The question of the original homeland or Urheimat of the Indo-European family of languages is not a settled one: although most writers on the subject would support a theory that the family originated in “South Russia,” a general term for a large area stretching northwestwards from the Caspian Sea or for any specific part of this area, and spread by expansions and/or migrations to the other areas historically inhabited by speakers of Indo-European languages, this theory is not supported by the main academic disciplines involved in the study of the Indo-European homeland question, particularly in respect of the presence of these languages at the easternmost end of the Indo-European spectrum, that is, in South Asia.
While linguists, by and large, continue to support this theory, and to maintain that the Indo-Aryan languages of South Asia were brought into this region by immigrants or invaders in the second millennium BC, archaeologists are increasingly rejecting this theory on the ground that the evidence of archaeology, physical anthropology, and cultural continuity in South Asia from the neolithic period onwards disproves the idea that any such immigration or invasion ever took place, or at least that it could ever have taken place within the time-frame dictated by the exigencies of the chronology suggested by Indo-European dialectological studies (Erdosy 1995: x-xii).
For the purpose of this chapter, I will leave aside the implications and details of the linguistics versus archaeology debate, and only examine, to the extent possible within the scope of the chapter, the third academic discipline, apart from linguistics and archaeology, which has a direct bearing on the subject of the Indo-Aryan languages in India and, by extension, on the subject of the Indo-European migrations and expansions: namely, the study of textual sources, which in this context, means specifically the study of the evidence in the Rigveda.
The evidence in the Rigveda is examined by me in comprehensive detail elsewhere (in my book The Rigveda – A Historical Analysis, Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi), which, at the time of writing, is in print, and I will present a brief summary of this evidence in the present chapter.
The examination covers the following aspects of the Rigveda:
1 A comparative examination of the mythology of the Rigveda and the mythologies of other Indo-European branches.
2 An examination of the internal chronology and geography of the Rigveda.
3 An examination of references in the text which have a bearing on the origins and migrations of other branches of the Indo-Europeans.
The study of comparative Indo-European mythology has shown that it is possible to reconstruct a common or Proto-Indo-European mythology, or at least to identify elements common to different Indo-European mythologies.
The results of this study produce a picture which is very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with any of the possible scenarios in which the composers of the Rigveda are treated as immigrants into India who composed the text at the end of a long series of migrations from South Russia to the northwest of India, the greater part of the alleged journey being carried out in the close company of the Iranians.
According to the standard theory of Indo-Aryan immigration into India:
(a) The Indo-Iranians, as a more or less single undifferentiated group, separated from the other Indo-European groups in the Indo-European homeland itself: according to Victor H. Mair, for example, the Indo-Iranians were already separated from the Tocharian and Anatolian branches by 3700 BC; from the Germanic, Baltic, Slavonic, Italic, Celtic, and Albanian branches by 3200 BC; from the Greek branch by 2500 BC; and from the Armenian branch by 2000 BC (Mair 1998: 848–52).
(b) After separating from all the other branches, the original Indo-Iranians, still as a single undifferentiated group, migrated to Central Asia, and settled down there for a considerable period of time. So considerable a period of time, in fact, that the original immigrants were absorbed into the local populations and almost completely lost their original racial features and characteristics: according to Michael Witzel,
even before their immigration into South Asia, (they) completely ‘Aryanised’ a local population, for example, in the highly developed Turkmenian-Bactrian area which yielded the BMAC, involving both their language and culture. This is only imaginable as the result of the complete acculturation of both groups.
(Erdosy 1995: 113)
By the time they reached the Subcontinent they were already racially mixed:. . .they may have had the typical somatic characteristic of the ancient populations of the Turanian/Iranian/Afghan areas and may not have looked very different from the modern inhabitants of the Indo-Iranian borderlands.
(Ibid.)
