<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/sarasvati-hindu-civilization Updated.
Hindu civilizational continuum (Book revie -2: Talageri's The Rigveda and the Avesta, 2008, with particular reference to critique of Witzel's unscholarly, unethical, dishonest, abusive, flip-flops)
Posted on the web at http://www.scribd.com/doc/8775936/witzel2
In my first review of the book published on Nov. 18, 2008 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/8116692/Talageri Annex 2 for ready reference), I had focused on the key points made by Shrikant Talageri in affirming the chronological sequence of Rigveda and Avesta.
I present a second review, pointing to the raison d'etre for Talageri's work: critiquing the 'scholarship' evidenced by Michael Witzel, a Harvard Professor.
I earnestly suggest that both Witzel and Hock should read Talageri's book (2008). If they need copies, I can have them couriered, provided I get the mailing addresses and a request. This suggestion is particularly directed to both Witzel and Hock whose false claims are shred by Talageri into pieces, with remarkable collation of evidence and scholarship.
If both Witzel and Hock do not read Talageri's work and do not respond to the specific points made by Talageri, I will have to continue Review 3 with particular reference to Hock's spurious linguistic arguments, also exposed by Talageri.
Shrikant Talageri has critically referred to Witzel throughout the book. Special sections dealing with him are chapter 1 (p.49-53), chapter 3 (p.117-129), chapter 5 (p.168-175), chapter 6 (290-307), chapter 8 (p.347-354). A few bon mots from these pages are annexed (Annex 1) so that the readers are encouraged to read Talageri's work in original. This is intended to show a flavour for the arguments of Talageri to fully expose the spurious scholarship of Witzel.
I strongly urge Witzel to read the above cited pages, and answer every point if he can; he also has the option to read the entire book. Of course, he will try to get away from this exercise as usual by breezy references to Talageri's profession as a bank employee and will avoid replying on the grounds that it is not necessary to do so! But other readers can draw their own conclusions.
Talageri has, demonstrated, with irrefutable evidence, Witzel, for example:
1. making up stories out of thin air (e.g., converting Vasistha into an Iranian and finding all kinds of evidence for this, p.50-52) ,
2. to be a confused 'scholar', forgetting on one page what he has written on another and therefore contradicting himself thoroughly (e.g., he makes Visvamitra the head of the coalition against Sudas in the Battle of the Ten Kings and has Visvamitra defeated and humiliated in this Battle, and then elsewhere he has the Visvamitras glorifying Sudas' victories in this very battle, p.52-53. Similarly, Witzel describes the Aryan incursion as the trickling-in of one Afghan Aryan tribe into the Indus area and emphatically rejects the idea of a violent military invasion, and then he himself describes a violent military invasion in detail, p.321-322), and
3. writing exactly the opposite after reading Talageri's book The Rigveda A Historical Analysis of what Witzel had written before reading it (for example on the Ganga, p.125-128, and on the Rigveda itself, p.348-353).Â
Talageri's work is a veritable expose of Witzel's 'scholarship'. Is Talageri trying to pour water on a duck's back? The duck will swim away, the spurious Professor stays on with water wetting most of his slippery work and demonstrating an example of motivated, dubious scholarship.
Sotto voce
J'accuse Harvard University of retaining and encouraging an academic who is intent only on denigrating the world heritage represented by the cultural foundations provided by Samskrtam.
It is doubly shameful that the University has allowed the Prince of Wales chair to be sullied by acquiescing in gross violation of academic ethics by an occupant of the furniture. Many instances of conduct unbecoming of a Harvard University have been brought to the notice of Harvard Corporation and no action has been taken. (See Vishal Agarwal's critique, Shree Vinekar's critique available on Harvard U. files. I will be happy to provide the references, if asked for). It is time for the prestigious institution to review, de novo, the contribution to knowledge made by this chair on the lines of the reviews undertaken in German schools resulting in the closure of Sanskrit/South Asia studies. It is tragic indeed that an occupant of the furniture called Prince of Wales chair has insulted the institution's standards of ethics and academic standards of excellence bringing scholarship to a gutter level.
In the name of education, vidyadevi Sarasvati, I urge the Provost of Harvard U. to institute an inquiry and throw the chair and its occupant out and redeem the University's image in the community and demonstrate social responsibility. It is shameful that an academic indulges in general abuses without facing up to, reading critiques and respond if he can or acknowledge ignorant arrogance and crass academic incompetence. This academic is a blot on the academe and a danger to the present and future generations of students (exemplified by the intemperate and abusive response to Review 1 of Talageri's work so diligently, painstakingly put together with remarkable integrity in search of truth.
I suppose this is the hallmark of all seekers of knowledge, including Harvard University and standing the test of contributions made to the enlightenment of young students in their earnest quest for satyam and enhancing their full potential to make contributions to abhyudayam and dharma.
Kalyanaraman, Ph.D.
..
