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Michael Witzel Quotes
born 1943 Germany
Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist and academic. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50-80).
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I would not care, eg, if the IA-s could be shown to emerge from the proto-Masai culture of E-Africa.
Chicken and still later exports from India are absent in common Laurasan ritual.
The so-called ‘invasion’ of IA speakers is not (yet) visible in the archaeology.
Poets such as Śamyu Bārhapatasya 6.45.1, some early Kaṇvas (in book 8) [belong to the] Early Ṛgvedic level.
This word [Druhyu] means, literally, ‘the ones who seek to cheat’. Non-linguist as he is, Talageri missed a great chance for a ‘socio-ethnic’ study based on an etymology!
“Not only the language, but also the culture of the newly arrived elite was appropriated, including the 'Vedic Tank' the horse drawn chariot.”
Given the scholarly inclinations among the expatriate communities in North America we may expect a slew of new interpretations, in fact, a whole new cottage industry. Their impact will appear especially on the internet.
“[…] the Vedas were composed orally and they always were and still are, to some extent, oral literature. They must be regarded as tape recordings, made during the Vedic period and transmitted orally, and usually without the change of a single word.” (WITZEL 1997b:258).
“I have also since changed my opinion, based on new evidence, about the relative date of the bulk of RV2 which I would now include in the mid-level texts”.
[rice first appears in the Atharvaveda] unless the Ṛgvedic words (brahma-)-udana and puroḷāś mean a certain rice dish, as they do later on.
The IAs, as described in the RV, represent something definitely new in the subcontinent […] The obvious conclusion should be that these new elements somehow came from the outside.
Book 5 [...] even knows, in a hymn not suspected as an addition, of the Yamunā.
Ironically, many of those expressing these anti-migrational views are emigrants themselves, engineers or technocrats like N. S. Rajaram... who ship their ideas to India from U.S. shores.
Book 6, again, knows of the west (including the Yavyävatp) but once mentions even the Ganga in an unsuspicious hymn [a hymn not suspected to be an addition].
Theoretically, since Gartsamada Saunaka [the eponymous Rsi of Mandala II of the Rigveda] is made a Bhargava, he could be later than Book 6.
Between the arrival of the Aryans ... and the formation of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda a much longer period must have elapsed than is normally thought.
The entire book 7 is thus a snapshot o f history: the incursion o f the Bharata into the Panjab from across the Sindhu, and their battle with the “Five Peoples” and the Püru.
[Kurukṣetra] became the heartland of the Bharatas well into the Vedic period. It is here that 3.53.11 places the centre of the earth.
In general, the books of RV level I (RV 4-6) are thoroughly South Asian and have reference to local climate, trees and animals. We therefore have to take them seriously at their word, and cannot claim that they belong just to Afghanistan.
The Kassite conquerors of Mesopotamia (c.1677-1152 BCE) have a sun god Šuriiaš, perhaps also the Marut and maybe even Bhaga (Bugaš?), as well as the personal name Abirat(t)aš (Abhiratha); but otherwise the vocabulary of their largely unknown language hardly shows any IA influence, not even in their many designations for the horse and horse names.
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