Nicholas Kazanas and Myself: Who Insulted Whom?

 

Nicholas Kazanas and Myself:

Who Insulted Whom?

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

I had intended my article, posted on 11 December 2022, to be my last blog, and announced in the article that it would be so. For various reasons, I was totally disillusioned with what is going on in India today, and I just wanted to call it quits and get out of this whole ugly swamp of dirty politics, even if it meant putting a complete halt to my fight for Hinduism and Indian Culture (which has been my life's purpose since I was in the second standard in school, 1965-66, as I have pointed out in the video interview uploaded by Sangam Talks four months ago). However, later, on the advice of many people, and after thinking over the matter with a cool head, I decided it would be madness to tie my own hands in this manner, and felt it better to write at least only when I felt like it, though not as frequently and not as passionately as before.

Such a point has come up with a reader's comment (on 27-12- 2022) to my last article, which was as follow: "Sir Dr.Nicholas Kazanas has mentioned you several times in his article- https://omilosmeleton.gr/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/A-Reply-to-Koenraad-Elst.pdf. He is criticizing several of your claims and claiming that you have insulted him in your 2008 book. Sir have you replied to this?"

Certainly I do have to reply to this!

 

For the readers, let me quote what Kazanas writes in the above article: "6. Elst displays, as we all do, the scholar’s trait of examining all possible sides of an argument to an extent that sometimes seems ridiculous. I mention two points only.

On p91 he raises the linguistics of Joanna Nichols which I used (and so did Talageri, in his 2008 publication, he informs us). Just before, he mentions me reprovingly in that I dismissingly mentioned Talageri’s study of 2008 of which I had heard but had not read. I had heard from Elst himself at a conference in the USA (he was carrying a copy with him). I had not read it because in the Introduction Talageri embarks on an insulting attack against N. Kazanas. Not even Witzel ever used such insulting terms against me. But, in any case, I had by then been convinced that Talageri knew no Sanskrit, and so I would not be interested in his treatment of a subject that requires knowledge of Sanskrit. So that is that".

 

No, that is not that. After making such an allegation (remember Witzel and his fans claiming that I had insulted Witzel's wife, to which I had given a fitting reply in a blog article), it cannot just be "that". I will set out the facts, and show a mirror to this hyper-arrogant man to whom I have been giving undeserved respect till now, which he returns by writing lies even as recently as in the above article one year ago (in October 2021).

I will only deal with his petty comments on what I wrote in my Introduction (actually my Preface) to my book in 2008. The rest of his references (only two or three) to me in the article are on points which are too petty and childish to deserve any reply. I leave it to readers to judge who insulted whom, and then further to judge the petty aspects of Kazanas's writings (which I have refrained from referring to before in writing).

The article will have two parts:

I. Who Insulted Whom?

II. Kazanas's Dubious Practices in Scholarship.

 

 

I. Who Insulted Whom?

Kazanas, referring to the Introduction/Preface of my book in 2008 (The Rigveda and the Avesta - The Final Evidence), writes: "in the Introduction Talageri embarks on an insulting attack against N. Kazanas. Not even Witzel ever used such insulting terms against me".

Let me quote exactly what I wrote in my Preface in 2008 (TALAGERI 2008:xx-xxii):

"In this context, I will mention only one OIT writer of this kind, because he has chosen to make his personal resentment public: the Greek writer Nicholas Kazanas. In his article “The Rigveda Date and Indigenism”, June 2006, on p. 10, he writes: “Indeed, in recent years also many publications advocated indigenism: Sethna 1992; Elst 1993; Frawley 1994 and with Rajaram 1997; Feuerstein et al 1995; and others”. In the footnote to this, he writes: “S. Talageri should perhaps be included but despite having some good ideas, this author knows no Sanskrit and has no training in Archaeology or other related disciplines and so goes astray constantly”

 

