words which seem to drive him into a frenzy of
uncontrollable fury or madness. We must take note of it in full, tedious though
it is. To distinguish clearly Fournet’s own words from places where he quotes
my book, I will underline the parts quoted by him from my book, and place in
bold type Fournet’s own words of wisdom:
“some words have acquired particular
meanings under the pen of the author. This is the case of ‘development’ and ‘to
develop’. These two words are a key lexical tool to suggest change and
evolution in the fixist and anti-evolutionist framework of the author. We have
made a survey of the main instances throughout the book and, most of time, the
meaning is not ‘to transform, to evolve’ but ‘to create ex-nihilo’. The
inherited features shared by proto-Iranian(s) and Rig-Vedic Aryan(s) from their
common ancestor(s) are described in the book with these two apparently ordinary
and innocuous words: ‘development’ and ‘to develop’. The substitution of ‘to
transform’ or ‘to create ex-nihilo’ reveals the conveyed meaning: ‘The
Rig-Veda and the Avesta are the two oldest ‘Indo-Iranian texts’. The joint
evidence of the Rig-Veda and the Zend Avesta testifies to a period of common
development [=creation ex-nihilo]
of culture which may be called the Indo-Iranian period. According to the AIT
(Aryan Invasion Theory), this period preceded the period of composition of the
Rig-Veda and the Avesta: the joint ‘Indo-Iranians’ in the course of their
postulated emigrations from South Russia, settled down for a considerable
period of time in Central Asia, where they developed [=created ex-nihilo] this joint culture. Later, they separated
from each other, migrated into their historical areas, where they composed,
respectively, the Rig-Veda and the Avesta, both representing the separate
developments [=transformations] of
this earlier joint culture. This joint Indo-Iranian culture is, therefore,
pre-Rigvedic’. (p.3) These two words
‘development’ and ‘to develop’ enable the author to neutralize the difference
between the transformation of a bygone entity, which in the Indo-Iranian case
is a split into new entities, and the acquisition or creation of a new feature
by an existing entity which remains unchanged. Most of the time, these two words
are preceded or followed by ‘joint’, ‘jointly’ ‘common’, ‘in common’. As the
above example shows, this semantic neutralization is textually constructed from
the very first words of the book. In most places, the replacement of ‘develop’
by ‘transform’ or ‘evolve’ does not suit semantically, because this is not the
purported meaning. Other instances are: ‘The Indo-Iranian culture common
to the two texts developed [=was
created ex-nihilo] after the composition of the hymns of the Early and
Middle Books’ (p.45). ‘In our examination of the relative chronology of the
Rig-Veda vis-à-vis the Avesta, the common development [=creation ex-nihilo] of the joint ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture
represented in these two texts took place in the period of the Late Books of
the Rig-Veda […] In which area did this development [=creation ex-nihilo] of the joint “Indo-Iranian’ culture take
place? […] The common ground therefore lies in the area stretching from Punjab
to Afghanistan.’
(p.81). ‘The joint ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture common to the Avesta and the
Rig-Veda developed [=got created
ex-nihilo] during the period of composition of the Late Books of the
Rig-Veda. […] the area of development [=creation
ex-nihilo] of this joint ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture […] the development [=creation ex-nihilo] of this common
‘Indo-Iranian culture […] the area of development [=creation ex-nihilo] of this joint ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture […]
the development [=creation
ex-nihilo] of this joint ‘Indo-Iranian’ culture […].’ (p.98). ‘The
Rig-Vedic ritual traditions developed [=got
created ex-nihilo] in northern India’ (p.105) ‘They actually
developed [=began to feel] an
all-pervading disdain […]’ (p.107) ‘the emigrating Mitanni could have
developed [created ex-nihilo] a
few [Prakritizations]’ (p.172) ‘The
Vedic Aryans […] lived in a period prior to the development of this common
culture’ (p.188). ‘The culture of the Last Rig-Vedic Period (the common
elements of which are found in the Late Books 5,1 and 8-10, in the Zend Avesta
[…]) was already fully developed [=created
ex-nihilo]. Before this was the Middle Period, and before this the Early
Period, both of which preceded the development [=creation ex-nihilo] of this common culture’ (p.200). ‘The
common non-Indian word, in the OIT scenario can have developed [=been created ex-nihilo] in the
region of Afghanistan and Central Asia’. (p.303). In the pages 223-226, where the author describes his scenario of
dispersal, this peculiar use of the word ‘to develop’ is compounded with the
misunderstood word ‘isogloss’ and the nondescript phrase ‘to develop an
isogloss’ (as of languages) is introduced. Thereafter, the book reveals the
following sentence: ‘The various European Dialects, on the other hand,
developed isoglosses in common, separately, with both the Last Dialects as well
as the Early Dialects’ (p.242). This
is how the author describes or explains the emergence of the so-called European
Dialects. This set of words is undoubtedly benchmark and the reader is left to
think whether Talageri has not outwitted the Colorless green ideas sleep
furiously of Chomsky. Being a structuralist, we shall leave to
generative-transformists the task of turning the above sentence into the
passive voice. On the whole, this chapter of the Section 2 reveals the multiple
inadequacies and flaws of the author’s fixist and anti-evolutionist approach.
In contrast with the Section 1, which contains stimulating elements,
potentially requiring further analysis, this chapter of the Section 2 can be
rated to be a near complete intellectual wreckage. About nothing (< 5%) has
any scientific value or status.”
What
does one call all this: a philosophical discourse, a semantic dissertation, a
Freudian psycho-analysis, or just the rantings and ravings of a maniac? The
last part of the monologue is certainly nothing but pure venom and hate. But
the one outstanding aspect of the whole monologue is the masterful way in which
Fournet completely diverts the discussion and attention from all the masses of
material data and evidence to the purely semantic issue of the meaning of one
word.
The
word “develop” has many meanings: “create” or “invent” is one of them (e.g. “he
developed a new machine/system”). But in not
one of the instances given by Fournet does the word “create” (much less the
gratuitous phrase “create ex-nihilo”) fit in with the sense of the sentences
where he replaces “”develop” with “create ex-nihilo”. The word “evolve” would
be a more correct replacement (except in the one instance where he translates
as “began to feel”). But neither “evolve” nor any of the other synonyms
(acquire, grow, build up, alter, change, expand, generate, become, modify)
would express the composite meaning of the word “develop” which goes beyond all
its synonyms and is the absolute mot
juste.
It
is clear that Fournet has not understood Hock’s hypothesis at all (if, that is, he
has even read any of it outside the references to it in my book!). The main
point of the hypothesis is that the various IE branches (originally “Dialects”
of PIE) share, among each other, certain linguistic features (which I, not incorrectly, call isoglosses).
Different branches share different isoglosses with different sets of branches.
The logic is that, in the original homeland, the original Dialects, which gave
birth to the later branches, shared these isoglosses with each other when they occupied contiguous areas: in
short, the isoglosses are “areal features” in origin (in the original
homeland). Although the branches occupied distant areas in historical times,
the isoglosses give testimony to the fact that the original Dialects were in contiguous areas. But there are
different isoglosses which cover different dialects: i.e. Dialects A, B and C
may share one isogloss in opposition to Dialects D, E and F; while A, B, D and
E may share another isogloss in opposition to C and F. Hock purports to present
a dialectological arrangement which shows all the Dialects sharing isoglosses
with each other in contiguous areas, in such a way, or ways, as to explain all the isoglosses. Hock’s contention is
that his arrangement shows the hypothetical geographical positions of the
different Dialects to each other in the original homeland to be more or less
the same as the actual geographical
positions of the respective branches to each other in their earliest attested
historical periods.
I,
on the contrary, show that Hock’s dialectological arrangement does not explain all the isoglosses, and, in
fact, leaves many important isoglosses unexplained. In order to explain all the
isoglosses, three things are required: a homeland to either the north or the
south of the broad historical east-to-west Indo-European belt, a common exit
point from this homeland onto this belt where exiting branches would remain in
contact with each other after exiting the homeland (this alone explains the isoglosses shared by far apart branches
like Hittite, Tocharian and Italic), and a shifting series of movements which
would bring different branches in contact with each other in different periods.
Such a scenario from an Indian homeland explains all the isoglosses, as well as
a host of other linguistic features and phenomena, of the different branches
more logically and fully than any other homeland scenario; and all this is
fully corroborated by the actual recorded textual evidence of the Rigveda and
the Avesta.
