Dimensions of The Aryan Problem Revisited in 2017 - Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram

Studies in Tamil Civilization
Land of Dharma
Proceedings from the Swadeshi Indology Conference Series
Editors
Shrinivas Tilak
&
Sharda Narayanan
Infinity Foundation India

2019
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Studies in Tamil Civilisation
LAND OF DHARMA
(Proceedings of the Swadeshi Indology Conference Series)
Selected Papers from the Conference held in Dec 2017 (Chennai)
Edited by: Dr. Shrinivas Tilak and Dr. Sharda Narayanan
Pages: 356
Year of Publication: 2019
ISBN: 978-81-934537-4-2
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#2
Chapter 2
The A of ABC of Indian chronology*:

Dimensions of the Aryan problem
revisited in 2017
– Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram

*In reference to the authors’ framework seen in earlier Swadeshi
Indology work
Abstract
Whether posited as an invasion by or migration of Aryans, these
variant forms—of an into-India hypothesis (supposed movement into
India around the second millennium BCE)—are underpinned by one
constant: the consequence that the earliest forms of Vedic culture
and Sanskrit are not indigenous to India. Written in 2017, this paper
examines, in three dimensions, whether such a hypothesis, given its
startling consequence to Indic history, can remain a preserve of only
one domain (linguistics) before demonstrating not only an absence
of proof for such a consequence, amongst other related questions, in
key Indic texts through a study of the terms ārya and drāviḍa but
also specific problematics in the development of this hypothesis in
historical linguistics.
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88 Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram
1 Introduction
From Indomania to Indophobia, Europe’s appraisal of India has seen
ebb and flow in a manner that has changed the course of both
continents for several centuries. While numerous ancient Greeks,
Romans and Arabs as well as Germans and French heaped abundantly
generous and insightful praise about the character of the Indian
culture in the early centuries of contact, the advent of colonization
changed the tide. The initial waves of positive wonder and awe
turned into a systematic destruction of everything the Indian held
as formative and precious, be it religion or scientific achievements
or even the very character of the Indian, using the faithful colonial
tools of malicious and insidious criticism from a well-developed kit
of propaganda, thusly painting a highly revolting portrait of the
ancient land and consequently providing legitimacy to the act of
looting an entire people for centuries. Indeed, the speed with which
the narrative accorded to India by Britain was revamped beyond
recognition—from hailing it as among the greatest civilizations to one
which needed to be saved and transformed according to the sagely
wisdom of the colonizer—openly betrays the nefarious intentions of
the oppressor.
Among the most potent tools in the British propaganda kit was the role
played by its intelligentsia. In the garb of studying Indian culture, the
colonial academia did a phenomenally thorough job of systematically
dismantling every aspect of Indian culture and infiltrating it with
Christian evangelist anthems. Disfiguring the very spine of Indian
culture began with attacking all aspects of the sanātana dharma. Today,
the indentation that ancient India had no sense of historical thinking
has become a maxim and it is to the colonizer that the Indian owes
gratitude for this very generous appraisal. The British went further
from this imperious proclamation to give more of their largesse—a
revised historical account and new theories of the very origin of the
land’s culture. And at the heart of this peremptory legacy lies a revised
chronology that was constructed of Indian history, which successfully
enabled the colonizer in his designs.
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2. The A of ABC of Indian chronology 89
2 “Aryan” problem in 2017: Western

academia to Indian politics - some
manifestations
It is to the work of several pioneers of western Indology that the
most critical conceptions of colonization are credited - the common
structure of Greek, Latin, German, Persian and Sanskrit as well as
the apparent common origin of Sanskrit and European languages to a
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language and its corresponding homeland.
The association of race, with the new European conception of a PIE
language, by Indologists such as Max Muller and Adolphe Pictet, marks
one of the most crucial milestones that set the ball rolling on some
disastrously consequential fallacies for India. Ārya, from being a term
that was used to denote a highly cultured person, became Aryan,
which henceforth referred to a race that invaded ancient India to
defeat the Dasyus, who later became associated with Dravidians, a
far cry from the original meaning of the term. In an increasingly
tenuous progression of the idea, one finds writings that forcefully
impose it while correlating Aryan with Indo-European and eventually,
the white/fair skin tone, with little irrefutable evidence, entirely
relying on the similarities between Indo-European languages as well
as dubious translation and interpretations of Sanskrit words. Recent
illustrations of this morphed understanding of the issue highlight how
little has changed over centuries, be it in academia or even politics. For
instance, the 2017 Fall term course ANTHROP 2G03, titled “Readings
in Indo-European Myth” from the McMaster University [Hamilton,
Ontario Canada] includes, in its Course Outline, the following as its
objective:
“To acquaint the student with the major gods and themes in the myths
of the Indo-European peoples of Europe and Asia.”1
The index of fourth in list of five texts prescribed for course—The Rig
Veda authored by Wendy O’Flaherty Doniger—includes the following
entry:
“Āryan (‘Noble’), Indo-European tribe that invaded India, 112, 129, 145,
148, 156, 162, 262, 278, 280” (Doniger 1981:326)
Note the term “invaded.” The significance of this observation lies
in the fact that in 2017, a prescribed text in an under-graduate level
Anthropology course at a World Top-80 university is advancing the
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notion that Aryans were an “Indo-European tribe that invaded India”

even as they further continue:
“A second notable change is a tendency among adherents of the standard
view to abandon the idea of invasion, in the sense of a rapid military
penetration, in favour of a slower, more gradual migration of Aryans into
India, accompanied by warfare, to be sure, but spread over a period of
long time.” (Trautmann 2007: xxxvii)
Statements such as the following are carefully constructed and made
easily accessible:
“The term “invasion”, while it was once commonly used in regard to
Indo-Aryan migration, is now usually used only by opponents of the
Indo-Aryan migration theory. The term “invasion” does not any longer
reflect the scholarly understanding of the Indo-Aryan migrations, and is
now generally regarded as polemical, distracting and unscholarly.”2
As well as this:
“To begin, in any discussion of the ‘Aryan problem’, one has to stress
vehemently that the “invasion model” which was still prominent in the
work of archaeologists such as Wheeler (1966: “Indra stands accused”),
has been supplanted by much more sophisticated models over the past
few decades (see Kuiper 1955 sqq., Witzel 1995, Thapar 1968).”
(Witzel 2001:31)
The pervasion of scholarship of this type that resolutely promotes the
Aryan theory, in all its varied forms, in a decided manner without any
scope open for debate is seen even in what is described by the reputed
Journal Nature, as “an incomparable monument of scholarship, one of
the wonders of our age”—The Oxford English Dictionary—in which the
entry for the term Aryan3 not only includes “people speaking an Indo-
European language who invaded northern India in the 2nd millennium
BC, displacing the Dravidian and other aboriginal peoples”, but also
what can nominally be construed as narrative-advancing sentences in
the subtle garb of “Example sentences” as seen in the link in note 3.
This definition of Aryan resembles largely what Keppens & Roovers
call “the classical textbook version” of Aryan Invasion theory:
“In its classic textbook version, this theory claims that a Sanskrit-
speaking Aryan people entered India around (or before) 1500 BC and
spread its language, religion and social structure among the indigenous
population.” (Keppens and Roovers 2014:51)
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In other words, even in 2017, a prescribed text in an undergraduate

anthropology course of a university ranked in the top 1% globally
and the premier dictionary for academic research are pedaling what
Keppens & Roovers call “the classical textbook version” of Aryan
Invasion Theory! Even as one wonders if such partisan coverage of
a topic is what passes for scholarship in premier institutions, Keppens
& Roovers, while stopping just short of spelling out what they consider
the “tragic part of the story about the AIT,” write:
“The story of the Aryan invasion theory reveals how a thesis
that reflected the European cultural experience of India gradually
transformed itself into the ‘historical truth’ about India. This thesis had
grown within a specific system of theological and historical beliefs that
Europeans shared and depended for its coherence and plausibility on
this system. Its fundamental theoretical outlines reflected conceptual
patterns in the European cultural experience, rather than any scientific
or empirical research into the Indian past.
There is a tragic part to the story about the AIT, but this is better left
for another place and time. The colonial educational system placed
Orientalist discourse at the same level as Newton’s theory of gravitation
and taught it as a scientific description of the Indian subcontinent.
Indians educated within this system began to adopt this discourse as
though it truly were the historical truth about India. They did not
do so as passive recipients, but rather became active propagators who
appropriated this discourse to fight the presumed historical injustices
of Indian society. In the south of India, political parties were created
that claimed to represent ‘Dravidian’ interests against ‘Brahmanical’
supremacy.... If this theory reproduces the specific cultural experience
that Europe has had of India in the guise of historical truth, then it is high
time to take the ongoing controversy about the AIT out of the realm of
partisan politics.” (Keppens and Roovers 2014:18)
Sadly, in our opinion, the story about AIT is not even equivalent
to Newtonian Mechanics, but akin to the geocentric model of the
universe replacing the heliocentric one and thus setting back through
its falsehoods and falsities the very fundamental perceptions of India
and her history, both at home and abroad. Western academia alone is
not the realm of such theories, for huge sections of Indian polity too
have not only arrogated this subject, but also used it actively to reap
political mileage. The title “Kharge’s Aryan Jibe: When It Comes To Bashing
BJP, Even Racism Is Fine With the Congress”4 was one publishing house’s
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version of the story titled “Debate on Aryan invasion theory revived”5 , by

another publishing house.
Thus, mainstream academia as well as politics in India, even in
2017, are evidently still safe havens for the AIT, the supposedly
(academically) discredited version of its vigorous successor The Aryan
Migration (into India) Theory, which received almost unprecedented
press coverage in India recently (in 2017 June) when the same
publishing house that published Debate on Aryan Invasion Theory
Revived, dedicated a whole page to How genetics is settling the
Aryan migration debate,6 which it called “thorniest, most fought-over
question in Indian history.”
Indeed, this deeply contentious theory, with its very questionable
methodology, has literally taken away the proverbial homeground
of the Indian and everything that is her native contribution to the
world knowledge systems. It was J. C. Rhode in 1820 who associated
a geographical focus i.e. Central Asia, as the home of the Aryan
race. Franz Bopp furthered the theory to the point of it being a
dogma. Linguistic paleontologists, anthropologists held on to the idea
of language irrevocably linked with race even in the absence of any
scientific evidence such as fossil artifacts and so on. Further, many
historians such as Leon Poliakov remark:
“Thus, the most diverse authors and disciplines concurred in situating
the cradle of the whole human genus between the Indus and the Ganges.
It remained to linguistics to give its word, which it did in a decisive yet
ambiguous manner: on the one hand in clearing the fog of venturesome
suppositions, but on the other hand in making a new supposition just
as weak – that it was not the whole human genus, but one particular
race, a white race, that by succession became Christian and descended
the mountains of Asia to colonize and fertilize the Occident. All this
happened as if the Europeans of the scientific era, liberated from the
conventions of the Noachian genealogy and objecting to the common
father Adam, looked for new and special ancestors, without breaking
all that much with the tradition that placed their origin in the fabulous
Orient. Linguists allowed them to design these ancestors by opposing
the Aryans to the Hamites, the Mongols and the Semites.”
(Poliakov 1971:188)
Anthropology and scientific advances such as Darwinism changed the
nature of the discourse in Europe with each passing decade. From
the Indo-European (IE) having migrated and colonized Europe to later
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theories where the IE was seen to be imparting a newer culture to

the original European, the debate increasingly took a turn for the
worse for the Indian with d’Omalius d’Halloy arguing at the Paris
Anthropological Society of 1867 that in fact, it is the European who
conquered the Indian colony.7
Paul Broca as well as C. Royer supported this line of argument further,
with the arrow of the so-called migration occurring into India, with
all these theories rapidly reaching status of dogmas and decrees with
very little sound evidence, against the backdrop of the prevailing anti-
Semitic tendencies of Europe of the time. Increasingly Europe sought
the origin of the Aryan closer to itself geographically and while these
debates raged on in France and Germany, the most disastrous effects
of all this vacuous theorizing were seen in how the British wielded
these ideas to justify its colonization of India. Against the backdrop of
Aryan invasion, they spun a successful narrative of their imperialism
not being an aberration but only another wave of colonization that
India experienced. It is indeed deeply astonishing that in a matter of
a couple of centuries, Indomania turned into Indophobia to such an
extent that it provided a theoretical basis for some of the dastardliest
subjugation of an entire people in the history of all civilization. From
being the largest GDP contributor in the world when the British first
set foot to the land, India was plundered into poverty and famine
within two centuries, while Britain used the loot for funding its wars
and industrial revolutions.
3 Dimensionalising the Aryan problem

The Aryan Migration/Invasion theory has had several morphings
through history, representing at turns the inherent predisposition to
favour some voices on one hand and disregard and neglect others,
especially those of the central player, the Indian himself, and ignore
some of his significant questions, such as why there is an absence of
any mention of any such migration/invasion in its abundantly prolific
and plenteous literature. Indeed, it is this lack of significance attached
to voices, may we add deliberately, across multi-disciplinary domains
as well as cultures that have played a huge role in permeating all
sectors with its falsities. In our analysis, we observe two components
that need to be carefully examined and studied in this section -
the inputs provided by domains apart from linguistics as well as a
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thorough examination for evidences of the AIT in the Indian canon;

after all, the ‘Indo’ part of Indo-European debate must necessarily be
included as part of the core data for analysis for one to have a debate
that is not prejudiced from the start. In the sections below of the
paper, we authors dimensionalise the problem in the following ways:
1. The approach: multi-disciplinary or only Linguistics?

