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For those who have approached the question of the origin of the Indo-European peoples and languages from the angle of philology, the great problem ha… - Stefan Arvidsson
" "For those who have approached the question of the origin of the Indo-European peoples and languages from the angle of philology, the great problem has been that there are no texts about migrations, much less about military invasions… From the Rigveda, people have taken passages that tell about the Aryans' attacks on cities and concluded that they then must have been a foreign, warlike, nomadic people. Nor does Roman, Hittite, Slavic, Celtic, or Germanic, written material mention migrations or conquests from the time when the Indo-Europeans supposedly emigrated from their original home. The philologists have, however, been able to pint to certain loanwords, especially topographic and hydrographic names, as evidence of migration. But the cornerstone of philologists' work has been linguistic paleontology, which tried to re-create, through comparisons, a vocabulary that indicates knowledge about certain objects and phenomena (Arvidsson 2006, p.295).
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About Stefan Arvidsson
Stefan Arvidsson (born 1968) is a Swedish historian who is Professor of the History of Religions at Stockholm University and Professor in the Study of Religions at Linnaeus University.
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Additional quotes by Stefan Arvidsson
The historian of religions Ulf Drobin clarifies Trubetskoy's point: "all classification must stem from criteria. The followers of the language tree theory avoid definite criteria and replace them with a concept of language that is BOTH changeable (in time) and constant (Indo-European). In the final analysis they end up in paradoxes and mysticism. Ur-Indo-European must either lack prehistory, or it must have a non-Indo-European prehistory. The latter, however, cannot be explained with out some form of criteria" (Arvidsson 2006, p.297, emphasis and parentheses in the original).
In Gimbutas's case I (Arvidsson) think that many readers of her work have sensed that there is another agenda behind her theoretical constructions, in addition to the clearly feminist agenda. This subtext probably is related to the fact that she was forced into exile by the Bolshevik troops who invaded her homeland, Lithuania, in 1944-45, moving across the Baltic and eastern Europe. There is something very "Cold War" about her theories and about the maps she draws of Indo-European invasions of eastern Europe and the Balkan peninsula. In any case, a connection can be observed between not idealizing, or even disapproving of, Indo-Europeans, and placing their homeland on Slavic ground (Arvidsson 2006, p.293).
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And it is true that the Aryans were praised in the nineteenth century by people whom one should not hesitate to call proto·Nazis, in spite of the anachronism. However, there were also some people who sang the same tune but whose political and religious ideas should not be characterized in this way. Michelet's. Quinefs. and Renan's struggle against "Semitic mentality~ and Judeo-Christian religiosity was a struggle against dogmatism. irrationalism, and conservatism, and for science. secular lawmaking, and education. Naturally, this does not mean that the work of these scholars does not contain prejudiced. one-sided. or historically false claims, nor is my analysis meant to question the fact that anti·Semitism was very widespread among all kinds of intellectuals in the nineteenth century, in France as well as in other Western lands. But it is misleading to label as anti·Semitic all Aryanist attacks on Judaism and Christianity that were made in the name of universalism and liberalism.
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