If
Fournet is too busy searching out the most basic and simplistic meanings of
individual English words (isogloss, develop, etc.) from the substandard
dictionary used by him, and concentrating only on rhetorical and polemical
arguments on the meanings of these words, rather than trying to understand the
real issues involved here, I at least have better things to do.
9.
Minor points on the evidence of the
isoglosses: Fournet’s discussion of the evidence of the isoglosses is littered
with all types of petty or time pass comments of a polemical nature:
At
the very beginning of the discussion, I point out that there are two versions
of the OIT (correctly distinguished by Hock): the “Sanskrit-origin” hypothesis
and the “PIE-in-India” hypothesis, and that I represent the “PIE-in-India”
hypothesis. Fournet has the following snide comments to make on this point: “As regards the first version, the author
has ‘very emphatically rejected the idea that the Vedic language was the
ancestor even of the languages known today as the Indo-Aryan languages, let
alone of all the Indo-European languages’ (p.205). This rejection is coherent
with the general approach of the author according to which Rig-Veda Aryans have
always been different from anybody else: ‘The other Indo-European dialects were
different from the Vedic dialect […]’ (p.298). In fact, the Indo-European
languages are not far from having no ancestor at all in this version of the OIT”.
Now does Fournet himself believe that the Vedic language is the ancestor of all
the Indo-European languages? If not, does it mean that he also believes that
the “Rig-Veda Aryans have always been
different from anybody else”, and that the Indo-European languages have “no ancestor at all”? If not, then why
should it mean that I believe it?
Here we have a prime example of petty criticism for the sake of criticism. But
this is the childish theme which reverberates through Fournet’s time pass
“criticism”:
“It must be emphasized that the scenario
proposed by the author is not a homeland for the Proto-Indo-European family,
nor a protoIndo-European homeland. The scenario is a representation of (some
of) Indo-European languages and branches concentrated in a reduced area. As the
intellectual framework of the book negates the linguistic concept of
Proto-Indo-European as a proto-language spoken by a unique prehistorical human
community, the scenario illustrates some of the Indo-European languages (or
branches) as having contiguous individual homelands. In other words they have
never been anything but neighbours. The Proto-Indo-European homeland, in this
version of the OIT, is a compaction of individual homelands, one of them being
that of Indo-Aryan. This could be called the PIE Homunculus Loquens Theory. The
compacted homelands area already contains all the components of the
Indo-European family in a reduced and telescopically concentrated format. In
this theory, the Indo-Europeans became what they aiways were, but they did so
further away.[…] The scenario described in the book is teleological […] Because
the author does not accept the paleo-linguistic notion of Indo-Iranian, and has
a fixist and anti-evolutionist framework, he posits that Indo-Aryan has always
existed, at least as far back as ‘originally’ may go, and he has to posit that
all Indo-European languages were equally existing from the same point, to when
‘originally’ goes back.”
There
is more repetitive ranting and raving in the same vein. What Fournet’s dim
brain fails to comprehend is that, whether he likes it or not, all these
foolish and myopic charges would apply equally well to the presentation of the
isoglosses by Hock in his article, “Out of India? The Linguistic Evidence”
(1999), to which my own presentation in this chapter is a reply. Hock also does
not start the Proto-Indo-European story from the embryonic and foetal stages,
but starts it with the various Dialects ancestral to the various branches
already basically differentiated from each other, “having contiguous individual homelands”, with “all the components of the Indo-European family in a reduced and
telescopically concentrated format” etc.. Or perhaps, it does, and he
thinks a simple assertive denial will do the trick: “This erroneous interpretation of Hock’s representation of isoglosses
misleads the author into thinking that a telescopic, homothetic or geometrical
modification of Hock’s representation projected on his compacted homelands area
could make any historical or linguistic sense”. Well, if wishes were
horses, Fournet would ride. My presentation, except in its more complete survey
of the isoglosses, and in its diametrically opposite conclusion, is of the same
type as that of Hock, and if Fournet does not have the guts to deal with the
evidence, he could at least refrain from opening his mouth too wide and making
a fool of himself.
Fournet
indulges in more semantic hairsplitting, or criticism for the sake of
criticism: he refers to my “decided
contention (for political reasons) that Indo-Aryan is not a ‘dialect’ (p.236)
but a ‘branch’ (p.223). It must be reminded that Indo-Aryan is the Indian
sub-sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-branch of the non-Anatolian branch of
the Indo-European family, the other branch between [sic] Anatolian”. So all the scholars and
linguists who have referred to Indo-Aryan as a “branch” (including Meillet and Winn quoted earlier), and all those
(and this includes the overwhelming
majority of western linguists and other academicians) who refer to
Tocharian, Hellenic, Germanic, Celtic, etc. as “branches” rather than as “sub-branches
of the non-Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family” all have their “political reasons” for doing so?
Fournet seems to be unaware that the “Indo-Hittite” theory he is upholding here
is almost as dead as a dodo, and Anatolian is now treated as one more branch of
Indo-European, albeit a special one. [Incidentally, I have treated, in this
context, the words “dialect” and “branch” as almost synonyms, the
original IE “dialects” later developing
into the different “branches”. Where
does this joker catch me claiming that Indo-Aryan is “not a dialect but a branch”?
I do so neither on p.236 nor on p.223, nor anywhere else].
About
my very logical contention that the one-way traffic of borrowings from
Indo-Aryan and Iranian into Finno-Ugric proves that the Indo-Iranians did not
pass through the Finno-Ugric areas in a migration towards the east, but that
west-migrating groups of Indo-Iranians imparted those words to Finno-Ugric,
Fournet calls it an “ad-hoc and
unparsimonious hypothesis of unattested Indo-Iranian people: ‘the
west-migrating Indo-Aryans and Iranians are, unfortunately, lost to history,
but their existence is vouched for by the borrowed words in the Uralic
languages’”. This criticism falls in the same category, call it what you
will, of OIT writers who reject the very existence of the Proto-Indo-European
language because it is “unattested”.
Fournet fails to realize that the very fact, that the Indo-Iranian languages of
the south do not “attest”, with
Finno-Ugrian borrowings, their having passed through the Finno-Ugrian areas,
itself “attests” to the
existence of west-migrating
Indo-Iranians lost to history.
Later,
Fournet again shows his total inability to comprehend written English, in the
following simplistic criticism. He quotes my statement denying that “the ‘sequential movement of different
groups’ Out-of-India hypothesis (postulated by no-one, so far as I know)” (p.306 of my book) forms any part of
my hypothesis, and writes: “The reader
is left to understand what the Early Dialects, the European Dialects and the
Last Dialects (p.236) mean. Is this not sequential? Not to speak of ‘The
European Dialects moved northwards from Afghanistan, and then, in the same
above order [i.e. Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic] appear to have
gradually migrated by a northwest path into Europe, and continued right upto
Western Europe, […]’ (p.240). And ‘Hittite,
Tocharian and Italic are the dialects which, in any generally accepted schedule
of migration, were the first, second and third, respectively, to migrate from
the original homeland.’ (p.222). Is a schedule of respectively, first, second
and third, not sequential? It seems that the author makes a distinguo between ‘one
by one’ or in small groups, but this distinction is irrelevant”. Only a
person with a brain like Fournet’s could have asked such foolish questions. Nowhere have I said that the emigrating
branches of Indo-European did not move out in sporadic sequential movements.
Obviously, they were not running a relay race that they all started sprinting
out the moment the whistle was blown. Fournet quotes different sentences to
show that I describe sequential movements. But, when he quotes my allegedly denying it, he deliberately quotes only
half the sentence: I am not denying
sequential movements per se, I am denying “the
‘sequential movement of different groups’ Out-of-India hypothesis (postulated
by no-one, so far as I know) argued
against by Hock (HOCK 1999a), which would treat the various Indo-European
Dialects as moving, one by one, out of
the bottle-neck routes leading from northwestern India to the outside world,
after having developed all the isoglosses within India”. Note the key
words I have placed in italics here, which Fournet deliberately avoids quoting. As I have shown, all the isoglosses
developed, in stages, outside this
bottleneck area.
Fournet
also quotes my references to the Druhyus, Anus and Purus, but as he is
admittedly totally ignorant about these matters, his views, that my homeland hypothesis
is “hallucinatorily absurd” and that
my “intellectual framework is flawed to
a (possibly) hopeless extent”, and (note the sheer poetry of this) that “this part of the book has a kind of
incoherent and unworldly flavour that borders on Nostradamus’ predictions”,
I will treat as merely the rantings of a vicious mind.