2. Insider analysis of some Indigenous sources including studying
the occurrences of the terms ārya and drāviḍa
3. Towards a pūrva-pakśa of Indo-European (IE) linguistics
3.1 Dimension 1: Approach: Multi-disciplinary or

only Linguistics?
In her review of what is perhaps the first attempt at publishing diverse

voices on this topic—the volume titled The Indo-Aryan Controversy:
Evidence and Inference in Indian History—Stephanie W. Jamison, in
describing what she sees as the nub of the matter, writes:
“The nub of the matter is the nature of the relationship between
the Indo-Aryan languages of the subcontinent, i.e., Sanskrit and its
descendants first attested in historical times in the northern parts of
the subcontinent [as opposed to the Dravidian and Munda languages
primarily attested in the southern and middle parts] and the (other)
Indo-European languages, found from Central Asia and the Near East
through most of Europe. As I hardly need to remind readers of this
journal, it has been generally accepted for nearly 200 years that all these
languages are genetically related (a linguistic, not a biological term, NB)
and can be traced back to one original language, Proto-Indo-European,
for which we have no attested remains but which can be reconstructed
in remarkable detail. Both the demonstration of linguistic relationship
and the reconstruction of the proto-language rely on a very powerful and
scientifically exact tool known as the Comparative Method, whose value
has been demonstrated time and time again on language families around
the globe. There is nothing either vague or speculative in the application
of these linguistic methods.” (Jamison 2006:255)
She also insists on the primacy of the method of linguistics:
“...though archaeology might offer useful ancillary evidence with regard
to the Indo-Aryan question, linguistics must offer the primary
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evidence, and scenarios that are highly implausible or impossible

from a linguistic point of view are unlikely to be correct.”
[Emphasis ours] (Jamison 2006:258)
From her own domain, i.e. Linguistics, James Clackson notes the
following about the primacy of Linguistics as a method, vis-a-vis other
methods such as archaeology and early texts, in questions pertaining
to the origin of Indic languages:
“What does this mean for the origin of the Indic languages, and by
extension, the origin of the Indic civilization? My answer is, I am
afraid, inconclusive. From the linguistic data alone, without taking
into account the evidence of archaeology or early texts, it is not
possible to draw definite conclusions about the homeland of the speakers
or Proto-Indo-European, or even the age of the language family. The
Indo-European model, as a model of language relationships and of
linguistic descent, tells us nothing certain about the origin of the
Indic civilization.” (Clackson 2013:286) [Emphasis ours]
Clackson’s point of view, at least about the need for multi-
disciplinarity in approach mentioned above, does not appear to
be an isolated voice when one considers the closing comments
of Paul Heggarty—senior scientist at the Linguistics department of
the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig
(Germany)—in his essay published in the The Routledge Handbook of
Historical Linguistics (2014):
One overall judgement emerges from this survey of how historical
linguists have traditionally sought to set language (pre)histories into
real-world contexts: all our traditional techniques and models are
less reliable than the discipline has long liked to believe.... The same
technique can be open to opposing interpretations, and different
techniques often contradict each other on the same language family.
Convincing ‘proof’ is hard to come by indeed.... Linguistics alone
cannot come to the most plausible overall scenario for the prehistory
of the populations involved. That can be assessed only in the light
of the archaeological and genetic records, and the cause-and-effect
relationship that links them all.... Those other disciplines continue
to make spectacular leaps forward, and in historical linguistics itself,
dropping the mask of many ‘old certainties’ only throws open
the potential for great advances towards a sounder, truly cross-
disciplinary understanding of prehistory.... Even for the world’s
largest language families, that synthesis still has far to run. For
language convergence areas and diversity hotspots, we have barely even
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begun to unlock the cross-disciplinary potential, so as to round out the

rich tale that our languages can tell us of our past.”
(Heggarty 2014:623-4) [Emphasis ours]
“The importance of multi-disciplinarity” has been a striking feature
of Michel Danino’s scholarship pertaining to the debate on Aryan
invasion/migration:
“Contrary to Mr. Joseph’s thesis that “genetics is settling the Aryan
migration debate”, no single discipline will ever be able to do so on its
own.... At bottom, few scholars from either side, or from any side, seem
to realise that the Indo-European problem will be laid to rest only when
a theory can effectively take care of all the above disciplines, and a few
more: the problem is essentially multidisciplinary.”8
In his education module titled The Aryan Issue, Danino lists seven
approaches to the Aryan issue (Danino 2016:4). While Danino has
taken this multi-disciplinary line consistently over decades (as have
other non-linguist scholars), the now-emerging expressed emphasis
on expansion, amongst linguists, to multidisciplinarity seems to
mirror a similar, and much welcome, movement in the “Aryan debate”
domain away from the Into-India/Out-of-India migration binary (like
the one posited by Thomas R. Trautmann in his book The Aryan Debate
(See p. xl: “First, advocates of the alternate view must argue that Indo-
European languages come from a homeland in India”)) and to a similar
expansion, of the description of the debate, that envisions atleast a
ternary rather than the binary:
“There are three main schools of thought in this regard. Proponents
of the Indo-European theory suggest that the Sanskrit language and
civilization were an intrusion into India from the West. Proponents of
the continuity theory, on the contrary, believe that they arose locally.
The third school of thought proposes that the current scholarship is
insufficient to trace the Sanskrit language and civilization back to pre-
historical times, and that further research is required to develop a fair
comparison between the European languages and the Indian languages.”
(Marcantonio and Jha, 2013:Front Cover)
It is from being located in this third school of thought, from
our conviction based on the secure foundation of the need for a
multidisciplinary approach and from our particularly deep skepticism
of absolute chronology diktats from solely linguistic methods (on the
latter, we have for company, linguists themselves: “In summary the
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Indo-Europeanist’s data and method do not allow the question ‘When

was PIE spoken?’ to be answered in any really meaningful or helpful
way” (Clackson 2013:273) and: “The only way to establish absolute
linguistic chronologies is to correlate linguistic facts with dates fixed
by other means.” (Pereltsvaig and Lewis 2015:164)) that we approach
the study of some of the earliest Sanskrit texts—particularly the terms
ārya and drāviḍa—to present a depth-view of their contrast with the
distortions surrounding the key pivots of both AIT and AMT: the terms
Aryan and Dravidian. More specifically, we list as exhaustively as we
can and analyze occurrences of ārya and drāviḍa in order to answer
these questions:
1. What is the range of meanings evident from usage of ārya and

drāviḍa?
2. Is there any evidence for an invasion of drāviḍa by ārya?
3. Is there any evidence for a migration of ārya-s from outside and
into India?
4. Is there any evidence for ārya-s migrating into India along with
Sanskrit?
5. Is there any evidence to directly link drāviḍa with dasyu?
As these questions are but a subset (the A part) of our larger quest
in seeing through the ABC smoke clouding the chronology of ancient
India, we feel it inherently essential to invoke voices from the
physical sciences too and consider the questions from these domains
that challenge the typical narratives of the theory. T.R.S Prasanna,
observes:
“We have examined evidences from astronomy, mathematics and
metallurgy, which any scientist with a background in physical sciences
must consider in order to form a professional opinion on AIT. We propose
the criteria – four questions that must be addressed satisfactorily – for
scientists to support AIT in a professional capacity. On these grounds, we
establish that there is no scientific basis for the Aryan Invasion Theory.”
(Prasanna 2012:221)
While archaeologists in India have been nearly unanimous in
repeatedly reporting, over many decades now, the lack of any
evidence for either an invasion or a migration into India by the
so-called Aryans (that is, in this case, loosely Indo-Europeans),
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archaeologists from other parts of the world have joined the chorus,
in some cases, questioning the “Indo-Aryan” and the “Indo-European”
construct itself. Towards the end of their essay South Asian Archaeology:
Late Prehistoric Cultural Continuity or Discontinuity, Jim G. Shaffer and
Diane A. Lichtenstein include:
“Indeed, the description by many contemporary scholars of a migrat-
ing/invading Aryan social group from a “homeland” somewhere
northwest of South Asia is equivalent to an example of Anderson’s
(2006) “imagined communities” - a community of the past which
is imagines, created, to justify a present identity. The “Indo-Aryan /
European imagined community” was created by the late nineteenth- and
twentieth-century philological and historical scholars to justify their con-
temporary “colonial, racial and ethnocentric” worldview paradigms
(Figueira 2002 for South Asia discussion). By the mid-twentieth century,
there emerged the discipline of archaeology’s scientific and verifiable
chronological techniques, associated with a greatly expanded archaeo-
logical data set for the South Asian region. It is necessary to develop new
interpretative paradigms incorporating data revealed by the archaeolog-
ical record to help document the complexities of South Asian cultural
traditions.” (Shaffer, Lichtenstein 2013:253)
More recently, the winner of the prestigious Prix Roger Caillois award
(2015), archaeologist Jean-Paul Demoule notes:
“It is widely known that the canonical Indo-European model, which
was originally a purely linguistic model, is founded on a strong central
assumption: that of an original people (Urvolk), who inhabited an original
homeland (Urheimat) where they spoke an original language (Urspache).
They left this homeland to spread progressively throughout the large
part of Eurasia, giving rise through a process of scissiparity to all the
historically known Indo-European languages and to the peoples who
spoke, or still speak, them.... As regards facts, we will begin with
realia, i.e. archaeology.... With regard to the original Indo-European
people, therefore, it is essential to: a) prove archaeologically that
a migration originated in some part of Eurasia and spread through
all of the regions where historically-attested Indo-European languages
were spoken; b) prove that original migration was Indo-European....
Three principal alternative homelands are proposed in current scientific
literature: the Baltic, the Near East, and the Pontic Steppe.... There ideal
of Baltic and Scandinavian homeland... is archaeologically untenable....
In other words, we do not find any evidence for the diffusion of
the entire material culture of the steppes to those regions where
historically attested Indo-European languages were spoken (See genetic
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data presented below).” (Demoule 2016:165-74)

No less than Andrew Colin Renfrew, the British archaeologist who is
credited by many as the first to propose that the dispersal of Proto-
Indo-Europeans originated in Neolithic Anatolia (i.e. the Anatolian
hypothesis), remarks:
“So what, Demoule invites us to consider, is likely to be form of the
ultimate solution? For a solution to the long-standing problem, would
indeed be welcome. He must surely be right that it will involve new
models, including the phylogenetic models which have been applied
over the last decade. A very recent survey (Pereltsvaig & Lewis 2015)
is largely devoted to their denunciation, falling back on a simple
reiteration of the familiar steppe hypothesis. But as Demoule implies,
such a critique is unlikely to advance matters very much if it has little
new to offer.... Perhaps the ‘much more complex and multi-disciplinary
models’ which he advocates will soon be found to bring about this
resolution.” (Renfrew 2017:436)
A part of a response to Jean-Paul Demoule from one of the authors
referred to in the above quote —Pereltsvaig—in her blog piece
titled Are Indo-Europeans “Untraceable”?—A Response to Jean-Paul Demoule
includes the following:
“But, as Martin Lewis and I discuss in our book, The Indo-European
Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical Linguistics, the Indo-
European problem is primarily one of historical linguistics, not
archaeology, anthropology, or genetics, although evidence from these
disciplines can be very helpful.”9 [Emphasis ours]
In her above-mentioned co-authored book though, one finds in the
‘Conclusion: what is at stake in the Indo-European debate’:
“As we have emphasized, examining the origins and spread of the Indo-
European language family, or of any other linguistic grouping, is by
necessity an interdisciplinary matter. Although historical linguists
and archeologists rightly occupy center stage, geographers as well
as historians, cultural anthropologists, and members of many other
disciplines have crucial roles to play as well.”
(Pereltsvaig and Lewis 2015:234)[Emphasis ours]
While in her response seen in the blogpost to archaeologist Jean-Paul
Demoule, Pereltsvaig states that in her book they discuss that “the
Indo-European problem is primarily one of historical linguistics, not
archaeology,” is she not contradicting their statement from the very
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same book quoted above, wherein allusion is to examination of Indo-

European language family being “by necessity an interdisciplinary
matter?” Singling out this inconsistency might seem like nitpicking
yet this equivocation is not, in our view, insignificant to bookmark
even as we considered examples of scholars from linguistics, such as
James Clackson, Paul Heggarty and Angela Marcantonio who concur
on the importance of seeing the historical aspects (if any) of the Indo-
European problem as essentially a multi-disciplinary problem, much
like scholars from other pertinent domains such as Jean-Paul Demoule,
Colin Renfrew, Michel Danino and also Shrikant Talageri (who too
sees this, like Clackson, as a problem to be solved by evidence from
Linguistics, Archaeology and Textual Analysis; see: The “Aryan” Story
vs. True Aryan History10 (2017) and unlike Stephanie W. Jamison. Thus,
even as some linguists hold onto the primacy of their domain to the
solution for the Aryan problem, there are others who call for a multi-
disciplinary approach, as do scholars from other disciplines. While
we as authors subscribe to the point of view that multi-disciplinary
approach is the way to adopt to address the Aryan problem, we attach
seminal importance to what the indigenous texts of Bharat have to
say (or not say, as might be the case with regard to the so-called Aryan
invasion/migration into India carrying Sanskrit and Rig Veda).
3.2 Dimension 2: Analysis of relevant Indic sources

