Erdosy testifies that “the principal concern” of scholars (like Witzel) studying South Asian linguistics is to find “evidence for the external origin… - George Erdosy

Erdosy (1995a), who is prepared to find "some support" for small-scale migrations associated with the intrusive BMAC elements noted earlier, nonetheless states: "Several cultural traits with good Vedic and Avestan parallels have been found widely distributed between the southern Urals, Central Asia and the Indo-Iranian borderlands. However, even allowing for the uncertain chronology of Central Asian sites, few of these traits show the northwest-southeast gradient in chronology predicted by our linguistic models." Rather, in the manner of other traits commonly associated with the "Aryans" within South Asia, "they originate in different places at different times and circulate widely, undoubtedly through the extensive interaction networks built up in the mid-3rd to early 2nd millennia B.C." The main point is that "it is impossible, thus, to regard the widespread distribution of certain beliefs and rituals, which came to be adopted by Indo-Iranian speakers, as evidence of population movements" (12).

We reiterate that there is no indication in the Rigveda of the Arya‘s memory of any ancestral home, and by extension, of migrations. Given the pains taken to create a distinct identity for themselves, it would be surprising if the Aryas neglected such an obvious emotive bond in reinforcing their group cohesion. Thus their silence on the subject of migrations is taken here to indicate that by the time of composition of the Rigveda, any memory of migrations, should they have taken place at all, had been erased from their consciousness.

As for Burrow‘s thesis that some place names reflect the names of geographical features to the west, and thus preserve an ancestral home, they once again rather rely on an assumption of Arya migrations than prove it. [...] His cited equivalence of Sanskrit Saraswati and Avestan Haraxvaiti is a case in point. Burrow accepts that it is the latter term that is borrowed, undergoing the usual change of s- > h in the process, but suggests that Saraswati was a proto-Indoaryan term, originally applied to the present Haraxvaiti when the proto-Indoaryans still lived in northeastern Iran, then it was brought into India at the time of the migrations, while its original bearer had its name modified by the speakers of Avestan who assumed control of the areas vacated by proto-Indoaryans. It would be just as plausible to assume that Saraswati was a Sanskrit term indigenous to India and was later imported by the speakers of Avestan into Iran. The fact that the Zend Avesta is aware of areas outside the Iranian plateau while the Rigveda is ignorant of anything west of the Indus basin would certainly support such an assertion.