Must the
AIT-vs.-OIT Debate be Converted into a Battle of the Absurdities?
Shrikant G. Talageri
I often carp about those who abuse me and act like sepoys of the western academia-media-woke-mafia by accepting things as divine revelations only because they are said/written by western academics and printed in western academic journals and rejecting things as wrong only because they are said/written by people who are stonewalled by this mafia. What is being said, what proof is being given – none of these things matter to sepoys: the General Dyers of the academic mafia have given instructions, and these sepoys shoot without blinking an eyelid.
But occasionally I find it funny to see how some of the alleged battles between members of the AIT side and members of the OIT side turn out to be a Battle of the Absurdities: OIT supporters keep attacking Linguistics which has everything to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate, and which conclusively proves the OIT, and AIT supporters keep citing the non-evidence of Genetics which has nothing to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate or with Language Spread, and which can neither conclusively prove or disprove either the AIT or the OIT.
I have already written much, perhaps more than enough, on this matter, so I will not bother to repeat myself in any detail, but it is really funny to see each of the two sides struggling to prove themselves more absurd than the other side. A twitter “debate” sent to me runs as follows (I will only quote a less-than handful of a few of the most illustrative tweets):
On the OIT (or generally anti-AIT) side:
It’s appalling to see some educated Indians still believing in the racial construct, Aryans, & the linguistic construct PIE (Proto Indo European) another colonialist construct. They are constructs only not truth. The truth is Arya is not Aryan and definitely not a race in the Vedas; PIE never existed it was constructed by putting together some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit. PIE is an imaginary construct, maybe smart theory, but nonexistent nonetheless….
9.33 PM · Jan 17, 2025
It’s extremely annoying to
come across PIE proponents. They talk with great confidence about something
that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support
of any kind.
10.31 PM · Jan 17, 2025
On the AIT side:
"So as far as Indian
history is concerned all origins including the original contributors are
Indigenous Indians" So, humans living in India just fell out of the sky
one fine day?
11.17 AM · Jan 18, 2025
"And
archaeology & genetic history shows no invasions/migrations for the period
1900-1300 B.C.E." There is no such conclusion. AMT is disputed by Hindu
nationalists who claim that Indians existed in India since beginning of time
and as a separate entity from rest of humanity
11.22 AM · Jan 18, 2025
How
can you possibly be a professional and be allowed to lie constantly, you know
you are lying when you claim no evidence of migration in genetics, that’s all
you leftist do is lie and that’s why trump won because literally everyone with
a brain can see it.
2.30 AM · Jan 18, 2025
And he/she presents the following extract from a “genetics” report:
So here, we have a classic
example of the ridiculous spectacle of an alleged AIT-vs.-OIT discussion with OIT
supporters categorically rejecting Linguistics which has everything
to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate, and which conclusively proves the OIT,
and AIT supporters keep citing the non-evidence of Genetics which
has nothing to do with the AIT-vs.-OIT Debate or with Language
Spread, and which can neither conclusively prove or disprove either the AIT
or the OIT.
[As an aside, it is amusing to see Prof. Lavanya Vemsani being classified as a “leftist” and Trump being brought into the discussion!]
Let us take up the pseudo-OIT obsession first: these people claim that “Aryans, & the linguistic construct PIE (Proto Indo European) another colonialist construct…. are constructs only not truth….PIE never existed it was constructed by putting together some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit. PIE is an imaginary construct, maybe smart theory, but nonexistent nonetheless”; “something that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support of any kind”:
Of course PIE was a construct: it is not recorded anywhere. But the name, address, occupation, photograph, and other details of my ancestors twenty generations before me are also not recorded anywhere. If I try to reconstruct (how?) these things, I will definitely end up very badly wrong. But that would not justify me saying that the idea that I could have any ancestors twenty generations before me is “something that’s utterly made up by conjecture ALONE, with absolutely no primary support of any kind”. If I am here now I had ancestors twenty generations ago (and more).
In the case of PIE, it has been reconstructed from the data available in all the known IE languages: it is perfectly possible that many languages which could have contributed many more factors in the reconstruction have never been found recorded anywhere, that even in the languages known and recorded many features have escaped the calculations of the linguists, and that there have been even otherwise many mistakes in the reconstruction for various different reasons. So we certainly cannot take the reconstructed PIE as an exact representation of PIE as it actually was (though many linguists may actually be doing so: again the divine revelation syndrome). But certainly, as far as possible, it is an educated reconstruction, useful in tracing out the history of the IE languages, and most certainly you simply cannot say PIE never existed.
