Unmasking AIT

[dhu]

Thank you for your response. You rightly wonder where this research leads to. We are indeed not interested in it as a historical curiosity.



I completely agree with you that it does not matter how a theory came into being as long as it is sustained by evidence and clarifies aspects of the world we live in. However, there are serious reasons to doubt whether this is so in the case of the Aryan Invasion or Immigration Theory.



The current literature about the Aryans and their migrations shows that the AIT/AMT is not as unproblematic or sustained by evidence as you seem to think. Of course, as I am not a Sanskritist, I am in no position to challenge the scientificity of the linguistic studies Witzel has done and I have no intention of doing so. However, I can say that when it comes to Witzel's and others' claims about the history of the Indian people and culture – that there once was an Aryan people, that had a Vedic religion, Sanskrit as its language, an ideology that structured society and imposed all of this on the indigenous population of India when they arrived there – these are not supported by the evidence he provides. The problem arises when scholars like Witzel link the linguistic facts about the Indo-Aryan languages to a people with a particular culture and religion.



As you yourself say: " the Rg Veda is not the record of an immigrating community,but was composed many centuries after IndoEuropean languages entered India; and secondly it was the record of only one of the many IE peoples in India." If this is true then this seriously challenges the foundation for theses that link the dispersal of the Indo-Aryan languages to the migrations of a people and culture (be it from or to India).



If we look at the literature about the Aryans we see that many scholars indeed struggle to link the available facts about India's past to claims about the culture, people and society at that time. This has brought many to conclude that 'the Aryans' only refers to a linguistic group, or to a cultural group which cannot be linked to a specific language, or to the followers of the Vedas but then without linking this to a culture or without making claims about the role these played in society, etc. Yet, at the same time the notion of the Aryans as a the people that had Sanskrit as their language and Vedism as their religion and ideology, remains unchallenged. The existence of such an Aryan people remains the starting point of most descriptions and studies of the development of the Indian culture.



So, in order to see whether Witzel's proof or evidence for an Aryan immigration is scientifically valid or not we need to take a closer look at the notion of the Aryans. That is, at the relation between the Vedas and a people with a particular culture, religion and language. We are currently working on an analysis of the contemporary literature on the Aryans to see whether there is any evidence for such a link. If not, then it becomes relevant to look at the development of the idea of the Aryans and their role in the development of the Indian culture. The article we uploaded takes a first step in doing this. We try to show that the fundamental theoretical outlines of the Aryan Invasion theory reflects the European cultural experience of India rather than any scientific or empirical research into the Indian past. We further argue that these theoretical outlines are Christian theological in nature. A lot more research needs to be done on this. Amongst other things about the relation between the notion of an Aryan people and the caste system.



With regard to 'problematizing the caste theory' the question should be 'which theory'?. The claim that there exists a caste system in India can hardly be called a theory. At the moment there exists no single theory that shows that there is such a system and how it works. The fieldwork results of the Centre for the Study of Local Cultures moreover show that at least in Karnataka no system exists that hierarchically divides society with the Brahmins on top.





I hope this clarifies the aim of the article.



Yours



Marianne