Indo-European Cloudland - Michel Danino

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THE INDO-EUROPEAN CLOUDLANDPaper presented at a seminar on the Homeland of Indo-European Languages andCulture organized by the Indian Council of Historical Research in New Delhi onJanuary 7-9, 2002. Published inA Discourse on IndoEuropean Languages andCulture,D.N. Tripathi, (ed.), Indian Council of Historical Research, New Delhi,

2005, pp. 42-53.

Although the Indo-European (IE) homeland theory has taken many forms and colours, it

rests on the central assumption of an isolated, single proto-language in an isolated,

single homeland, from which, at some point in time, Proto-Indo-European (PIE) people

burst out in almost every direction to sow their linguistic seeds. But no one knows for

sure where, when, why or how: after two centuries of intensive studies and often

acrimonious debates, Indo-Europeanists cannot agree on the particular homeland or the

date of the great dispersal, and we still have theoretical Urheimats ranging fromNorthern Europe (Lothar Kilian) to Bactria (Johanna Nichols), with, on the way, Central

Europe (Igor Diakonov, Pedro Bosch-Gimpera), the Uralic-Volgan steppes of Southern

Russia (Marijas Gimbutas, J. P. Mallory) and various parts of Anatolia (Colin Renfrew,

Aron Dolgopolsky, Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, Vjaceslav V. Ivanov), among other

overlapping possibilities. Edwin Bryant (2001: 140) neatly sums up the situation: The

minute one tries to further narrow this vast Indo-European-speaking area, one enters the

quagmire of speculation and disagreement that has been characteristic of the Indo-

European homeland quest since its inception.

In addition to this persisting lack of consensus, a number of inconsistencies on

linguistic, archaeological, anthropological and cultural fronts have so far baffled

attempts at a wide-ranging synthesis. In fact, some Indo-Europeanists are honest enough

to speak of an endless series of cul de sacs, a remarkably unsatisfactory sets of

choices, and admit that the issue is by no means resolved. (Mallory, 1989: 257).

This paper attempts a brief survey of some of these inconsistencies, with

emphasis on the Indian point of view, which generally receives little more than a

cursory look based on outdated evidence or models.1

Linguistic Inconsistencies

Since its birth in the nineteenth century, linguistics has been the backbone of the

IE homeland theory. Despite important advances, it remains largely based on the tree

model (or genetic model), even though many linguists have exposed its limitations,

pointing out that it does not even work for the historical period: for instance, the model


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The Indo-European Cloudland / p. 2

shows English as originating from Germanic (through West Germanic and Low

German), but does not account for the very considerable influence of Latin on it, largely

through French. Attempts to include such real-life complexities (e.g. in the wave

model) have not been very successful, and we still find much IE literature taking the

linear genetic model for granted and coming up with questions such as, When did

language A separate from language B?, thus assuming that languages A and B had no

further point of contact after branching off, and none too with any other language!

Moreover, linguists have been unable to make areal linguistics, based on geographic

distribution, fit with genetic linguistics. Edward Sapir, N. S. Trubetzkoy, Antonio Tovar,

Joseph Greenberg, Georges Mounin and others have criticized such shortcomings of

conventional linguistics, including its claim to reconstruct hypothetical languages of the

distant past. Edmund Leach (1990: 243) was rather scathing: The origin myth of the

Indo-European philologists calls for a lineage of wholly imaginary ancestral

protolanguages.

The question of model apart, linguistic paleontology was once the great hope

of the new science: linguists claimed they were able to re-create the Indo-Europeans

original environment, down to its flora and fauna. However this field is now largely

discredited: depending on the approach followed, one can equally well arrive at a warm

or a cold climate, the plains of Central Europe or the mountains of the Caucasus; the

PIE people can be portrayed as aggressive nomads or as peaceful sedentary

agriculturists, etc. Similar disagreement has dogged the date of the supposed dispersal,

which ranges from 7000 to 3000 BC (Herbert Khn and Lothar Kilian go even beyond

10000 BC). Clearly, linguistics has no reliable way to date the speed with which

languages evolve.

While the existence of families and groups of languages is undeniable, structural

linguistics often produces results inconsistent with the family approach. Thus C.

Massica showed how, choosing thirty structural parameters for Hindi, the only language

that meets all of them is Telugu (a Dravidian language), followed by Bengali (Japanese

comes fourth and Turkish seventh, ahead of IE languages such as German or English).