Annex 1 Ripping apart Witzel's work of dubious 'scholarship'
NB: All page references are to Talageri's book (2008).
Chapter 1G (pages 49-50)
"There has been a strange failure, on the part of the scholars examining the evidence, to reach the unavoidable conclusions we have reached in this chapter. The reason for this is of course the fact that they have always viewed the data through the blinker of the AIT. But the failure runs deeper: there has been a tendency to manufacture evidence and indulge in fraudulent scholarship in order to provide substance to the theories which run contrary to the data.
"The level of fraudulent and make-believe scholarship which dominates the Aryan debate today can be gauged from the following: Michael Witzel, throughout his various writings, from WITZEL, 1995b:334-335 to WITZEL, 2005:344, keeps insisting that Vasistha is an 'Iranian' or an 'immigrant from Iran', even a 'self-proclaimed' Iranian immigrant. In WITZEL 2005: 335, he even refers to 'the origins of the Bharatas and Vasistha in eastern Iran.' ââ¬Â¦By what statistical logic does Witzel decide that Vasistha, of Book 7, 'avoids' the use of absolutives, presumably in sharp contrast to all the other composers making lavish use of absolutives in their compositions? As we can see, there six occurrences of absolutives in Book 7, compared to, for example, only three in Book 6, and five each in Books 4 and 5."
Chapter 1G (pages 51-2)
"The way in which Witzel arrives at his conclusions is in itself enough to show up his fraudulent scholarship. But what is significant, in the light of our analysis of the Avestan names in this chapter, is that while the Late Books 5,1 and 8-10 are literally overflowing with compound names of the Avestan type, such names are completely absent in Book 7, the Book of Vasistha (and also in the Early and Middle Books, 2-4, 6-7, which are the Books associated with the Bharatas. Bharatas are in fact referred to by this name only in the Family Books 2-7: the owrd Bharata in this sense does not occur even once in the non-family Books). In fact, the only Iranian names, of persons and tribes, in the Book of Vasistha, the 'self-proclaimed Iranian', are the names of the enemies of Vasistha and the Bharatas in the Battle of the Ten Kings: Kai, Kavasa, Prthus, Parsus, Pakthas, and Bhalanas."
Chapter 1G (Page 53)
"In other words, according to Witzel's account of the events, Vasistha ousted Visvamitra as the priest of Sudas; and, in revenge Visvamitra led a coalition of tribes in the Ten Kings' Battle against Sudas and Vasistha, and was 'completely' defeated. And, later, the descendants of Visvamitra composed a hymn III.53, in 'praise' and glorification of the Bharatas, in fond memory of the asvamedha organized to 'commemorate' and celebrate the 'triumphs' of Sudas and Vasistha and the defeat and humiliation of their own ancestor visvamitra!"
Chapter 3 (p.117-129)
"As a crusader in the holy cause of the AIT, who has collaborated closely with many of the eminent leftist historians in anti-OIT campaigns in the Indian media, Witzel contributes his bit to this campaignââ¬Â¦Witzel goes on to make the following juvenile comments: 'Incidentally, it is entirely unclear that the physical river Sarasvati is meant in some of these spurious hymns: in 6.49.7 the Sarasvati is a woman and in 50.12 a deity, not necessarily the river (Witzel 1984). (At 52.6, however, it is a river, and in 61.1.7 both a river and a deity ââ¬â which can be located anywhere from the Arachosian Sarasvati to the Night time sky, with no clear localization' (WITZEL 2000b:7). These are clearly not the words of a scholar making serious statements on an academic subject: that the Sarasvati of VI.49.7 'is a woman' is ludicrous, to say the least! And if, in any reference, Sarasvati is the name of a deity or a woman, even an amateur student of the subject could tell Witzel that the circumstance presupposes the existence of a river named Sarasvati, since the word Sarasvati is clearly originally the name of a river: it means 'the one with many ponds' (WITZEL 1995a:105)ââ¬Â¦
"WITZEL.1995b:335, fn82). Here, he (Witzel) not only identifies the Sarasvati of the RIgveda with the Sarasvati of Kurukshetra which dried up progressively after 1500 BCE, but notes that it 'flows from the mountains to the sea' (a description now often sought to be transferred to the Harahvaiti of Afghanistan, with the Hamun-i-Hilmand being the 'sea' described in the verse), and accepts that it shows that the battle of ten kings took place prior to 1500 BCE. And nowhere, in that article or in his charts on the geographical data in the Rigveda, does Witzel talk about women and non-riverine deities, or about Arachosia or the Night time sky, in reference to the word Sarasvati in these Early Booksââ¬Â¦(WITZEL. 2000a: 6). Note what Witzel is writing shortly before reading TALAGERI 200: he repeatedly refers not only to Book 6 in general, not only to hymn VI.45 in general, but specifically to the verse in that hymn which refers to the Ganga, as pertaining to the 'early Rigvedic period' and as constituting part of the geographical data of 'the oldest books' and 'the oldest hymns', and he even takes up issue with other western scholars who think otherwise!"
