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The situation whereby the Aryans are indigenous and compose the bulk of the [Rg Veda] in the 4th millennium in Saptasindhu is a very simple one and i… - Nikos Kazanas
" "The situation whereby the Aryans are indigenous and compose the bulk of the [Rg Veda] in the 4th millennium in Saptasindhu is a very simple one and in harmony with the archaeological data in the region. Scholars who think that this simple situation is at odds with their linguistic theories need do no more than reexamine these theories, which necessitate the further theory of the Aryan immigration, which theory generates complexities and problems and is in conflict with the data of archaeology. After all it is not as though these linguistic theories are without problems of their own or that in their present form they harmonize with archaeological data anywhere else in the Eurasian belt involved....Instead of emitting such strident emotional cries and witch- hunt slogans, Prof Witzel and his followers had better re-examine their unfounded linguistic assumptions and recall the words of Edmund Leach [published in 1990], who was neither an Indian nationalist technocrat, nor a New-Age writer, but a solid, mainstream pillar of the academic establishment...
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About Nikos Kazanas
Nicholas Kazanas (born 1939) is a Greek Indologist. Kazanas has been Director of Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute and he is on the Editorial Board of Adyar Library Bulettin (Chennai). Kazanas was honored by the Government of India with the Padma Shri award in 2021 under the Literature and Education field.
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Native Name:
Νίκος Καζάνας
Alternative Names:
Nicholas Kazanas
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Additional quotes by Nikos Kazanas
In summing up his extended survey of linguistic evidence Witzel tells us that the mode of the IA entry is "archaeologically still little traced"; it is, he states, securely traced in the texts (horses, chariots, religion etc) and from linguistics and possibly from future studies of the male Y chromosome (2001: 55-56). Here we have an attempt at falsification ("little" when in fact it is none) and wishful thinking. Neither horses and chariots nor linguistic phenomena, such as Witzel provides, prove any entry. They are interpretations of facts by a mind already colored by the AIT.
But what of the Iranian name Haraxvaiti? This name appears in the first chapter of the Vidēvdād along with placenames Haetumant (=Helmand), Māuru or Margu (= Margiana), Bāxδī or dhri (=Bactria) etc and, of course, Haptahǝndu. Haraxvaiti means simply ‘one who has harah-’. But Harah̦ - or Harax- is a stem entirely isolated in Avestan: it has no cognates, no other related lexemes.... But nothing, not one cognate, in Avestan other than the lonely and pitiful *harah̦ -! Observe now two absurdities implicit in the Doctrine. The Iranians who stayed put in Iran lost their own root *har/*hǝrᵊ- or whatever and all derivatives, while the IAs who moved further away retained this thoroughbred IE root and all its ramifications. And then they gave the name Sarasvatī (with the change of ha > sa) not to a large river like the Indus but to a dried-up stream in memory of the Haraxvaiti in Arachosia!
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I have seriously changed my mind on this subject; I have no axe to grind, as it were, no position or reputation to maintain; I can and shall change my mind again if strong and sufficient evidence emerges. Prof Witzel raises many points for discussion - some useful, some wasteful - but offers no evidence other than conjecture. Conjecture or hypothesis is not admissible as evidence in any impartial Court of Law.
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