Is the Harappan Script Deciphered? If not, is the Harappan Language Likely to be “Aryan” (Indo-European) or Dravidian?

 

Is the Harappan Script Deciphered? If not, is the Harappan Language Likely to be “Aryan” (Indo-European) or Dravidian?

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

No, I am not writing this article claiming to be an expert on the subject and able to provide a final answer as to the decipherment of the script (or should I say “alphabet”?). Yes, the Harappan language is very, very likely to be “Aryan” (Indo-European) and equally very, very unlikely to be Dravidian (or indeed anything non-Indo-European), not yet (in my opinion) on the basis of the decipherment of the script, but on other very, very solid pieces of evidence, data and logic. As I have always said, the absolutely final conclusive (i.e. indisputable) answer can only come when the alphabet is conclusively deciphered beyond any reasonable doubt (which I honestly don’t think has happened yet, but I will answer that question, and explain my answer, more in detail further on in Section III of this article), But, till that final conclusive answer is reached, the very much greater likelihood is that it is “Aryan” (Indo-European).

The reason I thought of placing my thoughts on this subject in black and white was due to a question posed to me by someone in a personal mail: “As per recent news reports, seals found at keeladi in Tamilnadu are similar to seals found at Indus Valley. Is this true?  Tamilnadu  Chief Minister has declared prize for a person who deciphers the Indus valley script. He thinks Indus valley civilisation is Tamil Civilisation. Kindly clarify”.

 

Actually, these are two totally distinct issues: firstly, can we say the Harappan language was Indo-European even without the (undoubtedly final and conclusive) evidence of an indisputable decipherment of the Harappan script? And secondly, is the Harappan script in fact deciphered and to what degree of certainty? There is a third alternate issue which also has to be dealt with before the second one (which actually is the main subject of this article), and which is mooted by many people: can there be a pre-Harappan AIT followed by a IE/Indo-Aryan/Vedic Harappan civilization?

So the three questions must be separately answered:

I. Can the Harappan language conclusively be considered Indo-European rather than non-Indo-European?

II. Could there be AIT followed by an “Aryan” Harappan civilization?

III. Is the Harappan Script deciphered?

 

 

I. Can the Harappan language conclusively be considered Indo-European rather than non-Indo-European.

So let me first put very clearly the reasons why, irrespective of whether the Harappan script is ever deciphered or not, the very much greater likelihood or even certainty is that the Harappan language is “Aryan” (Indo-European).

 

Reason 1. Basic honest Logic:

Firstly, the only languages ever known (known, as opposed to speculated or theorized) to have been spoken in the areas of the Harappan civilization are Indo-European languages: the only non-Indo-European language spoken in the area (excluding Burushaski spoken to its north) is Brahui (a Dravidian language), but all linguists (all of them staunch believers in, and supporters of the AIT) including Elfenbeim, Witzel, Southworth and Hock, now accept that Brahui is a migrant from the South to Baluchistan just around a thousand or so years ago. As Witzel points out, “its presence has now been explained by a late migration that took place within this millennium (Elfenbeim 1987)” (WITZEL 2000a:§1). Likewise, Southworth, even while urging a Dravidian presence in the Harappan areas, admits that: “Hock (1975:87-8), among others, has noted that the current locations of Brahui, Kurux and Malto may be recent” (SOUTHWORTH 1995:272, fn22).

The first rule of logic is that unless some actual recorded and deciphered evidence is found (in any disputed area, or in contemporary references to that area in the records of other known civilizations) indicating that a language (or language-family), other than the one presently found spoken all over the disputed area, was spoken in that area earlier, then, pending any new concrete evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that the same language (or language-family) was spoken in that area in an earlier unrecorded historical period under discussion as has been spoken in all known and recorded historical periods. If some civilization with undeciphered records (or no records at all) is discovered in China, it must be logically assumed (until evidence is found to the contrary) that the language of that civilization was Sinitic, and if some civilization with undeciphered records (or no records at all) is discovered in Tamilnadu, it must be logically assumed (until evidence is found to the contrary) that the language of that civilization was Dravidian. Assuming the contrary without concrete evidence only indicates a predetermined and unscientific bias, and the onus of proving their contention with concrete evidence lies on the scholars insisting that a different language(-family) was spoken in that area earlier, and not on the scholars insisting that the same language(-family) was spoken as at present (or as in the earliest recorded history).

 

Reason 2. The Scientific Dating of the two parts of the Rigveda:

We have the Rigveda, a text whose geographical horizon spreads over almost exactly the same area (western U.P. and Haryana in the east to Afghanistan in the northwest) as the Harappan civilization:

The periods of the two (the Rigveda and the Harappan civilization) also coincide almost exactly:

The roots of the archaeologically attested Harappan Civilization (see also the Wikipedia article on "Indus Vally Civilization") go back to at least 7000 BCE, but the main phases of the full-fledged Civilization are as follows:

Phase 1. Pre-Harappan: 3300-2600 BCE.

Phase 2. Mature Harappan: 2600-1900 BCE.

Phase 3. Late Harappan: 1900-1300 BCE.

The textually attested Rigvedic Civilization also has an almost identical division into phases:

Phase 1. Old Rigveda: 3300-2600 BCE.

Phase 2. New Rigveda: 2600-1900 BCE.

Phase 3. Finalization Period and last parts of Book 10: 1900-1400 BCE.

 

Now since those who have newly arrived in this discussion (or in my writings on this subject) will wonder how I have given the above dates to the Rigvedic phases, let me set out the evidence in detail:

1. The Rigveda is a text which has been preserved orally from the time of composition of each hymn without the slightest change. As usual, I will quote Michael Witzel's repeated testimony:

“Right from the beginning, in Ṛgvedic times, elaborate steps were taken to insure the exact reproduction of the words of the ancient poets. As a result, the Ṛgveda still has the exact same wording in such distant regions as Kashmir, Kerala and Orissa, and even the long-extinct musical accents have been preserved. Vedic transmission is thus superior to that of the Hebrew or Greek Bible, or the Greek, Latin and Chinese classics. We can actually regard present-day Ṛgveda recitation as a tape recording of what was composed and recited some 3000 years ago. In addition, unlike the constantly reformulated Epics and Purāṇas, the Vedic texts contain contemporary materials. They can serve as snapshots of the political and cultural situation of the particular period and area in which they were composed. […] as they are contemporary, and faithfully preserved, these texts are equivalent to inscriptions. […] they are immediate and unchanged evidence, a sort of oral history ― and sometimes autobiography ― of the period, frequently fixed and ‘taped’ immediately after the event by poetic formulation. These aspects of the Vedas have never been sufficiently stressed […]” (WITZEL 1995a:91).

