Shrikant G. Talageri Quotes

Witzel rejects my etymology (one of the few etymologies actually proposed by me) of the word purusha (man) from Puru on the direct analogy of manusha (man) from Manu (p.147 OF MY BOOK) and pontificates:

The Vedic Aryans were the Purus of the ancient texts. And in fact, the particular Vedic Aryans of the Rigveda were one section among these Purus, who called themselves Bharatas.

As we saw, there is a large class of personal names and name-elements common to the Late Books and hymns of the Rigveda (386 hymns in the Late Books of the Rigveda and 8 Late hymns in the earlier Books), and to the Avesta (the bulk of the names, right from the name of the first composer of the Avesta, and the names of his closest associates), the Mitanni (including every common name element known), and the Kassites (the only known name). These names and name-elements are fundamental to all four groups, but completely absent in the Early and Middle Books of the Rigveda (apart from the 8 Late hymns mentioned earlier). And all these names and name-elements are very common in post-Rigvedic texts.

And, on this principle, Witzel’s papers themselves are “devoid of scholarly value”, since he is also “motivated” by the desire to counter the Indian homeland theory. Erdosy testifies that “the principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel) studying South Asian linguistics is to find “evidence for the external origins - and likely arrival in the 2nd millennium BC - of Indo-Aryan languages”; and Witzel himself admits that his historical analysis of the Rigveda is motivated by the desire to counter “recent attempts (Biswas 1990, Shaffer 1984) to deny that any movement of Indo-European into South Asia has occured.”

The above provides the most perfect illustration of Witzel’s mode of academic(?) discussion: he does not raise points because he believes in them and wants to get them either clarified or accepted; he raises them only to heckle and raise a din, like a speaker in a political harangue or a schoolboy in a school slanging match between two rival groups, where the same accusation is repeated again and again with a deaf ear turned to the response or clarification.

When the Ramayana was being shown as a serial on TV, Leftist and progressive artists, led by doughty warriors like A.K. Hangal and Dina Pathak, organized a march in Bombay to protest against this "communal" act of Doordarshan (Rama being a pre-Islamic Indian hero, any serial on him would obviously be a "communal" one). Addressing a rally at the conclusion of the march, Dina Pathak bitterly castigated Doordarshan for showing another "communal" item on its network—a report of the archaeological discovery, by Dr. S.R. Rao, of the remains of ancient Dwarka, under the sea, off the coast of Gujarat (Dwarka, having sunk under the sea long before the birth of Islam, any report on it would obviously be a "communal" one). Need we say more?" (TALAGERI 1993:32-34).

My book was published in early 2000, and I sent a copy of it to Witzel (not in a nasty spirit, and certainly not in anticipation of bouquets, but only to facilitate a healthy dialogue, or, at the very least, as a matter of courtesy). Earlier, I had also sent a copy to another scholar at Harvard (with whom I had earlier established indirect and temporary contact). Within a month I received an e-mail letter from that scholar ...relating that there had been a discussion between Witzel and himself “about the possibility of Talageri coming to study with him (Witzel) in Harvard to do advanced study or a Ph.D.” Witzel, the scholar wrote, “is the Vedic scholar par excellence, and Shrikant could get proper training and academic credentials if he were to be accepted”. I was asked to “contact Michael Witzel directly”. There was a proviso – as discreetly phrased as the rest of the letter – “provided he is open-minded and flexible in his views, and does not show himself to be intransigent or predisposed to certain ideas”.

There is no direct ethnic connection between the identities of different peoples of the Rigvedic period and the identities of actual different peoples living in present-day India, or indeed in the world today. (TALAGERI 2008:363)

The identification of the BhRgus with Soma is deeper, older and more significant: it is clear that the Soma plant originated among the BhRgus of the northwest, and it is they who introduced the plant and its rituals to the Vedic Aryans and their priests.