Fournet
also writes: “For reasons that are obscure,
briefly polished off, the author rejects the hypothesis of a homeland ‘situated
in any central area’ (p.221) and states that ‘a common exit point’ (p.223) is
necessary. These two points are obviously required by his scenario but they
remain no less obviously unjustified in the book. And we tend to consider his
rejection of these two points unacceptable in the first place”. As we have
been seeing throughout this reply, and will see more clearly in the next point
(10. A fake review) Fournet criticizes without reading, and we can safely say
that he has not read, or has totally failed
to understand, what I have written on p.222, where I have explained why a
common exit point is necessary. [Incidentally, note his confused logic or
confused English: in the first sentence above, he correctly states that I reject one point, about a homeland
“situated in a central area”, while I require
another point, “a common exit point”. In the second sentence, he suggests that
I require both the points (a homeland
“situated in a central area as well as “a common exit point”?). In the third
sentence, he says that I reject both
the points!].
Funnily,
Fournet also complains that, in my hypothesis, I portray Indo-Aryan as a branch
which “has never moved from India:
‘Indo-Aryan, the Dialect which remained in the homeland after all the others
had left’ (p.277)”. But why does this surprise Fournet, or why does he find
it worthy of comment? Since my hypothesis portrays India as the original
homeland, isn’t it understood that it is intrinsic to the hypothesis that
Indo-Aryan, which is historically native to this area, automatically stands
portrayed as a branch which “never moved
from India” (although two groups
from among the Indo-Aryans did do so: the proto-Mitanni, and the Indo-Aryans
who moved westwards through the Finno-Ugrian areas)? A time pass comment to
beat all time pass comments.
10.
A fake review: Fournet’s
“review” of sections F and G of chapter seven of my book is particularly
interesting, since it exemplifies more clearly than anything else the fake
nature of his whole review, and the fact that Fournet compulsively “reviews”
without reading, or else that he is pathetically unable to comprehend at all what he is reading. [While
section G alone is entitled as an Appendix by me, actually these two parts
should have been entitled Appendix 1 and Appendix 2 respectively, since they
represent two aspects of the linguistic evidence different from the rest of the
chapter].
Fournet
has the following to say about section F, “The linguistic roots in India”:
“The next pages (p.277-290) are a kind
of summary of the preceding pages from the start of the book and a kind of
provisional conclusion, before the author proceeds to the archeological
chapter. Our intuition is that a first version of the book may have stopped
here and that new chapters were added later on. This might explain the
erroneous reference: page XVIII and not XV for the preface […]”
Incredibly,
this section, far from being a summary of them, has nothing whatsoever to do
with “the preceding pages from the start
of the book”, and deals with linguistic evidence totally different even from
those discussed in the sections dealing with the evidence of the isoglosses. It
deals with the “two-waves-of-migration” theory and its incompatibility with the
literary and linguistic evidence, with the question of non-Vedic dialects of
“Indo-Aryan”, with the l-and-r phenomenon in “Indo-Aryan” linguistics and how
it totally shatters the AIT paradigm, with the evidence of Bangani and
Sinhalese, and with suggested affinities between Indo-European and Austronesian.
None of these topics has even been touched upon in “the preceding pages from the start of the book”. Fournet
unilaterally deduces, from the title of the section and perhaps a glance at the
first paragraph or two, that this section represents “a kind of summary of the preceding pages from the start of the book”.
Hercule Fournet does not stop there; from this first deduction he draws another
one: “that a first version of the book
may have stopped here and that new chapters were added later on”. Then he
draws a third deduction from the second one (and the giant leap in logic involved
here is totally beyond me, and would probably leave even Sherlock Holmes,
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple foxed): that this might “explain the erroneous reference: page XVIII and not XV for the preface”.
Fournet’s
summary treatment of section G, “Witzel’s linguistic arguments against the OIT”,
is even more hilarious. This is what he has to say about this section: “The next sub-chapter (p.290-307) is focused
on previous exchanges with the author’s bête noire aka Michael Witzel. There is
nothing new in this part of the book. The part was probably added to the book
because some of its content has not been published elsewhere as the author had
wished (p.290)”.
It
is clear that Fournet has not even glanced at this section, since every word written
by him here is factually wrong. I state at the very beginning of this
sub-chapter or section that it represents my
point-by-point reply to the summary of the linguistic arguments against the
OIT made by Witzel in his article in the
Bryant-Patton volume published in 2005. It has nothing whatsoever to do
with any “previous exchanges” with
Witzel. This is the first time that I replied to this article by Witzel, and I
do not know that anyone else had done so before me; so this part of the book
should have been absolutely “new” to any reader, and certainly to
Fournet, who, as per his own admission, knew nothing about the OIT: “Before reading the book, we had about no
expertise on the OIT, apart from the vague idea that the OIT tries to promote
India as a possible homeland of the Proto-Indo-European language”.
But
Fournet attempts a Hercule Fournetian deduction here too: “The part was probably added to the book because some of its content has
not been published elsewhere as the author had wished”. Where does Fournet
get this idea? I explain on p.290 that the article by Witzel was published in
the Bryant-Patton volume published in 2005, which also contained an article by
me. But while I was expressly not allowed to update my article (which had been
given to the publishers in 1998, seven years before it was published), Witzel
was allowed to update his article almost to the last minute. This explanation
by me is interpreted by Fournet to mean that this present sub-chapter by me (pp.290-307 in my book published in
2008) contains material which I wanted to publish in the 2005 Bryant-Patton
volume but was not allowed to do so! Now this sub-chapter consists of my point-by-point reply to Witzel’s
article published in the 2005 Bryant-Patton volume, which of course I could
only have read after that volume was
published and I received a copy of it much later. So how could it be possible
that this reply to his article could contain matter which I wanted to publish
in that very volume itself but was not allowed to do so?
After
all his bluster about the lack of linguistic discussion in my book (and he
means of course etymological discussions about Proto-Indo-European roots!), Fournet
not only completely ignores all the
linguistic discussion in these two sections, but shows up his total inability
to even comprehend what the sections are all about. But none of this stops him
from “reviewing” and making masterful deductions, and arriving at condemnatory
conclusions!
11.
The archaeological case:
Fournet then moves on to review chapter eight of my book, “The Archaeological
Case”. Since this chapter is based more on logical arguments, and less, or
almost not at all, on hard data and evidence (which makes Fournet uncomfortable
and nervous), Fournet is a bit more comfortable with this chapter: “In this part of the book, the word
‘developed’ has a more regular meaning (fully-grown-up) and the word
‘transformation’ is used, in contrast with all previous chapters of the
Sections 1 and 2, where this latter word is unheard-of […]. Moreover
the content of this chapter is considerably better than the rest of the section
2”. But his “kindness” stops at this point.
He
starts out by a repetition of his earlier Fournetian deduction: “As mentioned before, we suspect that this
part of the book was probably added to the book in a second (or third) phase of
its composition”. […]. Hercule
Fournet even provides the two clues which pointed the way towards this
deduction: first: “There are some
lexical differences with previous chapters” (meaning the above “fully-grown-up” use of certain words),
and second, “There is a sort of
contradiction in the very existence of this chapter. The author has very
emphatically declared that the case is settled once and for good in favor of
the OIT and then one more chapter is nevertheless added. This is one more
oddity in the textual organization of the book.” Therefore, one more
deduction: “The first page is a kind of
apologetic transition for the addition of the chapter.”
To
Fournet’s myopic vision, nothing seems to be what it actually is: earlier, he
deduces that “pages (p.277-290) are a
kind of summary of the preceding pages from the start of the book and a kind of
provisional conclusion,” when it was nothing of the kind. Now, when I
actually state, on the first page of chapter eight, that the aim of this “final
chapter [is] to sum up the case and present it in final perspective”, it looks
to him like an apology for the “addition”
of this chapter. Actually, right from my second book, I have constantly been
pointing out that there are three disciplines involved in the study of the
Aryan question: linguistics, archaeology and textual analysis. As the entire
first section is devoted to the unassailable masses of textual references which
conclusively prove the OIT, it should be clear to anyone with a modicum of
sense that a second section with two chapters on the linguistic and
archaeological aspects of the case was inevitable from the beginning. But
having made a deduction, Fournet must find clues for it, ranging from “lexical differences” to an “apologetic” attitude.
While
it is true that “the case is settled
once and for good in favor of the OIT” on the basis of the unassailable textual
evidence and a consideration of all the linguistic evidence, it is unthinkable
that the discussion could ever have been sought to be concluded without
considering the archaeological (including anthropology, etc,) position.