“It must be underlined that just like an ancient inscription, these words have not changed since the composition of these hymns c.1500 BCE, as the RV has been transmitted almost without any change […] The modern oral recitation of the RV is a tape recording of c.1700-1200 BCE.” (WITZEL 2000a:§8).

[I usually give a long series of quotations on this point from different papers of Witzel. Here, I will let these two representative quotations suffice].

 

2. The scholars, from Oldenberg through Witzel to Proferes, are unanimous that the Rigveda basically falls into two parts:

The Rigveda consists of 10 Manḍalas or books (containing 1028 hymns and 10552 verses), chronologically classified as follows:

To begin with, the western academic scholars themselves, from Oldenberg through Michael Witzel to Theodore Proferes (see TALAGERI 2008:132-135 for details), have classified the books of the Rigveda into two groups: the family books (2-7) and the non-family books (1, 8-10), and testified, on the basis of their own analyses, that the family books were composed and compiled before the non-family books. Further, they have detached book 5 from the other family books and concluded that it agrees with the non-family books rather than with the other family books. By their analysis, the books of the Rigveda can be classified into three categories: the earlier family books (2-4, 6-7), the later family book (5), and the even later non-family books (1, 8-10).

 

As I have shown in my article "Final Version of the Chronological Gulf between the Old Rigveda and the New Rigveda", the huge number of New Words and New Meters in the Rigveda is found, in the three categories of hymns, as follows:

1. Old Rigveda Books 2,3,4,6,7:  0/280  Hymns, 0/2368 verses, 0 words.  +0 hymns with New Meters.

2. Redacted Hymns in Old Books 2,3,4,6,7:  61/62  Hymns,  470/873 verses, 724 words. +6 hymns with New Meters.

3. New Rigveda Books 1,5,8,9,10:  684/686 Hymns, 4256/7311 verses, 6828 words. +96 hymns with New Meters.

This is the extent of the chronological gulf separating the Old Rigveda from the New Rigveda, showing that the composition of the Old Rigveda took place in a much more ancient age than the composition of the New Rigveda. And, as I have pointed out in the article, the number of words, hymns and verses given in my article may just be the tip of the iceberg.

 

3. Before the Ashoka pillars and edicts, there is no scientifically datable evidence of chronology anywhere in India. The Rigveda, though they are in effect "inscriptions", "snapshots" and "tape recordings" (in the words of Witzel) of their form at the time each hymn was composed, cannot be scientifically dated (carbon dating, etc.). The same is the case with the hymns of the ancient Iranian Avesta which is so closely culturally linked to the Rigveda. However, another third database closely linked to the two provides us the scientific dating which gives us the general scientific time frame for the Rigveda: this database is the actual scientifically dated linguistic material concerning the Mitanni people who ruled a huge part of Syria and Iraq between 1550-1260 BCE, and are known from other records to have been prominently present in West Asia at least two centuries earlier.

These Mitanni people were of "Indo-Aryan" linguistic origin, a fact accepted by the scholarly academic world. In fact, the presence of "Indo-Aryans" in West Asia as early as 1750 BCE was so unsettling to the theory that "Indo-Aryans" entered India and composed the Rigveda only after 1500 BCE, that a theory was agreed upon that the Mitanni Indo-Aryans had separated from the pre-Vedic Indo-Aryans in Central Asia itself at some early period, and had migrated westwards into West Asia even before the pre-Vedic Indo-Aryans entered northwestern India to later compose the Rigveda.

However, an examination of the common names and name-types in the Rigveda and the Mitanni records shows that the common elements are found only in the New Rigveda (and continue to be found in later texts) but are totally missing in the Old Rigveda: the distribution of these common Rigvedic-Mitanni names and name types in the Rigveda is as follows:

Among the composers of the Rigveda (108 hymns):

New Rigveda: 108 hymns:

V. 3-6, 24-26, 46, 47, 52-61, 81-82 (21 hymns).

I. 12-23, 100 (13 hymns).

VIII. 1-5, 23-26, 32-38, 46, 68-69, 87, 89-90, 98-99 (24 hymns).

IX. 2, 27-29, 32, 41-43, 97 (9 hymns).

X. 14-29, 37, 46-47, 54-60, 65-66, 75, 102-103, 118, 120, 122, 132, 134, 135, 144, 154, 174, 179 (41 hymns).

 

Within the references in the Rigveda (79 hymns, 128 verses, 131 references):

Redacted Hymns: 2 hymns, 2 verses and 2 references:

VII. 33.9 (1 hymn, 1 verse and reference).

IV. 30.18 (1 hymn, 1 verse and reference).

New Rigveda: 77 hymns, 126 verses and 129 references:

V. 19.3; 27.4,5,6; 33.9; 36.6; 44.10; 52.1; 61.5,10; 79.2; 81.5 (9 hymns, 12 verses and references).

I. 35.6; 36.10,11,17,18; 38.5; 45.3,4; 83.5; 100.16,17; 112.10,15,20; 116.2,6,16; 117.17,18; 122.7,13; 139.9; 163.2; 164.46 (13 hymns, 24 verses and references).

VIII. 1.30,30,32; 2.37,40; 3.16; 4.20; 5.25; 6.45; 8.18,20; 9.10; 21.17,18; 23.16,23,24; 24.14,22,23,28,29; 26.9,11; 32.30; 33.4; 34.16; 35.19,20,21; 36.7; 37.7; 38.8; 46.21,33; 49.9; 51.1,1; 68.15,16; 69.8,18; 86.17 87.3 (24 hymns, 42 verses and 44 references).

IX. 43.3; 65.7 (2 hymns, 2 verses and references).

X. 10.7,9,13,14; 12.6; 13.4; 14.1,5,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15; 15.8; 16.9; 17.1; 18.13; 21.5; 33.7; 47.6; 49.6; 51.3; 52.3; 58.1; 59.8; 60.7,10; 61.26; 64.3; 73.11; 80.3; 92.11; 97.16; 98.5,6,8; 123.6; 132.7,7; 135.17; 154.4,5; 165.4 (29 hymns,  46 verses and 47 references).