If Kazanas had merely refrained from mentioning my name in his list of writers who “advocated indigenism”, I would naturally have ignored the matter; but Kazanas chooses to make certain comments, and I will, only for this once, condescend to reply to these petty and pompous comments:

 

To begin with, whether or not Kazanas agrees with all the views expressed in my writings, and irrespective of his personal opinions of me, how can Kazanas claim that I do not fit into the single criterion mentioned by himself: of being the author of a publication which “advocated indigenism”, i.e. of being an “OIT” writer? What am I then to be classified as: an AIT writer? I would not, even in childish retaliation, seriously argue that Kazanas himself is not an OIT writer, any more than I could argue that he is not Greek, or he could argue that I am not an Indian. In fact, how many of those, named by himself in his list, would seriously agree with him, not only on my exclusion from a list of writers who “advocated indigenism”, but even on the deeper question of whether I “go astray constantly” and whether my work is therefore unfit for consideration? And even, let me add (even at the risk of sounding arrogant), on the basic question of whether their own names can be there in this particular context while mine is expressly excluded? 

 

Secondly, do all the scholars named in his above list know Sanskrit (and Vedic Sanskrit at that), and do they all have “training in Archaeology or other related disciplines”?  

      

The truth is that Kazanas initiated a discussion with me by e-mail, from 26/2/2005 to 28/4/2005, in which he tried to point out mistakes in my book (TALAGERI 2000). I am always extremely grateful to people who point out mistakes (whether printing mistakes, or mistakes of fact, data or reasoning) in my writings, since it helps me to correct those mistakes; and, as I told him in that e-mail correspondence, I prefer to have alleged instances of serious mistakes and errors in my writings to be pointed out to me now, when I am alive to be able to either justify myself or to correct those mistakes, than to have them bandied about much later when I am dead and gone and no more able to reply. But, the discussion took an unfortunate turn, due to unreasonable remarks and arguments from his side, and I noticed that it was starting to move round and round in circles (like the internet discussions mentioned above); so we mutually, and (at least on my side) as amicably as possible, decided to close the discussion without bearing any resentment.

 

Apparently, Kazanas, for all his spiritual talk, could not cleanse his mind of petty resentment. He had ended his side of the discussion with a Witzellian thrust, telling me that I was not really qualified to discuss, or write on, the subject since I “do not know” Sanskrit. One year later, in his above article (see quotation above), he again takes up the attack from that point. On the same grounds, he will be summarily dismissing my analysis of the evidence of the Avestan names, in this present volume, on the ground that I “do not know” Avestan.

 

"[Significantly, in his mail to me dated 12/04/2005, Kazanas had written: “I changed my views about IAs and the RV date because facts compelled my mind (and your 1993 opus helped greatly)”. And now I am not even to be counted among writers who “advocated indigenism”.]

 

There is a saying in various Indian languages: “you can wake up a person who is asleep, but you cannot wake up a person who is only pretending to be asleep”. I will, accordingly, henceforward only be concentrating on waking up people who are asleep, and not waste my time in trying to wake up people, from either the OIT side or the AIT side, who pretend to be asleep."

This is the sum total of my critical references to him in my 2008 book. It must be noted that:

After our rather spirited discussion in 2005, which he ended with the childish escape-route argument that my writings were not worthy of consideration because I "did not know Sanskrit", I decided that he was after all on "our side", and it would be best to avoid creating schisms in the OIT "camp". Also, Koenraad Elst was a fan of Kazanas's linguistic arguments on the reconstruction of PIE, and (please see the next section) I have also given him due respect at all times for his contributions in that respect.