Many have highlighted characteristics that IE languages share with supposedly separate

families, for instance the Finno-Ugric and the Semitic, or even with language familiesof America and Africa (Edward Sapir, Joseph Greenberg, John Bengtson, Merritt

Ruhlen). Such researches militate against the watertight models of PIE dispersal and

suggest much more ancient and extensive contacts between the various families.

Coming to India, while comparisons between the IE family and American,

African or Asian languages have been treated as a legitimate field of inquiry, pioneering


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Archaeological Inconsistencies

Attempts to correlate IE linguistic and archaeological evidence have remained

the subject of endless debates among Indo-Europeanists, with little or no agreement as

yet. This is not surprising, for archaeologists have long recognized that a particular typeof pottery cannot easily be equated with a given people or linguistic group, as it can

change in response to many factors (techniques, trade, raw materials and other

environmental factors, lifestyles, or contacts with other groups). In other words, it is

quite risky to equate the appearance of a new kind of artefact with the arrival of a new

people speaking a new language yet that still is the most common line of argument

found in IE literature. (The classic example of such an erroneous methodology in

Indias case is the now discredited use of the Painted Grey Ware as evidence for the

supposed arrival of the Aryans.) The whole problem of synthesizing archaeological and

linguistic data therefore remains as intractable as ever.Moreover, as archaeological evidence accumulates, the picture of ancient

peoples in Eurasia (and, indeed, elsewhere) grows ever more complex and less tolerant

of invasionist models. In the case of India, most archaeologists (e.g., R. S. Bisht, Dilip

K. Chakrabarti, George F. Dales, S. P. Gupta, Jean-Franois Jarrige, Jonathan Mark

Kenoyer, B. B. Lal, S. R. Rao, Jim G. Shaffer, etc.) have emphatically asserted the

complete absence of evidence of invasion or even migration an absence that has

compelled AIT proponents to retreat considerably and dilute their scenario: Aryan

invaders were previously portrayed as aggressive conquerors hurtling down the Khyber

pass in their horse-drawn chariots and imposing on peaceful natives their military mightand a culture diametrically opposed to its [Harappan] predecessor (Basham,

1981: 29). But now, except for a few scholars stuck in nineteenth-century models,3they

are forced to admit that the arrival of Indo-Aryans in Northwest India is scarcely

attested in the archaeological record, presumably because their material culture and life-

style were already virtually indistinguishable from those of the existing population

(Allchin & Allchin, 1997: 222, emphasis mine). What a climb-down!

If the lack of positive evidence for an invasion or migration has been

acknowledged, archaeological evidence favouring a Vedic background to the Harappan

civilization has not been given the attention it deserves. The strongest evidence lies inthe identification of the Ghaggar-Hakra river (along which hundreds of Harappan

settlements have been identified) with the Vedic Sarasvati river, an identification made

since the nineteenth century and accepted almost unanimously by archaeologists (even

by supporters of AMT such as the Allchins). This has considerable implications, since

the Sarasvati is known to have finally dried up around 1900 BC several centuries


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before the supposed Aryans could have reached its banks and composed Vedic hymns in

praise of the mighty river. This paradox remains the Achilles heel of AIT and has

compelled a few diehard invasionists to try and relocate the Sarasvati in Afghanistan,

making a mockery of the Vedic Rishis clear depiction of the river system of the Indo-

Gangetic plains.4

Also, R. S. Bisht (1999) has drawn extensive parallels between Harappan town-

planning and terms in the Rig-Veda for settlements, houses etc., rejecting the view that

the Rig-Veda has a purely pastoral setting. More positive evidence comes from the

crucial cultural field.

Anthropological Inconsistencies

Before we move on to it, let us briefly consider how the IE homeland theory

fares when examined by anthropological evidence.

The whole IE edifice rests on migrations across vast areas, but for which

evidence is generally nonexistent. Edmund Leach (1990: 241), in his famous

devastating paper, ridicules the persistence of the movement of peoples doctrine that

IE scholarship depends on. Colin Renfrew (1989) voices much the same criticism.

Moreover, as pointed out by Koenraad Elst (1999: 159ff), on the demographic level, the

PIE explosion makes little sense, as the regions variously identified with the PIE

homeland never seem to have had a high population density. In addition, demographic

movements were rarely if ever symmetrical, in several opposite directions at the same

time, as required by the IE theory: whether the PIE homeland is regarded as central

Europe, Anatolia or the steppes of Southern Russia, the models asks the PIE people to

have migrated westward, eastward and southward at the same time something very

unlikely to have occurred when the said regions had sparse populations.