 

The only other important Mitanni word is the word maini (bead, jewel): the Rigvedic word maṇi "bead, jewel", is found just twice (I.33.8; 122.14) in the New Rigveda, 78 times in the Atharvaveda, and countless times throughout the subsequent Vedic and Sanskrit literature; and is an extremely common and popular word in all modern Indo-Aryan languages, and in all non-IE languages influenced by Sanskrit. It is completely missing in the Old Rigveda.

This shows that the ancestors of the West Asian Mitanni separated from the Rigvedic people during the period of composition of the New Rigveda, and long after the period of composition of the Old Rigveda (since the language they took with them was the language of the New Rigveda). Since they were already settled in West Asia by the nineteenth century BCE, they must have left the area of composition of the New Rigveda long before 2000 BCE. So the period of composition of the New Rigveda itself had started well before 2000 BCE. And the period of composition of the Old Rigveda therefore goes back even longer before  2000 BCE.

 

4. Again, the area of composition of the New Rigveda was in India. And the area of composition of the Old Rigveda was even further east within India: the oldest Book 6 is located fully to the east of the Sarasvati river in Haryana, the next two Books 3 and 7 record the expansion of the Vedic people westwards into the Punjab, and the next Book 4 records their expansion into Afghanistan. So, long, long before 2000 BCE and the commencement of composition of the New Rigveda (however many centuries a sceptic may decide this period to be), the Vedic civilization had already been long established to the east of the Punjab. It was therefore from India and the Harappan area that the Mitanni migrated westwards into West Asia before settling down there by at least the nineteenth century BCE.

All the above is based on rock-solid and unchallengeable data, and incontrovertibly shows that both the area and period of composition of the Rigveda and area and period of the Harappan civilization almost exactly coincide with each other.

 

5. Finally, what is the linguistic and historical position shown by the data in the Old Rigveda in that period long, long before 2000 BCE and in an area coinciding with the area of the Harappan civilization? It is as follows:

(a) The Old Rigveda does not remember any place outside India, much less any migration from that area or any invasion-of/migration-into India.

(b) The Old Rigveda does not refer to any non-Indo-European people in the local surroundings, either as friends or enemies, much less as local people (as opposed to themselves as newly-arrived outsiders) who were conquered by them.

(c) The local river names and animal names in the Old Rigveda are purely Indo-Aryan names. This phenomenon is noted even by Witzel with surprise: “A better case for the early linguistic and ethnic history of India can be made by investigating the names of rivers. In Europe, river names were found to reflect the languages spoken before the influx of Indo-European speaking populations. They are thus older than c. 4500-2500 B.C. (depending on the date of the spread of Indo-European languages in various parts of Europe).” (WITZEL 1995a:104-105). But, in sharp contrast, “in northern India rivers in general have early Sanskrit names from the Vedic period, and names derived from the daughter languages of Sanskrit later on.[…] This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri”. (WITZEL 1995a:105-107). Blažek (in his paper "Hydronymia Ṛgvedica") shows that out of 29 river-names, 22 have purely Indo-Aryan names, and the rest have suggested Indo-Aryan as well as suggested non-Indo-Aryan alternative etymologies.

Clearly, the earliest phases of Rigvedic composition must go long back before even 3000 BCE.

 

Reason 3. The Evidence of Cattle:

Then we have the evidence of cattle: the Rigvedic culture is a purely pastoral culture reflecting to the full the pastoral nature of the reconstructed PIE culture. At the same time, the Harappan culture is an urban+pastoral culture. It is funny to hear people contrasting the Rigvedic culture with the Harappan culture on the ground that the first is pastoral and the second is urban: they bank on the fact that people swallow boldly-declared pulpit pronouncements without using their brains (or, to be more charitable, perhaps out of ignorance about the facts). The fact here is that of the two species of domesticated cattle in the world, one was domesticated in the Harappan area by the Harappans: The wikipedia article on "Cattle" unambiguously tells us: "Archeozoological and genetic data indicate that cattle were first domesticated from wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) approximately 10,500 years ago. There were two major areas of domestication: one in the area that is now Turkey, giving rise to the taurine line, and a second in the area that is now Pakistan, resulting in the indicine line [….] European cattle are largely descended from the taurine lineage".

All other academic sources regularly point out that "the Indus Valley Civilization" was one of the two centers of domestication of cattle: "The earliest evidence of cattle herding in south Asia comes from the Indus River Valley site of Mehrgarh and is dated to ~7,000 YBP (Meadow 1993)" (ROMERO 2013:256)!

Does all this make the Harappan civilization a non-pastoral one, and that too, to the extent that this suffices as evidence that it cannot be identified with the pastoral “Aryans”?

As an article in the Hindu points out"“When we talk about Harappans, we always refer to the metropolitan cities and the big towns. But we have no idea of the parallel economy — agro-pastoral or rural. We know they had great urban planning, trading systems, jewellery making. But we don't have any idea how the common masters were living during the Harappan times, their lifestyle and how they were contributing in the larger network,” explains Prabodh Shirvalkar, from the Department of Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology at the Deccan College Postgraduate and Research Institute, Pune. He is one of the authors of the papers published in Scientific Reports. [….] “The Harappans did not just use dairy for their household. The large herd indicates that milk was produced in surplus so that it could be exchanged and there could have been some kind of trade between settlements. This could have given rise to an industrial level of dairy exploitation,” adds Dr. Chakraborty." (PACHA 2020).

 

The Rigvedic culture is likewise, a pastoral culture best and most fully representing the PIE heritage:

The Rigveda is an extremely cow-centered text. Not only is the cow mentioned many more times than any other animal (including the horse), but the word go-/gau- in the Rigveda is replete with many naturalistic and mystic meanings (where it represents the rays of the sun, the earth, the stars, and many other more mystic things not within the scope of this article) showing it to be a central feature of the Rigvedic religion and socio-economic environment.