However, one year later (in 2006), he went out of his way to make the snide remarks that I have quoted above. I did not bother to reply to it till two years later when I made the above remarks in the Preface of my book in 2008. If he finds those remarks "insulting" I wonder how we are to describe his totally unprovoked and extraneous remarks in his article in 2006. Those remarks are also blatant lies because, in our internet exchange in 2005 (which he himself has uploaded in full on his own site), in his mail of 12/4/2005, he admitted that he was initially a supporter of the AIT, but that "I changed my views about IAs and the RV date because facts compelled my mind (and your 1993 opus helped greatly)". If his own conversion to the OIT was based on my 1993 book (the first and most basic result of my studies), how does he justify claiming, and continuing to claim to this day, that my contribution to the OIT are not worthy of consideration because "this author knows no Sanskrit and has no training in Archaeology or other related disciplines and so goes astray constantly"?

 

In fact, let me state clearly and unashamedly that the full-fledged OIT is originally almost my single-handed brain-child: all other writers were concerned only with showing that the Rigveda was much older than alleged and that the Vedic culture was directly connected to the Harappan culture, and that there was no evidence for the AIT. All of them were totally indifferent to the fact that Indo-Aryan was just one of twelve Indo-European branches, and that to disprove the AIT it was necessary to have an alternate paradigm showing that those other branches migrated out of India. I formulated that paradigm and proved the major parts of the textual and linguistic evidence for it.

I am now no more willing to be respectful or even polite to pompous and over-opinionated textbook-worms, who pontificate that they know Sanskrit and I don’t. there are probably millions of people all over the world who have studied or can speak textbook Sanskrit (Classical or Vedic). How many of them would be able to analyze the Rigveda as I have done? After nearly thirty years of studying the historical Rigveda, I certainly know much more on the subject than most people. Recently, some people  raised (with a superior air) textbook arguments against certain words analyzed by me, like kavi cāyamāna, pṛthu-parśu, and vadhryaśva, but after I wrote articles on each of these words, they have retired from the debate worsted. Kazanas does not bother to give any examples of where my alleged lack of knowledge of Sanskrit leads me "astray", and how seriously astray. His pompous pronouncements from his ivory-tower pulpit seem to be enough for him, but are they enough for others?

So, I repeat to my readers: please consider all the above and judge as to who insulted whom in the above exchanges.

 

Note also that that same book in 2008 also contained some positive references to him, where I gave Kazanas (as also Witzel) credit for pointing out important mistakes by me in my 2000 book (The Rigveda - A Historical Analysis) TALAGERI 2008:

 

"The second mistake, pointed out to me by Kazanas in his correspondence with me, was the omission, in my list of references to the phrase sapta+sindhu in the Rigveda, of one verse:VIII.24.27. This was particularly unfortunate, since VIII.24.27 is the one verse in the Rigveda which the majority of western scholars accept as a direct reference to a land or region called Sapta Sindhavah (analogous to the Haptahəndu of the Avesta), while the others are indirect references, meaning “seven rivers”. In that list (TALAGERI 2000:114), I inadvertently omitted VIII.24.27, and erroneously named another verse, VIII.96.1, which in fact does not contain this phrase" (TALAGERI 2008:xxx).

 

"And it was just this kind of mistake that Kazanas chose to pounce on in his e-mail discussion with me (February to April 2005), referred to earlier. I was genuinely grateful to him for pointing out that in my list of references to the phrase sapta+sindhu on p. 114 of my book, I had omitted the most important reference, VIII.24.27. But it turned out that far from trying to be helpful, he was only out to insinuate that I had deliberately concealed this reference with some ulterior motive in mind. And the more I tried to point out how ridiculous it was to suggest that I would be trying to conceal evidence which was in my favour (and, in fact, if I had ignored the other, indirect, references to the phrase sapta+sindhu, and only taken into account the direct reference in VIII.24.27, which is the only reference generally accepted by the western scholars as referring to a region named “Land of the Seven Rivers”, then my geographical case would have been even stronger: I could have pointed out that not only western areas like Afghanistan, i.e. Gandhāri, but even the area where the Rigveda is alleged to have been composed, the Punjab, i.e. Sapta Sindhavah, is referred to only in the Late Books, while place names of the East, Kīkaṭa, etc., are referred to in the Early Books), the more he insisted on continuing to make an issue out of it.