While the Aryan invasion/migration theory underwent its many
morphings in Europe, several Indologists who made truly coherent
remarks at a time when the entire intelligentsia seemed to be swayed
and taken in with claiming Aryan inheritance saw through the British
designs and actively rejected the entire hypothesis. The trio of
the greatest leaders of India - Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Swami
Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo categorically rejected many tenets of
the Aryan conjecture, as did Dr. B.R Ambedkar, who systematically
studied the term ārya in his work ‘Who were the Shudras?’ Sri Aurobindo
carried forward Swami Dayananda Saraswati’s interpretation of the
Vedas into a brilliant analysis that recast them as the wellspring of
the most profound and quintessential Indian thought, a far cry from
the very literal interpretation that several Europeans read of the work
that reduced India into a primitive and barbaric race. The Secret of the
Veda and the Hymn to the Mystic Fire contain several passages that cast
aside the Aryan invasion theory as a myth of the philologists.
# 100
Among the host of Europeans who propagated the Aryan Migration

and Invasion theories, it is to the missionary and linguist Robert
Caldwell that India owes her disastrous and rather tragic inheritance
of the Aryan-Dravidian divide. Caldwell’s A Comparative Grammar of the
Dravidian or South - Indian family of languages focused on studying the
southern Indian languages as not only being distinct from Sanskrit,
but also embodied the role played by missionaries in manipulating the
Aryan theories to further their cause of replacing sanātana dharma in
India with Christianity. Caldwell actively evangelized the locals by
morphing Dravidians into a separate race that had little to do with
the Aryan/Brahmin, a far cry indeed from the original meaning of
the term. While Europe and the British in India presented vacillating
pictures of the ‘Aryan’ and the ‘Dravidian’ — once presenting the
former as the fair skinned man of high culture and the latter as the
dark skinned indigene who had to retreat from his primitive practices
to the antithetical picture of the Aryans being a hoard of barbarous
tribe who swooped down through the Khyber pass to the fertile lands
of the Dravidians — the traditionalists in India have maintained that
surely there must be some record in the greatest canons of the land
of the invasion, if indeed it took place. Even a casual scan of the
purāṇa, itihāsa and the literature of the land will reveal the great
detail to which descriptions of the people and the geography of the
entire subcontinent are present, along with revealing the depth of
the Indian mind’s inroads into all aspects of a high culture, from
astronomy and architecture to art forms, warfare and the applications
of sciences! Surely there must be some reference made somewhere in
the inexhaustible literature to such an invasion/migration?
1 Occurrences of “ārya” and “drāviḍa” from 13 indigenous

sources
While sources of research today can span several domains including

philological, archaeological as well as biological, it is vitally important
that one relies not only on secondary interpretations and hypotheses
that were willfully created during a period of dubious intentions
such as the colonial and post–colonial, but also study the primary
sources belonging to the period prior to colonial expositions. Even as
awareness of the fact of the absence of the word ‘Aryan’ in Sanskrit
literature appears to be on the rise, precious little scholarship—
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of the variety that attempts to comprehensively list and analyze—

seems to exist on the actual usage of the primary terms ārya and
drāviḍa in Sanskrit literature. Table 2.1, that follows, is a quantitative
summary of an attempt (Table 3, in Appendix) to address this specific
void in research by undertaking a search-list-analysis of a range of
indigenous texts such as Ṛg Veda, Sāma Veda, Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata,
Brahmapurāṇa, Skandapurāṇa, Garudapurāṇa, Nātyaśāstra, Arthaśāstra,
Manusmṛti, Abhijñānaśākuntalam, Kumārasaṃbhavam, Raghuvaṃśam in
order to understand the context and nature of occurrences of these
terms and place them in their rightful frame, so that the original
Sanskrit terms of this deeply impactful theory find their authentic
roots. The appendix at the end of the paper carries the table with the
verses in full.
Table 2.1: 204 occurences of Ārya and Drāviḍa

from 13 different sources
Indigenous source Ārya Drāviḍa

Ṛg Veda 36
Sāma Veda 1
Rāmāyaṇa 33
Mahābhārata 50 11
Brahmapurāṇa 1
Skandapurāṇa 1
Garuḍapurāṇa 7
Nātyaśāstra 14 2
Kauṭilya Arthaśāstra 12
Manusmṛti 3 1
Abhijñānaśākuntalam 30
Kumārasaṃbhavam 1
Raghuvaṃśam 1
Total 190 14
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2 Our analysis:
1. A careful study of the results compiled in the table above, as

well as the contexts in which they appear in the texts, explicates
to us authors the absence of any indication to an Aryan
invasion/migration event. In our research we authors found
no references to the word drāviḍa in any of the three books of
the Tolkāppiyam—the Ezhuttadikaram, the Solladikaram and the
Poruladikaram—the oldest surviving work on Tamil grammar,
literature and linguistics. Neither did we find references to the
term in Śrīmad Bhāgavatpurāṇa, Kālidāsa’s Abhijñānaśakuntalam,
Raghuvaṃśam nor Kumārasaṃbhavam. In the many references
to the occurrences of the terms in the Mahābhārata, we were
plainly led to the same conclusion - ārya as a word is used
in both genders to address a person of cultural refinement
and noble standing. In fact, the word embodies all the noble
characteristics of man in general and a beautiful expression
of it is found in the Rāmāyaṇa, while describing Rāma - ārya
sarva samaścaiva sadaiva priyadarśanah. The term drāviḍa has
always been used to refer to a group of people from the south,
along with other kingdoms, but never at all has one group
been highlighted against another among the southern kingdoms
itself, let alone any Aryan-Dravidian clash and migration. We
do not find any compelling evidence that treats Aryan and
Dravidian languages as separate as well, especially to the extent
that they emerge as distinct language families in themselves.
For a culture that has produced such copious amounts of
literature and especially itihāsa such as the Mahābhārata and
the Rāmāyaṇa, which have historical grounding as well, the
absence of any mention of the so-called invasion/migration
speaks resounding volumes about the non-occurrence of it in
the first place. And one readily recollects the words of James
Tod, “If we consider the political changes and convulsions which
have happened in Hinduism since Mahmud’s invasion and the
intolerant bigotry of many of his successors, we shall be able
to account for the paucity of its national works on history,
without being driven to the conclusion, that the Hindus were
ignorant of an art which was cultivated in other countries from
almost the earliest ages. Is it to be imagined that a nation so
highly civilized as the Hindus, amongst whom the exact sciences
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flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture,

sculpture, poetry and music were not only cultivated but taught
and defined by the nicest and most elaborate rules, were totally
unacquainted with the simple art of recording the events of
their history, the chapters of their princes and the acts of their
reigns?” (Tod l829, 1957:xiv-xv) to once again lay the onus on
the proponents of the theory to justify their results as against
the present situation.
2. While the proponents of Aryan theories actively ignore the
major works across the Indian literary and historical spectrum,
it is to the Veda-s that they attribute much of their misread
and misunderstood ideas of the debate, including the supposed
battle between the Aryans and the Dasyu-s as representing the
clash that pushed down the original, latter group. Even as we see
the range of interpretations given to the Vedas across centuries,
what must clearly be acknowledged is that the west has chosen
to isolate selected interpretations of the Vedas and disconnect it
from the rest of the body of the canon. But, in the clear absence
of any reference to a migration/invasion across the literary
oeuvre, what falls back into spotlight is a more fundamental
call – to date the Vedas in the Indian chronological framework
by using the rest of its own canon, including methods from
astronomy and archaeology, as the basis and reference and
setting aside this entire prejudiced invasion/migration as the
premise. The redressal of this nub also does justice to other
important Indian chronological markers, such as references
found in the Atharva Veda to writing and the consequent
dismissal of the idea that it was introduced into India from
outside.11
3. The association of race to the term ārya and characteristics
including colour, especially the fair skin with the Aryans, forms
the basis of the AIT and the west’s mammoth misreading into
the Vedas; the theory also sets up a contrast with that of the
Dasyus/Dāsas as being dark skinned. We have repeatedly seen
in every context of the term used that the nobility associated
with the use of the term refers to that of cultural and mental
aspects and nothing at all with any physical attribute. The term
Dasyu as well, finds reference throughout the Veda as one who
is ignoble and pursues inner darkness, with Sāyaṇācārya in fact
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defining the term as thief. The root of the term Dasyu leads to
dāsa and upakṣaya i.e destruction. The conflict between the ārya-
s and the Dasyus is one between the forces they represent and
nowhere does one see any interpretation of this as a racial battle.
The association of the terms such as kṛṣṇa and asīkini found in the
Rig Veda with Dasyus forms the basis of west’s interpretation of
the group as dark skinned. But, a careful reading of the passages
only shows the many psychological and symbolic meanings
associated with both the terms, primarily as forces of darkness.
Even literal interpretations such as the one by Sāyaṇācārya,
of krsṇa tvac is that the demon Krsṇa was defeated by Indra
and his skin (tvac) was rent. Even the term Āryavarṇa finds a
more sensible interpretation as seen by that of Sri Aurobindo.
(Sri Aurobindo 1998:223) The sweeping conclusions that AIT
proponents have built on the misreading of the various words
associated with colour in the Vedas has been scrutinized not
only by Insiders but also by some western scholars. Consider the
observations by Edward Hopkins as early as 1883 on the matter,
setting the tone for veracious approach on the matter:
“We find from this investigation that the use of color words in the
Rig Veda is not unlike that in other poetic literatures. The light
colors predominate in frequency of occurrence and breadth of
application. All that glances, glares, sparkles, is more frequently
described than that which is dark and gloomy. Light and dark are
the broad general antitheses, real color is less often mentioned,
and to fix any exact standard for these colors is impossible, as
this is forbidden by the general meaning of the root, or by the
uncertainty we are in regard to the real color of the objects
described. It is, finally, impossible to mark off distinct meanings
for the majority of color words used in the Rig Veda, as no one
color term is precise enough to answer to any one spectrum
color; an indefiniteness that lies, however, in the language alone,
since we have no proof that such indefiniteness was the result of
inability to distinguish between the various colors or shades color
which in the literature are grouped under one Veda.”
(Hopkins 1883:182)
4. The Veda-s have been subjected to various interpretations
and commentaries not only by European writers (to whom
most of the modern-day proponents of AIT refer) but also
by some Indians. While masters such as Śaṅkaracārya and
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Sāyaṇācārya have pushed the boundaries with their readings of

the texts, there have also been brilliant thinkers such as Swami
Dayananda Saraswati and Sri Aurobindo, who have translated
and commented upon the works by seeing them as a part of
the whole body of Indian oeuvre. While the understandings
of the veda-s stand disconnected from those of the later works
such as the upaniṣad-s and the purāṇa-s in the works of most
commentators, they form the very bedrock and natural base
in the interpretations by these two sages. While one looks
at the tall structures built on tenuous, second and third hand
and rather stretched interpretations of the Ṛg Veda by most
Europeans, whose knowledge of Sanskrit is either limited or
non-existent, one feels the return to authentic scholarship
based on intimate knowledge of the language and the work
itself to form as the primary source for the debate. While Sri
Aurobindo’s interpretation of the Vedas are seen in his works
The Secret of the Veda and Hymn to the Mystic Fire, his unfinished
work on the origins of the Aryan language and linguistics that
have been published in parts, show the direction of the sage’s
thought. Long before the modern linguist’s realizations, Sri
Aurobindo devoted attention to the roots of the language seen
in the Ṛg Veda, as against only the common vocabulary and
pursued original linguistic research on the matter.
In light of much sagacious, faithful readings of not only the words

ārya and drāviḍa and the forces they represent but the entire Ṛg Veda
itself, the Insider tradition has persistently countered the fallacious
interpretations of the Outsider narrative while more than carrying the
burden of disproving the Aryan invasion/migration hypothesis. It is
vexing indeed that appropriate and relevant data that ought to form
a central portion of the analysis on the issue seems sidelined from
mainstream inquiry.
# 106
3.3 Dimension 3: Towards a pūrva-pakśa of Indo-

European (IE) linguistics
1 IE Historical Linguistics and Comparative Method: Differences

amongst linguists and some critique from other academic
fields
No less than the editors of the 2014 The Routledge Handbook of

