09-22-2003, 05:41 AM
If you have a serious interest in the Indo-European and Indo-Aryan problems, then Mallory is a must read. If you have no interest in linguistics then it may be of no interest. Mallory's forte is lingusitics and he is rather effective at that. However, in terms of archaeology it is somewhat dated. For a more updated view you may see the Tarim mummies along with Mair, where they discuss the IA problem more objectively. In any case archaeology has not thrown much light on the IE and IA problems. Renfrew's book is more heavy on archaeology but shabby in terms of linguistics and comparative mythology.
In my opinion the Indo-Iranian languages and culture are most critical to the understanding of early IE. This was also the view of the western scholars until the end of the 1940s. Suddenly after that the focus on I-Ir started decreasing and it was relegated to a relatively unimportant position in IE studies. The books of both Mallory and Renfrew suffer from this bias against I-Ir. The excess attention given to Hititte by both these streams is real not helpful. This has had negative consequences in attacking the IE problem. In part Mallory and Mair try to address that in the Tarim mummies but their thinking is still constrained by the old biases that are still there. The mainstream Indologists spearheaded by Witzel and his lackeys are only adding to the problem by their inaccurate work on the Indian material. Likewise most native Indian scholars are also shoddy in their work and labor under some delusions effort to fight strawmen (The Aryan invasion debate). But one will have to do far more serious investigation beyond Mallory and Renfrew to understand the nuances of the problem. Nevertheless, they are a good place to start.
In my opinion the Indo-Iranian languages and culture are most critical to the understanding of early IE. This was also the view of the western scholars until the end of the 1940s. Suddenly after that the focus on I-Ir started decreasing and it was relegated to a relatively unimportant position in IE studies. The books of both Mallory and Renfrew suffer from this bias against I-Ir. The excess attention given to Hititte by both these streams is real not helpful. This has had negative consequences in attacking the IE problem. In part Mallory and Mair try to address that in the Tarim mummies but their thinking is still constrained by the old biases that are still there. The mainstream Indologists spearheaded by Witzel and his lackeys are only adding to the problem by their inaccurate work on the Indian material. Likewise most native Indian scholars are also shoddy in their work and labor under some delusions effort to fight strawmen (The Aryan invasion debate). But one will have to do far more serious investigation beyond Mallory and Renfrew to understand the nuances of the problem. Nevertheless, they are a good place to start.