Even so, I am genuinely grateful to him for pointing out the mistake, and to Witzel for pointing out the other, more important, mistake regarding the hymns referred to in the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa VI.18; and I will be grateful to anyone else who brings forward to my notice any similar mistakes in this present volume (although it has been my effort to try not to make similar careless mistakes this time). I will be happy if they do so in a friendly and helpful spirit, but the exercise will not be any the less welcome even if it is done with unfriendly or hostile intent: the point is that mistakes should always be corrected" (TALAGERI 2008:xxxi-xxxii).

 

And again, in my 2008 book itself, I gave Kazanas credit for another point:

 

"In spite of the fact that the Egyptians are not alleged to have come into Egypt from the Caucasus, they used imported woods from the Caucasus, rather than Egyptian woods, in the manufacture of their chariot. If the Vedic Aryans had immigrated into India from the outside, their chariots should certainly also have been manufactured from oak, elm, ash, hornbeam and birch, all of which are trees and woods that are alleged to have been known to them before their alleged immigration into India; but the Vedic Aryans used only purely Indian woods in the manufacture of their chariots. This is a very strong argument against the idea that they were immigrants from outside. [This point was first, so far as I know, made by Nicholas Kazanas] (TALAGERI 2008:102)."

 

 II. Kazanas's Dubious Practices in Scholarship.

Even after all the exchanges recorded above, I have always accorded respect to Kazanas's genuinely original and important contributions to the study of PIE Reconstruction.

I have referred to him positively wherever I was discussing the linguistic evidence for the OIT in my articles (and my talks) After 2008:

1. "Linguistically, the Vedic language is the only language which still retains the verbal roots of the most common cognate words in the different Indo-European languages. This point, first noted by Nicholas Kazanas, has been dealt with in more detail by Koenraad Elst, who points out that the roots of many of the most basic and commonest cognate words (for example, the words for father, son, daughter, bear, wolf, etc.) are still active and productive roots in the Vedic/Sanskrit language with many other words being created from the same verbal roots, while only these isolated cognate words are present in the other branches with no clear clues as to their etymologies" ("THE FULL OUT-OF-INDIA CASE IN SHORT - The Rigveda and the Aryan Theory: A Rational Perspective").

2. "Now Nicholas Kazanas and Koenraad Elst have shown in detail that Vedic/Sanskrit is the only language, among all the IE branch languages, which has organic coherence in the formation of words, in the form of an enormous number of basic and productive verbal roots or dhātus (about 700 dhātus, of which more than 200 are very productive roots) each producing a rich family of lexemes (i.e. distinct verbs, nouns, adjectives, all derived from the same root) while other languages only have isolated words without discernible roots (except through Sanskrit dhātus) or lexemes" (The complete Linguistic case for the Out-of-India Theory").

As will be seen, except when referring, in the Preface of my book in 2008, to his unwarranted insulting remarks about me in his article in 2006, I have always referred to him with respect and given him credit for his linguistic work in this field.

 

But now I think it is also time to speak about his darker side in this whole matter, which I have refrained from pointing out so far out of respect for his linguistic work: and this is about his tendency to plagiarize ideas or data from others without giving them any credit at all, and then behaving as if he were the initial originator of these ideas or even outright lying about it.

1. One example of this tendency is seen already above in his "Reply to Koenraad Elst" written just last year: "On p91 he raises the linguistics of Joanna Nichols which I used (and so did Talageri, in his 2008 publication, he informs us). Just before, he mentions me reprovingly in that I dismissingly mentioned Talageri’s study of 2008 of which I had heard but had not read." Very clearly, he has come to know about the work of Johanna Nichols, and its implications, from my book in 2008 (the very book where he claims I insulted him), but here he claims he "used" the works of Nichols on his own (after 2008) without knowing about my 2008 book, which he "had heard but not read" and about which he only came to know after Elst "informed" him about it much later (presumably after Elst read about Nichols' data in Kazanas' much later writings)!