But even more linguistically important is that the Sanskrit language contains every single common IE word associated with cows and cattle:

Mallory tells us there are three different words for "cow" in the IE languages, *g^wṓus, *h1eĝh, and *wokéh_a-. The first, as we saw, is found in all the twelve branches. As for the other words for cow, bull, cattle, they are all found in Indo-Aryan + in different other branches:

a. *h1eĝh "cow": Skt. ahī-, Armenian ezn, Celtic (Old Irish) ag.

b. *wokéh_a- "cow": Skt. vaśā-, Italic (Latin) vacca.

c. *phekhu- "livestock": Skt. paśu-, Iranian (Avestan) pasu-, Italic (Latin) pecū, Germanic (Old English) feoh, Baltic (Lithuanian) pēkus.

d. *uk^(w)sēn "ox": Skt. ukṣan-, Iranian (Avestan) uxšan, Tocharian okso, Germanic (English) ox, Celtic (Old Irish) oss.

e. *wṛs-en "bull": Skt. vṛṣṇí-, Iranian (Avestan) varəšna-.

f. *usr- "cow/bull": Skt. usra/usrā, Germanic ūro (from ūrochso).

g. *domh_oyos "young bull":  Skt. damya-, Celtic (Old Irish) dam, Albanian dem, Greek damálēs.

This last is particularly significant. Gamkrelidze points out the following: "that speakers of Proto-Indo-European were among those who domesticated wild cattle is also shown by the presence in Indo-European of another term for 'bull', derived from the verb *t'emH- 'tame, subdue: bridle: force': OIr dam 'bull', Ved. damya- 'young bull to be tamed', Alb. dem 'young bull', (Mayrhofer 1963:II.35), Gr. damálēs, 'young bull to be tamed', damálē 'heifer'" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:491). The weight of the evidence, however, shows that this "taming" took place in the area of the Vedic people in the Indus-Sarasvati area, and not in West Asia as Gamkrelidze tries to suggest.

Further, the following two words also illustrate the developed role of dairying in the PIE world (as best reflected in the Rigvedic language and culture):

a) Skt. goṣṭhá- and Celtiberian (an extinct Celtic language spoken in Spain) boustom, "cattle-shed"; and

b) a common PIE word for "udder": Skt. ūdhar-, Greek oŭthar, Latin ūber, Germanic (English) udder. Again, Indo-Aryan is the common factor.

[Significantly, the "Near Eastern migratory term" taurus borrowed from Semitic referred to by Gamkrelidze is missing in the three eastern branches (Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Tocharian) but found in all the other western branches, indicating that it was a non-IE word borrowed by the west-emigrating branches as they passed through the Semitic areas].

 

Therefore, the intrinsic pastoral nature of both the Harappan as well as Rigvedic cultures being beyond doubt, are we to assume (in order to fit this into the AIT model) that the “Indo-Aryans” coincidentally marched from an intrinsically pastoral (Steppe) area to another different intrinsically pastoral (Harappan) area bringing with them the fullest pastoral cultural terminology of the Steppes? this could have been a last desperate plea had it not been for one very big factor which throws a massive spanner in the works of the AIT machine: we should find two varieties of traditional cattle in India: the indigenous "indicine line" of cattle domesticated by the Harappans, and the different "taurine line" of cattle brought in by the very prolifically pastoral "Vedic Indo-Aryans". However, the fact is that, till modern colonial times, all the cattle in India have only belonged to the single "indicine line" (Bos indicus) of domesticated cattle.

To accommodate this fact into the AIT will require extraordinarily special pleading: that the "Indo-Aryans" migrated all the way from the Steppes to India over a period of centuries as a "pastoral people", alone (among all the branches) carrying with them the entire PIE pastoral vocabulary, with all its mythic elements and imagery, but they did not bring any cattle with them at all. By a strange coincidence, they landed up in the very area of domestication of a different (from the variety of cattle known to them in the Steppes) species of domesticated cattle, and thereby reclaimed their Steppe pastoral heritage with the help of these indicine cattle — so conveniently domesticated for them by the Harappans only to provide these immigrants with a readymade pastoral environment (reminiscent of the Steppe Homeland they had left far behind them in the distant past) so that they did not feel like strangers in a foreign land! Or, of course, it could be that they did bring the taurine cattle with them, but they liked the local indicine cattle so much that they killed off all their own taurine cattle and completely destroyed all traces of them (perhaps swallowed up even the bones), and then transferred their pastoral loyalties to the cattle domesticated by the Harappans!

Obviously, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the people (the Harappans) who domesticated these indicine (zebu) cattle in the northwest of India, and the Rigvedic Aryans who developed such a very "pastoral" culture on the basis of these very indicine cattle of northwestern India, were broadly one and the same. And the same goes for the Proto-Indo-Europeans, whose culture, reconstructed on the basis of the common elements in all the branches, was the very same "pastoral" culture of the Rigveda in an earlier period.

 

The evidence of the Harappan cattle goes even farther in establishing the validity of the OIT: while the taurine cattle of the west appear in India only in colonial and modern times, the emigration of the indicine cattle (obviously along with Indo-European speakers migrating out of India) is being established by more and more scholarly studies: recent scientific genetic studies of cattle have confirmed that the Indian humped zebu cattle, domesticated in the Harappan area since thousands of years, suddenly started appearing in West Asia as well as Central Asia around 2200 BCE, and by 2000 BCE there was largescale mixing of the Indian zebu cattle, bos indicus, with the genetically distinct western species of cattle, bos taurus, in West Asia.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6449/173 

Clearly the evidence from genetic studies of the presence and spread of domesticated cattle completely negates the AIT scenario, and at the same time emphatically confirms the OIT scenario. The expansion westwards of the Anu tribes (including the proto-Iranian speakers) is recorded in the Rigveda, and, as we have shown earlier, the Mitanni people also migrated to West Asia during that period, which characterizes the appearance not only of the indicine Harappan cattle but also of the Indian elephant and the Indian peacock in West Asia.

So the genetic “sinners”* who try to trace the migrations of languages through the migration of genes had better take note of this more solid genetic evidence of cattle migration.

[*To repeat golden words: Max Muller himself (accused of being the prime original proponent of the AIT) had declared (seeing the excesses of racist scholars) that “an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar”. Today, he would have said: “a geneticist who speaks of IE genes and Dravidian haplogroups is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a R1a dictionary or a M1 grammar”.]

 

Reason 4. The Evidence of Lactase Persistence:

From cattle, let us come back to people − but in a related context. The AIT experts tell us that the pastoral “Aryans” who came from outside, invaded and displaced the “Dravidian” Harappans, occupied the Northwest and drove the “Dravidian” Harappans to the South.