I have already dealt with the IE-family-and-PIE question in several articles (apart from my books). Here I will give just one example for the fat-headed to answer. Just take the example of the forms (I) am, (thou) art and (he/she/it) is in one representative language from each of the twelve IE branches:
English: (I) am,
(thou) art, (he/she/it) is:
Sanskrit: asmi, asi, asti.
Avestan: ahmī, ahī, astī.
Homeric Greek: eimi, essi, esti.
Latin: sum, es, est.
Gothic: em, ert, est.
Hittite: ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi.
Old Irish: am, at, is.
Russian: esmy, esi, esty.
Lithuanian: esmi, esi, esti.
Albanian: jam, je, ishtë.
Armenian: em, es, ê.
Tocharian: -am, -at, -aṣ.
The Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti become Russian esmy, esi, esty and Lithuanian esmi, esi, esti, with the simple change of “a” to “e”, and Avestan ahmī, ahī, astī with the simple change of “s” to “h”. Greek eimi, essi, esti also is immediately recognizable, as also Hittite ēšmi, ēšši, ēšzi. The other languages require a slightly longer look, and, yes, also some knowledge of sound changes in those languages.
Surely all those other languages some of which are ancient languages and some modern ones, and which are separated from each other by thousands of miles and by diverse and independent histories and no known ancient prehistorical contacts with Sanskrit cannot have simply borrowed their basic verbal conjugational forms from “some words from existing languages mainly Sanskrit”? No language in the known history of the languages of the world has ever borrowed these basic conjugational forms from some other language:
Even the Dravidian languages within India have forms totally dissimilar to Sanskrit:
Tamil: irukkiŗēn, irukkiŗāy, irukkiŗān/irukkiŗāḷ/irukkiŗadu.
Kannada: iddēne, iddi, iddāne/iddāḷe/ide.
Telugu: unnānu, unnāvu, unnāḍu/unnadi/unnadi.
And even the modern Indo-Aryan languages have distinct forms from Sanskrit (though related ones):
Marathi: āhe, āhes,
āhe.
Konkani: āssa,
āssa, āssa.
Hindi: hũ, hai,
hai.
Gujarati: chũ, che, che.
Bengali: āchi, ācha,
āche.
Sindhi: āhyẫ, āhĩ,
āhe.
Punjabi: hẫ, haĩ,
hai.
To drive the point in further, just one word will illustrate
the picture much more clearly: Sanskrit tu-, Hindi tū, Marathi tū,
Konkani tūȗva, Sindhi tuȗ, Punjabi tūȗ, Gujarati tū,
Bengali tui, Oriya tu, Assamese toi, Kashmiri tsa,
Romany (Gypsy) tu. In Iranian, we have Avestan tū, Persian tu,
Pashto tu, Kurdish tu, Baluchi tæw.
Here are the words in the other distant
branches: Latin tū, Italian tu, Spanish tu,
Portuguese tu, French tu, Romanian tu, Catalan tu,
Irish tu, Scots-Gaelic thu, Welsh ti, Old English thū
(later English thou), Icelandic thu, German du, Norwegian du,
Danish du, Swedish du, Old Church Slavic ty, Russian ty,
Belarusian ty, Polish ty, Czech ty, Slovak ty,
Ukrainian ty, Bulgarian ti, Serbian ti, Croatian ti,
Slovenian ti, Macedonian ti, Bosnian ti, Armenian du,
Albanian ti, Doric Greek tu, Lithuanian tu, Latvian tu,
Tocharian tu, Hittite ta/du.
Compare this flood of Indo-European words with the Dravidian equivalents: Tamil nī, Malayalam nī, Toda nī, Kota nī, Brahui nī, Kurukh nīn, Kannada nīnu, Kolami nīv, Naiki nīv, Telugu nīvu.
It is extremely unnatural for languages to borrow personal
pronouns from other languages.
Very obviously, the IE language family is a fact, and, by all logic of natural common sense, all the diverse IE languages must have had a common ancestral speech-form, which, very logically, has to be called PIE.