Chapter 5 (p.168-175)
"WITZEL's FRAUDULENT ARGUMENTS. In a recent paper (WITZEL, 2005), Witzel argues, in some detail, a point frequently made by him earlier: that the Indo-Aryan elements in Mitanni indicate a pre-Rigvedic language, with linguistic features which necessarily rule out any idea that the Mitanni coluld have emigrated from India ââ¬â that the Mitanni were in fact an offshoot of the pre-Rigvedic Indo-Aryans as yet on their way towards Indiaââ¬Â¦And all three points (of Witzel's arguments) are misleading or fraudulent: 1. The argument about 'retroflexation' is clearly fraudulent, since it is clearly impossible to know whether the Mitanni IA language had cerebral (retroflex) sounds or not. But, in either case, whether they had them or not, it constitutes no objection to their emigration from Rigvedic Indiaââ¬Â¦2. Witzel's second argument, about the absence of 'typical South Asian loan words' and 'local Indian words' in the Mitanni IA language is in the same fraudulent vein. The only Mitanni IA words in the record are the names of a handful of Vedic Gods, some numerals, some words connected with horses (their colours, chariots, racing, etc.), a handful of other words (e.g. mani), and, as Witzel aptly puts it, 'a large array of personal names adopted by the ruling class'ââ¬Â¦The limited available Mitanni IA wordlist can certainly be analysed, but how on earth can anyone presume to make categorical declarations about which words were absent in the Mitanni IA language?...3. Witzel's third argument is that the Mitanni words seem to preserve certain sounds which had been transformed into other sounds already in the RV language: the RV has edh, e and h where the reconstructed pre-RV forms (also in Iranian) were azd, ai and jh respectively, while the Mitanni IA words seem to preserve the original sounds. This argument is not necessarily fraudulent in its essence, but it is nevertheless as baseless and misleading as the othersââ¬Â¦Witzel, of course, usually refers to phonetic changes in 'minor details such as the pronunciation of svar instead of suvar, etc.', but (as in Deshpande, above) changes from azd to edh or ai/au to e/o could very logically have been among the changes affected in the phonetic redactions."
Chapter 6 (290-307) ââ¬â 7G
"APPENDIX: WITZEL'S LINGUISTIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE OITââ¬Â¦we will examine the article presented by Michael Witzel (WITZEL 2005) in a volume edited by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton, published in 2005, which claims to present the linguistic case against the OITââ¬Â¦Witzel begins his linguistic arguments with an inadvertent admission that the AIT linguistic case is based on argumentative points rather than concrete evidenceââ¬Â¦Ironically, the case presented in Section 1 of this book (which I challenge Witzel to refute), for the Out-of-India scenario, is actually based on a combination of the Mitanni 'inscriptions' and the evidence of the Rigveda and Avesta, of which the material in the Rigveda has also frequently been referred to by Witzel as being 'equivalent to inscriptions' (see section 8C in the next chapter)ââ¬Â¦ In sum, all of Witzel's linguistic arguments are basically directed against three hypotheses which are treated as the core of the OIT case, but which form no part whatsoever of the case presented by us: (1) the 'Sanskrit-origin' hypothesisââ¬Â¦(2) the 'sequential movement of different groups' Out-of-India hypothesis (postulated by no-one, so far as I know) argued against by Hock (HOCK 1999a)ââ¬Â¦and (3) 'Misra's new dating of the RV at 5000 BCE' (WITZEL 2005: 358), from which Witzel decides: 'The autochthonous theory would have the RV at c. 5000 BCE or before the start of the Indus civilization at 2600 BCE', and 'according to the autochthonous theory, the Iranians had migrated westwards out of India well before the RV (2600-5000 BCE)' (WITZEL 2005: 369). Therefore, to sum up, there is no linguistic case at all, worth the name against the OIT case presented by us in our earlier books, and presented again with much more detail in this present book, especially in this chapter. The Indian homeland case presented by us answers all the linguistic requirements perfectly, while the AIT completely fails to answer any of them."
Chapter 8 (p.347-354)
"ââ¬Â¦the correctness of our classification (in TALAGERI 2000) of the Books of the Rigveda into Early, Middle and Late, and the fact that this is the 'right Rigveda', is established and proved by the way in which it 'predicted' the pattern of distribution of the Avestan names and name-elements (and other important words like ara, 'spokes') years before that distribution was demonstrated in this present book. A more fitting reply to Witzel's criticism could not have been foundââ¬Â¦As Witzel tells us elsewhere, 'we need to take the texts seriously, at their own word. A paradigm shift is necessaryââ¬Â¦' (WITZEL 2000b:332). Unfortunately, instead of taking the texts seriously at their own word, writers like Witzel have spent umpteen years and plenty of energy in producing voluminous piles of pure and incomprehensible nonsense based only on wild flights of their imagination, full of masses of chaotic details, wild speculations, mutually contradictory interpretations and conclusions, and ludicrous fairy tales, all of it leading nowhere."