Tony Joseph confidently presents this argument in his book: "A countrywide screening of DNA samples from all major language groups and regions of India to answer questions about lactase persistence (the technical term for the ability to digest milk after infancy) came to many conclusions, three of which are as follows: first, its distribution in India follows a general north-west to south-east declining pattern. Second, the mutation is identical to the European one. Third, only about a fifth of Indians can digest milk into adulthood, with people in western and northern India being the most likely to do so. The frequency of the gene ranges from over 40% in certain parts of western and northern India to less than 1 per cent in parts of north-east India" (JOSEPH 2018:218).

In short, the “pastoral Aryans” − who came to India through the northwest, settled down there, and drove the local non-Aryans (=Dravidians) southwards − had developed “lactase persistence (the technical term for the ability to digest milk after infancy)” since they were pastoralists. Hence, the northwest of India, where the “pastoral Aryans” settled down, has the highest lactase persistence (“over 40%”) which becomes less and less (“to less than 1 per cent”) as one moves eastwards and southwards into India where we find the original non-Aryans (=Dravidians and others), who were not originally pastoral and hence had no original lactase persistence.

This fraudulent argument works only if one wrongly or ignorantly assumes the Harappans were non-pastoral. As we saw above, the truth is that they were the oldest pastoralists in India: of the two species of domesticated cattle in the world, one was domesticated in the Harappan area by the Harappans. So they must in fact have had the highest lactase persistence. If the AIT is true, the Dravidians in the South (if they were the original Harappans) should have had the highest lactase persistence. But they do not!

Note the first map (ROMERO 2013:253) directly showing the levels of lactase persistence in India: the areas marked green and yellow have high levels of lactase persistence, while those marked in blue have low levels. Note that the map, which represents the scientifically analysed levels of lactase persistence in India today (and not in Harappan times) actually directly presents us with a map (in yellow and green) of the areas covered by the Harappan sites in the days of the Harappan civilization. In short, the areas which must have had lactase persistence in those days (the areas of the Harappans who had domesticated the zebu or indicine cattle) are exactly the same as the areas which have lactase persistence today, i.e. roughly the same people occupy those areas today whose ancestors occupied them in the days of the Harappan civilization. This is incompatible with the AIT scenario.

Interestingly, note the second map above, representing a larger geographical picture depicting this lactase persistence over a much larger part of the Old World, shown in the following article, with a slightly different color scheme. Here, the red and yellow areas show the higher incidence of lactase persistence, and the blue and green areas show the lower incidence of lactase persistence.

https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2148-10-36 

It will be noticed that if we logically accept that the areas (red and yellow) whose population practised pastoralism over a historically longer period of time show a higher degree of lactase persistence, and the areas (blue and green) whose population practised pastoralism over a historically shorter period of time show a lower degree of lactase persistence, then the Steppe areas (as well as Anatolia, the Caucasus areas and northern Iran, and even Central Asia) which are regularly touted as the original or transitory Homelands of the Indo-European pastoralists, are in blue and green, discounting the idea that pastoralism originated there, while the core Harappan area continues to be in red and yellow.

And again note that the Dravidian South, is in (non-pastoral) blue and green, while both the areas (the Harappan areas as per the AIT, and the area of Elam as per the DIT) touted as as the original habitats of the Dravidians are in red and yellow!

In short, the concentration of high lactase persistence in the northwestern parts of India, (although the whole of India is now a milk-consuming society), gives strong testimony to the comparative stability of the population all over India from Harappan times (and to the presence of Dravidian speakers in the South since long before those same Harappan times) and to the identity between the Harappan and Rigvedic civilizations.

As per the OIT, the Rigvedic Aryans (whose language and literature are totally suffused in pastoral terminology and imagery) were part of the indigenous  Harappan culture — its eastern part — and there was no major migration from the Harappan areas into the interior or the South (beyond normal migrations of local people which must have taken place from any part of India to any other part in any period). So the presence of high lactase persistence even today mainly in the former Harappan-Rigvedic areas, but not in the interior areas and the South, is the expected and normal phenomenon in an OIT scenario.

 

After all this − and we need not even repeat the testimony of archaeologists who reject the AIT and deny any change in the population in the Harappan areas (see my article below) – we can categorically conclude, even without the solid aid of any conclusive decipherment of the Harappan script, that the Harappan civilization was Indo-European and not Dravidian (or anything else non-Indo-European):

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/01/ait-vs-oit-chapter-8-archaeological-case.html

 

 

II. Could there be AIT followed by an “Aryan” Harappan civilization?

Among many categories of people who discuss or comment on the AIT-vs.-OIT debate, there is the lazy armchair attitude: “why not an AIT before the Harappan civilization?” Even today, many people on the social media pose this question.

These categories of people include a wide range from the merely lazy and the merely gullible (who have swallowed the AIT as a divine revelation not to be questioned, but feel it would be nice if the Harappan civilization were to be identified as Vedic) to Brahmin Supremacists and Hindu Invasionists. I referred to them as long ago as in my second book in the year 2000 (extract given below): 

The Hindu invasionist school is a distinctly different school of interpretation from the standard invasionist one: it also fully accepts the idea that the Aryans invaded, or migrated into, India from outside in the distant past; but that, perhaps, is the only point on which it agrees with the standard invasionist school.  On every other point, this school represents a particularly bizarre variety of staunch Hindu reaction to the invasion theory, and the sole aim of this school is to present the Vedic Aryans and their civilization in as glorified a manner as possible [...]

Tilak [the founder of this school] had nothing particular to say about the date of the Aryan invasion of India, or about the actual invasion itself. The Indus civilization had not been excavated in his time, and hence it formed no part of his considerations.

However, later scholars of this school are very careful to bring the Aryans into India before the period of the Indus civilization, unwilling to allow this civilization to be attributed to anyone other than the Aryans themselves.  And they are strongly critical of suggestions or claims to the contrary […]

The Hindu invasionist interpretation, in fact, contains the seeds of even greater “schism”: while the standard invasionist theory, after the discovery of the Indus civilization, at least gives the Dravidians the credit of cultural and civilizational superiority alongwith the military inferiority which led to their alleged defeat at the hands of the invading Aryans, the Hindu invasionist theory wants the Dravidians to be considered inferior in terms of both military strength and culture.

The standard invasionist school treats the latter-day Indian or Hindu culture and civilization as an amalgam of the cultures and civilizations of the invading Aryans and the indigenous Dravidians, with more Dravidian elements than Aryan, but the Hindu invasionist school treats this culture and civilization as a wholly Aryan one imposed by a superior race on an inferior one.

