Recent hypotheses connecting the Oxus civilization with the Indo- Iranians or the Indo-Aryans are of two kinds: the first consider the Oxus civilization as an emanation of the Indo-Iranians / Indo-Aryans (Sarianidi, Hiebert); the second hold that newcomers from the steppes succeeded the Oxus civilization (Kuzmina) or took possession of it (Parpola, Mallory). This wide uncertainty, which may appear surprising, is due to the fact that no trace of invasion is noticed on the ground, no cultural transformation is marked by the presence of archaeological material whose origin could be attributed to peripheral regions. Expressions like “elite dominance” or “infiltration,” despite their great evocative power, are nothing but rhetorical devices. They do not manage to mask our present inability to account for a supposed historical phenomenon. [...] In neither of the two regions, steppes and oases, do we find an archaeological material that could be indisputably attributed to Indo-Iranians, Indo- Aryans, or Iranians.

There has been further discussion of the position of the Oxus Civilisation regarding the problem of the Indo-Aryans in relation to the Indus Civilisation, and its problems regarding the connections between the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia, especially Bactria.255 The literature is abundant, but the archaeological material does not support the theory of the crossing of the Hindu Kush by Indo-Aryan or Aryan tribes, whether they are identified as the ‘Oxus people’, or with the ‘Andronovo tribes’. Andronovo-type pottery has been found at Shortughaï and in the Dashli sites in Afghanistan, as well as almost everywhere in Central Asia north of the Hindu Kush, after around 1800 bc, but there is no reported evidence for this ware to the south of the Hindu Kush. On the other hand, there is evidence for Oxus Civilisation material to the south of the Hindu Kush, but no conclusive proof that the distribution of this material represents a migration rather than other types of exchange or trade.

Consequently, in current migratory hypotheses, in the same way that the Oxus Civilization disappears upon contact with India, the culture of the Andronovo steppes vanishes upon contact with the Oxus Civilization and never crosses towards the south the line which extends from Kopet Dagh to Pamir-Karakorum, which poses serious problems for historically translating the Indo-Aryans towards the South.

The Iranians may have been an offshoot from India.

Archaeologists point out that there is not a single cultural element of central Asian, eastern European, or Caucasian origin in the archaeological culture of the Mitannian area.... In contrast to this lacuna, Brentjes draws attention to the peacock element that recurs in Mitannian culture and art in various forms (to be eventually inherited by the Iranians), a motif that could well have come from India, the habitat of the peacock. Since this motif is definitely evidenced in the Near East from before 1600 B.C.E., and quite likely from before 2100 B.C.E., Brentjes (1981) argues that the Indo-Aryans must have been settled in the Near East and in contact with India from well before 1600 B.c.E.32 The corollary of this is that the Indo-Aryans "could not be part of the Andronovo culture [a culture dated around 1650-1600 B.C.E. with which they are usually associated], but should have come to Iran centuries before, at the time when the Hittites came to Anatolia".

Nonetheless, those who do find die aforementioned linguistic exigencies compelling must find some way of getting the Indo-Aryans speakers into the subcontinent by some means or another. Mallory (1998) feels comfortable enough ascribing some form of Indo-Iranian identity to the Andronovo culture but admits that, "on the other hand, we find it extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India . . . where we would presume Indo-Aryans had settled by the mid-second millennium BCE" (191). Referring to the attempts at connecting the Indo-Aryans to such sites as the Bishkent and Vakhsh cultures, he remarks that "this type of explanation only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (192). He points out that suggesting an Indo-Aryan identity for the BMAC requires a presumption that this culture was dominated by steppe tribes. However, "while there is no doubt that there was a steppe presence on BMAC sites, . . . this is very far from demonstrating the adoption of an Indo-Iranian language by the Central Asia urban population" (192).

Along the forest trajectory as well there is evidence of either an early Indie presence or undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian or Proto-Indo-Aryan. Among the Indo-Iranian loans into early Finno-Ugric are some so phonologically archaic that they could well be Proto-Indo-Iranian... Iranian, but not Indo-Aryan, regularly reflects PIE s as h, so this Finno-Ugric form looks more Indie than Iranian. Abaev also cites some less well attested forms that could be specifically Indie... These borrowings would have taken place somewhere in the vicinity of the southern Ural Mountains. They were received from a steppe language and incorporated into Finno-Ugric as it began its spread along the forest trajectory. This linguistic evidence for an Indie or Proto-Indo-Iranian wave preceding Iranian on the steppe is weak but legitimate. In partial confirmation of it, Kuz’mina identifies the Andronovo culture of eastern Kazakhstan in the mid-second millennium BC as Indo-Aryan..... There is also evidence for Indo-Aryan along the steppe trajectory in the form of a set of Crimean place names which Trubač identifies as Indo-Aryan. This evidence is even weaker—place names in general have poor diagnostic value since they lack denotational meaning—but carefully researched and again legitimate. If Trubačv is right there is evidence for an Indie advance to the western steppe. Taken together, the Finno-Ugric and Crimean evidence are consistent with the assumption of a short-lived Indie or Indo-Aryan presence at the frontier of the Iranian spread on the steppe, in addition to the well-known Indie frontier in northeastern Mesopotamia and India.