Annex 2 Book review: S.G. Talageri, 2008, The Rigveda and the Avesta âââ¬" the final evidence, Delhi, Aditya Prakashan interspersed with flippant, fraudulent comments by Witzel <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->AIT Club mutual admiration society member, Hock indulges in suggestio falsi, suppressio veri on isoglosses
Hindu civilizational continuum (Book review -3: Talageri's The Rigveda and the Avesta, 2008, with particular reference to critique of Hock's 'evidence' of the isoglosses)
1. [After a detailed discussion of the evidence concerning the river Sarasvati, and of Witzel's 1995 papers on this point, on pages 111-112 and pages 115-121, Talageri makes the following observations:] "It is interesting to note that, in spite of the fact that Witzel's article actually only shows that the Sarasvati of the Rigveda is identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra, other AIT scholars lap up some other spurious and self-contradictory assertions from the article as evidence for the AIT<b>. Hock cites this very article by Witzel, which he claims is 'ignored or denied by Hindu nationalist authors', as 'evidence which suggests that some of the hymns in which the river Sarasvati is invoked (or the Goddess for that matter) may go back to a period before the arrival of the aryas in India and to an area outside India, in present-day Afghanistan and eastern Iran; </b>see Appendix A in Witzel 1995b:343 which distinguishes a 'western' Sarasvati (RV 2.41.6, 10.64.9) and a Sarasvati in Kurukshetra (3.24.3 and in book 7)' (HOCK 1999b Through a glass darkly: Modern 'racial' interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on arya and dasa/dasyu in Vedic Society: 164). <b>Clearly the AIT club is an extremely closed mutual admiration society where one member's unsubstantiated speculative assertions, howsoever absurd, become another member's clinching evidence." </b>Talageri adds: "But, in spite of Hock's eagerness in grabbing at the straw of Witzel's suggestion about two different Sarasvatis in the Rigveda, the sum of Witzel's article is that all the references to the Sarasvati in the Early Books refer only to the Sarasvati of Kurukshetra: the Ghaggar-Hakra." (page 121).
2.[In chapter 7, <b>Talageri first shows how the theory of a homeland situated somewhere from East Central Europe to Eastern Russia does not help at all to explain the isoglosses, but that the theory of an Indian homeland explains all the isoglosses and all the other linguistic data. </b>In this context, Talageri writes as follows about Hock's arguments:] "<b>But most fatal to Hock's case is the fact that the evidence of the isoglosses, as presented by him, is deliberately partial and selective:</b> not only does Hock fail to take into account many important isoglosses linking together different branches, but he even pointedly excludes from his arrangement one crucial brahcn, Tocharian, on the plea that 'it is difficult to find dialectical affiliation' (HOCK 1999a:16) for it. Tocharian is important because it shares certain important isoglosses with the Anatolian (Hittite) branch and the Italic branchââ¬Â¦In no reasonable dialectological arrangement of Indo-European dialects can these three dialects (Hittite, Tocharian and Italic) be shown to be sharing these important isoglosses with each other in contiguous areas and then 'maintaining their relative positions to each other as they fanned out from the homeland' to their respective earliest attested areasââ¬Â¦ <b>So Hock simply ignores the concerned isoglosses, and excludes Tocharian from his arrangement, and crosses his fingers in the hope that no-one notices. </b>It is therefore clear that the actual evidence of the isoglosses in fact shows quite the opposite of what Hock claims for it: <b>it in fact shows that the Indo-European homeland simply cannot be situated in any central area (such as the area from 'East Central Europe to Eastern Russia') </b>with the dialects simply 'maintaing their relative positions to each other as they fanned from the homeland; to their respective earliest attested areas." (p.221).
Can Hock read the whole chapter (Chapter 7. The Evidence of the Isoglosses, pp. 205-307) and point out any fallacies in Talageri's criticism of his (Hock's) arguments, or in Talageri's own arguments, to show that his theory of a homeland in the area East Central Europe to Eastern Asia is more plausible and simple than Talageri's theory of a homeland in northern India?
Between the self-professed linguists, Witzel and Hock, there should be some way to make both of them read Talageri's critique and respond, instead of being dismissive. <b>Hock, in particular, has to answer the serious charge of deliberate exclusion of Tocharian while spinning isogloss myths. </b>So, what else is new in I-E punditry?
Kalyanaraman<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Tocharian and Bangani in the East ( right in the middle of the Satem distribution ) is an insurmountable problem for AIT. The very fact that they survived only in remote mountainous regions argues for a prior more extensive presence, disrupted only by subsequent internal developments. Hittite/Italic thus must be viewed as migratory outliers retained as "Peripheral Archaisms".
Hocks's theory of concentric expansion (and trivialization of Kentum in the East) is <i>ad hoc</i>, designed only to minimalize chronological development.