This is not merely an inference drawn from their theory; it is actually stated in so many words by Tilak, who asserts that “the very fact that they [the Aryans] were able to establish their supremacy over the races they came across in their migrations from the original home, and that they succeeded, by conquest or assimilation, in Aryanising the latter in language, thought and religion under circumstances which could not be expected to be favourable to them, is enough to prove that the original Aryan civilization most have been of a type far higher than that of the non-Aryan races”.

Tilak is very evidently proud of “the vitality and superiority of the Aryan races, as disclosed by their conquest, by ex-termination or assimilation, of the non-Aryan races with whom they came into contact in their migrations in search of new lands from the North Pole to the Equator”.

Moreover, Tilak, and other scholars of this school, are quite certain that they themselves are descendants of these “Aryan races” who conquered India, rather than of the “non-Aryan races” of India who were conquered: Tilak repeatedly refers to the Aryans as “the ancient worshippers and sacrificers of our race”.

 

The motives of these Hindu Invasionist scholars are as deplorable as their slavish and unquestioning acceptance of the AIT is sad.

But can their conclusion − that the AIT could have taken place before the Harappan civilization, and that it was these “invading Aryans”, invading at a date far earlier than the Harappan period, who established the Harappan civilization – be taken at all seriously?

Unfortunately for them, it cannot be taken at all seriously. It must be remembered that the AIT was not formulated on the basis of (datable or non-datable) historical records but on the basis of linguistic speculations fuelled by the need to explain a linguistic circumstance: that the languages stretching out from western Europe to North India were linguistically related to each other as part of one language family.

And whatever modern racists (geneticists trying to solve the problem of IE language origins on the basis of genetic data) may speculate, and their sepoy admirers accept as “scientific truth”, it is Linguistics which can tell us when, if at all, the “Aryans” came into India. Any theory (whether based on genetic data or ideologically or caste motivated wishful thinking) which suggests an earlier pre-Harappan date for the AIT falls flat on its face even before the race starts out and is not even in the running.

 

The linguistic evidence shows that the different Indo-European branches started geographically separating out from the Homeland and, more importantly, from each other, at or after or around a certain date: “The date of dispersal of the earliest, western IE languages […] can be estimated in the early third millennium BCE. Further dates can be supplied by a study of important cultural features such as the common IE reconstructed word for copper/bronze, or the vocabulary connected with the heavy oxen-drawn wagon […] They point to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the third millennium as a date ad quem, or rather post quem for the last stage of commonly shared PIE” (WITZEL 2005:370). He also points out (WITZEL 2005:371-372) how different linguistic innovations among different Indo-European branches, many shared by the Vedic language also, can only have taken place after just before or around 3000 BCE.

So:

(a) either the Homeland is somewhere far away from the area of composition of the Rigveda (which is practically coeval with the area of the Harappan civilization) and the AIT brought the Vedic people into India after 1500 BCE or so after the decline of the Harappan civilization,

(b) or the Rigvedic people are itself a core part of the Harappan civilization, and the Harappan civilization is itself a core part of the IE Homeland.

There can be no third alternative to please intellectually lazy or gullible people (who have swallowed the AIT as a divine revelation not to be questioned, but feel it would be nice if the Harappan civilization were to be identified as Vedic) or Brahmin Supremacists or Hindu Invasionists.

 

 

III. Is the Harappan Script deciphered?

Finally we come to the question which made me start out on this article: “As per recent news reports, seals found at keeladi in Tamilnadu are similar to seals found at Indus Valley. Is this true?  Tamilnadu  Chief Minister has declared prize for a person who deciphers the Indus valley script. He thinks Indus valley civilisation is Tamil Civilisation. Kindly clarify”. It was put to me in an email by an acquaintance from my own community staying in Bangalore, named Sankarshan Shukla (whose father was a renowned priest and singer at our Shirali math). I am not replying piecemeal to his question, but treating it as part of a larger question about my own views regarding the Harappan script and its decipherment.

“Views”? Yes, views. I do not and cannot in any way claim to be an expert able to answer finally and conclusively on the question of the Harappan script and its decipherment. I (in spite of my unchallengeable mastery of the AIT-vs.-OIT issue) do not have either the patience, the skill and technical ability, or, to be frank. the very high level of dedication, knowledge and analytical skills, which would be required to decipher the Harappan script. I would not know how to even start on the project (starting with the massive task of gathering together all the literally tens of thousands − I have no count even of how many tens of thousands are now available − of Harappan seals and inscriptions) arranged date-wise or period-wise and area-wise, In fact, the very thought of this project fills me with awe.

But I do have full confidence in my intelligence and ability to make logical judgments. So I will set out my views on the different takes on the decipherment of the Harappan script, which fall into four broad categories, starting from the least likely or frankly ridiculous to the most likely or reasonably credible:

1. The interpretations as Dravidian.

2. The interpretations as “Non-Language”.

3. The discoveries and interpretations of “Harappan-like” scripts or symbols elsewhere.

4. The interpretations as “Aryan” (i.e. Indo-European).

 

1. The interpretations as Dravidian:

Among the earliest major attempts to discover a Dravidian language represented in the Harappan script was by Iravatham Mahadevan. About the attempts of this and other similar scholars, I had already written as follows in my very first book in 1993: “many attempts were made to decipher the Indus script, by individual scholars like Langdon, Hunter, Hrozny, Mahadevan and others, and by teams of Finnish and Soviet scholars. All these attempts, however, met with failure. The main reason for this failure was that the whole exercise of attempted decipherment was based on arbitrary and whimsical methods [….] presuming the language to be Dravidian, the scholars then proceeded to set out on a spree of reckless and whimsical interpretations: each individual letter of the Indus script was taken up and arbitrarily presumed to stand for a particular object or concept; then the letter was "read" by giving it the sound-value of the [first sound of the] particular present-day Tamil or general Dravidian word which was arbitrarily presumed to be the one word, out of many, which best expressed that object or concept; then that letter, on different seals, was variously read with different arbitrary variations of that sound-value, each variation being again arbitrarily connected up with other similar present-day Tamil or general Dravidian words or word-parts. Using these arbitrary and whimsical methods, it is not very surprising that these scholars came up with a hundred different, even diametrically opposite, "readings" for any single seal, and ended up tying themselves up into knots and convincing no one but themselves and their committed admirers”.