(c) The process of immigration into the northwestern parts of India was equally a complex one. As pointed out by George Erdosy, the movement into the northwestern parts of India was not part of a process of “cataclysmic invasions, for which there is little evidence indeed,” but of “more gradual and complex phenomena” (Erdosy 1995: XV). Witzel, in the same volume, characterizes it as a “gradual trickling in, and subsequent rise in dominance, of Vedic tribes in the Punjab”: the process was so gradual that their “genetic impact would have been negligible and. . . would have been ‘lost’ in a few generations in the much larger gene pool of the Indus people” (Erdosy 1995: 113).
(d) The process of development of the Vedic language and culture in the Punjab was also a long and complex one: according to Witzel,
Such a process may have evolved in the manner of the Mitanni (and, in a different context, much of Hittite) culture: initial domination by Indo-Aryan speaking, somatically and to some extent culturally already ‘Turanian’ tribes in the Panjab, followed by quick acculturation.
(Erdosy 1995: 114)
Speaking about the language of the Rigveda, Witzel refers to the conclusions of F. B. J. Kuiper who “traces the influence of the substratum in the use of iti, in the two forms of the gerund which presupposes a long time of ‘subliterary’ usage prior to acceptance into the high, poetical language, and in the spread of retroflex sounds such as ṭ, ḍ, ṇ, and ṣ” in the language of the Rigveda, and endorses Kuiper's conclusion that “between the arrival of the Aryans. . . and the formation of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda, a much larger period must have elapsed than is normally thought.” Witzel therefore sums up the situation: “in contrast to its close relatives in Iran (Avestan, Old Persian), Vedic Sanskrit is already an Indian language” (emphasis in the original) (Erdosy 1995: 108).
The Rigveda, it must be noted, is, according to this theory, the end product of this very long and complex chain of events and circumstances.
The character of Rigvedic mythology, in relation to the mythologies of the other Indo-European branches, however, stands in sharp contrast to the scenario described earlier:
(a) The mythology of the Rigveda represents the most primitive form of Indo-European mythology: according to A. A. Macdonell, for example, the Vedic gods “are nearer to the physical phenomena which they represent, than the gods of any other Indo-European mythology” (Macdonell reprint 1963: 15).
In fact, the original nature-myths, in which the mythological entities and the mythological events in other Indo-European mythologies are rooted, can, in the vast majority of cases, be identified or traced only through the form in which the myths are represented in the Rigveda.
(b) All the other Indo-European mythologies, individually, have numerous mythological elements in common with Vedic mythology, but very few with each other (and even these are ones which are also found in Vedic mythology).
Thus, the only recognizable Indo-European elements in the mythologies of the various Indo-European peoples of ancient West Asia are those which they, separately, share with the mythology of the Vedas: Hittite Inar (Indra); Kassite šūriaš (Sūrya), Maruttaš (Marut), and Inda-bugaš (Indra-Bhaga); and Mitanni Indara (Indra), Mi-itra (Mitra), Nasha-at-tiya (Nāsatya), and Uruwna (Varuṇa).
Likewise Baltic Perkunas (Parjanya) and Slavonic Pyerun (Parjanya), Svarog (Svarga), Ogon (Agni), and Bog (Bhaga) have their parallels in Vedic mythology.
As Griffith points out in the preface to his translation of the Rigveda: “the deities, the myths and the religious beliefs and practices of the Veda throw a flood of light upon the religions of all European countries before the introduction of Christianity” (Griffith 1887).
In many cases, it is almost impossible to recognize the connections between related mythological entities and events in two Indo-European mythologies without a comparison of the two with the related Vedic versions. Thus, for example, the Teutonic Vanir are connected with the Greek Hermes and Pan, but it is impossible to connect the two except through the Vedic Saramā and Paṇi : as we have shown in detail in our book (Talageri 2000), the Teutonic Vanir and Greek Pan are cognate to the Vedic Paṇi.