Hindu civilizational continuum (Book revie -2: Talageri's The Rigveda and the Avesta, 2008, with particular reference to critique of Witzel's unscholarly, unethical, dishonest, abusive, flip-flops)
Posted on the web at http://www.scribd.com/doc/8775936/witzel2
In my first review of the book published on Nov. 18, 2008 (http://www.scribd.com/doc/8116692/Talageri Annex 2 for ready reference), I had focused on the key points made by Shrikant Talageri in affirming the chronological sequence of Rigveda and Avesta.
I present a second review, pointing to the raison d'etre for Talageri's work: critiquing the 'scholarship' evidenced by Michael Witzel, a Harvard Professor.
I earnestly suggest that both Witzel and Hock should read Talageri's book (2008). If they need copies, I can have them couriered, provided I get the mailing addresses and a request. This suggestion is particularly directed to both Witzel and Hock whose false claims are shred by Talageri into pieces, with remarkable collation of evidence and scholarship.
If both Witzel and Hock do not read Talageri's work and do not respond to the specific points made by Talageri, I will have to continue Review 3 with particular reference to Hock's spurious linguistic arguments, also exposed by Talageri.
Shrikant Talageri has critically referred to Witzel throughout the book. Special sections dealing with him are chapter 1 (p.49-53), chapter 3 (p.117-129), chapter 5 (p.168-175), chapter 6 (290-307), chapter 8 (p.347-354). A few bon mots from these pages are annexed (Annex 1) so that the readers are encouraged to read Talageri's work in original. This is intended to show a flavour for the arguments of Talageri to fully expose the spurious scholarship of Witzel.
I strongly urge Witzel to read the above cited pages, and answer every point if he can; he also has the option to read the entire book. Of course, he will try to get away from this exercise as usual by breezy references to Talageri's profession as a bank employee and will avoid replying on the grounds that it is not necessary to do so! But other readers can draw their own conclusions.
Talageri has, demonstrated, with irrefutable evidence, Witzel, for example:
1. making up stories out of thin air (e.g., converting Vasistha into an Iranian and finding all kinds of evidence for this, p.50-52) ,
2. to be a confused 'scholar', forgetting on one page what he has written on another and therefore contradicting himself thoroughly (e.g., he makes Visvamitra the head of the coalition against Sudas in the Battle of the Ten Kings and has Visvamitra defeated and humiliated in this Battle, and then elsewhere he has the Visvamitras glorifying Sudas' victories in this very battle, p.52-53. Similarly, Witzel describes the Aryan incursion as the trickling-in of one Afghan Aryan tribe into the Indus area and emphatically rejects the idea of a violent military invasion, and then he himself describes a violent military invasion in detail, p.321-322), and
3. writing exactly the opposite after reading Talageri's book The Rigveda A Historical Analysis of what Witzel had written before reading it (for example on the Ganga, p.125-128, and on the Rigveda itself, p.348-353).Â
Talageri's work is a veritable expose of Witzel's 'scholarship'. Is Talageri trying to pour water on a duck's back? The duck will swim away, the spurious Professor stays on with water wetting most of his slippery work and demonstrating an example of motivated, dubious scholarship.
Sotto voce
J'accuse Harvard University of retaining and encouraging an academic who is intent only on denigrating the world heritage represented by the cultural foundations provided by Samskrtam.
It is doubly shameful that the University has allowed the Prince of Wales chair to be sullied by acquiescing in gross violation of academic ethics by an occupant of the furniture. Many instances of conduct unbecoming of a Harvard University have been brought to the notice of Harvard Corporation and no action has been taken. (See Vishal Agarwal's critique, Shree Vinekar's critique available on Harvard U. files. I will be happy to provide the references, if asked for). It is time for the prestigious institution to review, de novo, the contribution to knowledge made by this chair on the lines of the reviews undertaken in German schools resulting in the closure of Sanskrit/South Asia studies. It is tragic indeed that an occupant of the furniture called Prince of Wales chair has insulted the institution's standards of ethics and academic standards of excellence bringing scholarship to a gutter level.
In the name of education, vidyadevi Sarasvati, I urge the Provost of Harvard U. to institute an inquiry and throw the chair and its occupant out and redeem the University's image in the community and demonstrate social responsibility. It is shameful that an academic indulges in general abuses without facing up to, reading critiques and respond if he can or acknowledge ignorant arrogance and crass academic incompetence. This academic is a blot on the academe and a danger to the present and future generations of students (exemplified by the intemperate and abusive response to Review 1 of Talageri's work so diligently, painstakingly put together with remarkable integrity in search of truth.
I suppose this is the hallmark of all seekers of knowledge, including Harvard University and standing the test of contributions made to the enlightenment of young students in their earnest quest for satyam and enhancing their full potential to make contributions to abhyudayam and dharma.
Kalyanaraman, Ph.D.
..
Annex 1 Ripping apart Witzel's work of dubious 'scholarship'
NB: All page references are to Talageri's book (2008).