The
aim of this chapter is threefold:
First,
to show very conclusively that this third discipline also, although based only
on logical arguments rather than hard data (since archaeology has failed so far
to yield any hard, concrete evidence for either
the AIT or the OIT), “is not neutral in the debate so far as the
AIT case is concerned: archaeology stands in sharp opposition to the AIT and conclusively disproves it. At the same
time, archaeology is more or less neutral
so far as the OIT case is concerned: although there is obviously no conclusive
archaeological evidence for the OIT scenario, this circumstance does not
disprove the OIT. There are many basic reasons why archaeological evidence is vital for the AIT to be accepted as valid, but archaeological evidence is not vital for the OIT to be accepted as valid, and we will see this in detail in this
chapter.” (pp.311-312 of my book).
Second,
to show that the AIT contention that a “non-Aryan” Harappan civilization was
replaced by an “Aryan” one is untenable
since it consists of a combination of
several totally incompatible postulates ─ a combination which has no
parallel anywhere else in the world, and therefore represents an extremely
unlikely to impossible scenario.
Three,
to show that, because of this combination of several incompatible postulates,
the AIT writers are compelled to concoct different scenarios to explain away
the facts which contradict these postulates, but these scenarios also end up
contradicting each other sharply.
It
is these three points that are explained in
great detail in chapter eight of my book with facts and illustrations. And
it represents a logical conclusion to the rest of the book.
Fournet
so utterly fails to understand (assuming he has really read any portion of the
chapter) the inevitable logic of the detailed case presented in this chapter,
that he writes: “Another point is the
reluctance of the author to accept an ethnocultural and linguistic shift in a
short period. There exists [sic]
clear examples of such processes: that of Gaulish people becoming Gallo-Romans
in probably fewer than five centuries, and some Uralic people who changed from
Samoyedic to Turkic to Russian in three generations”.
Fournet
here illustrates the second point that I am making in this chapter: that the
contention that a “non-Aryan” Harappan civilization was replaced by an “Aryan”
one is untenable since it consists of a combination
of several totally incompatible postulates ─ a combination which has no
parallel anywhere else in the world, and when AIT writers like Fournet (see
also Witzel on pp.318, 320-322, and Hock on pp.326-27 of my book) try to show
parallels based on only one or two postulates they only succeed in highlighting
the unparalleled nature of the contention in
respect of all the other postulates.
Thus,
taking only the single postulate of “an
ethnocultural and linguistic shift in a short period”, Fournet cites the
alleged parallel of the Gauls becoming Gallo-Romans in “fewer than five centuries” and a section of Uralic people changing
from Samoyedic to Turkic to Russian in three generations. But he ignores the sharp opposition between these cases and
the alleged AIT case in respect of all the other postulates:
Firstly,
there can be no comparison between the Gauls and the Samoyedic groups (with
full respect for their culture) and the Harappans in respect of civilizational
status. However much it may irk Fournet (“It
remains to be proved to which degree this panegyrical description suits the
real state of that civilization at that time. It seems that this Harappan area
was on the contrary in a kind of crisis and past its heyday”), the Harappan
civilization was one of the great ancient civilizations, on par with the
Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Chinese civilizations and even superior to them in a
few respects (while they may have been superior to it in some others). Even
when it was “past its heyday”, its
inhabitants continued to be the inheritors of that great civilizational
tradition.
Secondly,
the unorganized Gauls were conquered, overrun and ruled by the Romans, whose
massive and organized military apparatus was unparalleled in the world at that
time and is still an object of respect. Likewise, the unorganized Samoyedic
groups were repeatedly conquered by Altaic people, and finally came under the
control of one of the most totalitarian states, the basically Russian USSR.
On the other hand, the multitudes of Harappans are alleged to have been
completely transformed ethnoculturally and linguistically by a few people, less
culturally advanced than themselves, “trickling” into their midst or (according
to Witzel) by “just one ‘Afghan’ IA
tribe that did not return to the highlands but stayed in their Panjab winter
quarters in spring”.
Thirdly,
there are ample textual records and archaeological evidences, and strong
traditional memories, which testify to the earlier languages and ethnocultural
identity of the Gauls and the Samoyedic people, and to their conquest and
linguistic-ethnocultural conversion by the Romans and the Russians
respectively. The alleged AIT case has left not the faintest textual record or
archaeological trace of any earlier language and culture, or of this alleged
total linguistic-ethnocultural conversion from non-Aryan Harappans to Aryan
people, and not the faintest traditional memory of it either among the local
people or in the oldest Aryan texts.
Fourthly,
the conversion of the Gauls and the Samoyedic people was on a relatively
superficial or outer level in comparison with the alleged conversion of the
non-Aryan Harappans, which was so deep, total and complete that even Witzel
remarks on the unparalleled nature of this totality. He describes as “relatively rare” what we (allegedly)
see in the Harappan transformation “with
the absorption of not only new languages but also of an entire complex of
material and spiritual culture, ranging from chariotry and horsemanship to
Indo-Iranian poetry whose complicated conventions are still actively used in
the Rgveda. The old Indo-Iranian religion, centred on the opposition of Devas
and Asuras, was also adopted, along with Indo-European systems of ancestor
worship”. Even more startling is the fact that even the rivers have purely
Aryan names even in the very oldest texts, with no evidence to suggest that
those rivers ever had different names earlier. Witzel describes it as “especially surprising” since it is
totally without parallel anywhere else in the world.
Fifthly,
as I have pointed out in my book, the Harappans are supposed to have been
converted and transformed not by the original Indo-Aryans who are alleged to
have originally emigrated from South Russia, but by a group of people who so
represented the final result of a continuous admixture of different races all
the way from South Russia to India that they bore almost no ethnic affinity at
all with the original Indo-Aryans, but were actually (in Witzel’s words) an “Aryanized” section of the “local population” of the “Turkmenian-Bactrian area which yielded the
BMAC”, and (in the words of Hock) were therefore “fairly similar to the population of that area” (the Harappan area)
“in terms of their physical appearance”.
And the “Aryan” ethos transmitted by these highly diluted carriers of the
Indo-Aryan culture to the Harappans resulted in the Vedic civilization in the formerly
Harappan areas, which produced a text (well after these Vedic people had lost
all memories of this whole process of transformation, as also of any
extra-territorial associations), the Rigveda, which seems to contain the seeds
and essence of the reconstructed and reconstructable language and mythology of
the original Proto-Indo-Europeans in the original homeland, and bears closer
affinities with the language and mythology (in a more primitive form) of each
of the other Indo-European branches than any of them bear to each other! Is
there any comparison at all on this
point with the Gauls or the Samoyedic groups?
To
compound his errors, Fournet quotes me in full as follows: “The AIT case is
made up of a great number of different extremely unlikely to impossible
scenarios and postulates which contradict each other hopelessly: each scenario
or postulate is concocted in order to explain away certain valid objections to
the AIT, but it ends up contradicting most of the other scenarios or postulates
concocted to explain away various other equally valid objections. The net
result is a ‘complex’ mass of chaotic scenarios or postulates which explain
nothing and lead nowhere: except that they are all intended to somehow prove
the AIT case” (p.331), and writes: “After
having read the (section 2 of) the book, our conclusion is that this
description best suits the OIT”. Fournet does not realize that just retorting
“you too” or “not me, you”, like a
child involved in a juvenile quarrel, makes no sense. I have exposed all the
contradictions in the AIT scenario (e.g. advocating peaceful “trickling-in” scenarios to answer
objections about the lack of archaeological evidence, while advocating violent
invasionist scenarios to answer objections about the total transformation). At
the same time I have presented a single, coherent and cohesive scenario in my
book where all the points fit in with each other and there is no internal
contradiction whatsoever: I challenge anyone to show me any contradictions.
Apart
from this, Fournet’s review of this chapter contains his usual silly time pass comments:
He
writes that “the interactions between
the new and the old populations are described in an “erase and rewind” mode”
in my description of the Aryan transformation of the Harappan area. What he
does not realize is that, in my hypothesis, there are no “new” and “old”
populations in that area. It is the AIT which holds that there were two
different populations or civilizations in that area, before and after the
alleged Aryan transformation. What I am describing, or exposing, is the AIT
descriptions of the case.
Further,
Fournet writes: “we do not understand
this statement of the author: ‘The Vedic Aryans are the People of the Book in
the Rigveda’. (p.368)” Fournet does not understand it because he has not
read pp.260-264 of my book, or for that matter, most of the book as a whole. He
writes: “The book does not require any
prior reading of the two other books by the same author, which were on the same
topic”. But he could have correctly added: “The writing of this review did not require any prior reading of this
book under review either”.
