They, therefore, postulate that some time had elapsed since the actual invasion and conquest, and it was the close ancestors of the composers of the … - Shrikant G. Talageri

Witzel‘s location of the Sarasvatī in Book 2 in Afghanistan is not an honest one: he does it only because he wants a Rigvedic Book which refers only to western rivers, in order to show the Vedic Aryans ―fighting their way through the NW mountain passes in their alleged movement from west to east, and Book 2 is his only option, since the name of only this one river is mentioned in the whole of this Book, and it is a name which can be manipulated from east to west by creating a dual entity (thanks to the existence of a Sarasvatī, the Avestan Harahvaiti, in Afghanistan).

The totality of the alleged transformation itself is clearly unparalleled and unprecedented, and in every way contrary to the normal: Witzel himself, see above, repeatedly describes different aspects of it as "surprising", "relatively rare" and against what "one would have expected" in such cases. The case becomes impossible when we consider all the aspects together: (a) the transformation was total, (b) the people who brought about this transformation were illiterate, pastoral nomadic tribes "on the move" who "trickled" into the area in miniscule numbers, (c) the people who were transformed were the inhabitants of the most densely populated urban civilization of the time, covering a larger area, and having a relatively longer continuity without much change, than any other contemporary civilization, (d) the change took place within a few hundred years, and (e) it left absolutely no traces in the archaeological record, either of the conflicts and struggles involved or the necessarily resultant changes in ethnic and material composition of the areas after the transformation. It requires extraordinary "special pleading" to advocate such a case.

After chapter 9 (etc) of my book, his unfruitful “offer”, and our rather acrimonious e-mail debate, and now this “review article” that he was compelled to write as a natural sequel to all this, Witzel cannot easily admit that he finds my analysis and conclusions acceptable.... To sum up: when it comes to indulging in “inane accusations and outright slander”, even under cover of writing a “review article” of a book, Witzel is second to none! .... Throughout the whole debate, Witzel epitomizes the kind of scholar described by Max Muller (in his book “India – what it can teach us”) as being very rare in India, but not so rare in the west (a generalization which need not be true in general, but is definitely true in this case): the scholar who indulges in “rudeness of speech … quibbling….. special pleading ….. (and) untruthfulness” and who “writes down what he knows perfectly well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those who still value truth…”