A Breakthrough in Vedic Studies
The Vedas, often considered mythology, abound in concrete information which, taken in conjunction with their language, enables scientists to determine the movements of speakers of Indo-Aryan (IA) towards and into South Asia. This has been the subject of several recent workshops of which the results are now being published. A first volume contains the Proceedings of an International Vedic Workshop at Harvard in June, 1989. Another reflects a similar seminar on Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, October 1996. The results of the Second International Vedic Workshop, at Kyoto in 1999, are forthcoming. The third will be held at Leiden in 2002 (May 29June 2).
By FRITS STAAL
Rigveda 1.112.6 tells us that the Asvins, divine young men who travel through space, regarded with favour a certain Karkandhu. One need not know much Sanskrit to sense that Karkandhu is not Vedic or Sanskrit but can it be proved? It is not enough to fail to find an etymology from Indo-Aryan (IA), the language family of which the language of the Rigveda is the earliest well-known member; or from Indo-European (IE), the larger family to which IA belongs. There must be structural reasons, i.e., criteria from morphology or 'form,' phonology or 'sound', and syntax or 'sentence structure.' F.B.J. Kuiper showed that an etymology for Karkandhu is not merely unavailable but impossible. It cannot be analysed as kar-kandhu, a common reduplication in IE but following different rules (Sanskrit: di-dhiti 'inspiration' or ci-kirsha 'intention to do'). Besides, kandhu does not have the structure of an IE verbal root. Nor can we analyse: kark-andhu because no derivational form andhu occurs in any IA or IE word.How did Karkandhu get into the Rigveda? No language is pure and that applies not only to names. Kuiper wrote in 1991 that Vedic Studies would not make headway unless someone was prepared to stick out his neck. He listed 383 Rigvedic words that 'have little or no chance of being of Indo-European origin.' He computed that these words constitute five or six per cent of the Rigvedic vocabulary, later reduced to four per cent on the basis of a more accurate database count of the total number of Rigvedic words. Not a large number, but not without significance.
It is not obvious that the language of the Rigveda is IA and that IA is IE. These statements derive from two hundred years of research and an accumulation of facts. The relationship between languages resides in the most basic parts of the vocabulary: numerals (Sanskrit sapta, Greek hepta, Latin septem, English seven,...), body parts (pada, pedon, pedis, foot), common verbs (asti, esti, is), conjugations and declensions (Sanskrit agnis, agnim, agnibhyas; Latin ignis, ignem, ignibus). Syntax is illustrated in J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989) by Rigveda 1.32.1: indrasya nu viriyani pravocam is similar in structure to 'Of Indra I shall now proclaim the heroic deeds' and means the same. The nu is the same as Greek, Old Irish, Lithuanian, and Old English nu, modern English now. Indra's viryani are English virile deeds from Latin vir 'man.' Pra vocam 'proclaim,' literally 'speak forth,' is related to Latin pro 'forth' and voco 'I call.' English provoke has the same form though the meaning is different. Pro is common in Greek/Latin/French /English protect, provide, etc. Vac and voc- correspond to Latin vox, French voix, English voice, vocal, vociferous. Thousands of such facts and the sound laws that relate them to each other determine the place of IA within IE. Where do the Vedic facts come from?
Oral tradition
The Vedas are known in exact detail by brahmins who maintain their Vedic tradition orally and recite Vedic mantras during rituals. Ritualists and reciters do not and need not know the meaning of most of the mantras they recite; but they know their precise form along with accents and modes of recitation that incorporate a good measure of linguistic analysis. Without this millennial preservation, modern scholars would have no manuscripts to collect or texts to edit since both depend upon the oral tradition which is more trustworthy than any written word.
Michael Witzel combined information on Vedic dialects with an abundance of apparently meaningless Vedic facts (e.g. on the direction of rivers) which acquired significance once they were put together. I call the result a breakthrough because it assigns a reasonably accurate location in space and time to the numerous schools of the Vedas that for millennia seemed to be suspended in air. Witzel's recon
struction begins with the Rigvedic era of Eastern Afghanistan and the Panjab (ca 1900-1200 BC). The Rigveda as we know it was collected later when the socio-political centre shifted to Kuruksetra, northwest of modern Delhi. The Kuru period of Middle Vedic saw the composition of most of the other three Vedas and early Brahmanas. Late Vedic texts, like the first Upanisads, were composed ca 700-450 BC in the eastern kingdoms of Kosala and Videha. During this long development, upward mobility ('Sanskritization') combined with the increasing dominance of brahmana-ksatriya alliances. The barley cultivation of Rigvedic pastoralism was replaced by rice (Suniti Kumar Chatterji derived Hindi cawal from Tibeto-Burman). Finally, a Vedic canon was orally established.
The linguistic picture of northern South Asia in prehistoric times, says Witzel, is as least as complex as that of modern India. He has identified some three hundred words that are demonstrably Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic (such as Munda), Tibeto-Burman, that belong to families of which only isolated members survive (e.g. Burushaski in the Hunza area of Pakistan or Nahali in Central India) or that are extinct. If words resist explanation but exhibit a particular linguistic structure, linguists postulate a substrate language. It may be used to test general ideas about what might have influenced South Asia for example, a 'West Asian wheat-barley-goat-cattle-sheep complex' and/or a 'Southeast Asian rice-water-buffalo-chicken complex.' Substrate languages are as common as dinosaurs.