Chapter 1G (pages 49-50)
"There has been a strange failure, on the part of the scholars examining the evidence, to reach the unavoidable conclusions we have reached in this chapter. The reason for this is of course the fact that they have always viewed the data through the blinker of the AIT. But the failure runs deeper: there has been a tendency to manufacture evidence and indulge in fraudulent scholarship in order to provide substance to the theories which run contrary to the data.
"The level of fraudulent and make-believe scholarship which dominates the Aryan debate today can be gauged from the following: Michael Witzel, throughout his various writings, from WITZEL, 1995b:334-335 to WITZEL, 2005:344, keeps insisting that Vasistha is an 'Iranian' or an 'immigrant from Iran', even a 'self-proclaimed' Iranian immigrant. In WITZEL 2005: 335, he even refers to 'the origins of the Bharatas and Vasistha in eastern Iran.' ââ¬Â¦By what statistical logic does Witzel decide that Vasistha, of Book 7, 'avoids' the use of absolutives, presumably in sharp contrast to all the other composers making lavish use of absolutives in their compositions? As we can see, there six occurrences of absolutives in Book 7, compared to, for example, only three in Book 6, and five each in Books 4 and 5."
Chapter 1G (pages 51-2)
"The way in which Witzel arrives at his conclusions is in itself enough to show up his fraudulent scholarship. But what is significant, in the light of our analysis of the Avestan names in this chapter, is that while the Late Books 5,1 and 8-10 are literally overflowing with compound names of the Avestan type, such names are completely absent in Book 7, the Book of Vasistha (and also in the Early and Middle Books, 2-4, 6-7, which are the Books associated with the Bharatas. Bharatas are in fact referred to by this name only in the Family Books 2-7: the owrd Bharata in this sense does not occur even once in the non-family Books). In fact, the only Iranian names, of persons and tribes, in the Book of Vasistha, the 'self-proclaimed Iranian', are the names of the enemies of Vasistha and the Bharatas in the Battle of the Ten Kings: Kai, Kavasa, Prthus, Parsus, Pakthas, and Bhalanas."
Chapter 1G (Page 53)
"In other words, according to Witzel's account of the events, Vasistha ousted Visvamitra as the priest of Sudas; and, in revenge Visvamitra led a coalition of tribes in the Ten Kings' Battle against Sudas and Vasistha, and was 'completely' defeated. And, later, the descendants of Visvamitra composed a hymn III.53, in 'praise' and glorification of the Bharatas, in fond memory of the asvamedha organized to 'commemorate' and celebrate the 'triumphs' of Sudas and Vasistha and the defeat and humiliation of their own ancestor visvamitra!"
Chapter 3 (p.117-129)
"As a crusader in the holy cause of the AIT, who has collaborated closely with many of the eminent leftist historians in anti-OIT campaigns in the Indian media, Witzel contributes his bit to this campaignââ¬Â¦Witzel goes on to make the following juvenile comments: 'Incidentally, it is entirely unclear that the physical river Sarasvati is meant in some of these spurious hymns: in 6.49.7 the Sarasvati is a woman and in 50.12 a deity, not necessarily the river (Witzel 1984). (At 52.6, however, it is a river, and in 61.1.7 both a river and a deity ââ¬â which can be located anywhere from the Arachosian Sarasvati to the Night time sky, with no clear localization' (WITZEL 2000b:7). These are clearly not the words of a scholar making serious statements on an academic subject: that the Sarasvati of VI.49.7 'is a woman' is ludicrous, to say the least! And if, in any reference, Sarasvati is the name of a deity or a woman, even an amateur student of the subject could tell Witzel that the circumstance presupposes the existence of a river named Sarasvati, since the word Sarasvati is clearly originally the name of a river: it means 'the one with many ponds' (WITZEL 1995a:105)ââ¬Â¦
"WITZEL.1995b:335, fn82). Here, he (Witzel) not only identifies the Sarasvati of the RIgveda with the Sarasvati of Kurukshetra which dried up progressively after 1500 BCE, but notes that it 'flows from the mountains to the sea' (a description now often sought to be transferred to the Harahvaiti of Afghanistan, with the Hamun-i-Hilmand being the 'sea' described in the verse), and accepts that it shows that the battle of ten kings took place prior to 1500 BCE. And nowhere, in that article or in his charts on the geographical data in the Rigveda, does Witzel talk about women and non-riverine deities, or about Arachosia or the Night time sky, in reference to the word Sarasvati in these Early Booksââ¬Â¦(WITZEL. 2000a: 6). Note what Witzel is writing shortly before reading TALAGERI 200: he repeatedly refers not only to Book 6 in general, not only to hymn VI.45 in general, but specifically to the verse in that hymn which refers to the Ganga, as pertaining to the 'early Rigvedic period' and as constituting part of the geographical data of 'the oldest books' and 'the oldest hymns', and he even takes up issue with other western scholars who think otherwise!"
