Where the Indo-European philologists are concerned, the invasion argument is tied in with their assumption that if a particular language is identifie… - Edmund Leach

Why is this sort of thing attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of early Sanskrit come to be so dogmatically associated with an Aryan invasion? In some cases the association seems to be a matter of intellectual inertia.

Yet here is precisely where anthropologists might make a useful contribution, if only their scholarly associates would stop thinking of the Rig Veda as a garbled history book.

In other words, the prominent place given to horses and chariots in the Rig Veda can tell us virtually nothing that might distinguish any real society for which the Rig Veda might provide a partial cosmology. If anything, it suggests that in the real society (as opposed to its mythological counterpart), horses and chariots were a rarity, ownership of which was a mark of aristocratic or kingly distinction.