Moreover, Indias Northwest certainly had a relatively high population density

during and after the Indus Valley civilization. Yet AIT dictates that it should be invaded

by people coming from areas of much lesser density somewhere in Central Asia

clearly the demographic mechanics of the whole thing are gratuitous and unnatural. If

some migrations took place, some of them must have been out of India too, and indeed

we know that Indus traders did go out in search of markets, all the way to the Gulf and

Mesopotamia and to Northern Afghanistan.

Finally, we would expect the supposed arrival of Indo-Aryans in numbers

sufficient to conquer the subcontinent to have left telltale traces. Quite the opposite is

the case: all anthropologists who have examined skeletons found in that region


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More extensive excavations, especially in the promising Sarasvati region, may

one day provide firm answers or else a final decipherment of the Indus script, but

that is unlikely to happen as long as experts in the field remain so reluctant to work

together. Also, multidisciplinary studies, integrating advances in biology,

archaeobotany, archaeozoology, archeoastronomy, will considerably increase our

understanding of the origins of Indian civilization. However they should also integrate

an unbiased scrutiny of Vedic texts, and not just on the purely outward level. 9 If we

cannot read the mind of the Rishis, can we hope to understand the world they lived in?

In the end, the more evidence accumulates on the dawn of civilization in various

parts of the world, the more our assumptions about ancient peoples turn out to be

simplistic and crude. Reality always ends up being more complex than our spotless

unilinear models. The Neanderthals seem to have played music with flutes carved out of

bones; Aborigines were painting a rich worldview on Australias rocks over 60,000years ago; Indias own treasure of rock art, Bhimbetka, has been occupied for 100,000

years. Only a straitjacket model can seek to confine Vedic times to 1200 BC.

There is room for a much more intricate evolution of our ancestors. The IE

model remains stamped with its own origins in a biblical paradigm (Trautmann, 1997:

52-57), which sees the world as a simple place with a simple and short history starting

from a single point of origin. This worldview is not likely to ever be capable of taming

reality.

Michel Danino

Indian Council for Historical Research, 2002


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Notes

1I have refrained from burdening this paper with numerous quotations in support of every point, as could

easily be done. Studies such as those by Edwin Bryant (2001), Michel Danino & Sujata Nahar (2000),Koenraad Elst (1999), B. B. Lal (1998 & 2002), N. S. Rajaram & David Frawley (2001) contain many

such references.

2Such studies have been made with regard to Tamil (R. Swaminatha Aiyar, 1975, and Sri Aurobindo,

[1914] 1971), Telugu (C. Narayana Rao, 1929) and Kannada (Varadaraj R. Umarji, 1983).

3E.g. Michael Witzel (1995: 114): The first appearance of [the invading Aryans] thundering chariots

must have stricken the local population with a terror ...

4For more details on the Sarasvati question, see B. B. Lal (2002), B. P. Radhakrishnan & S. S. Merh

(1999).

5Horse remains have undeniably been found in a number Harappan settlements and there are severalterracotta horse figurines (see books mentioned in note 1 for details, in particular by B. B. Lal), although

it is true that the horse and for that matter the cow, the camel and other animals has not been

depicted on Indus seals. On the other hand, after the Harappan civilization and right up to the historical

period, horse remains do not increase in any significant manner, which should have been the case if the

scenario of Aryans invading India in horse-drawn chariots were valid.

6Many of these instances of continuity between the Harappan and the later Indian civilization have been

well illustrated by Jonathan Mark Kenoyer (1998) and B. B. Lal (2002).

7On this important point, see Asko Parpola (2000) and J. McKim Malville (2000).

8 Strangely too, several groups in and outside India, for instance self-styled Dalit leaders, Christianmissionaries, Dravidian activists, etc., have made extensive use of AIT to exacerbate racial and social

divisions in Indian society for political or religious ends. Yet this perverted use of a now discredited

theory has rarely met with any condemnation from Indo-Europeanists.

9Sri Aurobindos The Secret of the Veda (1971) remains a pioneering work in elaborating a deeper

perspective and significance of the Veda. More recently, Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak & David

Frawley (1995) have discussed new insights in Vedic scholarship; Satya Prakash Singhs (2001) is a

wide-ranging study of Vedic symbolism.


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