In
giving his decided views that the system of signs depicted on the Harappan
seals is “most probably not a writing
system” (the weight of logic is on the side of the view that it definitely is one, but there is no sense in
pointless quibbling until it is finally and conclusively deciphered), Fournet
produces this gem of profundity: “The
author has the prejudice that the absence of writing is tantamount to idiocy
and cultural vacuum”!
And
Fournet ends his review of this chapter with his blessings: “Well, our most sincere suggestion would be
that the long defunct OIT should now be allowed to rest in peace”! Well,
our most sincere suggestion would be that Fournet step out of his cocoon and
learn to face unpleasant (to him) facts: it is the AIT which is being put to
rest, sooner than it would have otherwise, by inadequate protagonists like
himself.
12.
Identities and prejudices:
Fournet finally moves on to the last part of my book “Postscript: Identities Past and Present”. This postscript contains basically
two parts. The first part, like the first section of the book, consists of detailed
data and references from the Rigveda, here proving that the term arya in the Rigveda refers to the Purus, and that the terms dasa and dasyu refer
respectively to non-Puru tribes and their priestly classes. Beyond noting that
“the author agrees that there were two
different populations simultaneously inhabiting north-western India but he does
not identify the dasa with the pre-existing non Indo-Aryan population”, Fournet
does not deal with this data (any more than he deals with any of the hard data
in any other part of my book). [It may be pointed out, incidentally, that I do
not agree “that there were two different
populations simultaneously inhabiting north-western India”. There were many tribal conglomerate populations
inhabiting northern India as
whole, but in the eyes of the Puru
composers of the Rigveda, the Purus were
one entity, and all non-Purus were another].
The
second part of this postscript deals with ancient vis-à-vis modern identities. In
this part, I make it clear that my analysis of the Rigveda “refers to people
who lived, and events which took place, thousands of years ago” (p.363),
and that “the history of Vedic times is just that: the history of Vedic times. It has to do with the history of
civilizations and language families, and must be recognized as such; but it
does not have anything whatsoever to
do with relations between different ethnic, linguistic, caste or communal
groups of the present day. The biases and the conflicts of ancient times are
the biases and conflicts of ancient peoples with
whom present day peoples have no direct ethnic connections”.(pp.365-6). Hence
I plead that I “can only hope that nothing written in the book is used as a
fodder for manipulative politics of any kind seeking to revive supposed biases,
prejudices and putative identities of the past” (p.368).
As
the saying goes, to a person with severe jaundice, the whole world looks
yellow. Where any sane reader would have heard the voice of sanity, sobriety
and harmony in this chapter, Fournet finds the whole chapter eerily dark,
satanic and sinister and finds in this chapter “the very purposes that motivate the author’s enterprise. With these
purposes, we stand on the threshold of the political vested interests of the
author’s version of the OIT. And we will not step beyond that point, all the
less so as we have recently admired la Porte de l’Enfer by Auguste Rodin in the
Musée d’Orsay in Paris and we have some uncanny forebodings about thresholds”!
So this postscript is the doorway to Hell! A strange kind of phrase and
sentiment, this kind of medieval Christian attitude towards heathen traditions,
to hear in this day and age in a so-called academic debate!
Another aspect of this second part of the
postscript is that I plead for a non-partisan attitude even in our treatment of
the people and events in these ancient texts, and show how I have adopted such
an attitude in my own analysis. This seems to irk Fournet, who comments: “the author’s insistence on the otherness of
Indo-Aryans results in a very unfavourable portrayal of these people, who were
‘different’, ‘insular’, ‘developing an all-pervading disdain for and hostility
toward’ other people and areas, with a ‘traditional attitude’ of ‘disdain or
even mild hostility’, etc. The reader is left to wonder what ‘thoroughly South
Asian’ means. We cannot help thinking that the Indo-Aryans, and their
neighbours as well, do not deserve these characterizations”
The
particular quotation from my book which provokes this outburst is “The two
traditions, Vedic and Avestan, seem to represent two entities sharing a common
tradition, but as rival entities within this common tradition. And echoes of
this rivalry persist down to the later forms of these two traditions” ─ but
this is a view with which almost every single scholar of comparative studies of
Vedic and Avestan traditions would agree!
Furthermore,
if Fournet finds an “unfavourable
portrayal” of the Vedic Aryans in my analysis, his findings are not based
on Hercule Fournetian deductions drawn by him from indirect references in my
book, but on direct quotations of phrases used by me, and I have myself made
this “unfavourable” portrayal clear in unambiguous terms (p.368-369). So, here,
it seems as if he is ending up
defending the Vedic Aryans from my calumnious
portrayal of them! On the one hand, Fournet accuses me of glorifying the Vedic
Aryans and portraying them as a unique superhuman community, “an immanent, panchronic (near Platonician)
Entity, as old as ‘originally’ goes back, that has always been different from
anything else and that has virginally never moved from its supposed Indian
homeland” ─ all this simply because I
advocate an Indian homeland! And when I simply portray them as normal human
beings in their morals and actions, he turns round and accuses me of giving so
“unfavourable” a portrayal of them
that even he is compelled to rise to
their defence.
Fournet’s
words show his total lack of understanding. I have nowhere included “and their
neighbours as well” in these characterizations so far as I can see, since
my book is an analysis of the Vedic Aryans, whose attitude is portrayed in
their own books by themselves; and I cannot characterize other people on the basis of the way
they are portrayed by the Vedic Aryans.
But,
an examination of the Avesta will show that these are characteristics of the
Avestan Iranians as well. And an examination of the characteristic texts and
literature of almost every single civilized human community in history will
show that, except to the eyes of the idealistic and Utopian or partisan viewer,
this insularity and disdain for other peoples and areas is sadly characteristic
of almost all human societies in general. As I have repeatedly written: “Rigvedic
history, which forms the backdrop of the Rigveda, is like the history of any
ancient civilization” (p.369).
It
is only people with mind-sets like Fournet who will insist on interpreting the
very idea of location of the PIE homeland in India itself as being directly and automatically tantamount to
treating the Vedic Aryans as a unique, superhuman community. Incidentally, does
Fournet also feel that all the writers and scholars who advocate different
homelands for the Indo-Europeans also treat the present-day Indo-European
language speaking inhabitants of the geographical area advocated by them to be
“an immanent, panchronic (near
Platonician) Entity, as old as ‘originally’ goes back, that has always been
different from anything else and that has virginally never moved from its
[…] homeland”? Or are contemptuous
descriptions of this kind reserved only for dealing with the OIT hypothesis?
Fournet’s
comment, “The reader is left to wonder
what ‘thoroughly South Asian’ means”, is typical. Whether the reader would
“wonder” about it or not is a
doubtful question. If Fournet “wonders”
about it, it may be because he does not understand English beyond the limited
meanings of English words yielded by his favourite dictionary. More
specifically, it is because he has not read p.100 of my book. If he had, he
would at least have known that his mystification about this perfectly logical
and simple phrase would have to be clarified by Witzel, whose use of this
phrase has merely been repeated by me.
Fournet
ends his review of the postscript with his reference to my “evocation of the ‘Battle of the Ten Kings’
(p.370)”, and his admission of his “having
never read or heard what this epical event is” (although it is referred to
many times in the course of this book itself, as the Index could have
enlightened him) already referred to earlier in this reply. Then this profound
gem: “According to the author, this may
have been a kind of Big Bang of the Indo-European history. We tend to think
this more the Big Crunch of the OIT”.
After
a few words on my Index (already dealt with earlier on in this reply), Fournet
finally ends his “review” with the biggest joke cracked by him throughout this
entire “review”: he tells us that his “review” “has not been ‘done with unfriendly or hostile intent’ (p.XXXII)”!
III. Postscript: How to write a review.
As
we saw, the entire “review” had nothing to do with the data, evidence and
conclusions in my book, and consisted of nothing but polemics: long diatribes
and confused masses of comments and opinions on a variety of topics (from AIT
and OIT to Indo-Iranian to Proto-Indo-European), interspersed with jeers, nasty
pieces of psycho-analyses, and semantic discussions on the meanings of specific
words used by me. If large parts of the review, many of them quoted above (the
prime example being Fournet’s monologue on the words “development” and “to
develop”), were to be described in one phrase, it would be a phrase used by
Arun Shourie in one of his books: “verbal
vomit”.