Even the main Vedic myth which relates to the Saramā–Paṇi theme, found in the Rigveda in X 108, and in later developed forms in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa (II 440–2) and the Bṛhaddevatā (VIII 24–36), is found in both the Teutonic and Greek mythologies in transformed versions which bear absolutely no similarities with each other, but which are both, individually, clearly recognizable as developments of the original Vedic myth.
The myth, as it is found in X 108, incidentally, is itself an evolved and anthropomorphized form, located in the latest of the ten Books or Maṇḍalas of the Rigveda, of an original nature-myth, found referred to at various places in earlier parts of the Rigveda, according to which “Saramā is the Dawn who recovers the rays of the Sun that have been carried away by night” (Griffith's footnote to I.62.3) or by the Paṇis who are “fiends of darkness” or “demons who carry away and conceal the cows or rays of light” (Griffith's footnote to I.151.9).
(c) Iranian mythology, which should share to some extent at least the same character as Vedic mythology (since it is held that it was the undivided Indo-Iranians, and not the Indo-Aryans alone, who separated from the other Indo-European groups in South Russia and migrated to Central Asia where they shared a common culture and religion), on the contrary, has no elements in common with other Indo-European mythologies (other than with Vedic mythology itself).
It is difficult to understand how any objective analyst of Vedic mythology could fail to recognize the fact that the uniquely primitive and representative character of Vedic mythology is totally incompatible with a theory which treats the Rigveda as the end-product of a long and complex chain of events and circumstances involving a long period of separation of the original Indo-Aryans from the other Indo-Europeans, long migrations (over long periods of time) from South Russia to Central Asia and later to India, complete racial transformations en route (so that the “Indo-Aryans” who finally entered India bore little, or no, racial resemblance to the original “Indo-Aryans” who left South Russia), and a long stay in the Punjab where the (new or transformed) Indo-Aryans merged into the local population, lost all memories of their original habitats and journeys, and developed a uniquely Indian Indo-Aryan language before they commenced the composition of the Rigveda.
The geography of the Rigveda is held to be one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the text about the immigration of the Indo-Aryans through the northwest into the interior of India.
However, this conclusion is based, not on any analysis of the internal chronology and geography of the text, but on a bare assumption that if, as they must have, the Indo-Aryans entered into India from the northwest, then the Rigveda must give evidence of this circumstance, and the references to more western areas in the Rigveda must necessarily be older than references to more eastern areas. The argument that the Rigveda proves the immigration of the Indo-Aryans from the northwest into the east is thus a purely circular argument.
A proper perspective on the implications of the geographical references in the Rigveda cannot be had without first sorting out the internal chronology of the text.
The basis for the internal chronology of the Rigveda is the division of the text into ten Books or Maṇḍalas, which clearly represent more or less distinct epochs of Rigvedic composition and, hence, of Rigvedic history.
I have analyzed this chronology in detail in my book (Talageri 2000), and will merely present a summary of the criteria used, and the results obtained:
1 The first criterion is that of the relationship between the composers of the hymns in different Maṇḍalas: when Maṇḍala A contains hymns by a composer who is an ancestor of a composer in Maṇḍala B, it will be natural to assume that Maṇḍala A is older than Maṇḍala B.
2 The second criterion is that of references within the hymns in one Maṇḍala to the composers of hymns in another Maṇḍala: when a hymn in Maṇḍala D refers to a composer in Maṇḍala C as a figure from the past, it will be natural to assume that Maṇḍala C is older than Maṇḍala D.
3 The third criterion is that of references within the hymns to kings and Ṛṣis (other than composers, who have already been dealt with) who are contemporaries in some Maṇḍalas; and figures from the past in others: when Maṇḍala E refers to a king or Ṛṣi as a contemporary figure, and Maṇḍala F either refers to the same king or Ṛṣi as a figure from the past, or to a descendant of that king or Ṛṣi as a contemporary figure, it will be natural to assume that Maṇḍala E is older than Maṇḍala F.