Historical Linguistics Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans concede that
they (speaking for the domain Historical Linguistics) may not have
achieved “a single generalised theory of language change”:
“We may not have achieved a single generalised theory of language
change, but having such a common goal brings together researchers
from diverse perspectives, allowing us to resolve some questions and
to ask new ones.” (Bowern and Evans 2014:31) [Emphasis ours]
Not having achieved a single generalised theory of language change is
not insignificant as the whole of Historical Linguistics itself seems to
be defined, at least by Harvard, as “the study of language change over
time.”12
The Comparative Method, seen by Bowern and Evans as the
“cornerstone of historical linguistics,” (Bowern and Evans 2014:24)
is also seen by them as a way for both “reconstructing linguistic
history” (ibid.) and “for establishing historical relationships among
languages.” (ibid.) Seeing The Comparative Method as a way
for reconstructing linguistic history—essentially nothing more than
hypothesis generation—is clearly less problematic than seeing it
also as a way “for establishing historical relationships among
languages” when one considers the following observation about
The Comparative Method in Harvard-recommended textbook for an
introduction to Indo-European Linguistics with a stress on theoretical
and methodological issues:
“For a language which has textual remains sufficient for the linguist to
extract lexical and grammatical information, it is possible to apply the
techniques of reconstruction, such as the comparative method, to
build a picture of its development from PIE. However, the operation of
the comparative method does not guarantee a language’s place in
the family; only the initial recognition that two or more languages
are related can do that.... When does a linguist decide that there is
enough material to relate a language to the IE family? There is no
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absolute set of criteria beyond the general rule that the evidence
must convince both the individual linguist and the majority of the
scholarly community.” (Clackson 2007:3) [Emphasis ours]
On the Comparative method, in Historical Linguistics - An Introduction by
Lyle Campbell, one finds the following:
“Comparative method: a method (or set of procedures) which compares
forms from related languages, cognates, which have descended from a
common ancestral language (the proto-language), in order to postulate,
that is to reconstruct, the form in the ancestral language.”
(Campbell 1998:112)
“Step 1: Assemble cognates
To begin to apply the comparative method, we look for potential
cognates among related languages (or among languages for which
there is reason to suspect relatedness) and list them in some orderly
arrangement (in rows or columns).”
(Campbell 1998:112) [Emphasis ours]
If “to begin to apply the comparative method”, one must “look for
potential cognates among related languages”, how can this method—
the “cornerstone of historical linguistics” — be a way “for establishing
historical relationships among languages”, without being circular i.e.
given that the objective “establishing historical relationships among
languages” is being attempted by looking for potential cognates
among languages already considered related? If the languages are
already related, what relationship exactly remains to be established?
Senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human
History, Johann-Mattis List articulates not just the above phenomenon
calling it a “rule” but also records the reaction—of surprise—from the
biologists, to this “rule”:
“A particularly important rule that is often surprising for biologists is the
rule that says we can only compare languages that we know are related.
We could, of course, compare all languages in the world (and people
do compare all languages in the world), but the point is that we are
not allowed to compare languages historically unless we know whether
they share a common origin. This rule is reflected in a long-standing
debate regarding the question of how we can prove that two languages
are related.”13
In a critical appraisal of the methods of Historical Linguistics
scholar from the Department of Computer Science of Montclair State
# 108
University H.M. Hubey concludes:

“The best and only way to escape committing logical fallacies is to
practice doing science the way it is supposed to be done. This can
be done by laying the foundations and the basis of the working of the
comparative method, to understand its limitations, why and how it
works. Otherwise historical linguistics will be merely a memorization
of interesting facts, and even more interesting games, at best a heuristic
rule for finding some patterns in languages, but never a science.”
(Hubey 2002:16)
In her essay The Origin of Indian Civilization - Critical Analysis of the
Contribution of Linguistics, Sapienza, Angela Marcantonio, in arguing
that “confirmation bias has strongly affected the IE theory, that is,
the establishment of the IE language family, and as a consequence,
its model of Western origin of Indian civilization” (Marcantonio
2013:103), believes that “it is time to call into question the validity of
the IE theory, because, as we have seen, it has not been scientifically
founded - contrary to common belief” (Marcantonio 2013:144),
also that “there is no reason to uphold the thesis that Sanskrit
is “genetically” connected to the other (supposed) IE languages”
(Marcantonio 2013:145), alludes to the issue of circularity with clear
instantiation:
“Result 1: 32 per cent of the 683 “safely reconstructed” verbal roots
(“safely according to the dictionary itself) are only evidenced (according
to the dictionary) in one single branch of the IE family. This suggests that
these roots may be of local, or other origin. However, the assumption is
made that they are of IE origin and reconstructions are proposed. It is
then self-evidently circular to conclude that these words of IE origin just
because of the establishment of a reconstruction.
Result 2: 34 per cent of the roots are reconstructed on the basis of
data drawn from two language branches only. It is also accepted
within the linguistic community that reconstructions based on just two
witnesses are unsafe, because the possibility of chance resemblance or
of borrowing rates are quite high in these circumstances. At least three
witness language branches would be required to be relatively safe. In
spite of this, this assumption is made, again, that these roots are of
IE origin, and reconstructions are proposed. However, once again, it
would be circular to conclude that these attested verbs are inherited
just because of the establishment of reconstructions.”
(Marcantonio 2013:105-6) [Emphasis ours]
# 109
By demonstrating—using what she calls “standard, quantitative

unbiased methods” (Marcantonio 2013:110)—that “only 22.6 per cent
of the total number of the relevant conjugations match Verner’s
predictions,” (Marcantonio 2013:112) she concludes:
“If it were to become widely accepted in historical linguistics that it
was necessary to use procedures that are designed systematically to
identify and control potential sources of bias, then all the traditionally
established IE sound laws should be revisited, to verify whether or not
they really meet the “majority rule” criterion. If this kind of analysis
were widely carried out, it is possible that a number of established results
in the field will come to be regarded as unsafe.” (Marcantonio 2013:112)
Citing instances on practices in Historical Linguistics, she remarks:
“When examining the evidence for a given law (not just VL), the matches
are typically cited in favour of the Law, but the mismatches may be
minimized or not counted: they are “explained away” to be result
of various factors, such as “conditioning environments”, “dialectical
mixture”, “borrowing”, “secondary changes”, “analogy”, etc. (see
Durkin 2009:182). These explanations may appear to be reasonable, and
they may well be correct in many cases; however, they introduce a
bias because they are applied selectively. This has the effect of “cherry
picking” the forms that match a given Law and explaining away or
disregarding the rest.” (Marcantonio 2013:111)
Linguist Marcantonio’s remark about the Indo-European theory that
“a theory of this sort may be regarded as “not even wrong”, in
the sense that it is built up in such a self-consistent way that it
cannot be either verified or falsified” highlights the need not only
for an urgent examination of her domain’s fundamentals much more
closely, but for also revisiting—from the point of view of linguistics
itself—the origin of the Indian civilization (a logical end of our
pursuit to clear the smoke around key epochs of ancient Indian
chronology) and to do so “not only on the basis of linguistic data and
analysis, but also through the contribution of the other disciplines
typically engaged in tracking back the origins of peoples and
civilizations, such as archaeology, palaeo-anthropology and genetics.”
(Marcantonio 2013:145-6) Koenraad Elst calls pure linguistics as “fairly
soft evidence”, that “it is not compatible with just any state of affairs
in the real-world history, bendable any which way depending on
personal whims and political compulsions, as skeptics might blurt
out” and that the “discipline of linguistics can only narrow down the
# 110
spectrum of possibilities.” (Elst 2013:95-6)

In addition to clearly instantiating in depth at least two problems in
the historical comparative method, Jha, on closer inspection of so-
called Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages, considers the possibility
of even “a common origin for them” (Jha 2013:35).
2 Genetic relationship between “Indo-Aryan” and “Dravidian”

language families: closer look at results of two recent
quantitative studies
More quantitative evidence that seems to challenge the dominant

notion of the so-called genetic difference between the so-called
Indo-Aryan and so-called Dravidian languages has emerged, perhaps
accidentally. In Linguistic landscaping of South Asia using digital language
resources: Genetic vs. a real linguistics Lars Borin, Anju Saxena, Taraka
Rama and Bernard Comrie report the following:
“The experiments described above have shown how LDND distance
calculations on the LSI comparative vocabulary recover both inter-
family and intra-family genealogical relations for the four major
South Asian language families. However, no indications of a real
phenomena could be seen using this method on the LSI comparative
vocabulary.” (Borin et al 2014:3142)[Emphasis ours]
In the introduction of this paper, the authors include:
“South Asia is often mentioned in the literature as a classic example of a
linguistic area. There is, however, no systematic, empirical study of
South Asian languages to substantiate this claim. In order to critically
evaluate South Asia as a linguistic area, a systematic examination of a
set of linguistic features in a wide range of South Asian languages is
essential.... It has been claimed that this long-lasting contact situation
has made the languages of this region more similar in some respects
to each other than they are to their genealogically related languages
spoken outside this region, and that consequently South Asia should be
seen as a linguistic area (e.g., Emeneau 1956; Masica 1976; Kachru et al.
2008, and others).... However, systematic investigations of this claim
have been few and somewhat spotty, mostly relying on data from a
few major Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages (see Ebert 2006 for a
critique). The approach of Subbarao (2008) is representative: Linguistic
features (most of them from Emeneau 1956) are illustrated
with single—‘cherry-picked’—linguistic examples, and different
languages are used to illustrate different linguistic features.... In
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order to critically evaluate the notion of South Asia as a linguistic area,

we need to know the spread and extent of a linguistic feature across space
and language families.” (Borin et al 2014:3137) [Emphasis ours]
The significance of the two quotes above cannot be lost on anyone
familiar with mainstream views on linguistics pertaining to Indian
subcontinent. Firstly, these linguists concede that there has been “no
systematic, empirical study of South Asian languages to substantiate”
the mainstream view about South Asia as “a classic example of a
linguistic area.” Secondly, they admit that systematic investigations of
mainstream claim by linguists about South Asia are “spotty”, “relying
on data from a few major Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages”
and “with single ‘cherry-picked’ linguistic examples, and different
languages are used to illustrate different linguistic features.” For their
seemingly first-of-its kind evaluation—what they describe as “large-
scale investigation of the genealogical and a real relationships among
the languages of this region, based on the linguistic material available
in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India” (described as “the most
complete single source on South Asian languages”)—to reveal also
“inter-family genealogical relationships,” can it not be interpreted to
support Jha’s “common origin” hypothesis seen above? Despite the
above and the fact that their large-scale, quantitative investigation
shows no signs of “cross-family a real clusters,” the way they report
their finding—that is, the reasons they conceive—also make for
interesting reading. They report:
“There could be several conceivable reasons for this, e.g.:
1. There is in fact no a real effect to be recovered from the data;
2. the comparison method chosen (LDND) is not suitable for this problem;
3. contrary to our expectations (see section 2), the LSI comparative

vocabulary is the ‘wrong’ vocabulary for uncovering language contact;
or
4. we need to look at other parts of the language than vocabulary in order

to establish a real connections.” (Borin et al 2014:3143)
In their analysis of point 1 above, they include:

“Given the amount and quality of the argumentation advanced in
support of the hypothesis of South Asia as a linguistic area, it will take
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much stronger counterevidence than the results presented in this paper

to even begin to falsify this hypothesis. Hence, (1) is not a reasonable
assumption at this point.” (Borin et al 2014:3143)
In other words, since the result is challenging the existing hypothesis,
the reason must be that the method and data might be flawed.
Furthermore, in a thesis titled Studies in computational historical
linguistics14 , by one of the authors of the above paper, the reportage
of conclusions end up being only three points—points 2- 4 above—
with point 1 dropped, in effect, rejecting outright the possibility that
“there is in fact no a real effect to be recovered from the data” (Rama
2015:167). Such muted reporting of findings should perhaps come
as no surprise though to those familiar with Lyle Campbell, William
Poser school of Linguistics: in fact, the reportage is almost completely
compliant with the expectation of how results that potentially falsify
existing hypothesis and reveal strong support for that of a genetic
relationship:
“Some cases, when tested, reveal strong support for the hypothesis
of genetic relationship. In other cases, the evidence may not reach a
level of conviction, but may still remain suggestive, warranting further
investigation. Such hypothesized relationships are not to be embraced
with full enthusiasm, and are to be reported only with appropriate
warnings and qualifications, and encouragement to investigate further.
Some proposals, of course, may be found lacking and abandoned for lack
of sufficient evidence to guarantee even a minimum plausibility for the
proposed genetic connection.” (Campbell and Poser 2008:165)
Is the above not symptomatic of the domain’s now-seemingly-
institutionalized tendency to cherry-pick and advance those results
that support a favored hypothesis, a point Marcantonio also made
in the context of her analysis of Verner’s so-called “law”? Another
example of a reporting phenomenon similar in some ways to the
above example can be inferred in the way some aspects of the
results of another recent, one-of-its-kind, quantitative analysis by
D. Sengupta and G. Saha titled Study on Similarity among Indian
Languages Using Language Verification Framework was reported, where
correlations observed between Sanskrit and Tamil are already
decidedly “incoherent” (Sengupta and Saha 2015: 15,18).
# 113
3 Adding to Korada Subrahmanyam’s critique of the theories of