A
pedestrian response to my book of this kind would have been understandable from
a lay person, who would have neither the interest, nor the time nor the ability
to take the trouble to try to understand the details of the subject under
discussion. Many lay people who liked my first book found the second book more
tedious, and many who liked the second book find my third one extremely tedious
and tiring, because of the masses of references, data and statistics which they
naturally cannot be expected to read in detail or subject to a critical
examination. But people presuming to write a review of my book and judge the
contents as scholars cannot escape with this pedestrian approach.
Unfortunately, that is just what Fournet does in this “review” and which other
possible reviewers are going to try to do in respect of my book, when they do
not have the guts to address the real issues in my book. It is a technique
which was demonstrated by Witzel, in his review of my second book, and in the
enthusiastic reactions to it from his comrades in arms and many lay (but
partisan) readers, as a tactically effective one in derailing serious
discussion.. Any objection to the pedestrian and irrelevant nature of the
criticisms is dismissed as a failure to understand how clinching the criticism is
in debunking my arguments and evidence!
I
had to descend to Fournet’s low level in order to reply to his “review” of my
book. But, henceforward, I will not take the trouble of giving detailed replies
to any so called review of my book which concentrates on polemics or on anything other than factual criticism.
While
I can have nothing to learn from jokers like Fournet on “how to write a book”, Fournet certainly can learn from me “how to
write a review” or “how to review a book” on the basis of factual criticism
rather than polemics. Fournet’s whole attitude throughout his review was that
of a monkey who has been handed a stick (bandar
ke haath mein laathi, as the Hindi version of an all-India saying goes): he
decided that Koenraad Elst, by asking him if he could review my book, had given
him a licence to give me the thrashing of my life, and like Witzel, who has a
special word (“fun”) for this kind
of Indian-bashing, Fournet decided to have “fun” as never before. “Fun”
it may have been, but a “review” it was not.
As
illustration of what a genuine critique should be like, he can examine my own
criticism of Witzel in my book under review. I have also criticized Witzel (whom
Fournet calls my “personal favorite
duelist” and my “bete noire”) sometimes
in sharp words, but my criticism is everywhere based on factual criticism of what he has actually written, rather than, like Fournet, on polemical
monologues about my personal opinions
of what he represents, what he does not know, and what he has not mentioned but
should have (and in fact, on p.xxx and xxxii of my preface, I have even given
him credit for one important instance of factual criticism by him of my second
book). My criticisms are unanswerable, and have therefore remained unanswered
and steadfastly ignored by him:
On
p.50, I point out how Witzel takes up VII.33.3 in the Rigveda, which (as
confirmed by VII.18.9) is a reference to a battle on the Yamuna, and treats it
first as a battle on the Indus, then into a reference to a west-to-east
movement across the Indus by Vasishtha and the Bharatas, and finally into a
testimony of Vasishtha and the Bharatas being “self-proclaimed immigrants” from Iran. Can Witzel show one reference or one item of acceptable evidence (and tell us how many western Vedic
scholars will accept it as valid) to show that this verse refers to the Indus
and not to the Yamuna, and that Vasishtha and the Bharatas, as per this or any
other reference from the Rigveda or any other Vedic or even Puranic text, are “self-proclaimed immigrants” from Iran?
On
pp.50-51, I point out how Witzel again claims that since absolutives (gerunds)
are not found in Iranian, and since the Vasishthas don’t use absolutives in
their compositions, this is evidence of their being from Iran. Witzel does not provide a
complete family-wise or book-wise list of absolutives in the Rigveda to prove
his point. But I do, and show that his claim is blatantly false. Can Witzel
provide a complete list of absolutives from the Rigveda to show that he is
right and that I am wrong?
In
the same context I point out, on pp.51-52, that while the non-family books (1,
8-10) as well as the book of Atri (book 5) are overflowing with personal name types in common with the Avesta, the
book of Vasishtha (book 7) is not only completely lacking in such names, but,
in fact, the only Iranian names in the whole of book 7 are the names of the
persons and tribes arraigned as the enemies
of Vasishtha and the Bharatas! Can Witzel explain this in the context of his
claim that Vasishtha and the Bharatas are from Iran?
On
pp.52-53, I point out that Witzel, in two different pages of one and the same
paper written by him in 1995 (and later reiterated in all subsequent papers),
claims on the one hand that Vishwamitra was the leader of the coalition which
fought Sudas, the Bharatas and Vasishtha in the Battle of the ten kings and was
completely defeated and humiliated by them, and on the other that hymn III.53
was composed by the Vishwamitras to commemorate and glorify the victory of Sudas in this battle. Can Witzel clarify this point?
On
pp.108-110, I point out how Witzel claims that the Ganga and Yamuna are “already mentioned” in the Rigveda, as
if they are new sights on the Rigvedic horizon, and that to book 10 (which even
Witzel accepts as the last and latest book of the Rigveda) “most of Afghanistan […] is already out of sight”, as if the
Vedic Aryans, coming from the west, have moved away from it eastwards by the
time of composition of book 10. And I point out that, on the contrary,
Afghanistan (and even the Indus) is totally unknown to the three oldest books
of the Rigveda (books 6, 3 and 7) and even to a large extent to the other
family books (4, 2 and 5, of which 4 and 5 alone mention some rivers, but none
of the lakes, mountains, place-names and animals of Afghanistan), which refer
to all the rivers, place-names, lakes and animals of the east. And far from
Afghanistan being “already out of sight”
in the last and latest book 10, this book not only contains references to the
lakes, mountains, place-names and animals of Afghanistan (totally unknown to
the family books), but also to every single river of Afghanistan named in books
4 and 5, and even some more totally unknown to the family books. Can Witzel
show, from the references in the Rigveda, that he is right and I am wrong?
On
pp.115-122, I show how Witzel, in his papers on Rigvedic history written in 1995,
categorically identifies the Rigvedic Sarasvati with the Ghaggar-Hakra of
Kurukshetra, categorically and repeatedly locates every single reference to Sarasvati in books 6, 3 and 7 with the
Kurukshetra region, and categorically treats the reference to the Sarasvati
which flows from the mountains to the sea in VII.95.2 as a reference to the
river of Kurukshetra (and even dates the verse to before 1500 B.C. on the ground that the river of Kurukshetra had
dried up by that date). But after reading my book, Witzel suddenly discovers
that the Sarasvati of books 6, 3 and 7 is either the river of Afghanistan, or
the name of a woman or a deity, or a reference to the “night-time sky”, and that the reference in VII.95.2 is to the river
of Afghanistan (with the sea in the verse turning out to be the Hamun-i
Hilmand). Can Witzel justify this opportunistic volte-face?
Likewise,
on pp.125-128, I show how Witzel, in all
his papers written from 1995 to 2000, categorically treats the reference to the
Ganga in VI.45.31 as belonging to the “early
Rgvedic period” and as a reference found in one of the “oldest hymns” in one of “the oldest books”, categorically older
than at least books 1-3 and 7-10 of the Rigveda, and as evidence that “early Aryan settlement” extended “upto Yamuna/Ganga”, and he even takes
up issue with other western scholars who feel otherwise. But after reading my
book, Witzel suddenly discovers that this reference “occurs in a trca that could be an even later addition to this
additional hymn”, and finds that he has to “immediately throw out the reference to the Ganges
that appears at RV 6.45.31”. Can Witzel justify this second opportunistic
volte-face?
On
p. 170-173, I show how Witzel arbitrarily decides that the Mitanni language had no retroflexes, and,
therefore, that this is evidence against their migration from India. I have shown how the data
available is totally insufficient to
give any logical ground whatsoever for deciding that the Mitanni IA language
had no retroflexes (apart from the fact that even proven absence of
retroflexion in Mitanni IA would have been no evidence that they had not
migrated from India). Can Witzel produce convincing logical evidence to prove
his two points?
On
p.191, I show how Witzel, on two different pages of the same paper, treats the
word armaka in the Rigveda as the “ruins” of the (according to him
non-Aryan) Indus civilization, citing Falk
1981, and as “shallow remnants of the IA
settlements”, citing Rau, 1983. Can Witzel clarify his position on this?
On
pp.192-197, I show how Witzel treats a group of words, which he categorizes as
BMAC words (words allegedly borrowed by the Indo-Iranians from the alleged
language of the BMAC of Central Asia) as representing a pre-Rigvedic heritage. However all these words are missing in the earlier group of books (2-4, 6-7) of the
Rigveda, and are found only in the later
group of books (1, 5, 8-10) ─ earlier and
later as per a chronological
consensus among western scholars ─ and in all post-Rigvedic texts, and in
the Avesta. Can Witzel logically explain this contradiction?
