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According to Renfrew, there are many pitfalls in the attempt to create an “inventory’’ of Proto-Indo-European words. For example, it can be very diff… - Stefan Arvidsson
" "According to Renfrew, there are many pitfalls in the attempt to create an “inventory’’ of Proto-Indo-European words. For example, it can be very difficult to determine whether a word truly is inherited from the Proto-Indo-European vocabulary or has been borrowed later from an Indo-European sibling language. If this question cannot be resolved, it is impossible to determine whether the object or phenomenon that the word denoted existed in the Proto-Indo-European homeland or is something that people became acquainted with later. And how can we know, Renfrew continues his critical review, that the semantic meaning of a word has been constant over the centuries? Without knowing that, one cannot use the word in question to create a picture of, say, the fauna that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were familiar with.
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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
During the postwar (post 1945 CE) period, these two theories (Father Wilhelm Schmidt and Father Wilhelm Kopper's theory of primal cultures, and Georges Dumezil's theory of Indo-European mythology) have completely dominated research about Indo-European religion and culture—in spite of the fact that they arose in an ideological atmosphere that did not differ much from the Nazi one (Arvidsson 2006, p. 239, parentheses added).
When Schlegel imagined that knowledge about India could be used to improve the chaotic situation in Europe, he had to claim that the pantheistic view was not domestic, but had been introduced to India by foreign peoples. It is also significant for Schlegel's ideological turnaround that he refrains from discussing the quietistic Upani- shads in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Instead, he argues that what is genuinely original and valuable in the Indian religion is ethics and law, and that the foremost document of Indian literature is the Laws of Manu. 39
The sometimes interwoven traditions that have dominated the postwar period-personified by Dumezil and Gimbutas—have generally been considered to represent an objective, scientific body of research that contrasts sharply with the Nazis' misuse of the Indo-Europeans. But as we have seen in this chapter, there is no reason to stop critically analyzing the ideology of Indo-European scholarship. If Dumezil and Gimbutas have each represented a constructive research tradition, Bruce Lincoln can represent the tradition of ideological critique among scholars of Indo-European heritage (Arvidsson 2006, pp. 301-302).
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