Three different criteria are used, and the criteria are not used selectively (i.e. taking the names of a few selected composers and kings) but in totality (i.e. all the names of composers and kings, who are common to two or more Maṇḍalas, are taken into consideration), and the unanimous results are as follows:
Maṇḍalas 6, 3, and 7, in that order, stand out as representing the Early Period of the Rigveda.
Maṇḍalas 4 and 2, in that order, represent the Middle Period of the Rigveda.
Maṇḍalas 5, 8, and 9, in that order, represent the Late Period of the Rigveda.
Maṇḍala 10 represents the Very Late, or Final, Period of the Rigveda.
Maṇḍala 1 stands out as a Maṇḍala whose period stretches out from the pre-Middle (but post-Early) period to the Very Late, or Final, period of the Rigveda.
The above chronological order, separately obtained on the basis of each of the three criteria already cited, is further confirmed by the following factors:
(a) The chronological order of the Maṇḍalas (i.e. 6, 3, 7, 4, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10) is confirmed by a consideration of the rigidity of their family structures: that is, Maṇḍala 6 represents the most rigid family structure, where every single hymn and verse is composed by members of one single branch of one single family of composers; Maṇḍala 10, at the other end of the spectrum, has the loosest family structure, where not only are the hymns composed by Ṛṣis belonging to almost every single family in the Rigveda, but where, in a very large number of cases, even the very family identity of the composers is unknown; and all the other Maṇḍalas, exactly in the order obtained by us, represent stages or progressions from the rigid structure of Maṇḍala 6 to the loose structure of Maṇḍala 10.
(b) The general chronological order is also confirmed by a consideration of the method of attribution of hymns: in the older Maṇḍalas, hymns composed by the descendants of an important or eponymous composer are generally attributed to that ancestral composer himself, but in later Maṇḍalas, hymns are generally attributed to the actual composer himself. There is a general consensus that the six family Maṇḍalas (Maṇḍalas 2–7) are older than the nonfamily Maṇḍalas (Maṇḍalas 1, 8–10). It is significant that the family Maṇḍalas, except for Maṇḍala 5 (which, as per our analysis, is the latest of the family Maṇḍalas), follow the older method, while the nonfamily Maṇḍalas, except for Maṇḍala 1 (which, as per our analysis, is the oldest of the nonfamily Maṇḍalas), follow the later method.
The chronological order of the Maṇḍalas (6, 3, 7, 4, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10) becomes crucial for our analysis of the geography of the Rigveda.
An examination of the geographical factors in the Rigveda (rivers, places, animals), gives us the following picture.
1 In the oldest period of the Rigveda (the period of Maṇḍala 6), the Vedic Aryans were settled in the areas to the east of the Sarasvati, that is, in present-day Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
2 Toward the ending of the Early Period (Maṇḍalas 3 and 7), the Vedic Aryans expanded westwards into the Punjab.
3 By the Middle Period, and in the Late Period of the Rigveda, the geographical horizon of the Vedic Aryans had spread as far westwards as the southeastern parts of Afghanistan.
A chronological and geographical analysis of the Rigveda, thus, not only contradicts the assumption that the Vedic texts depict a movement from the northwest to the east, but, in fact, proves, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the movement was from the east to the northwest.
The theory of Indo-Aryan immigrations into India involves only the Indo-Aryans: it does not involve any other Indo-European group, not even the Iranians, who, according to this theory, parted company with the Indo-Aryans in Central Asia or Afghanistan itself (or, according to some writers, in “eastern Iran,” but this is often a euphemism for Afghanistan).
However, the evidence in the Rigveda contradicts this assumption: it is clear, from the evidence in the hymns, that major Iranian groups like the Persians (Iranian Parsua = Vedic Parśava), the Parthians (Iranian Parthava = Vedic Pārthava), the Pakhtoons (Vedic Paktha), and the Baluchis (Vedic Bhalāna), at the very least, all of whom are named in the Rigveda as “Anu” tribes, opponents of the Vedic king Sudās in the Dāśarājña battle (the battle of the ten kings) in Maṇḍala 7, were settled in the heart of the Punjab in the Early Period of the Rigveda. (The Purāṇas name another “Anu” tribe settled in the Punjab: the Medes, Iranian Madai = Puranic Madra.)
