Quite apart from the Aryan angle, the decipherment of the Indus Script by Dr. Rao is of great significance for Indian culture in another way: it prov… - Shrikant G. Talageri

Here, again, a case of what Max Muller called “special pleading”: now Witzel claims not only to be able to identify “non-Indoaryan” loanwords in Vedic, he can also identify the exact regions from which these “loanwords” were borrowed: we have Punjab loan words, U.P. loan words, Bactria-Margiana loan words…! Witzel knows, with scientific exactitude that “loanwords”, from imaginary “substrate languages”, which are found in both Vedic and Iranian are definitely from Central Asia, and not from the Punjab or U.P., and, equally, that “loanwords” found only in Vedic are from the Punjab or U.P. – not, of course, because his theory suggests these locations, but because he has found actual inscriptions from pre-RV eras, in one or more non-Indo-Iranian languages, from the respective areas, where these words are actually recorded!

The essence of Tony Joseph's book is the new "genetic evidence".

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.