Chapter 5 (p.168-175)
"WITZEL's FRAUDULENT ARGUMENTS. In a recent paper (WITZEL, 2005), Witzel argues, in some detail, a point frequently made by him earlier: that the Indo-Aryan elements in Mitanni indicate a pre-Rigvedic language, with linguistic features which necessarily rule out any idea that the Mitanni coluld have emigrated from India ââ¬â that the Mitanni were in fact an offshoot of the pre-Rigvedic Indo-Aryans as yet on their way towards Indiaââ¬Â¦And all three points (of Witzel's arguments) are misleading or fraudulent: 1. The argument about 'retroflexation' is clearly fraudulent, since it is clearly impossible to know whether the Mitanni IA language had cerebral (retroflex) sounds or not. But, in either case, whether they had them or not, it constitutes no objection to their emigration from Rigvedic Indiaââ¬Â¦2. Witzel's second argument, about the absence of 'typical South Asian loan words' and 'local Indian words' in the Mitanni IA language is in the same fraudulent vein. The only Mitanni IA words in the record are the names of a handful of Vedic Gods, some numerals, some words connected with horses (their colours, chariots, racing, etc.), a handful of other words (e.g. mani), and, as Witzel aptly puts it, 'a large array of personal names adopted by the ruling class'ââ¬Â¦The limited available Mitanni IA wordlist can certainly be analysed, but how on earth can anyone presume to make categorical declarations about which words were absent in the Mitanni IA language?...3. Witzel's third argument is that the Mitanni words seem to preserve certain sounds which had been transformed into other sounds already in the RV language: the RV has edh, e and h where the reconstructed pre-RV forms (also in Iranian) were azd, ai and jh respectively, while the Mitanni IA words seem to preserve the original sounds. This argument is not necessarily fraudulent in its essence, but it is nevertheless as baseless and misleading as the othersââ¬Â¦Witzel, of course, usually refers to phonetic changes in 'minor details such as the pronunciation of svar instead of suvar, etc.', but (as in Deshpande, above) changes from azd to edh or ai/au to e/o could very logically have been among the changes affected in the phonetic redactions."
Chapter 6 (290-307) ââ¬â 7G
"APPENDIX: WITZEL'S LINGUISTIC ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE OITââ¬Â¦we will examine the article presented by Michael Witzel (WITZEL 2005) in a volume edited by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton, published in 2005, which claims to present the linguistic case against the OITââ¬Â¦Witzel begins his linguistic arguments with an inadvertent admission that the AIT linguistic case is based on argumentative points rather than concrete evidenceââ¬Â¦Ironically, the case presented in Section 1 of this book (which I challenge Witzel to refute), for the Out-of-India scenario, is actually based on a combination of the Mitanni 'inscriptions' and the evidence of the Rigveda and Avesta, of which the material in the Rigveda has also frequently been referred to by Witzel as being 'equivalent to inscriptions' (see section 8C in the next chapter)ââ¬Â¦ In sum, all of Witzel's linguistic arguments are basically directed against three hypotheses which are treated as the core of the OIT case, but which form no part whatsoever of the case presented by us: (1) the 'Sanskrit-origin' hypothesisââ¬Â¦(2) the 'sequential movement of different groups' Out-of-India hypothesis (postulated by no-one, so far as I know) argued against by Hock (HOCK 1999a)ââ¬Â¦and (3) 'Misra's new dating of the RV at 5000 BCE' (WITZEL 2005: 358), from which Witzel decides: 'The autochthonous theory would have the RV at c. 5000 BCE or before the start of the Indus civilization at 2600 BCE', and 'according to the autochthonous theory, the Iranians had migrated westwards out of India well before the RV (2600-5000 BCE)' (WITZEL 2005: 369). Therefore, to sum up, there is no linguistic case at all, worth the name against the OIT case presented by us in our earlier books, and presented again with much more detail in this present book, especially in this chapter. The Indian homeland case presented by us answers all the linguistic requirements perfectly, while the AIT completely fails to answer any of them."
Chapter 8 (p.347-354)
"ââ¬Â¦the correctness of our classification (in TALAGERI 2000) of the Books of the Rigveda into Early, Middle and Late, and the fact that this is the 'right Rigveda', is established and proved by the way in which it 'predicted' the pattern of distribution of the Avestan names and name-elements (and other important words like ara, 'spokes') years before that distribution was demonstrated in this present book. A more fitting reply to Witzel's criticism could not have been foundââ¬Â¦As Witzel tells us elsewhere, 'we need to take the texts seriously, at their own word. A paradigm shift is necessaryââ¬Â¦' (WITZEL 2000b:332). Unfortunately, instead of taking the texts seriously at their own word, writers like Witzel have spent umpteen years and plenty of energy in producing voluminous piles of pure and incomprehensible nonsense based only on wild flights of their imagination, full of masses of chaotic details, wild speculations, mutually contradictory interpretations and conclusions, and ludicrous fairy tales, all of it leading nowhere."
