The Aryans, even according to the AIT, moved not into a vacuum but a region thickly populated by a people who may have been on the decline and moving… - Nikos Kazanas

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The Aryans, even according to the AIT, moved not into a vacuum but a region thickly populated by a people who may have been on the decline and moving eastward but who were also more numerous, more advanced in urbanized civilization and literate. Now, would the immigrants be in a position to give new names and would the natives accept them for their rivers? … I doubt it. When thousands of Greeks were forced out of Turkey in the early 1920s and immigrated into the Greek islands and the mainland, they formed new communities and often gave to these the names of their former habitats (eg New Ionia, New Smyrna, New Halkidona etc). This is as far as their “nostalgia” went. They did not rechristen nearby mountains, plains or rivers, but accepted the existing geographical nomenclature.

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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.

Also Known As

Native Name: Νίκος Καζάνας
Alternative Names: Nicholas Kazanas

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Additional quotes by Nikos Kazanas

From a very long experience of reading, studying and teaching, of participating in Conferences and, in recent years, of editing articles for Journals (and, of course, private contacts and exchanges with scholars in many fields) I acquired the certainty that very few academics use their reason to the full and even fewer are, despite their vociferous protestations to the contrary, interested in truth.

It could be argued that the IAs developed their complex but secure system of oral transmission while on the move. ... But, if that were so, what would the IAs (or Indo- Iranians, since they were one people, according to the AIT) be transmitting and thus preserving? Their sacred RV was composed in the Saptasindhu. If they had developed their superb system while on the move, then they would have at least a few tales of their adventurous trekking and these would have been embodied in the hymns of the RV.

I find it very difficult to think that I am dealing with a science fully grounded in the realities of language as we ordinarily know and use it. All these specialized terms, the artificial models, the reconstructions that exist in no known texts and cannot be verified and the endless hypotheses — they all seem to belong to a world of airy-fairy speculation.

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