Here, he puts his foot in his mouth, since he has definitely read my 2000 book "The Rigveda - A Historical Analysis", and referred to it critically many times, and already, in that book in 2000, I had first written in detail about the work of Nichols and its OIT implications (TALAGERI 2000:282-289), so he definitely already knew that I had brought out the OIT implications of Nichols' work, and, even if (as he falsely claims) he did not read my 2008 book, he already knew about Nichols' work from my 2000 book, and his claim that he was ignorant about my "use" of her work until he was "informed" by Elst about it is clearly a lie. But failing to give credit to others is a common trait of this revered scholar.

 

2. In my very first book in 1993, "The Aryan Invasion Theory", I had devoted a full chapter "Positive evidence in the Rigveda" (TALAGERI 1993:377-399) to Comparative Mythology where I compared the deities and myths of the different branches of IE, and showed that Vedic mythology is the only mythology which is close to the nature-origin of the myths and deities, and the only mythology which has common elements with all the other mythologies (Hittite, Greek, Germanic/Teutonic, Baltic-Slavic, Iranian) while none of the others can be connected with each other except through the common links with Vedic mythology. I further hammered this theme in my 2000 book in a whole chapter "Saramā and the Paṇis".

Now I was perhaps the first to undertake this study systematically to show the primacy of Vedic mythology among the different IE mythologies, and, as Kazanas admits that he got converted from AIT to OIT largely because of my 1993 book, and he has also read my 2000 book, he is clearly aware of all this. Nevertheless, he wrote an article, "Indo-European deities and the Ṛgveda", which was published in the Journal of Indo-European Studies in 2001, where he expands on my data (admittedly after some additional study), wherein he completely avoids mentioning my contribution, and actually claims his study to be a pioneering work on Comparative IE Mythology, after the studies by western scholars from the nineteenth century onwards which "have explored the correspondences, deviations and innovations in various motifs and deities in the different IE branches and these culminated in the 'New Comparative Mythology'—Cox, de Vries, Dumezil, Littleton, Polome, Puhvel, et al. several scholars have referred to mythology also in relation to establishing the PIE Urheimat (Renfrew 1989 250ff; Mallory 1989, ch V, J.P Schodt)"!

He has referred several times, in his writings after this, to his pioneering study in Comparative IE mythology in establishing the "Indigenous Aryans" case!

 

3. My book in 2008 (The Rigveda and the Avesta - The Final Evidence) was the first to present the massive evidence showing that the Rigveda preceded the Avesta by a huge chronological margin, and that in fact the Avesta belonged to, or even after, the period of the New Rigveda (the New Books of the Rigveda. 1, 5, 8-10).

Even if we accept Kazanas' lie that he did not read the rest of the book after the Preface, he did at least read the title of the book, and knew what it was about.

And yet, after this, he wrote many articles showing the same thing, nowhere giving me credit for the original study, but building upon my 2008 book (carefully avoiding the evidence of the Name-types, and concentrating only on common words). And not only does he pretend to be the first to bring out this evidence, he is even righteously indignant (in his 2021 article "Reply to Koenraad Elst") about not being given credit for the same by Elst: "I end this Reply with my surprise that Elst made no use of the extensive evidence I procured in favor of the priority of the RV against the Avesta. To be fair, he does mention the paper “Vedic & Avestan” and its theme that Vedic is much older than Avestan; but this is supported by shiploads of linguistic and literary evidences. Furthermore, the evidence shows beyond any doubt that the Avesta corresponds more or less with the later hymns of the RV only." He does not however, expect anyone to be surprised about his total silence on the fact that it was I, and not he, who first brought out this evidence !!