Jarrige (1985) specifically mentions that the existence of the Indo-Aryans has "so far only been deduced on the basis of linguistic evidence" (62; ). Otherwise, "what we see is a dynamic system of multidirectional contacts and 'influences' extending throughout a vast area from southern Central Asia to the Ganges valley and continuing from the beginning of the 2nd millennium into the 1st millennium BC" (62).

Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. . . . For many years, the "invasions" or "migrations" of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/ Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the second rise of urbanization. . . . This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. . . . Instead, there was an overlap between Lite Harappan and post-Harappan communities . . . with no biological evidence for major new populations.

I agree that a plausible explanation has yet to be given as to how, if there were indeed no actual invasion of Indo-Aryans but only the migratory ‘trickle’ into which it has been reconfigured, the newcomers could have completely eradicated the pre-existing language of the entire North of the subcontinent in the short interval normally allotted between their arrival and the composition of the Rgveda, in which the local topography is Indo-Aryan. When one considers that, in these proposed two or three centuries, such hypothetical migrants managed even to Sanskritize practically all of the names of rivers and places, the most conservative aspect of a substratum, in the N.W. of the subcontinent, but yet failed to do so in the East of the subcontinent despite Aryanizing it for well over two millennia, and the accomplishment is remarkable (and, of course, they failed to even displace the Dravidian languages in the South despite extensive interaction for almost as long). Add to this that their predecessors were the highly sophisticated and urbanized residents of the Indus Valley Civilization, and the incoming Indo-Aryans typically construed as pastoralist nomads, and Kazanas has a right to wonder how and why would the Indus Valley dwellers have so thoroughly and completely adopted the language of these illiterate herdsmen if the latter were not invaders — a status denied them by archaeology?

This raises the immediate objection that if archaeology cannot trace any consistent material culture identifiable as Indo-Aryan arriving into the subcontinent from outside, it most certainly cannot identify any such culture emanating out. Accordingly, as far as archaeology is concerned, we have reached a stalemate (although from a Migrationist perspective there is, arguably at least, some kind of chronological sequence of archaeological culture that at least heads toward the general direction of the subcontinent, even if it does not penetrate it). Ultimately, however, the Aryans cannot be satisfactorily identified in the archaeological record as either entering or exiting. The trajectory of the Indo-Aryans, indeed the necessity of their very existence, is a linguistic issue that archaeology, as most archaeologists are well aware, cannot locate in the archaeological record without engaging in what, to all intents and purposes, amounts to special and often complicated pleading. On the basis of the present evidence, linguistics cannot decisively determine with any significant degree of consensus where the original home- land actually was. And archaeology can only hope to be productive in identifying the material remains of a linguistic group if linguistics has already done the groundwork of pinpointing its geographic area of origin with a reasonable degree of precision.

Chakrabarti (1977b) finds that they "may more satisfactorily be explained as nothing more than what they apparently are: isolated objects finding their way in through trade or some other medium of contact, not necessarily any population movement of historic magnitude" (31). He notes that prior to die artificial boundaries demarcated by the British, the southern part of the Oxus, eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and the Northwest of the subcontinent all constituted an area with significant economic and political interaction throughout the ages—a sphere of activity distinct from the Iranian heartland to the west and Gangetic India to the east. In such an economic and geopolitical zone, "any new significant cultural innovation in any one area between the Oxus and the Indus is likely to spread rapidly to the rest of this total area" (31). As far as he is concerned, "the archaeological data from the Indus system and the area to its west . . . which have been interpreted as different types of diffusion from a vague and undefined West Asia are no more than the indications of mutual contact between the geographical components of this interaction sphere" (35).

The dates (2200–1500 BCE) and location of the Andronovo culture are consistent with the attribution of this culture to the undivided Indo-Iranians. But we will notice that the traces attested today stop in Bactria... No Andronovian burial has yet been found south of the Oxus.... They are very thin: a few shards. It should therefore be assumed that the Indo-Iranians, Proto-Iranians or Proto-Indo-Aryans got rid of this culture just as they entered Iran and India. The hypothesis is possible since, to arrive in these territories, they had necessarily crossed sedentary zones belonging to the Oxus civilization, whose material culture was much superior. The curious thing is that they seem not to have borrowed anything from the latter either. Furthermore, one of the markers of the Scythian civilization and – for the majority of archaeologists – of the p-i-e and i-ir habitat in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC is the existence of tombs covered with a tumulus (known as kurgan/ kurgan)... So in Sintashta. However, this type of burial was considered an abomination both in Vedic India and in Mazdaean Iran. Clearly, it is very difficult to find a marker for the i-ir group.

Although the overall socioeconomic organization changed, continuities in technology, subsistence practices, settlement organization, and some regional symbols show that the indigenous population was not displaced by invading hordes of Indo-Aryan speaking people. For many years, the ‘invasions’ or ‘migrations’ of these Indo-Aryan-speaking Vedic/Aryan tribes explained the decline of the Indus civilization and the sudden rise of urbanization in the Ganga-Yamuna valley. This was based on simplistic models of culture change and an uncritical reading of Vedic texts. Current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia. Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities, with no biological evidence for major new populations.