Annex 2 Book review: S.G. Talageri, 2008, The Rigveda and the Avesta âââ¬" the final evidence, Delhi, Aditya Prakashan interspersed with flippant, fraudulent comments by Witzel <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->AIT Club mutual admiration society member, Hock indulges in suggestio falsi, suppressio veri on isoglosses
Hindu civilizational continuum (Book review -3: Talageri's The Rigveda and the Avesta, 2008, with particular reference to critique of Hock's 'evidence' of the isoglosses)
1. [After a detailed discussion of the evidence concerning the river Sarasvati, and of Witzel's 1995 papers on this point, on pages 111-112 and pages 115-121, Talageri makes the following observations:] "It is interesting to note that, in spite of the fact that Witzel's article actually only shows that the Sarasvati of the Rigveda is identical with the Ghaggar-Hakra, other AIT scholars lap up some other spurious and self-contradictory assertions from the article as evidence for the AIT<b>. Hock cites this very article by Witzel, which he claims is 'ignored or denied by Hindu nationalist authors', as 'evidence which suggests that some of the hymns in which the river Sarasvati is invoked (or the Goddess for that matter) may go back to a period before the arrival of the aryas in India and to an area outside India, in present-day Afghanistan and eastern Iran; </b>see Appendix A in Witzel 1995b:343 which distinguishes a 'western' Sarasvati (RV 2.41.6, 10.64.9) and a Sarasvati in Kurukshetra (3.24.3 and in book 7)' (HOCK 1999b Through a glass darkly: Modern 'racial' interpretations vs. textual and general prehistoric evidence on arya and dasa/dasyu in Vedic Society: 164). <b>Clearly the AIT club is an extremely closed mutual admiration society where one member's unsubstantiated speculative assertions, howsoever absurd, become another member's clinching evidence." </b>Talageri adds: "But, in spite of Hock's eagerness in grabbing at the straw of Witzel's suggestion about two different Sarasvatis in the Rigveda, the sum of Witzel's article is that all the references to the Sarasvati in the Early Books refer only to the Sarasvati of Kurukshetra: the Ghaggar-Hakra." (page 121).
2.[In chapter 7, <b>Talageri first shows how the theory of a homeland situated somewhere from East Central Europe to Eastern Russia does not help at all to explain the isoglosses, but that the theory of an Indian homeland explains all the isoglosses and all the other linguistic data. </b>In this context, Talageri writes as follows about Hock's arguments:] "<b>But most fatal to Hock's case is the fact that the evidence of the isoglosses, as presented by him, is deliberately partial and selective:</b> not only does Hock fail to take into account many important isoglosses linking together different branches, but he even pointedly excludes from his arrangement one crucial brahcn, Tocharian, on the plea that 'it is difficult to find dialectical affiliation' (HOCK 1999a:16) for it. Tocharian is important because it shares certain important isoglosses with the Anatolian (Hittite) branch and the Italic branchââ¬Â¦In no reasonable dialectological arrangement of Indo-European dialects can these three dialects (Hittite, Tocharian and Italic) be shown to be sharing these important isoglosses with each other in contiguous areas and then 'maintaining their relative positions to each other as they fanned out from the homeland' to their respective earliest attested areasââ¬Â¦ <b>So Hock simply ignores the concerned isoglosses, and excludes Tocharian from his arrangement, and crosses his fingers in the hope that no-one notices. </b>It is therefore clear that the actual evidence of the isoglosses in fact shows quite the opposite of what Hock claims for it: <b>it in fact shows that the Indo-European homeland simply cannot be situated in any central area (such as the area from 'East Central Europe to Eastern Russia') </b>with the dialects simply 'maintaing their relative positions to each other as they fanned from the homeland; to their respective earliest attested areas." (p.221).
Can Hock read the whole chapter (Chapter 7. The Evidence of the Isoglosses, pp. 205-307) and point out any fallacies in Talageri's criticism of his (Hock's) arguments, or in Talageri's own arguments, to show that his theory of a homeland in the area East Central Europe to Eastern Asia is more plausible and simple than Talageri's theory of a homeland in northern India?
Between the self-professed linguists, Witzel and Hock, there should be some way to make both of them read Talageri's critique and respond, instead of being dismissive. <b>Hock, in particular, has to answer the serious charge of deliberate exclusion of Tocharian while spinning isogloss myths. </b>So, what else is new in I-E punditry?
Kalyanaraman<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Tocharian and Bangani in the East ( right in the middle of the Satem distribution ) is an insurmountable problem for AIT. The very fact that they survived only in remote mountainous regions argues for a prior more extensive presence, disrupted only by subsequent internal developments. Hittite/Italic thus must be viewed as migratory outliers retained as "Peripheral Archaisms".
Hocks's theory of concentric expansion (and trivialization of Kentum in the East) is <i>ad hoc</i>, designed only to minimalize chronological development.