 

4. In the context of the Internal Chronology of the Rigveda (first set out by me in my 2000 book, and later elaborated beyond refutation in my 2008 book, and now in my recent blogs about the Chronological Gulf Between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda), a very strange thing written by him must also be noted:

In my book in 2000, I classified the ten books of the Rigveda into Old (6.3.7), Middle (4,2) and New (5,1,8,9,10). In my subsequent works, I continued with this classification, but concentrated more on a grouping of the Old Rigveda (consisting of the Old and Middle Books 6,3,7,4,2) and the New Rigveda (the New Books 5,1,8,9,10), for the simple reason that even the western scholars would not be able to dispute this grouping, since it has already been unwittingly ratified by Oldenberg, Witzel, Proferes, and others (while the division within the Old Rigveda into Old and Middle has not).

Kazanas, in his comparative chronological studies of the Rigveda and the Avesta, fully accepts this internal chronological division (and, in his article "Vedic and Avestan", writes: "all in all I accept Talageri's scheme, but not his view that it took about 2000 years to complete the Ṛgveda") — strange, since the "scheme" comes from a person whose works have little value because he "does not know Sanskrit"!

And then, a paragraph or so later comes this strange sentence:

"for my purposes, I shall make the following simple division:

Early books 3, 6 and 7;

Middle 2, 4;

Late 5, 1, 8, 9 and 10;

Probably Talageri on his part, Witzel on his own part, and others with different preferences, will disagree. So be it."

I, for one, am totally unable to explain or even understand this mysterious sentence. I myself have formulated this "simple division" as early as 2000 and in all later writings, and Kazanas himself even admits this a few paragraphs earlier. And yet, here he claims that it is he who is making this "simple division" and that "Probably Talageri will disagree"! Perhaps this mysterious sentence is in Sanskrit, which I "do not know", which is why I am confused about it?

 

5. There are many points in the e-mail discussion between Kazanas and myself in 2005, which Kazanas himself has posted in full on his site (unless he takes it down now) which can be elaborated to show Kazanas' tendency to prevaricate and to vaccilate in his pronouncements and actions. I will not bother to go into them in detail, but it is not worth it. I will only mention one point:

During that discussion, I told him about the pioneering article "Prāgāthikāni" by my favorite Indologist, Edward Hopkins, about which he admitted he was totally unaware. He asked me to send it to him, but, since I was more techno-illiterate at the time, I wrote: "I am genuinely sorry, I do not know how to send you the two articles by Hopkins. I have them in printouts, and do not know the procedure for getting them scanned and sent. They are from JAOS 1896, and JAOS 1898". However, a few mails later, he wrote back: "Agarwal sent me the 2 Hopkins papers and I have read the 1898 one and 1/4 of the 1896. I don’t care much for them. Here I must stop because I must think of my secretary also who has much else to do." I was shocked at his casual and dismissive attitude, and (after he accused me of basing myself on emotions rather than on facts) I could not refrain from writing: "Your insistence on all the Indo-European ancestral groups having actually been part of the Rigvedic culture by that name, your respect for the 'Vedic Tradition which says that the RV was compiled[...]at 3102', even your casual dismissal of Hopkins papers with 'I don’t care much for them' (which really leaves me literally speechless), all seem to me more emotional than objective".

Later on, in his "pioneering" studies comparing the Rigveda and the Avesta, Kazanas makes plentiful use of Hopkins' paper, which he had contemptuously dismissed earlier, and which I had thrust on his notice.

Much more could be written after a detailed search through Kazanas' prolific writings. But I will stop here. Let me again repeat that Kazanas's contributions in the linguistic field are extremely valuable and important. I have said this in the past and will say it in future also. But his tendency to pick ideas from others, and, after some more study, presenting them as his own original contributions, is deplorable. And even more deplorable is the total lack of respect for people from whom he plagiarizes ideas (without giving credit for them) and claims to be a pioneer of those ideas , and his superior dismissal of their works on childish grounds. I would request him to shed his superiority complex, and dubious scholarly practices, which would still leave him as a great scholar in his own right and a pioneer in many aspects of linguistic studies on the Indo-European question.