language
Korada Subrahmanyam’s account of specific appropriations by

Western linguists (on Humboldt, see (Subrahmanyam 2008:89,91),
on Ferdinand Saussure see (ibid.:94) and on Noam Chomsky see
(ibid.:111)) from Sanskrit and Sanskriti might be without precedent
and serve as examples to substantiate the point in Breaking India
about how “the Indian source lost its earliest grammar” after it had
been “securely relocated as ‘Western’”. (Malhotra and Neelakandan
2011:17)
Quoting “vāgarthāviva sampṛktau” the point he makes—that “for
Indian theorists, śabda and artha are inseparable” (Subrahmanyam
2008:128)—and the substantiation for that point that follows, is an
extremely effective and scathing critique of false characterization
of Indian linguists by the likes of Fritz Staal, whose statement is
further quoted by computational linguist and mathematician Wiebke
Petersen:
“Indian linguistics originated among reciters who wanted to preserve
their Vedic heritage and apply it in ritual. Unconcerned with meaning,
they concentrated on form and incorporated a good measure of linguistic
analysis that culminated in the Sanskrit grammar of Pāṇini. (Staal,
2006)” (Peterson 2009:1)
Yet another instance of 21st century relevance of Pāṇini—in this case,
“to approach some modern problems” and to “data representation
in Computer Science”—is evident from computational linguist and
mathematician Wiebke Petersen’s conclusion of the paper mentioned
above:
“Another possible, but yet unexplored application area of the presented
formalization of Pāṇini’s technique is data representation in Computer
Science. Data structures in Computer Science are encoded linearly
as classical programming languages are inherently linear. Since tree
structures can be encoded as nested lists, many formalisms only allow
for tree structures and leave polyhierarchies out.... A promising task is
to explore to what extent Pāṇini’s Sivasutra-technique can be employed
for the representation of hierarchies in order to allow at least for limited
multiple inheritance without losing the advantages of an efficient linear
encoding and processing of hierarchical relations. The idea is to extend,
for some tasks, the class of admissible hierarchies from tree-shaped
hierarchies to S-sortable ones.” (Petersen 2008:19)
# 114
Despite all the above, in a Harvard stratification of the History

of Linguistics (2012), “scientification of Linguistics”15 suffixes, not
the tradition of Pāṇini, but a 19th century phenomenon: “The
neogrammarian turn”. On the point of scientification, here is an
excerpt about Pāṇini’s contribution in a 2013 publication, from no less
than the high towers of Humanities:
“His formalism even served in the twentieth century as the basis for the
first high-level programming languages, as ALGOL60, which also work on
the basis of a fully specified system of rules. (See Chapter 6). Virtually
all programming languages are written in formalism that uses Pāṇini’s
linguistic notion of grammar.” (Bod 2013:20)
Interestingly, Bod goes on to add:
“We will see that over the centuries, but primarily from the nineteenth
century on, linguistics used an increasingly formal approach.”
(Bod 2013:20)
Thus, according to Bod and Harvard, while 19th century is the
century from when “linguistics used an increasingly formal approach”
and “the scientification of linguistics” occurred, a whole century
and more hence, the editors of The Routledge Handbook of Historical
Linguistics Claire Bowern and Bethwyn Evans admit, in 2014, that
they “may not have achieved a single generalised theory of language
change”(Bowern and Evans 2014:31). View this in light of the fact
that already in the century previous to when Bowern and Evans
admit the above, Pāṇini’s grammar had served “as the basis for the
first high-level programming languages” (Bod 2013:20) and yet Pāṇini
himself fails to make it to the very top (top 3)—those considered to be
with “unquestionable influence and importance” (Thomas 2011:xv)—
of Margaret Ann Thomas’ 21st century (2011) Fifty Key Thinkers on
Language and Linguistics, while the three who make it to this list
include: 1) Plato (who has authored no grammar), 2) Saussure and
3) Chomsky, latter two we came across above in Subrahmanyam’s
critical observations. Also, in 21st century, if Pāṇini’s grammar is to
be categorised in Linguistics and Linguistics is to be categorised in
Humanities, why is “scientification of Linguistics” being attributed
to neo-grammarians? With regard to Pāṇini’s grammar vis-a-vis any
other attested grammatical tradition from anywhere in the world,
Bod’s appraisal is telling:
# 115
“Compared with Pāṇini, the other linguistics from antiquity appears to

be from a different world. No other work from Chinese, Greek or Roman
literature comes close to Pāṇini’s grammar in terms of complexity of
precision.... Western linguistics continued to be dominated by the
taxonomic study of words after Priscian, and this situation did not
change until the later Middle ages.” (Bod 2013:18-9)
The glaring omission of Pāṇini in the domain’s list of the three most
influential linguists (Thomas 2011: xv) begs the question whether
the colonial bias against Indian names continues to pervade western
scholarship to this day, especially considering the unparalleled
contribution by Pāṇini to the field. While Margaret Ann Thomas’ list
rather incredibly includes, as one of the thinkers, “Language of the
Bible” (placed in between entries with boundary years 116 BCE and
400 CE) (Thomas 2011:xv) and the anonymous ‘The First Grammarian’
(supposedly 12th century) (Thomas 2011:xv), Pāṇini, the sole Bhāratiya
to make it to that supposedly global list, who incidentally tops
her list chronologically (even with an outsider dating of Pāṇini to
fourth or fifth century BCE that is), himself names at least 10 of
his predecessors: Apisāli, Kaśyapa, Gārgya, Gāḷava, Cakravarmaṇā,
Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. From
Fritz Staal’s outsider chronology found in his “Table of the Sanskrit
Grammarians” (Staal 1972:xxxiv), it is evident that even Staal knew
enough to know and place in his chart Nirukta, a technical treatise
on etymology, lexical category and the semantics of Sanskrit words
attributed to Yaska, who, as per Insider tradition (and some Outsider
accounts too), clearly precedes Pāṇini and is considered a successor
of one of the 10 predecessors Pāṇini names: Śākatāyana, a notable
absentee (amongst others) both in Staal’s chart and Margaret Ann
Thomas’ list. In Thomas’ list, only 7 names—Pāṇini, Plato (c. 428/7
- 349/7 BCE), Aristotle (384-322 BCE), Marcus Terentius Varro (116-
27 BCE), Aelius Donatus (4th century CE), Priscian of Caesarea (6th
century CE), Sibawayhi (d. c. 796)—chronologically precede the list
of at least 17 names that have been in the contention for the title
of “father” (Campbell and Poser 2008:14) of Comparative lingusitics..
About the connections among Indo-European languages, Campbell
and Poser note that “connections among Indo-European languages
had been observed long before Jones... ” (Campbell and Poser
2008:14) and on the relationship of Sanskrit with certain other Indo-
European languages they note that “the relationship of Sanskrit with
certain other Indo-European languages, especially with Greek and
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Latin, had also been recognized prior to Jones (for example, Thomas
Stephens [1549-1619] 1583 (see Muller 1986:14- 15), Filippo Sassetti
[1540-1588] 1585, Jean François Pons 1743, Benjamin Schultze [1715-
1790] 1760, Gaston Laurent Coeurdoux 1768, Nathaniel Halhed 1778,
Lord Monboddo 1774-1809 (cf. Zeller 1967). Moreover, there were
at least 47 published accounts of Sanskrit before Jones’ statement
on the matter (Muller 1986:14)” (Campbell and Poser 2008:26). As a
preliminary framing step in the direction of an insider pūrva pakśa
of Linguistics pertaining to Indo-European (prior to the start of 20th
century), and in that, with a focus on “Aryan” and “Dravidian”, we
authors have compiled a Table 216 of 88 names (people born between
1100 and 1900) who are considered to be associated with the field of
linguistics. Links with Sanskrit (51), Dravidian (5) and Indo-European
laws (17) that we were able to locate are also indicated in order to
facilitate deeper, more specific research dives in the future. With
regard to tracing Sanskrit, one recent thesis that we could not access
but would like to call out is A History of the Transmission of Sanskrit in
Britain and America, 1830-1939 by Dr. Mishka Sinha.
4 Adding to the first Insider pūrva -pakśa: Examining assump-

tions of a key IE law and 21st century attributions to “the first
great American linguist”
Unlike Mishka Sinha, whose thesis title is limited both geographically

and chronologically, Rosane Rocher, in her four-page double-column
essay Discovery of Sanskrit by Europeans, covers a period starting from
1583. The last paragraph of her essay is telling in ways more than one:
“More than joining the academic mainstream, Sanskrit took pride of
place in the development of comparative Indo-European grammar....
Sanskritocentrism remained the norm for generations of comparatists.
So significant was the discovery of Sanskrit in the development of
comparative Indo-European linguistics that it has been felt necessary
of late to voice reminders that it was not a prerequisite-as the work
of Rask, Grimm and others demonstrate. Accounting in part for
the magnitude of this impact are the quality, quantity, antiquity and
longevity of Sanskrit literature, yet more important was the fact that
Sanskrit was first taught to Europeans-directly or mediately-according
to the enduring tradition of rigorous analysis by Pān ̧ini and other Indian
grammarians and phoneticians. The identification of the root as the
smallest common denominator of derived forms, vocalic alternation,
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derivational and inflectional suffixes, substitutional rules, zeroing etc.,

and the description of articulatory processes were the procedures
according to which Europeans learned Sanskrit from pandits.”
(Rocher 1995:191)
While carefully measured credit is extended to some aspects of
Sanskrit, Pāṇini, Indian grammarians and phoneticians and unnamed
“pandits”—here one wonders where the so-called exacting European
academic publishing standard and ethic that requires naming one’s
sources vanish—significance of the discovery of Sanskrit is reined
in by qualifications such as the one Rocher uses, that “it was not a
prerequisite-as the work of Rask, Grimm and others demonstrate”
(Rocher 1995:191). That Rocher’s qualification is an articulation of the
exception and not the norm should be evident from the table above:
of the 17 names who have laws named after them (or whose name is
associated with a law, as in the solitary case of the laws of Palatals),
barring Grimm, all others, i.e. 16 of 17 have a connection with Sanskrit
and without Sanskrit, those laws might not have been possible.
The cultural importance of Indo-European—in whose comparative
grammar development Rocher says Sanskrit took pride of place—is
explained by John Goldsmith and Bernard Laks:
“The dawning realization that there was an Indo- European family, with
a considerable depth in time and cultural richness, served to provide
a new answer to European issues of identity which became acute as a
new set of nations emerged over the course of the century. The Western
tradition had long been ambivalent about the uncomfortable fact that it
was the Semitic sphere, not the European, where a tradition of language,
literature, and religion reaching back at lesat[sic]two thousand years
could be found. But with the emergence of the Indo-European family,
a new family, the Aryan family, was now ready to appear with a rich and
coherent tradition, not to mention a powerful set of myths. The word
Aryan was coined by Schlegel in 1819 on the basis of the Sanskrit root
ārya-, “noble.” In francophone and anglophone countries, one spoke
of “Indo-European,” while in Germany one spoke of “Indo-Germanic,”
a term created by Franz Bopp.” (Goldsmith and Laks 2016:74)
How is it not hypocrisy when linguists—or any of the proponents of
the Indo-European hypothesis—hurl accusations of “nationalism” or
“cultural-ideological motivations” at those who objectively question
the Aryan invasion/migration (and perhaps more importantly the
assumed consequent import of Sanskrit and ṚgVeda) into India, which,
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is predicated so much on the Indo-European hypothesis, when its own

importance is clearly also cultural and stems from cultural-ideological
motivations, as evident from the quote above?
A perhaps not completely insignificant (21st century?) development
with regard to Greek records of Sanskrit becomes evident when one
considers that while to Staal there had not appeared “to have been a
single Greek account of the Sanskrit grammarians or, for that matter,
of the Sanskrit language” (Staal 1972:4), and to Rocher the Greek
“linguistic slate is blank” (Rocher 1995:188), to Campbell and Poser
though, there is evidently a significant connection:
“Significantly, Salmasius also brought Sanskrit into the emerging picture
of Indo-European relationships embodied in the Scythian theory (and
Boxhorn agreed with him). Of the Sanskrit words recorded by Ctesias
in his fifth-century BC description of India, Salmasius observed:
“All the Indian utterances which have come down to us, recorded by
Ctesias in his Indika, can, with only minor modification, be found in
modern Persian. From this it is clear that the Indian of Ctesias is
Indoscythian and it follows that either modern Persian is the descendant
of the language spoken by the Indoscythians, or that the Indians of
Ctesias descended from the Scythians who descended into India, whilst
the people who migrated to Parthia trace their origin to the same stock.
(Salmasius 1643:379–80, cited in van Driem 2001:1047)”
(Campbell and Poser 2008:21)
Not only is this Greek connection now claimed, the supposedly 5th
century BCE Ctesias’ methodology is certified (read white-washed)
with the contemporary linguistic term “sound correspondences”:
“With respect to methodology, it should be noticed that these Scythian
works, early attempts at establishing genetic relationships among
languages, employed (as in the case of Boxhorn) “lexical analogies,”
but required “the testimony of morphology” for proof, and sound
correspondences were also known and utilized, as in the case of
Salmasius. (Cf. also Droixhe 1980.)” (Campbell and Poser 2008:22)
In the future (if not already), one might not hence be surprised
if Ctesias supersedes Pāṇini in Euro-centric chronological charts
of linguists! A simplistic summary of the narrative peddled
might be this: the ancient notion of Scythian Ursprache, for a
brief while becomes “Aryan”—courtesy Schlegel in 1819—before
being superseded by “Indo-European”, a term whose invention is
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attributed to Thomas Young in the year 1813 and of which Sanskrit

