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 … - Shrikant G. Talageri

Sanskrit has many words for the horse: aśva, arvant or arvvā, haya, vājin, sapti, turanga, kilvī, pracelaka and gho ṭ aka, to name the most prominent among them. And yet, the Dravidian languages show no trace of having borrowed any of these words; they have their own words kudirai, parī and mā [...] The Santali and Mundari languages, however, have preserved the original Kol- Munda word sādom. Not only has no linguist ever claimed that the Dravidian and Kol-Munda words for ̳horse‘ are borrowed from 'Aryan‘ words, but in fact some linguists have even sought to establish that Sanskrit gho ṭ aka, from which all modern Indo-Aryan words are derived, is borrowed from the Kol-Munda languages.

Witzel is finally compelled to fall back on open pleading as follows: "any archaeologist should know from experience that the unexpected occurs and that one has to look at the right place". In other words, "there is no archaeological evidence, true. But it must be there somewhere, it is just that no-one has found it as yet; it is only just waiting to be found"! As if some yet-to-be-discovered sites could provide the archaeological and anthropological evidence, for a total transformation which affected the entire region, which is missing in all the discovered sites from the same region. This is the sort of wishful appeal-to-faith pleading that Indians are (not unjustly) accused of resorting to when their ideas of ancient India are out of tune with the material evidence:... By Witzel‘s logic, even the claim of many Indians that ancient India had aeroplanes should not be dismissed simply because aeroplanes have not yet been found in any archaeological record!

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.