Wilhelm Rau, whose work helped pave the way for the present synthesis, shows in the first volume under review that the term grama referred in early Vedic to a train of herdsmen, roaming about with cattle, ox-carts, and chariots in quest of fresh pastures and booty. Subsequently it came to denote a temporary camp for such a train, made of bamboo-poles and reed-mats that could be quickly assembled. Grama denotes 'village' for the first time in late Vedic. R.N. Dandekar, nestor of Vedic scholars, associating Varuna with Bactria and Indra with the Panjab, explains how Rigvedic dual deities such as Indra-Varunau may have been created to bridge the gap between poets, priests/warriors and local cults. Madhav Deshpande, who had earlier demonstrated the importance of bilingualism in the Vedic period, shows that 'Arya/Anarya' are not ethnic terms but express claims to moral, social, and spiritual status, tending toward exclusion in legal texts and epics, but inclusion and transformation among Jains and Buddhists. Known for his work on the Indus Civilization and archaeology as well as the Samaveda (often neglected but not in these volumes because of a substantial contribution by Masato Fujii), Asko Parpola argues that the composers of the Rigveda are descendents of a second wave of IA speakers who competed with the Dasa of the first. Rau had shown that the Rigveda describes Dasa forts with circular and often multiple walls. Viktor Sarianidi and others had excavated precisely such fortified structures in the 'Bactrian-Margiana Archeological Complex' (BMAC) of 1900-1500 BC in the steppes around the Oxus.
Asian Contacts
I have long been interested in Vedic istaka which refers to bricks from which ritual altars are constructed or 'piled'. An Iranian cognate is istya. These IA words cannot be explained from IE and Witzel suspected long ago that they come from a lost BMAC substrate language. He has now added words for camel, donkey, mustard, hemp, and terms of material culture associated with agriculture and brick-built settlements. More are listed in 'Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan' in the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies of September 1999 (edited by Witzel at: www.shore.net/˜india/ejvs). Some left traces in Chinese, Tibetan, or Altaic. Alexander Lubotsky has recently found others, including terms of Vedic ritual. The BMAC substrate language is coming into its own.
Witzel's footnote on the language of the Indus Civilization (now expanded into The Languages of Harappa, forthcoming) points out that all ancient Indo-Iranian, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic, or Tibeto-Burman languages, plus several isolates and substrates, are possible candidates. The only candidate that has been seriously studied, with negative result, is Dravidian. The reasons are that the Dravidian family of languages is large, well known, and there is a comprehensive etymological dictionary by Burrow and Emeneau, just as there is one for Indo-Aryan by Mayrhofer. No such aids exists for Austro-Asiatic though H.-J. Pinnow has worked on comparative Munda (Kharia, Santali, Mundari, Korku, etc.). Austro-Asiatic languages include Khmer, Mon, Vietnamese, Khasi, Khmu, and about 75 others in Southeast Asia. The Sino-Tibetan family consists of Tibeto-Burman and Chinese. James Matisoff and his colleagues in the Sino-Tibetan Etymological Dictionary and Thesaurus (STEDT) project at the University of California, Berkeley, have been working on an etymological dictionary since 1987. In Tibeto-Burman, there are about 250 languages in nine subgroups. Important languages besides Tibetan and Burmese are Jingpho (Kachin), Lushai, Manipuri (Meithei), Newari, and Lepcha.
Two final questions about the breakthrough: (1) Does it have implications beyond Vedic? and (2) Is it final? The answer to (1) is Yes. The new Vedic dates are consistent with those of the earliest known IE: Anatolian languages such as Hittite, preserved on more than five thousand clay tablets in perhaps as many as thirty thousand fragments, spanning the period of 1650-1200 BC. The date of Greek remains controversial but there is something else the three regions have in common: the IE languages came from elsewhere and induced bilingualism.
The answer to (2) is No. Science is never final for new facts and arguments will change its course. Of the Anatolian tablets that were covered with soil and dust a century ago, more than a hundred volumes have now been published and some are translated. The Harappan inscriptions have been published and computerized also but no one is able to read them. Their decipherment, the discovery of other early languages, or something else could totally change the picture.
Words are not things and language does not depict reality in a straightforward manner. English is used in many parts of the world and for all kinds of purposes. Languages spread not because of invasions but through contacts between people. Readers of these books should keep such facts in mind.
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References
Witzel, Michael (ed.)
Inside the Texts/Beyond the Texts: New approaches to the study of the Vedas
Cambridge: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University, (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Vol.2), 1997
Bronkhorst, Johannes, and
Madhav M. Deshpande (eds)
Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia: Evidence, interpretation and ideology
Cambridge: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard University; (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, Vol.3), 1999
Professor Frits Staal is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and of South Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,
E-mail: jfstaal@socrates.berkeley.edu