became a constituent—before Schleicher—credited as whose work in
“comparative linguistics was a summation of the achievements up to
his time and whose methodology provided the direction for much
subsequent research”17 —in 1874 introduced the tree diagram (Bendall
1874:8)for languages and the “starred form” (Lehmann 1967:8) which
continues till today with the latest morphing called the Proto Indo
European (PIE).
While according to Campbell, “Schleicher broke the practice of citing
Sanskrit” (Lehmann 1967:94) in favor of a “reconstructed form of a
proto-language” (ibid.), according to Wilbur A. Benware, “Theodor
Benfey appears to have been the only Indo-European scholar before
1860 to have questioned the vowel triad axiom” (Benware 1974:25)
and was “highly critical of the over-use of Sanskrit as the basis for
comparisons among the various Indo-European language” (Benware
1974:26). Benfey’s argument for “Greek as a better representative of
the original situation” (ibid.) is acknowledged by Collinge as correct
yet “a guess without circumstantial support” (Collinge 1985:134). Two
points seem to be relevant to these decisions:
1. that Sanskrit offers “a simple vowel triad (/i,a,u/)” rather than

a “PIE array of /i, e, a, o, u/” (Collinge 1985:133)
2. and the “lack of representation of for short e and o in the Sanskrit
alphabet” (Benware 1974:25)
That a late 20th century (1985) academic textbook The Laws of Indo-
European should pronounce Point 1—Sanskrit offers “a simple vowel
triad (/i,a,u/) rather than a “PIE array of /i, e, a, o, u/”—should
shock even a western Sanskritist and be hard to reconcile with
“The Sanskrit Alphabet” (Staal 1972:xix) where the so-called Sanskrit
“Vowels” are clearly not limited to any triad. For an insider with basic
knowledge of Sanskrit, that a foreign category “vowel” is projected
onto Sanskrit and takes precedence over the native category svara
(which includes all vowels) would lead to an outright dismissal of
the point: that Sanskrit offers “a simple vowel triad (/i,a,u/).” This
point should become abundantly clear and easy to grasp for anyone—
insider, outsider, uninitiated in Sanskrit—when s/he considers the
Māheśvarāṇi Sūtrāṇi and in its tradition, the following tabulation
found in Gita press publication of Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi18 :
# 120
Where exactly in the Sanskrit native tradition are अ, इ, उ called “Vowels”

and amongst “Vowels”, “Primary” (as “put briefly” (Bryant 2001:70)
in a chapter with an arguably gratuitous subtitle: The Dethronement
of Sanskrit)? अ, इ, उ are, as per Sanskrit tradition, without doubt a
mātrā shorter than ए, ओ but what native Sanskrit category calls them
“Primary” amongst “vowels” and just because ए, ओ have a mātrā more,
does that mean one can make a statement that Sanskrit offers “a
simple vowel triad (/i,a,u/)” rather than a “PIE array of /i, e, a, o, u/”?
More importantly, is the comparison of /i, e, a, o, u/ and अ, इ, उ, ए, ओ even
a meaningful comparison? Can the fact that Sanskrit’s sophistication
in having an internal logic to separate अ, इ, उ from ए, ओ on counts such as
mātrā (whilst being in the same category native-to-tradition category
svara) be extrapolated to make the point that “Sanskrit offers “a simple
vowel triad (/i.a,u/)” rather than a “PIE array of /i, e, a, o, u/”?
As a response to the second point, the supposed “lack of representa-
tion of for short e and o in the Sanskrit alphabet,” an insider could ask
whether the following has been considered:
“On going through Patañjali’s commentary on the sutras of Pāṇini,
I discovered that Sanskrit too has these short vowels and it was a
comforting discovery. Patañjali says that, in chanting the Satyamugri and
Ranayaniya Śākhās of the Sāmaveda the short “e” and “o” are used.” 19
(Sarasvati 2008:295)
The idea of refuting the two points above is not to claim Sanskrit
as PIE but to simply highlight, what appears to us, to be serious
methodological flaws—flawed comparison, flawed reasoning, not
rooted in Sanskrit tradition (amongst others)—which are attributed
as reasons—not by us, but by linguists themselves—for Sanskrit
being relegated to a sister status, rather than the more-or-less exact
preserver of the original language. Those who advance either the Out-
# 121
of-India theory or the theory that Sanskrit is the original PIE might,
though, find the above two refutations of some use.
”Any possibility that Sanskrit as a language and the Vedic tradition could
have evolved in India remains an anathema in the eyes of the Europeans
and the cause of relentless attacks on India.... Assertions and claims,
even though put forward with unshakable conviction, when looked
critically appear to be based on beliefs and assumptions, and not
compelling or credible evidence. And yet the same belief based
dogmatic assertions remain the guiding principles of the Western
mindset, with little response from Indian scholarship to contest,
challenge and overturn what in most instances should be easily
refutable.” (Singh 2017:18) [Emphasis ours]
While undertaking a detailed review of every Indo-European law with
a Sanskrit connection (Table 2 shows at least 17) and instantiating
all Western appropriations from Sanskrit would be too vast in scope
to be dealt with in any depth here that does justice to these full-
fledged independent research topics, like our treatment of one
Indo-European law—significant enough for linguists to attribute it
to at least five scholars and for relegating “Sanskrit” as a “sister”
of Greek and Latin)—and questioning attributions by Goldsmith
and Laks to whom they call “the first great American linguist”
(Goldsmith & Laks 2016:89)—William Dwight Whitney—might be a
small addition to Professor Subrahmanyam’s catalogue of Western
linguistic appropriations and digestion.
In Language and Mind Sciences Goldsmith and Laks not only call Whitney
“first great American linguist”, but also provide a diagram—Fig. 2.2.(Gold-
smith and Laks 2016:93)—which makes clear his nodal role between nine
subsequent linguists (including five of the “neogrammarians”) and seven
linguists before him. According to Goldsmith and Laks, it was Whitney
who “introduced the various parts of the articulatory apparatus—
the lungs, the larynx, the pharynx, the parts of the mouth. In short,
voice was “the audible result of a column of air emitted by the lungs,
impressed with sonancy and variety of pitch by the larynx, and individ-
ualized by the mouth-organs.””
(Goldsmith & Laks 2016:96) [Emphasis ours]
They then add:
“There were three important positions: “one in the front, made by lip
against lip, the labial closure, giving p; one in the back of the mouth,
made against the soft palate by the rear upper surface of the tongue,
# 122
the palatal (or guttural) closure, giving k; and one intermediate

between the other two, made by the point or front of the tongue
against the roof of the mouth near the front teeth, the lingual (or
dental) closure, giving t.” [61-2]. He put this together graphically in a
simple chart:” (Goldsmith & Laks 2016:96) [Emphasis ours]
“All of this sounds quite modern and up to date, but there is more, and
we wish to emphasize this fact because what he wrote next is often
taken to be an insight that was not made explicit until the work of
the Prague Circle in the 1930s. “Along with k,t,p, in the first place,
go their nearest kindred, g,d,b,” Whitney wrote, and he referred to
g as the sonant, or vocal, “counterpart” of k, and so on.”
(Goldsmith & Laks 2016:97) [Emphasis ours]
All three excerpts emphasized above (first and third being unarguably
explicit attributions to Whitney), in our view, can be attributed to
Pāṇini through others in his tradition rather than Whitney. This is
easily verified when one considers points 13 to 16 (Ballantyne 1849:4-7)
in the English translation titled The Laghu Kaumudi, A Sanskrit Grammar
by Varadaraja published just about a year before Whitney left for
Germany to study Sanskrit.
4 Conclusions
In our analysis, we have considered, in section 2 of the paper, some
of the recent 2017 evidence from mainstream Western academia
and Indian politics and observed how not only the Aryan Migration
(into India) Theory, but also its supposedly discredited predecessor
Aryan Invasion Theory are privileged in certain textbooks and courses,
which hence make an Insider analysis and critique of this seemingly
beaten-to-death topic not so redundant. In section 3, bearing in mind
future treatments of this topic, we have attempted dimensionalising
the problem: firstly, by establishing that western linguistics is not
and cannot be the primary source for a resolution of this problem
(especially when it relates to the origins of Indian civilization and
consequently chronology of ancient India) even if western linguistics
were the primary sustainer of this problem for over two centuries;
secondly, demonstrating, through a detailed search-list-analyse study
of occurrences of ārya and drāviḍa in some of the earliest indigenous
(Sanskrit) texts, no basis for an Aryan Invasion/Migration into India
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accompanied with import of Sanskrit and Rig Veda, and thirdly,

through a step towards a pūrva-pakśa of Indo-European linguistics,
highlighted differences in positions even within linguists vis-a-vis the
robustness of their methods, included some of the critiques of the
domain’s methods from other academic fields, took a closer look at
more recent quantitative studies whose results can be interpreted
to weaken some aspects of supposedly established aspects of Indo-
Aryan and Dravidian languages, also compiled, in order to facilitate
further research, a chronological frame of 88 names (between 1100
CE and 1900 CE), majority of whom are acknowledged in recent
mainstream linguistic publications as part of the Indo-European
linguistics tradition, and finally examined closely, assumptions of an
important Indo-European (so-called) “law” and attributions to ”the
first great American linguist.” We believe that the combination of
the above addresses specific voids in Insider efforts in addressing this
problem, even as it brings together arguments from diverse fields and
scholars that would advance an Insider position on this matter.
As one looks back at the work which lies at the very inception of
the outrageous theory of Aryan Invasion/Migration into India, one
sees not only the progressive paths traced by science, be it through
evolution or the dismissal of the concept of race, but also the role
played by one of the most fundamental tools of practising history -
comparison. William Jones’s find of the commonalities seen across
the languages of Sanskrit, Persian, German, Greek and Latin hinges
entirely on this method. At the heart of comparison as modus operandi,
lies chronology. In purposefully setting up a comparison between the
Oriental and Occidental cultures, the colonial Indologists laid the basis
for not only studying the resemblances between the two, but also the
timelines that formed the backdrops for the respective cultures. In
doing so, the wise, prosperous ancient India had to make way for the
dullard and poor one to justify Pax Britannica’s rule. Chronology of
India thus found itself defaced and vandalised to be boxed in a manner
the coloniser chose. It is indeed shocking that native accounts and
methods of the pandit were not only mocked at and discarded but
also openly replaced with the revised narratives that were constructed
on suspect foundations, provided by the European academia and
missionaries alike. The casualties that resulted from this blow range
from the dating of the Veda-s to historical events and literary and other
cultural creations. We authors in our previous work have shown in
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detail the impact of the altered British chronology in dating several

of ancient India’s kings, works such as the Nātyaśāstra, Aśtādhyāyi,
and even the very act of introducing writing in India. In a brilliant
masterstroke, the British, by altering the very basis of India’s history—
her chronology—reduced her to a people that desperately sought
delusional ideas of antiquity on one hand to believing the coloniser’s
falsehoods and falling prey to divisive forces amidst her own. The
debate between the ārya and drāviḍa forces seen to this day, be it in
political or social spheres, is a prime example of the latter. Thus, by
reordering the chronology of the land, the oppressor equipped himself
with tools to desacralise its most cherished and formative aspects,
even as he appropriated that which could strengthen his own cultural
assets or create new ones disconnected from its source.
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Notes
1 https://anthropology.mcmaster.ca/courses/readings-in-indo-european
-myth
2 Note 54 in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_migration_theory
as on Sep 2017
3 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/aryan
4 Jagannathan, R (2015), Kharge’s Aryan Jibe: When It Comes To Bashing BJP, Even Racism Is
Fine With The Congress, https://swarajyamag.com/politics/kharges-aryan-jibe-when-it-
comes-to-bashing-bjp-even-racism-is-fine-with-the-congress
5 Hebbar,
Nistula (2015), Debate on Aryan invasion theory revived, http://www.thehindu
.com/news/national/debate-on-aryan-invasion-theory-revived/article
7920009.ece
6 Joseph,
Tony The Hindu June 16 2017 http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/scie
nce/how-genetics-is-settling-the-aryan-migration-debate/article190
90301.ece
7 See Jean Baptiste d’Omalius d’Halloy, Jul. - Oct., 1867, Proceedings of Paris Anthropological
Society pp 357–360
8 Danino,
Michel (2017), The problematics of genetics and the Aryan issue, http://www.th
ehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-problematics-of-genetics-and-the-arya
n-issue/article19165320.ece
9 Pereltsvaig,Asya (Oct 25, 2015), Are Indo-Europeans “Untraceable”?—A Response to Jean-
Paul Demoule, http://www.languagesoftheworld.info/bad-linguistics/are
-indo-europeans-untraceable-a-response-to-jean-paul-demoule.html
10 Talegeri, Shrikant (10 July 2017), The “Aryan” Story vs.
True Aryan History, http://tala
geri.blogspot.in/2017/07/the-aryan-story-vs-true-aryan-history.htm
l
11 Consider the terms likhat and likhitam in the Atharva veda (likhat in verses 14.2.68c and
20.132.8, likhitam in 12.3.22c respectively)
# 129
12 LING S-120 Introduction to Historical Linguistics, Retreived from:

https://www.summ
er.harvard.edu/courses/introduction-historical-linguistics/33194
13 List, Johann Matis (Apr 13, 2016), Monogenesis, polygenesis, and militant agnosticism, http:
//phylonetworks.blogspot.in/2016/04/monogenesis-polygenesis-and-mi
litant.html
14 Rama,Taraka (2015), Studies in computational historical linguistics – Models and Analysis,
ed. Borin, Laris University of Gothenburg, Retrieved from: http://spraakdata.gu.
se/taraka/slut_seminar_thesis.pdf
15 https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/grestenberger/files/syllabus_his
tory_of_linguistics.pdf, p. 2
16 Table 2 can be accessed at: https://goo.gl/uLutsN
17 https://www.britannica.com/biography/August-Schleicher
18 See p. 19 in लघुिस ा तकौमुदी, Retrieved from https://goo.gl/AvC3jo on 20 July 2018