"The first stage, the primary stage, is represented by the familiar "Hindu-Muslim-Isai" syndrome. According to this, the Arabic-West-Asian culture of Islam, the Palestinian-European culture of Christianity, and the Indian culture of Hinduism, represent the three components of our "composite" Indian culture. (The introduction of the "Sikh" as a fourth angle to this triangle, was a side-development, intended to firmly separate Sikhs from other Hindus, and bring them closer to Muslims. That this part of the conspiracy has been a roaring success needs no elaboration here)….
The "Amar-Akbar-Anthony" brand of film propaganda has always been an indispensable feature of our Film industry. It has served to highlight this "composite" culture, by presenting stereotypes of blatantly West-Asianized Muslims and blatantly Europeanized Christians, insisting all the time on the "Indianness" of these stereotypes….
In this second stage, the "Amar" aspect of the "composite" culture is slowly diluted and downgraded, and the "Akbar" aspect is glorified and upgraded; hence, the propaganda must, necessarily, be more subtle than the "Amar-Akbar-Anthony" brand of propaganda.
When two persons meet, in a Hindi film, and one is a Hindu and the other a Muslim, they do not greet one another with namaste or Ram Ram: nor does one say namaste and the other assalam 'aleykum (nor in fact, do they refrain altogether from formal greetings); both greet each other with adab arz hai or assalam 'aleykum. When a Hindu, in a Hindi film, is faced with some great affliction, he starts doing the rounds, turn by turn, of a temple, a mosque, and a church, but a Muslim or Christian is never shown finding it necessary to approach other shrines. These are just two of many examples—each subtle by itself, perhaps not even consciously noticed in spite of their repeated occurrence—which, in the cumulative effect, serve to create the intended psychological environment.
The entertainment media have played no mean role in carrying on this brand of propaganda. The calculated glorification of Urdu, of Lucknow tehzib, of the Mughals, of gazals and qawwalis, etc., and the subtle ridicule of Sanskritized Hindi, has been a basic feature of the Hindi film industry…
The third stage is the final stage. This is the highest and most refined stage of all. At this stage, every aspect of India's mainstream culture, which existed in India prior to the arrival of Islamic culture from West Asia, represents "communalism".
Thus, it is perfectly secular for Indian politicians to don fez caps, visit mosques, perform namāz to clicking cameras, etc. But it is "communal", for them to visit temples, or bow down before Hindu holy men, or to wave ārtīs or break coconuts while inaugurating a function, since the customs of visiting temples, bowing before holy men, waving ārtīs, and breaking coconuts, all existed in India before the arrival of Islam from West Asia.
This last, and ultimate stage of "secularism" and "national integration based on a composite culture", can be fully comprehended only by the ideologically most advanced sections of Indians — the Leftists.

An analytical examination of just the three following assertions by Michael Witzel provides us with a great many examples of this exercise in deception:...Thus there is a regular AIT methodology by which every geographical name or word found in, or missing in, the Rigveda is to be interpreted: every eastern word found in the text is to be treated as indicative of a new area with which the Rigvedic Aryans are newly becoming familiar, and every eastern word not found as indicative of an eastern area not yet known to the immigrating Aryans; every western word found is to be treated as indicative of an area associated with the early days of the Aryan immigrations, and every western word not found as indicative of an area already old and forgotten by the immigrating Aryans

The totality of the alleged transformation itself is clearly unparalleled and unprecedented, and in every way contrary to the normal: Witzel himself, see above, repeatedly describes different aspects of it as "surprising", "relatively rare" and against what "one would have expected" in such cases. The case becomes impossible when we consider all the aspects together: (a) the transformation was total, (b) the people who brought about this transformation were illiterate, pastoral nomadic tribes "on the move" who "trickled" into the area in miniscule numbers, (c) the people who were transformed were the inhabitants of the most densely populated urban civilization of the time, covering a larger area, and having a relatively longer continuity without much change, than any other contemporary civilization, (d) the change took place within a few hundred years, and (e) it left absolutely no traces in the archaeological record, either of the conflicts and struggles involved or the necessarily resultant changes in ethnic and material composition of the areas after the transformation. It requires extraordinary "special pleading" to advocate such a case.

In keeping with a pattern which will be familiar to anyone studying the writings of supporters of the Aryan invasion theory, such unnatural or anomalous phenomena do not make these scholars rethink their theory; it only makes them try to think of ways to maintain their theory in the face of inconvenient facts.

To paraphrase himself: “give Witzel one archaeological site, and he will produce a comprehensive dictionary, complete with etymological analysis, of its language”.

“The earliest form of Indo-European speech (proto-proto-Indo-European) was spoken in the interior of India, and in late prehistoric times, it spread out as far north and west as Kashmir and Afghanistan” (TALAGERI 1993:229). It developed into different dialects or languages, of which the outermost ones (i.e. the dialects of the Druhyu and Anu) “spread out of India into Europe, West Asia and Chinese Turkestan […] The modern Indo-Aryan languages are not descendants of the Rigvedic dialects [i.e. the Pūru dialects], but of other dialects which were contemporaneous with the Rigvedic dialects [i.e. the dialects of the Ikṣvāku, Yadu, Turvasu, etc.], but which belonged to a different section of Indo-European speech (the Inner Indo-European section) […] The Vedic dialects remained the vehicles of the Vedic literature that followed the Rigvcda; but soon the ‘Classical Sanskrit’ language was artificially created by the ancient Indian grammarians (Panini was preceded by hundreds of other linguists and grammarians, many of whom are named by him in his Ashtadhyayi) in order to achieve a refined via-medium between the Vedic language and the Inner Indo-European dialects (which had developed conjointly with the Dravidian languages over the course of millenniums, and were therefore structurally different from Vedic, and also had their own roots and words). Later, the ‘Prakrits’ (which were also not fully natural forms of speech, but which successively approximated, to a greater and greater degree, the Inner dialects) came into vogue. Finally, the Inner dialects came into their own in the form of the ‘New Indo-Aryan’ languages, as heavily Sanskritised as the Dravidian languages. During the course of the millenniums, up to the present day, the various ‘Indo-Aryan’ […] dialects and languages influenced each other in innumerable ways, too complicated to be analysed here” (TALAGERI 1993:230).