I cannot improve on that description. The scholars started and ended with the preconceived conclusion that the language was Dravidian, and all their “decipherments” and interpretations, based on arbitrary choices and symbolic interpretations, dealt with only a few Harappan symbols, and ended in a big zero. They still have their admirers of course. And so do others who have proceeded along the same path. See the following video for example, and read the ecstatic comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwYxHPXIaao

 

2. The interpretations as “Non-Language”:

Many, many scholars, not unreasonably overwhelmed by the extremely complicated and seemingly insoluble nature of the decipherment of the Harappan script, simply give up. In some cases, such as the Witzel-Farmer duo’s “conclusions” on the issue, they firmly decide that the script does not encode a specific or particular language at all. In this particular case, the viciously anti-Hindu and anti-OIT nature of the duo when discussing the AIT-vs.-OIT issue alerts us to the fact that personal biases and prejudices are behind their conclusions:

https://www.harappa.com/content/introduction-study-indus-script#:~:text=In%202004%20Steve%20Farmer%2C%20Richard,Literate%20Harappan%20Civilization%20can%20be 

But again, to be very frank, however unlikely (given the limited, even if large, number of signs in the script) their viewpoint definitely is, that viewpoint can be dismissed as untenable with absolute finality only when the Harappan script is finally, conclusively and unchallengeably deciphered.

 

3. The discoveries and interpretations of “Harappan-like” scripts or symbols elsewhere:

Here we can include all those cases where people have “discovered” “Harappan” or “Harappan-like” inscriptions, semi-inscriptions or stray symbols in different places not only in different parts of India (from Bihar to Tamilnadu, including the one referred to above as being propagated by the CM of Tamilnadu) but even in different parts of the world, and then drawn out seminal “conclusions” about the Harappan language, the AIT-vs.-OIT debate and Indian history and politics in general.

Recently, a mail on an internet discussion group referred to the following:

“Here are the signs copies from a beam made of an unknown metallic substance in the craft recovered near Roswell n NM in July 1947. The signs were copies by US army investigators on the site:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1163828405/roswell-ufo-i-beam-poster-roswell 

A US high-ranking military officer who was deeply involved in this research and who came to India, partly at my invitation, briefed MPs and other officials in New Delhi. He was convinced there was a link between those signs and the graphemes found on Saraswati/Indus valley seals.”

I do not know which language the persons apparently involved in this study reportedly identify these symbols with (or indeed whichever language the persons who discover such “Harappan-like” symbols in any part of India, or elsewhere in the world, identify them with), but whether it is “Aryan” or “Dravidian” or anything else, I find these claims extremely wishful, and in fact I have problems from the very first step where these stray symbols are so categorically identified as “Harappan-like”. In fact the closest and most “Harappan-like” inscriptions (and not just stray symbols) that I have ever seen are in the inscriptions on Easter Island (deep in the Pacific Ocean) – the very island famous for the big isolated stone heads which are as mysterious as the inscriptions. See below:

This reminds me of a Films Division social-message short clip regularly shown on Doordatshan in the good old pre-cable-TV days, where a family is shown happily picnicking in some picturesque nature-rich picnic-spot, happily eating and drinking and then throwing the litter (paper plates, food leftovers, packets and boxes and bottles, etc.) right and left. They finally finish their picnic, collect their belongings and are ready to set off, when the father looks around and asks his children to see that no belongings have remained behind. Just then, an urchin appears on the screen, holding up in his hands a big collection of the litter left by them in the area, and asks; “magar iska kya karen?”) “But what to do with this?”

“Harappan-like” symbols anywhere in the world will be worth examining only when the main Harappan script in the Harappan seals are finally and conclusively deciphered. Till then, whenever I see or read about these claims associating stray symbols with “Harappan-like” symbols, I always feel like presenting a picture of an Easter Island inscription, like the one above, and asking “magar iska kya karen?”

 

4. The interpretations as “Aryan” (i.e. Indo-European):

Finally, we come to the most likely conclusion: that the Harappan script houses an “Aryan” (PIE/PIIr/PIr/PIA or whatever) language. As I have shown in Section I above, irrespective of whether the Harappan script is ever deciphered or not, the very much greater likelihood or even certainty is that the Harappan language is “Aryan” (Indo-European).

But while the Harappan language definitely cannot be anything else but “Aryan” (PIE/PIIr/PIr/PIA or whatever), can we take any particular claimed decipherment of the Harappan script (as “Aryan” PIE/PIIr/PIr/PIA or whatever) as decisive, conclusive and final? To be very frank, I cannot answer with a final resounding “yes!”. Because, although it is true that my biases as well as the evidence detailed in Section I make it inevitable that the Harappan script does represent an “Aryan” (PIE/PIIr/PIr/PIA or whatever) language, it does not automatically follow that any and every, or even any particular, claimed decipherment to that effect is really correct, let alone conclusive. And there have been literally dozens of different claimed “decipherments”, by both Indian and western scholars, reaching the correct conclusion (“Aryan”)but by different strange paths and methods, for many of which I have the same perception as for the “Dravidian” conclusions, that they are “based on arbitrary and whimsical methods” and represent “a spree of reckless and whimsical interpretations”.

However, two great claimed decipherments, both different from each other, but both truly great, impressive and admirable ones, stand out from the rest and must be mentioned, and merit study, examination and further research: the claimed decipherments by Dr.S.R.Rao and by Yajnadevam.

 

Dr.S.R.Rao has a special place in my heart, because his claimed decipherment of the Harappan script in 1982 was the event which inspired me to examine and investigate the AIT in the first place. Without Dr.S.R.Rao, and later and more concretely Sita Ram Goel, I would never have been a writer and researcher on ancient history. I had completed B.Com. in 1979, and was working in Central Bank of India since 1978, and spent most of my time (since 1976) in studying books on all kinds of cultural topics in the University of Bombay Fort library for my intended Encyclopaedia of India Culture (alas, never completed) and had done original research only on the subject of my mother tongue Konkani. But when I read in the newspapers about Dr.S.R.Rao’s decipherment, I was thrilled and enthused beyond words. I attended a talk by him in the Convocation Hall of Bombay University sometime in the early eighties and spoke to him, and cut and collected every newspaper reference to his claimed decipherment. And I started my own research on the AIT. Years later, when Sita Ram Goel told me that he had got Dr.S.R.Rao to write the  preface to my first book (Aditya Prakashan edition “The Aryan Invasion Theory – A Reappraisal”) I was thrilled beyond words.

