The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate

Rating:
Summary: Finally, light, not heat
Review: Edwin Bryant brings clear-eyed vision and thorough scholarship to a topic that has lately seen more heat than light. Theories about the prehistory of the Indian subcontinent have tended toward the speculative and ideological, and even scholars who have approached the subject dispassionately and carefully have been picked up by others who want to use their conclusions for political ends. Bryant looks at a couple of centuries of theorizing about the origins of the Indo-European languages, and particularly of Sanskrit. Both entertaining and educational.

The reviewer here that disses Bryant's book clearly didn't read it. He accuses Bryant of conclusions he never came to and beliefs he explicitly disavowed.

Rating:
Summary: Finally, light, not heat
Review: Edwin Bryant brings clear-eyed vision and thorough scholarship to a topic that has lately seen more heat than light. Theories about the prehistory of the Indian subcontinent have tended toward the speculative and ideological, and even scholars who have approached the subject dispassionately and carefully have been picked up by others who want to use their conclusions for political ends. Bryant looks at a couple of centuries of theorizing about the origins of the Indo-European languages, and particularly of Sanskrit. Both entertaining and educational.

The reviewer here that disses Bryant's book clearly didn't read it. He accuses Bryant of conclusions he never came to and beliefs he explicitly disavowed.

Rating:
Summary: A much-need survey
Review: I found this book to be a remarkably even-handed and clearly written overview of a subject that has, bizarrely enough, produced much empassioned debate in the past several hundred years -- the problem of the origins of the Indo-European language family. What is primarly a linguistic problem has been commandeered by missionaries, nationalists of varying stripes, racists, and even Nazis to produce a peculiar body of thought about a so-called "Aryan race" both in Europe and India. Even highly-trained scholars have indulged in circular reasoning, the conflation of disparate bits of evidence, and outright fantasy in their attempts to postulate and prove their answers to the questions posed by the undoubted similarities of the various languages in this far-flung group.
One of the tenets of the conventional, European view is that a group of Indo-European-speaking nomads entered India around 1200 BC and then proceeded to spread their language and culture throughout the northern half of this subcontinent. Beyond the existence of Sanskrit and the Prakrits themselves, the evidence for this movement of people has always been sparse; the reasoning displayed by those determined to prove that this influx existed has generally been flawed -- rough guesses have been turned into proven facts, and these so-called facts then used as the basis for more guesses. This entire controversy might seem of no interest to anyone outside of a handful of academics, but unfortunately, the early and false conflation of language and race has been partly responsible for the deaths of a great many innocent people. Ideas can be fatal in the wrong minds.
Bryant attempts to strip away the muddled thinking that surrounds the "Aryan influx" theory. First, he analyzes the theory itself and discusses its history -- which is primarly a history of colonial exploitation by the British and indigenous exploitation as well, by the upper castes. Bit by bit he examines the evidence that has been brought forward in support of the theory and displays just how inadequate it is. Most of the "sure things" invoked by scholars through the centuries, right up into the last decade, are not sure at all. Many could easily be used to prove the opposite theory, that the language and culture of northern India developed in place, as it were, from some vague Paleolithic or Mesolithic beginning.
I decided to write this review partly because I was startled by the other reviewer here, who seems not have finished Bryant's last chapter. Rather than dismissing the Indigenous Aryan theory or linking it solely with Hindutva, the current Hindi nationalist movement, Bryant takes pains to show that many serious scholars and prehistorians also uphold the theory or at least, have found huge holes in the fabric of the opposing, Aryan Migration, theory. Over and over he repeats that he does not mean to dismiss the solid thinkers and their theories. In fact, when I first read the book the constant repetitions of his support for serious holders of the Indigenous Aryan theory annoyed me; they seemed like overkill. I understand why he repeated himself now. While he himself thinks that the evidence for a migration is stronger than that for indigenous development, he makes it amply clear just how weak the evidence for both theories is. He does, however, have a little fun with the most far-fetched fringe writers on the subject, some of whsom have floated ideas that deserve mockery.
I did have a few minor problems with the book, but those must be laid at the door of Oxford University Press. The book contains so many typos that I can only suppose it wasn't proofread by a professional. The paper is so thin that the printer was forced to use dark gray ink instead of black to avoid show-through, a real nuisance for those of us whose eyes aren't what they used to be. For a book of this price, this kind of penny-pinching is inexcusable.

Rating:
Summary: Very flawed
Review: The book is not properly conceived. It pits the 19th century linguistics orthodoxy about the chronology of the Vedic people against a diverse set of scholars. On the one hand, you have the archaeologists who are completely against the racist basis of the linguists' framework; on the other, you have most Sanskritists and historians of astronomy who claim that the internal evidence within the Vedic books goes against the linguists' chronology. Bryant conflates all these diverse scholars with "Hindu nationalists", suggesting a political agenda behind the views!

He has created a false dichotomy of AIT and OIT. In fact, most of the scholars who reject AIT reject its chronology of invasions or immigration around 2000 BC, preferring to stay silent on the situation before 4000 BC or so.

The intellectural framework for the book is weak. Its one redeeming feature is that it brings together many different views. Bryant is to be commended for not taking sides too brazenly.