On
pp.295-297, I have shown how Witzel tries verbal jugglery and trickery in order
to argue against the migration of the Indo-European dialects from India: he
tells us that the ancestral forms of the western Indo-European dialects could
not have migrated from India since if they had they “would have taken with them a host of ‘Indian’ words ─ as the gypsies
(Roma, Sinti) indeed have done […] the
Gypsies, after all, have kept a large IA vocabulary alive, over the past 1000
years or so, during their wanderings all over the Near East, North Africa and
Europe”. He thus gives us the impression that his criterion is a group of “Indian” words which have been preserved
by the Gypsies but not by the western Indo-European languages. Such a criterion
would itself have been an unfair and illogical one, since the early development
of the non-Indo-Aryan Indo-European
dialects took place in the northwest (beyond Pakistan) ─ see maps on
pp.226-234 of my book ─ and they emigrated from there in an early prehistoric period, while the
Gypsies emigrated as speakers of an Indo-Aryan
dialect from the interior of India just over a 1000 years ago; so the
Gypsies could well have retained typically “Indian” words not found in the
western Indo-European languages. But what makes Witzel’s analogy really
fraudulent is the fact that he gives two different
groups of words to show that the Gypsies preserved “Indian” words with them
while the Indo-European dialects did not: he tells us that the Indo-Europeans
did not preserve “Indian words such as
those for lion, tiger, elephant, leopard, lotus, bamboo, or some local Indian
trees” ─ but then, neither did the
Gypsies! And he tells us that the Gypsies have preserved words such as “e.g. phral
‘brother’, pani ‘water’, karal ‘he does’” ─ but then, so have the western Indo-European
dialects preserved words for “brother”. “water” and “he does”! Can Witzel
explain this trickery? [Incidentally, the western Indo-European dialects in
fact actually have preserved words
for elephant (Vedic ibha, Greek el-ephas, Latin ebur), monkey (Vedic kapi,
English ape, Irish apa) and leopard (Vedic prdaku, Greek pardos, Hittite parsana)!]
All
these are concrete factual criticisms
based on hard, concrete data, of
things actually written by Witzel, and
the correctness or otherwise of each of these pieces of criticism can be
verified by examining this hard, concrete data. See also my criticism of Witzel
on pp.112-113, 189-190, 255, 263, 290-307, and elsewhere. Fournet could have
taken a leaf out of my book, and presented a logical critique based on factual
criticisms of the hard facts, data and evidence presented by me, rather than
presenting a mass of verbal vomit
consisting basically of vindictive polemical monologues.
But
polemicists like Witzel and Fournet are incapable of honest and decent debate.
They do not have the guts to present an honest and factual critique of the data
and conclusions presented in other people’s writings any more than they have
the guts to reply to honest and factual critiques of the data and conclusions
presented in their own writings. If they choose to merely comment on this
reply, expect name-calling or haughty dismissals. If they choose to reply at
some length, expect more verbal vomit, and plenty of dot-bashing. But do not
expect honest and serious debate and discussion. [“Dot-bashing”, from the
earlier “dot-busting”, is increasingly replacing anti-Semitism and Ku-Klux-ism
as the favourite form of ethnic bashing in certain western academic circles
since it is also the safest: firstly it is still “politically correct”, and
secondly even many co-opted and willing-to-be-co-opted Indians can be induced
to join in the “fun” (as pointed out
earlier, Witzel’s favourite word for it) or will even do so willingly]
In
the end, to genuinely unprejudiced and impartial readers of this reply, I can
only repeat what I wrote earlier on in this review: please carefully read both
my book (although I admit it is rather dry and technical) as well as Fournet’s
“review” and decide for yourself:
a)
what exactly the “real issues contained
in the review” are, and whether they really required to be addressed at
all; and also whether or not Fournet himself has in fact addressed the very real issues in my book in his “review”, and
b)
whether it is I who do not understand “how
to write a book” (and have to learn “how
to write a book” from this joker), or whether it is Fournet who does not
understand how to read a book, or how to understand what he is reading even
when it is set out in plain English.
______________________________________
II.
More Jokes from Fournet
dt. 1/6/2010
(My reply to Fournet's reply, to my
reply to his "review" of my book)
Arnaud
Fournet has responded to my reply (“A detailed reply to a joker’s ‘review’ of
my book”) to his “review” of my book in the only way he knows how: through
bluster, polemics and escapist rhetoric.
First,
he begins by protesting against being clubbed with the Farmer-Witzel pack of
jokers, forgetting that it was this pack of jokers alone who welcomed his
original “review” of my book with gleeful enthusiasm. I am aware that he is not
on good terms with them, but that has nothing to do with the fact that he and
they have common reactions when it comes to OIT writings in general and my
books in particular.
Next,
stung at his cheap comments on the color and smell of my book being exposed in
my reply for what they reveal of his mentality and attitude, Fournet goes on
the defensive: “I never mentioned the
smell as unpleasant. It is only his own personality that turns a neutral
sentence into a personal aggression”. Oh really? How many people would
agree that his cheap comments were neutral, or that such comments are what one
can expect in a decent scholarly review of a book?
Next,
he makes a pathetic attempt at sarcasm: “In
his reply states that ‘[he is] not answerable for a number of problems in the
book, such as wrong page numbers or ‘Incidentally, Elst in the index in bold
type with no page number’ […] Who is
the author of the book? I seriously doubt that the printer and publisher is
responsible for these features of the book […] things would be clearer if Mr. Talageri could indicate what parts of
the book he considers to be answerable for”.
This
whole thing only emphasizes again the pathetic nature of Fournet’s criticism
that a wrong page number cited in the contents and a wrong inclusion of a word
in the index constitute the big “problems”
in my book! It also shows his utter non-acquaintance with the process of book
publication. For his information, the printed versions of the book were sent to
me twice (in Mumbai) for proof reading (by the publishers in New Delhi). After I had completed all my
corrections, the publishers prepared the final version for print, and it was
only at this point that they finalized the page numbers. It was not sent to me
again for proof reading the page numbers! I sent the publishers two lists of
words to be included in the index. The page numbers for each word were to be
listed in the index by a mechanical computer process (not my field), and it was
not expected that I would have to proof read this also. If a word in my list
had no page number (the publisher did not include my preface, which mentioned
Koenraad, in his index listing), the word should have been excluded by the
publisher from the index. At any rate, I only saw the final printed version.
Typically, Fournet makes an issue of this, and uses this as an excuse for his
failure to deal with the real issues in my book.
After
the references to Farmer and Witzel, the smell of my book, and the printer’s
errors, Fournet next turns to my use of fonts. I have answered this pathetic
issue in my reply, and wont waste more time on it.
Finally,
Fournet ends his response to my reply (or rather, he ends his “Review part 2”)
with rhetoric and polemics in arguing that the pages and pages and pages of
data and references in my book are “either
irrelevant or inconclusive. They just prove nothing per se”. Therefore it
does not matter whether or not “the data
are false or need to be falsified or improved”! So he only succeeds in
emphasizing my point that, to him, rhetoric and polemics are a substitute for
data, facts, references and statistics.
If
nothing else, the sharp difference between my reply and his response to it must
be noted. My reply takes care to reply to every point raised by him, and even
to every comment made by him, with logic and facts. Like his “review”, his
response to my reply avoids replying to or dealing with anything written by me,
and seeks to escape with name calling and general rhetoric.
But
most pathetic of all is his attempt, in a mail debate on an internet site
following my reply, to try his hand for once at interpreting data instead of
only depending on rhetoric. In this mail, he writes: “we have De-u-wa-at-ti in Mitanni (in the late period!) and
this is the same as Deva-vat in the old books […] one of the late Mitanni
princes has a name which is the same as one of the oldest RV names!”
Firstly,
Fournet has not at all understood the nature of the data. We can have someone
named Vikramaditya in twentieth century India,
but we could not have a name such as Rocky, or even Gurpreet or Pandurang, in
fifth century India.
The point is that the Avestan and Mitanni names predominantly include
name types which only came into existence in the Late period and books of the
Rigveda, and were completely missing
in the Early and Middle periods and books. If Fournet could manage to find an
old name still in use among the Mitanni,
it would prove nothing.