In that book, long before Sita Ram Goel even thought of approaching Dr.S.R.Rao, I had already written a chapter on his decipherment “Decipherment of the Indus Script” giving his work a rave review, but I had also written a critical word: “Dr. Rao's decipherment has demolished the Aryan invasion theory. However, while the identification of the language as an Aryan one is beyond any doubt, a subsidiary and subjective interpretation that Dr. Rao puts on his own decipherment is not: Dr. Rao interprets the language and culture of the Indus people as "pre-Vedic", apparently un-willing or reluctant to tamper with the sacred cow of the accepted date of the Rigveda (1000 BC). But, Dr. Rao's interpretation is untenable. Even fully recorded and documented languages cannot be dated merely on their linguistic style; the Indus language, as deciphered by him, has certainly proved to be an Aryan one, but the deciphered language certainly cannot be subjectablc to interpretation in respect of its age vis-a-vis the language of the Rigveda. And, as will be demonstrated later in this book, the Indus civilization is very definitely post-Vedic. The fact, nevertheless, remains that Dr. Rao's decipherment has proved the Indus language to be an Aryan one.” It was large-heartedness on his part that he still consented to write the preface.

In retrospect, I cannot say how far his decipherment (already disparaged by most writers) was correct: As I wrote above, I do not and cannot in any way claim to be an expert able to answer finally and conclusively on the question of the Harappan script and its decipherment. But he will always remain (along with Sita Ram Goel) my ideal, and I still think his method (as I detailed in my book then in 1993) is still reasonably valid:

“S.R. RAO'S DECIPHERMENT OF THE SCRIPT. However, Dr. S.R. Rao, the eminent archaeologist, decided to be less speculative in his method. He refused to presume the identity of the Indus language to be either Aryan or Dravidian, and preferred to await the results, if any, to decide its identity.

He noticed two basic facts about the Indus script which had not caught the attention of the earlier scholars. Firstly, he noticed that of the 400 to 500 letters found on the seals, some letters seemed to be basic letters, while most of the other letters seemed to be those same basic letters with some additional signs attached to them. Secondly, he noticed that the script was not, as generally believed, absolutely uniform over the entire period of the Indus Civilization. Those seals, which were later in time, seemed to have less complicated letters, thereby indicating an evolution.

He, therefore, gathered together all the data on the different inscriptions and classified them periodwise. He also separated the basic letters from those with additional signs, and arrived at a small number of basic letters.

Then, he decided to examine, without prejudice, those scripts and alphabets of the world which were closest, in time, to the Indus script, to see whether those scripts or alphabets could give any clue as to the sound-values which could be assigned to these basic letters.

The oldest extant inscription of the Indian Brahmi script dated to around 450 BC or so, while the Indus sites excavated dated down to the mid-2nd millennium BC, leaving a gap of a thousand years.

However, in West Asia, the South Arabic and Old Aramaic alphabets had come into prominence by the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and the Ahiram Sarcophagus (1300 ac) and Gezer potsherd (1600 Bc) provided the earlier stages of these West Asian scripts. And here Dr. Rao struck gold. He found that many of the basic letters of the Indus script bore resemblance to the letters of these two West Asian alphabets.

He decided to assign to each Indus basic letter the same sound-value as the West Asian letter which closely resembled it. After assign-ing these values to the Indus letters, he proceeded to try to read the inscriptions on the Indus seals. The language that emerged turned out to be an "Aryan" one.

The above is a rather simplistic narration of the procedure adopted by Dr. Rao, which is given in detail in the two relevant books by him.”

 

In the reprint of this 1993 book, in my “Preface to the First Reprint 2003”, I wrote the following postscript to the issue: “Dr. Rao's was the first major decipherment of the script (and the one which gave me the most personal satisfaction), and it was up to other scholars doing research on the subject to prove the correctness or incorrectness of his decipherment. However, no-one appears to have cared to take up the task as yet. We have had a plethora of different decipherments since then, none of which, again, have been conclusively proved or disproved. I myself am not an authority on the subject. Therefore, the last word on the subject of the Indus script is still to be said, and I can only leave it at that for the moment.”

 

About the second claimed decipherment that I hold in great awe and respect, the recent decipherment by Yajnadevam also, I will say the same thing: “I myself am not an authority on the subject. Therefore, I am in no position to judge the correctness of his decipherment. I don’t know whether his decipherment is the last word on the subject (though I hope and pray he is generally correct), and I can only leave it at that for the moment”.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

BLAŽEK 2016: Hydronomia Rgvedica. Blažek, Vaclav. In Linguistica Brunensia, 2016, Vol. 64, issue 2, pp.7-54.

GAMKRELIDZE 1995: Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture. Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. and Ivanov, V.V. Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, Berlin, New York.

JOSEPH 2018: Early Indians. Joseph, Tony. Juggernaut Books, New Delhi, 2018.

PACHA 2020: Evidence of Dairy Production in the Indus Valley Civilization. Pacha, Asvathi. The Hindu, 24/10/2020.

ROMERO 2013: Herders of Indian and European Share Their Predominant Allele for Lactase Persistence. Romero et al, Molecular Biology and Evolution, August 2011, pp.249-260.

SOUTHWORTH 1995: Reconstructing Social Context from Language ― Indo-Aryan and Dravidian Prehistory. Southworth, Franklin C., pp.258-277  in “The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia”. ed. George erdosy, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin-New York, 1995.

TALAGERI 1993: The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism. Talageri, Shrikant G.  Voice of India, New Delhi, 1993.

TALAGERI 2000: The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya Prakashan (New Delhi), 2000.

TALAGERI 2008: The Rigveda and the Avesta―The Final Evidence. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 2008.

WITZEL 1995a: Early Indian History: Linguistic and Textual Parameters. Witzel. Michael.  pp. 85-125 in “The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia”, ed. by George Erdosy. Walter de Gruyter. Berlin, 1995.

WITZEL 2000a: The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000.

WITZEL 2001a: Autochthonous Aryans: The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts. Witzel, Michael. (EJVS)7-3(2001)

WITZEL 2005: Indocentrism: autochthonous visions of ancient India. Witzel, Michael. pp.341-404, in “The Indo-Aryan Controversy — Evidence and Inference in Indian history”, ed.Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, Routledge, London & New York, 2005.