19 Also,
see: (P_1,1.48) KA_I,117.4-118.4 Ro_I,357-359 {38/46} nanu ca bhoḥ chandogānām
sātyamugrirāṇāyanīyāḥ ardham ekāram ardham okāram ca adhīyate: sujāte eśvasūnṛte,
adhvaryo odribhiḥ sutam, śukram te enyat yajatam te enyat iti
# 130
# 324
Table 3 324
Source: All the references below are from http://www.sanskritdocuments.org, while those of the Rig Veda are from
http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/rvsan/index.htm.
The verses of Mahabharata and Ramayana are respectively from http://bombay.indology.info/mahabharata/welcome.html
and http://bombay.indology.info/ramayana/text/UD/Ram01.txt
Source Ārya Drāviḍa Comments
Rig Veda Book 1 Hymn 51
Appendix - Table 3
िव जानी ायान ये च द यवो बिह मते र धया

शासद तान । Interplay between Ārya
and Dasyu as opposing
Book 1 Hymn 59
forces, no reference to
तं तवा देवासो.अजनय त देवं वै वानर जयोित रदा-
any linguistic or
याय ॥
geographical association
Book 1 Hymn 103 to either term
िव ान वि न द यवे हेितम याय सहो वधया दयु न-
िम ॥
Book 1 Hymn 117
अिभ द युं बकु रेणा धम तो जयोित च थुरायाय ॥
Book 1 Hymn 130
इ ः सम सु यजमानमाय परावद िव वेषु शतमूितरा-
िजषु सवम हे वािजषु ।
Book 1 Hymn 156
वेधा अिज वत त रषध थ आय रत य भागे यजमान-
माभजत ॥
Book 2 Hymn 11
अपा णो य ितरायाय िन स यतः सािद द यु र ॥
# 325
सनेम ये त ऊितिभ तर तो िव वा स ध आयण
द यून ।
Book 3 Hymn 34
िहर ययमुत भोगं ससान ह वी द यून परायवणमावत ॥
Book 4 Hymn 26
अहम भूिमम अददाम आयायाहं वि दाशुषे म याय ।
Book 4 Hymn 30
उत तया स आया सरयोर इ पारतः ।
Book 5 Hymn 34
इ ो िव व य दिमता िवभीषणो यथावशं नयित दासम
आयः ॥
Book 6 Hymn 18
तवं ह नु तयददमायो द यू ेकः क रवनोरायाय ।
Book 6 Hymn 22
यया दासा यायािण व ा करो वि न सुतुका नाह-
षािण ॥
Book 6 Hymn 25
आिभिव वा अिभयुजो िवषूचीरायाय िवशो.अव ता-
रीदासीः ॥
Book 6 Hymn 33
तवं तािन ोभयानिम ान दासा व ा याया च शूर ।
Book 6 Hymn 60
Appendix - Table 3
हतो व ा याया हतो दासािन स पती ।

325
# 326
326
Book 7 Hymn 5
तवं द यू ोकसो अ आज उ जयोितजनय ायाय ॥
Book 7 Hymn 18
आ यो.अनयत सधमा आय य ग या त सु यो अजगन
युधा नन ॥
Book 7 Hymn 33
तरयः क वि त भुवनेषु रेति त ः परजा आया
Appendix - Table 3
जयोितर ाः ।
Book 7 Hymn 39
आयमणमिदितं िव णुमेषां सर वती म तो मादय-
ताम ॥
Book 7 Hymn 83
दासा च व ा हतमायािण च सुदासिम ाव णावसा-
वतम ॥
Book 8 Hymn 24
य र ादंहसो मुचद यो वायात स िस धुषु ।
Book 8 Hymn 51
य यायं िव व आय दासः शेविधपा अ रः ।
Book 10 Hymn 11
यदी िवशो वणते द ममायाि ं होतारमध धीरजायत ॥
Book 10 Hymn 38
यो नो दास आय वा पु तादेव इ युधये िचके तित ।
# 327
Book 10 Hymn 43
परैषामनीकं शवसा दिव ुतद िवद वमनवे जयोितरा-
यम ॥
Book 10 Hymn 49
अहं शु ण य शनिथता वधयमंन यो रर आय नाम
द यवे ॥
Book 10 Hymn 65
सूय िदिव रोहय तः सुदानव आया ता िव ज तो अिध
कषिम ॥
Book 10 Hymn 69
सम या पव या वसूिन दासा व ा याया िजगेथ ।
Book 10 Hymn 83
सा ाम दासमाय तवया युजा सह तेनसहसा सह-
वता ॥
Book 10 Hymn 86
अयमेिम िवचाकशद िविच वन दासमायम ।
Book 10 Hymn 102
दास यवा मघव ाय य वा सनुतयवया वधम ॥
Book 10 Hymn 138
िव सूय म ये अमुचद रथं िदवो िवदद दासय
परितमानमायः ।
Sāma Veda ४ ७ ३ १९०१a य यायं िव व आय दासः शेविधपा
Appendix - Table 3
अ रः ।
327
# 328
328
४ ७ ३ १९०१c ितरि चदय शमे पवीरिव तु ये सो
अ यते रियः ॥ १६०९
Mahābhārata 01110023c 02028048a Ārya used as a term of
आया स यवती भी म ते च राजपुरोिहताः पा ां च िवडां चैव सिहतां चोडके रलैः address for a man or
01143005a 02031012a woman with cultured
आय जानािस य ःु खिमह ीणामन जम् िवडाः िसंहला चैव राजा का मीरक तथा refinement and noble
qualities, Drāviḍa used in
01169008c 03048018c
Appendix - Table 3
referring to a group of
आय वेष िपता त य िपतु तव महा मनः सव ा ा सपौ डोडा सचोल िवडा धकान्
people belonging to the
01194009a 03118004a southern Indian region,
आयवृ च पा ा यो न स राजा धनि यः ततो िवपा मा िवडेषु राज; समु मासा च mostly never used in
लोकपु यम् isolation but while
referring to a group of
02049001a 05138025a kingdoms from the south.
आया तु ये वै राजानः स यसंधा महा ताः पुरोगमा च ते स तु िवडाः सह कु तलैः
02069005a 05158020c
आया पृथा राजपु ी नार यं ग तुमहित शा वैः सम यैः कु म यदेशै; ल छैः पु-
िल दै िवडा का यैः
03013081c 06010057a
आयामा वासयामास ातॄं चािप वृकोदरः िवडाः के रलाः ा या भूिषका वनवािसनः
03013083a 08004046a
आयाम े न वामेन राजानं दि णेन च मालवा म का चैव िवडा चो िव माः
# 329
03031029a 08008014c
आयकमिण यु ानः पापे वा पुनरी वरः सा यिक चेिकतान च िवडैः सैिनकै ः सह
03031038a 08033004a
आया शीलवतो ा ीमतो वृि किशतान् िवडा िनषादा तु पुनः सा यिकचोिदताः
03031040a 14084011a
आयशा ाितगे ू रे लु धे धमापचाियिन त ािप िवडैर ै रौ ैमािहषकै रिप
03035014c
आय य म ये मरणा रीयो; य ममु य मह िश-
यात्
03217009e
आया पलाला वै िम ा स ैताः िशशुमातरः
03219040c
आया माता कु मार य पृथ ामाथिम यते
03264049a
आयाः खादत मां शी ं न मे लोभोऽि त जीिवते
03281048a
आयजु िमदं वृ िमित िव ाय शा वतम्
05033025a
आयकमिण र य ते भूितकमािण कु वते
05037023c
व ा िहतानामनुर आयः; शि आ मेव िह
सोऽनुक यः
Appendix - Table 3
05050046a
आय तं तु जान तः संगरा िबिभ सवः
329
# 330
330
05056039c
आया धृितमतः शूरानि क पा बािधतुम्
05070056a
ये ेव वीरा ीम त आयाः क णवेिदनः
05082025c
आयाः कु लीना ीम तो ा वृि मनुि ताः
05093034a
Appendix - Table 3
शु ा वदा या ीम त आयाः पु यािभजातयः

05094043c
आया मितं समा थाय शा य भारत पा डवैः
05167010c
आयवृ ौ महे वासौ नेहपाशिसतावुभौ
06010012c
आया ले छा च कौर य तैिम ाः पु षा िवभो
06068031c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा भी ममेवािभदु ुवुः
06082030c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा न यजि त म संयुगम्
07009028a
आय तममोघेषुं ीम तमपरािजतम्
07021002a
आया यु े मितं कृ वा ि याणां यश करीम्
# 331
07077013c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा जिह पाथािवचारयन्
07086011c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा याव ि म जय थम्
07100018c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा यु ायैवोपति थरे
07118010a
आयण सुकरं ाहरायकम धनंजय
07164009c
आय यु मकु व त पर परिजगीषवः
07166034a
आयण तु न व या कदािच तुितरा मनः
08043046c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा येिह रथयूथपम्
11015013a
आय पौ ाः ते सव सौभ सिहता गताः
11020014a
आयामाय सुभ ां विममां च ि दशोपमान्
12063008a
यः या ा तः सोमप आयशीलः; सानु ोशः सवसहो
िनराशीः
Appendix - Table 3
12156018a
आयता नाम भूतानां यः करोित य नतः
331
# 332
332
12221033a
दातारः संगृहीतार आयाः क णवेिदनः
12272024c
आया यु े मितं कृ वा जिह श ुं सुरे वर
12312015c
आयावतिममं देशमाजगाम महामुिनः
12345008a
Appendix - Table 3
आय सूयरथं वोढु ं गतोऽसौ मासचा रकः

13048038c
आय पिमवानाय कथं िव ामहे नृप
13048044a
आय पसमाचारं चर तं कृ तके पिथ
14060025c
आय दारकाः सव िम छािम तानहम्
14072025a
आया च पृिथवीपालाः नरवाहनाः
14068012a
आया च प य पा ाल सा वत च तपि वनीम्
Rāmāyaṇa 1001015c आयः सवसम चैव सदैकि यदशनः
Ārya used as a term of
2020020c आयपु ाः क र यि त वनवासं गते विय address for a man or
2024002a आयपु िपता माता ाता पु तथा नुषा woman with cultured
2031008c आय यित वो राजा ग यतां त मािचरम् refinement and noble
qualities
2034027c आय िकमवम येयं ीणां भता िह दैवतम्
# 333
2064007a आया च धमिनरता धम ा धमदिशनी
2066006a आयक ते सुकुशलो युधािज मातुल तव
2066028a आय िकम वी ाजा िपता मे स यिव मः
2069013a आय क मादजान तं गहसे मामिकि बषम्
2093012c आय यािम सं ो महिषिमव राघवम्
2093038c आय येवािभसं ु य याहतु नाशक तः
2097005a आय तातः प र य य कृ वा कम सुद ु करम्
2100002c ाकृ त य नर येव आय बु े तपि वनः
2103013c आय युपवे यािम याव मे न सीदित
2103025c आय परमधम मिभजानािम राघवम्
2107006c आयमाग प य नानुम येत कः पुमान्
3017010c आय य वं िवशालाि भाया भव

यवीयसी
3041009a आयपु ािभरामोऽसौ मृगो हरित मे मनः
3057007a आयणेव प र ु ं हा सीते ल मणेित च
4018031a आयण मम मा धा ा यसनं घोरमीि सतम्

4019027c सु
वे पुन थाय आयपु ेित ोशती
4054007c आयः को िव वसे ातु त कु लीनो िजजी-
Appendix - Table 3
िवषुः
333
# 334
334
5057003a आयायाः सशं शीलं सीतायाः वगषभाः
5060024c आयकं ाहर बाह यां कु िपतोऽ दः
5061014a आय ल मण सं ाह वीरो दिधमुखः किपः
6023005a आयण िकं नु कै के याः कृ तं रामेण

िवि यम्
Appendix - Table 3
6061020c आय संदिशतः नेहो यथा वायुसुते परः

6098004a आयपु िे त वािद यो हा नाथेित च सवशः
6114008c आय य पादुके गृ यथािस पुनरागतः
6115014a आयपादौ गृही वा तु िशरसा धमकोिवदः
7051008a आय या ां पुर कृ य िवसृ य जनका म-