The battle represents a major conflict in which the Vedic people, who were settled to the east of the Sarasvati river in earlier times, expanded westwards into the Punjab, clashed with a confederation of the “Anu” tribes then inhabiting the region, and defeated them. This resulted in a movement of sections of these tribes from the Punjab to areas further west (starting with Afghanistan).
This battle, it must be noted, took place in the Early Period of the Rigveda, and is dated, by modern western scholars, to at least as early as the middle of the second millennium BC: for example, Witzel notes that the Sarasvati is “prominent in Book 7: it flows from the mountains to the sea (7, 95, 2) – which would put the battle of 10 kings prior to 1500 BC or so due to the now well-documented dessication of the Sarasvati (Yash Pal et al. 1984)” (Erdosy 1995: 335).
The ancestors of the Persians, Parthians, Pakhtoons, and Baluchis were therefore settled in the Punjab “prior to 1500 BC or so” on the evidence of the Rigveda, and the Vedic Aryans were settled to their east, to the east of the Sarasvati River.
The recorded presence of these Iranian groups in areas further west is much later to the period of the Dāśarājña battle, and even to the very latest date (1000 BC) assumed for the Rigveda as a whole by Western scholars. The Encyclopaedia Britannica records:
By the mid-ninth century BC two major groups of Iranians appear in cuneiform sources: the Medes and the Persians. Of the two, the Medes were the more widespread, and, from an Assyrian point of view, the more important. What is reasonably clear from the cuneiform sources is that the Medes and Persians (and no doubt other Iranian peoples not identified by name) were moving into western Iran from the east.
(emphasis ours) (Encyclopaedia Britannica 1974, Vol. 9, 832)
Likewise the Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology confirms:
We find no evidence of the future ‘Iranians’ previous to the ninth century BC. The first allusion to the Parsua or Persians, then localized in the mountains of Kurdistan, and to the Madai or Medes, already established on the plain, occurs in 837 BC in connection with the expedition of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III. About a hundred years afterwards, the Medes invaded the plateau which we call Persian (or Iran) driving back or assimilating populations of whom there is no written record. . .
(emphasis ours) (Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology 1959: 321)
More recently, P. Oktor Skjærvø reiterates that “‘Persians’ are first mentioned in the 9th century BC Assyrian annals: on one campaign, in 835 BC, Shalmaneser (858–824 BC) is said to have received tributes from 27 kings of Paršuwaš; the Medes are mentioned under Tiglath-Pileser III (744–727 BC)” (Erdosy 1995: 156).
To conclude, the textual sources not only flatly contradict any ideas of any immigration of Indo-Aryans into India from the northwest after a separation from the Iranians, but they provide strong and conclusive textual evidence in favor of the idea of an Indian homeland. In this, the textual evidence is in harmony not only with the evidence of archaeology (which rejects the idea of an Indo-Aryan immigration into India), but, with the evidence of more definitive linguistic criteria such as the evidence of place names and river names as noted by Witzel (Erdosy 1995: 105–7).
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1974. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Vol. 9. Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Erdosy, George (ed.), 1995. Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia – Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Griffith, Ralph T. H., 1987. Hymns of the Rgveda (complete translation of the text). New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, 1959. The Larousse Encyclopaedia of Mythology, translated by Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. London: Batchworth Press Ltd.
Macdonell, A. A., 1963 (reprint). The Vedic Mythology. Varanasi: Indological Book House.
Mair, Victor H. (ed.), 1998. The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Asia, Volume II. Washington, DC: The Institute for the Study of Man (in collaboration with) The University of Pennsylvania Museum Publications.
Talageri, S. G., 2000. The Rigveda – A Historical Analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.