The fact that a person who is a professor – in her twitter bio she apparently calls herself not only Dr. and Ph.D., but also describes herself as a “Distinguished Univ Professor@SSU multi-award Fulbright Honorary Prof@JNU 8Books Board:OAH,HAF,HUA,ICHRRF; Editor-in-Chief, Intnl Jrnl of Indic Rel;Pres,OAH,AAIS” – can repeatedly and emphatically make the extremely foolish assertion that “PIE never existed” and reject Linguistics totally, and yet claim to be in the vanguard of the anti-AIT or the OIT side, is a pathetic pointer to why the anti-AIT or the OIT side is so utterly rudderless against a fully organized AIT army which likewise does not bother about facts but knows it can rely on its academic, media and political power.
And the reason why it can rely on academic, media and political power is because they make full use of that power, while the OIT academics try to keep in the good books of their opponents by following all the monopolistic rules established by them. This professor, Dr. Lavanya Vemsani, Ph.D. is the same person who refused to publish my following article (regarding which I challenge any AIT supporting scholar or sepoy to be able to even inflict one scratch of destructive criticism against it, much less produce a full-fledged study of the Rigvedic vocabulary which could pose even an illusory competitor to it) because I did not have a Ph/D. (at the time) from any recognized University and nor was I ever peer-reviewed in the academic journals controlled by AIT writers:
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/final-version-of-chronological-gulf.html
And on the other side, we have religious fundamentalists who believe that the DNA, genes and haplogroups within any human body have the language or language-family spoken by that human being as a genetic component embedded within their DNA, and that by locating the geographical area of origin (or likely origin) of that particular genetic component, and the migratory expansions of that DNA, they can categorically trace the geographical area of origin (or likely origin) of a particular language or language family, and the routes of its migratory expansions.
In one of the above tweets, one of the AIT sepoys writes: “AMT is disputed by Hindu nationalists who claim that Indians existed in India since beginning of time and as a separate entity from rest of humanity”. This is a garbled version of what his master Witzel had written about me: foolishly, as it were, since I have never made any eternal claims of this kind, and my only claims are about the origins of PIE, which cannot go back “in India since beginning of time” and as a separate entity from rest of humanity” (and I certainly would not claim it does. There is a definite time limit to the formation of the IE family of languages].
On the other hand, even if not expressively put in those words by the AIT supporters, their stand amounts to a religious dogma that a person’s DNA contains a particular language embedded within it, and if that is so, who else can have put it there other than God?
Until OIT supporters get out of this illiterate rut of opposing Linguistics, and AIT supporters get out of this illiterate rut of resorting to Genetics (even when it blatantly contradicts all the Linguistic data), most AIT-vs.-OIT debates will continue to remain Battles of the Absurdities.
Postscript:
Incidentally, sometimes even in these discussions, we get some intelligent people giving intelligent and to-the-point responses to foolish questions. The question, “So, humans living in India just fell out of the sky one fine day?” above is answered by someone as follows:
You mean like how humans fell
out of the sky in central Asia/Europe before coming to India? Good question.
4.98 PM · Jan 18, 2025
To this, the AIT proponent typically asks (since the right to expect logical answers, according to him, lies only with sepoys) with “OK. Answer the question deflection will not work here”
To which, again, the
intelligent questioner points out:
You need to answer your own question
first. Did humans fall from the sky in Europe before they came to India? After
you answer this only your question makes sense. Otherwise you have nothing to
contribute other than simply muddying the waters. Try again.
12.37 AM · Jan 19, 2025
Needless to say, the AIT sepoy can only keep bleating out the same special plea following the same one-sided logic where the AIT supporter is the judge and the OIT supporter is in the dock.
And this is the biggest and most fundamental problem with the mental functioning of AIT sepoys (following their academic masters): they demand answers to questions, and evidence for claims, about the OIT which they refuse to answer or provide in respect of the AIT claims which they demand should be unquestioningly accepted as divine revelations. This kind of attitude is expected and natural in religious discussions by religious fundamentalists, but should have no place in discussions on factual historical issues.
But until the OIT supporters get their perspective on, and their knowledge of, the different aspects of the debate, as well as their priorities, right, it is not enough to just be able to point out the fallacies in the opponents’ cockeyed pronouncements. Whether the opponents accept our points or not, we should never put ourselves in the wrong on any point. Ultimately, the advocates of a Genetic solution to this Linguistic question will be proved as outdated and injudicious as those who at one point of time believed that outward racial features represented the “original Aryan” or, at an earlier date, those who cited the opinions of Church scholars about the earth being flat.
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