But
Fournet can not even find that. He tries to identify Mitanni De-u-wa-at-ti with the old
Devavat. But he only succeeds in putting his foot in his mouth. De-u-wa-at-ti
is not Devavāta but the late Devatithi (the name of the composer of hymn VIII.4).
It is not a lone or isolated name: we have the equivalents of Maryatithi,
Priyatithi, Mitratithi, Indratithi, Suryatithi, etc. in the Mitanni names. Are they all
Maryavat, Priyavat, Mitravat, Indravat, Suryavat, etc.? Fournet should stick to
jeering rhetoric. That is his only forte.
I
don’t think his pathetic response merits any further response.
_________________________________
Indology List Posts dt.11/6/2010 and
12/6/2010
Arnaud's post dt. 11/6/2010:
The Chicken-Run show goes on. So we have the second final final
reply. It's really funny to see that
1. on the one hand, we have Koenraad Elst parading on Cybalist,
where I cannot even post any reply at all.
2. on the other hand, Mr Talageri, who speaks about "having
the guts in their balls", is not even capable of showing up here himself.
Apart from these pathetic features, if we address a real issue, we
can see that Talageri is completely distorting the data.
<De-u-wa-at-ti> impossibly stands for devatithi as the
sequence -atithi is written <Su-wa-ti-ti> in the name Šuwatiti.
The reading -atithi (with three syllables) for -ati or -atti (with
two syllables) is invention.
As far as inventing data goes, we can further discuss the other
words:
Talageri wrote: "we have the equivalents of Maryatithi,
Priyatithi, Mitratithi, Indratithi, Suryatithi, etc. in the Mitanni names"
- Maryatithi does not
exist. Mariatti exists.
- Priyatithi this word is
bi-ri-(a)-at-ti possibly standing for viryatti (Note that the vowel -a- seems
to be long.
- Mitratithi what exists is a mutilated word mi-it-ta-xx-at-ti
possibly mittaratti? this word is not listed as potentially IA by some authors
(Gelb for example).
- Indratithi does not exist. Indaratti exists.
- Suryatithi does not exist. Suriatti exists.
- etc. which etc.??
Best
A
My Absolutely Final Reply To Fournet dt. 12/6/2010:
It is clear that Fournet really does not have the guts in his
balls to deal with the data and facts in my book. But since he has made
the mistake of taking up one piece of data, the Mitanni name Deuwatti, we can
confine the whole debate to this one word. [Incidentally, as I pointed out,
Fournet demonstrates here also his inability to understand English: he
quotes me saying "we have the equivalents of Maryatithi, Priyatithi,
Mitratithi, Indratithi, Suryatithi, etc. in the Mitanni names.", but he is not
able to understand what "the equivalents of" means, and thinks he
is countering me by making silly statements like
"Indratithi does not exist. Indaratti exists" etc.! Apparently
he is quite incapable of understanding that what I said was not that the
word "Indratithi" in this Sanskrit form is found in Mitanni, but that
"the equivalent of" Indratithi (=Indaratti) is found in Mitanni.
It is impossible to debate anything with a person whose brain is so
extremely obtuse].
In respect of Deuwatti, note that this name is found in company
with a host of other names: we will only take here those Mitanni names accepted
by Fournet in his response: Mariatti, Biriatti, Mitaratti, Indaratti,
Suriatti. Is it Fournet's claim that the atti in all these names is not
atithi? If so, what does he claim it is? More importantly, how many other serious
scholars studying the subject can he produce who will agree that the atti in
all these words is not atithi? Two of these names, Mitratithi and
Devatithi are found in the Rigveda itself. Or does Fournet claim that the
atti in Deuwatti alone (which he will claim is actually vatti)
is different from the atti in the other words (which is clearly not
vatti)? Again, how many serious scholars will agree with this convenient
exception?
Further, Fournet childishly argues: "The reading -atithi
(with three syllables) for -ati or -atti (with two syllables) is
invention". Then what about his reading "vatti" with two
syllables for his claimed "vat" with one syllable (since he
claims Deuwatti=Devavat)? Why the additional "ti" if it
represents Devavat? Also, ignorant Fournet (ignorant even after it is clearly
given in my book) is unaware that the known Avestan equivalent
of three syllabled Vedic "atithi" is two syllabled "asti"!
Fournet has staked his all on the one word Deuwatti. I
challenge this pathetic joker to show that the consensus or even the
majority scholarly opinion is on his side on this point.
__________________________
To avoid dealing with the Rig Vedic evidence and the IE isogloss evidence some people are now coming up with strange homeland theories by reviving long rejected ideas like Indo-Hittite and Indo-Uralic. Here is one such attempt
ReplyDeletehttps://www.academia.edu/41077803/Proto-Indo-Europeans_The_Prologue
Figure 1 shows the migration scheme. According to the author these routes apparently square well with the genetic evidence so far. Since we know that all the loans into Uralic from IIr are a one way traffic this paper can eventually be repurposed to support the OIT by adding the needed archaeological and genetic evidence.
The AIT argument has come down to a few genetic markers that diverged many thousand years ago and their unique clades are now found in South Asia and Eastern Europe. As most people know these markers are not unique to a particular language family and may not even be relevant to the debate. Be that as it may, here is a quote from the Kozintsev (2019) paper posted above regarding perhaps the most controversial of them all the R1a.
Delete"https://www.academia.edu/41077803/Proto-Indo-Europeans_The_Prologue
"More importantly, regarding any of the R1a clades as a PIE marker is tantamount to postulating that PIE originated in the steppe-an idea contradicted by all the available evidence. The distribution of these clades in modern Europe does not warrant the use of any of them as an IE marker (Belanovsky 2015: 71-72, 80-92, 107). According to Belanovsky et. al. (2013:30) "the Indo European MARKER DOES NOT EXIST, simply because the first population to speak Proto-Indo-European must have possessed a spectrum of haplogroups which were shared (or identical ) with its sister or neighbor populations that spoke other languages" (Kozintsev, 2019) emphasis added."
"There is mounting evidence that the most probable location of both the PIE and Uralic is the area east of the Caspian Sea. The former can be associated with the early farming cultures of Turkmenia and northern Iran. the latter with the Keltiminar culture (Kozintsev 2019). "
Mayuresh Madhav Kelkar, thanks for bringing up these valuable quotes from Kozintsev, (2019).
DeleteJust like Kozintsev(2019), Nichols(1997) too(mentioned many times in Talageri Ji's book) said that the origin of PIE homeland is EAST OF CASPIAN SEA.
Thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteMost welcome.
Deletelol why are you replying?
Deletelol. Learn English.
DeleteSure, what I typed that I need to correct? I was referring to Shrikant ji for posting this article that I asked him to.
DeleteAre you a polyglot? It seems so.
ReplyDeleteJust Marathi and Hindi, a bit of Gujarathi.
DeleteYou referring to yourself? This question is for Shrikant Talageri ji.
DeleteI came across this below information from a site, I thought it is worth to share these info with you.
ReplyDeleteDoes a link between Iranics and Germanics exist? The Indo-European migrations from 4000-1000 B.C. are definitely a testament of a common ancestor between these two peoples, however, either through sheer coincidence or a common origin, there are some striking similarities.
1)In Herodotus' Histories, he describes a Persian tribe known as the Germanians. Its similarity to "Germanic" is a sheer coincidence, as this is the etymology of the modern Iranian province of Kerman.
https://ibb.co/RvgBYRc
2)ASGARD(Norse Mythology) IS IN PERSIAN
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgerd
3)There is honestly a larger connection than I previously thought. It cannot be sheer coincidence that so many Iranian names have Germanic cognates.
Image "Asgaretia" "suedin"
https://ibb.co/MfxKtJX
https://ibb.co/GQr87gy
4)The Germanoi/Germanian tribe described by Herodotus, there too exists a cognate for Asgard (Ásgarðr), where Valhalla is located according to Norse mythology. This cognate exists both in Classical Persian history as well as modern day.
Image
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asgerd
https://ibb.co/zZ5C3K6
5) Other places with similar Germanic names in Iran
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German,_Iran
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alman,_Rasht
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suteh,_Kurdistan
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotvand
Some people have vested interests in supporting AIT so they wont give it up.
ReplyDeleteAryans are looking for their identity, they can't find it. therefore they have to fit Indians into their frame and then tell who we are!
i know this much, Indian culture stands for Moksha/Self Realisation/Mukti/Nirvana/Samadhi/Advaita etc and the first pre-requisite for that is to be free from Memories & Identities.
So lets not take an identity ourselves. but vehemently deny any such if imposed.