जाम्
7054012a आयण िह पुरा शू या अयो या रि ता पुरी
7054012c संतापं दये कृ वा आय यागमनं ित
Garuda Purāṇa अिभमानः सिह णु च मधु ीरृषयः मृताः । आयाः Ārya used as a term of
भूता भा या च लेखा च पृथुका तथा ॥ १,८७.२४ ॥ address for a man or
woman with cultured
सवािदम या तगलौ नौ यौ ौ तौ ि का ग- refinement
णाः । आया चतु कला तसवम ये चतुगणाः ॥
१,२०७.२ ॥
# 335
आयाल म व गणाः सदा जो िवषमे न िह । ष े जो
लौ वािप भवे पदं ष े ि तीयलात् ॥ १,२०८.१ ॥
म ये ि तुय जौ चपला मुखपूवािदचापला । ि तीयाध

सजघना आयाजाते च ल णम् ॥ १,२०८.३ ॥
आया थमाधल म गीितः या े ल ये । उपगीित-

ि तीयाधादु ीित य यया वेत् ॥ १,२०८.४ ॥
आयागीित चा तगु ग ितजाते च ल णम् । ष कला

िवषमे चे युः समेऽ ौ न िनर तराः । समा पराि ता न
या ैतालीये रलौ गु ः ॥ १,२०८.५ ॥
इित ीगा डे महापुराणे पूवख डे थमांशा ये आ-

चारका डेछ दः शा े आयावृ ािदछ दोल णिन पणं
नामा ो रि शततमोऽ यायः
Brahmapurāṇa १५४०२५१ प य सु लोकपालेषु आय त वािदिन ।
१५४०२५२ अ ौ शुि गतां सीतां िकं तु राजा
िनर शः ॥ १५४.२५।
Skandapurāṇa SP0020181 शैलािददै यस मद दे या च शत पता । Ārya used as a term of ad-
SP0020182 आयावर दानं च शैलािद तव एव च ॥ dress for a man or woman
Appendix - Table 3
with cultured refinement

and noble qualities
335
# 336
336
Nātyaśāstra ॥ ना शा म् अ याय ६ ॥ ॥ ना शा म् अ याय १३ ॥
address for a man or
अिप चा सू ाथानुिव े आय भवतः । कोसला तोशला चैव किल ा यवना woman with cultured
खसाः । refinement and noble
ऋतुमा याल ारैः ि यजनगा धवका यसेवािभः । िवडा महारा ा वै णा वै वानवासजाः ॥ qualities, Drāviḍa used in
३९॥ referring to a group of
people belonging to the
Appendix - Table 3
उपवनगमनिवहारैः शृ ाररसः समु वित ॥ ४७॥ ॥ ना शा म् अ याय २१ ॥

अथ हा यो नाम हास थाियभावा मकः । िकरातबबरा ा च िवडाः कािशकोस- southern Indian region,
स च िवकृ तपरवेषाल ारधा लौ यकु हकास ला- लाः । mostly never used in
isolation but while
प य दशन- referring to a group of
दोषोदाहरणािदिभिवभावै प ते । पुिल दा दाि णा या च ायेण विसताः kingdoms from the south
त यो नासाकपोल प दन ि याकोशाकु न वेदा- मृताः ॥ ११०॥ and other parts of the
यरागपा व हणािदिभरनुभावैरिभनयः यो यः । country.
यिभचा रण चा याविह थाल यत ािन-
ा व न बोधादयः ।
ि िवध चायमा म थः पर थ च । यदा वयं हसितत-
दाऽ म थः ।
यदा तु परं हासयित तदा पर थः ।
अ ानुवं ये आय भवतः ।
िवप रताल ारैिवकृ ताचरािभधानवेषै च ।
िवकृ तैरथिवशेषैहसतीित रसः मृतो हा यः ॥ ४९॥
# 337
भावा चा यास मोहो साहावेगामषचपल-
तौ यगव वेदवेपथुरोमा -ग दादयः ।
अ ाह - यदिभिहतं र ोदानवादीनां रौ ो रसः।
िकम येषां नाि त । उ यते अ य येषामिप रौ ो रसः ।
िक विधकारोऽ गृ ते । ते िह वभावत एव रौ ः ।
क मात् ।
बहबाहवो बहमुखाः ो तू िवक णिप लिशरोजाः ।
र ो ृ िवलोचना भीमािसत िपण चैव ।
य िकि समार भते वभावचेि तं वाग ािदकंत सव
रौ मेवैषाम् । शृ ार च तैः ायशः स यं से यते । ते-
षांचानुका रणो ये पु ष तेषामिप स ामस हारकृ तो
रौ ोरसोऽनुम त यः ।
अ ानुवं ये आय भवतः -
यु हारघातनिवकृ त छेदनिवदारणै चैव ।
सं ामस मा ैरेिभः स ायते रौ ः ॥ ६४ ॥
अथ बीभ सो नाम जुगु सा थाियभावा-

मकः । सचा ाि याचो यािन वणदशन-
क तनािदिभिवभावै प ते।
त यसवा संहारमुखिवकू णनो ेखनिन ी-
वनो ेजनािदिभरनुभावैरिभनयः यो यः । भावा चा-
Appendix - Table 3
याप मारो ेगावेगमोह यािधमरणादयः ।

337
# 338
338
अनिभमतदशनेन च ग धरस पशश ददोषै च ।
उ ेजनै च बहिभब भ सरसः समु वित ॥ ७३॥
अथा तु ो नाम िव मय थाियभावा मकः । स च

िद यजनदशनेि सतमनोरथावा युपवनदेवकु लािदगमन-
सभािवमानमाये जालस भावनािदिभिवभावै प ते ।
Appendix - Table 3
त य नयनिव तारािनमेष े णरोमा ा ु वेदहष-

साधुवाददान ब धहाहाकारबाहवदनचेला िल मणािद-
िभरनुभावैरिभनयः यो यः ।
भावा चा य त भा ु वेदग दरोमा ावेगस मजडता-
लयादयः ।
य वाितशयाथयु ं वा यं िश पं च कम पं वा ।
त सवम तु रसे िवभाव पं िह िव ेयम् ॥ ७५॥
॥ ना शा म् अ याय ७ ॥
इ जनिव योगा ा र या यािधत तथा
दुःखात् ।
ऋि ं पर य ा िनवदो नाम स भवित ॥ २९॥
॥ ना शा म् अ याय १४ ॥
# 339
मा ागणो गु चैव लघुनी चैव लि ते ।
आयाणां तु चतुमा ा तारः प रकि पतः ॥ ११८॥
॥ ना शा म् अ याय १५ ॥
प या च िवपुला चैव चषला मुखतोऽपरा ।
जघने चपला चैव आयाः प क ितताः ॥ १९६॥
मुखचपला यथा -
आयामुखे तु चपला तथािप चाया न मे यतः सा िकम् ।
द ा गृहकृ येषु तथा दुःखे भवित दुःखाता ॥ २१८॥
प प ाशदा ा तु ि ंशदा ा तथैव च ।

आया व रिप डेन िव ेया यो ृ िभः ॥ २२३॥
िवक पगणनां कृ वा सं यािप डेन िनिदशेत् ।

आयागीितरथायव के वलं व िभगणैः ॥ २२६॥
॥ ना शा म् अ याय १७ काकु वर य नः ॥
Appendix - Table 3
आयित ा णं ूया महाराजेित पािथवम् ।

उपा यायेित चाचाय वृ ं तातेित चैव िह ॥ ६८॥
339
# 340
340
सव ीिभः पितवा य आयपु ेित यौवने ।

अ यदा पुनरायित महाराजेित भूपितः ॥ ८२॥
आयित पूवजो ाता वा यः पु इवानुजः ।

योिषि रथ का येित राजपु ेित योधनैः ॥ ८३॥
Appendix - Table 3
Manusmṛiti ७।२११अ[२१५ंअ]/ आयता पु ष ानं शौय क - ◌ं१०।२२अ/ झ ो म च रा-

ज याद् ा याि नि छिवरेव च । Ārya along with its forms
णवेिदता ।
Āryata and its antonym
%[◌ं। ा याि ल छिवरेव च]
anaryam used as a term
◌ं७।२११च्[२१५ंच्]/ थौलल यं च सततमुदा- ◌ं१०।२२च्/ नट च करण चैव खसो of address for a man or
सीनगुणौदयः ॥ Bछ् .Sछ् ॥ िवड एव च ॥ Bछ् .Sछ् ॥ woman with cultured
१०।५७अ/ वणापेतमिव ातं नरं कलुषयोिनजम् । refinement and noble
◌ं१०।५७च्/ आय पिमवानाय कमिभः वैिवभाव- qualities.
येत् ॥ Bछ् .Sछ् ॥
◌ं१०।६८अ/ तावुभाव यसं कायािवित धम यव-

Drāviḍa used in referring
ि थतः । to a group of people
◌ं१०।६८च्/ वैगु याज् ज मनः पूव उ रः ितलो- belonging to the southern
मतः ॥ Bछ् .Sछ् ॥ %[◌ं।ज मतः ] Indian region and in
◌ं१०।६९अ/ सुबीजं चैव सु े े जातं स प ते यथा । cojunction with other
kingdoms
◌ं१०।६९च्/ तथाऽयाज् जात आयायां सव सं का-
रमहित ॥ Bछ् .Sछ् ॥
# 341
Kautilya Arthaśāstra 01.14.10
यथा च डाल उदपान च डालानां एव उपभो यो address for a man or
ना येषां, एवं अयं राजा नीचो नीचानां एव उपभो यो woman with cultured
न वि धानां आयाणां, असौ राजा पु षिवशेष ः, त refinement and noble
ग यताम् इित मािनवग उपजापयेत् qualities
01.17.35
यौवन उ सेकात् पर ीषु मनः कु वाणं आया य नािभः
ीिभरमे यािभः शू यागारेषु रा ावु ेजयेयःु
02.15.43
त डु लानां थः चतुभागः सूपः सूपषोडशो लवण-
यांशः चतुभागः सिपषः तैल य वा एकं आयभ ं पुंसः
02.25.03
ामाद् अिनणयणं अस पातं च सुरायाः, मादभयात्
कमसु ि िद ानां, मयादाित मभयाद् आयाणां, उ-
साहभया ती णानाम्
03.13.01
उदरदासवज आय ाणं अ ा यवहारं शू ं िव याधानं
नयतः वजन य ादशपणो द डः, वै यं ि गुणः,
ि यं ि गुणः, ा णं चतुगुणः
03.13.05
अथवाऽऽय आधाय कु लब धन आयाणां आपिद, िन-
Appendix - Table 3
यं चािधग य बालं साहा यदातारं वा पूव िन णीरन्

03.13.13
341
# 342
342
आ मिव ियणः जां आया िव ात्
03.13.19
आय ाणो वजा तः कमकालानु पेण मू याधन वा
िवमु येत
04.9.24
प रगृहीतां दास आिहितकां वा सं ि कां अिधचरतः
Appendix - Table 3
पूवः साहसद डः, चोरड़ाम रकभाया म यमः, सं ि कां

आया उ मः
04.9.26
तद् एवा णगृहीतायां आयायां िव ात्, दा यां पूवः
साहसद डः
05.3.17
चतु पदि पदप रचारकपा रकिमकाउप था-
ियकपालकिवि ब धकाः षि वेतनाः, आययु-
ारोहकमाणवकशैलखनकाः सव उप थाियन च
09.2.18
आयािधि तं अिम बलं अटवीबला ेयः
Abhijñānaśākuntalam सू धारः – ( नेप यािभमुखमवलो य ) Ārya used as a term of
आय यिद नेप यिवधानमविस अिमत तावदाग य- address for a man or
ताम् । woman with cultured
( िव य ) refinement and noble
नटी - आयपु इयमि म । qualities
सू धारः -
# 343
- आय अिभ पभूिय ा प रषिदयम् । अ खलु
कािलदास िथतव तुना नवेनािभ ानशकुं तला येन
नाटके नोप थात यम मािभः ।
त ितपा माधीयतां य नः ।
नटी -
- सुिविहत योगतयायाय य न िकमिप प रहा यते ।
सू धारः – आय कथयािम ते भूताथम् ।
आ प रतोषाि दुषां न साधु म ये योगिव ानम् ।
बलवदिप िशि तानामा म य ययं चेतः॥२॥
नटी -
- आय एवमेतत् । अन तरकरणीयमाय आ ापयतु ।
सू धारः – आय साधु गीतम् । अहो रागब िच वृि -
रािलिखत इव सवतो र ः । तिददान कतम करणमा-
ि यैनमाराधयामः ।
नटी -
- न वायिम ैः थममेवा मिभ ानशकुं तलं नामापूव
नाटकं योगे अिधि यतािमित ।
सू धारः -
- आय स यगनुबोिधतोऽि म । अि म णे िव मृतं
खलुमया तत् । कु तः ।
Appendix - Table 3
343
अनसूया -
# 344
344
- आय न खलु िकम य यािहतम् । इयं नौ ि यसखीम-
धुकरेणािभभूयमाना कातरीभूता ।
आय य मधुरालापजिनतो िव भो मां म यते कतम

आयणराजिषवंशोऽलंि यते कतमो वा िवरहपयु सुक-
जनः कु तो देशःिकि िम ं वा सुकुमारतरोऽिप तपोवन-
Appendix - Table 3
गमनप र म या मापदमुपनीतः ।
राजाः -
- वयमिप ताव व योः सखीगतं िकमिप पृ छामः ।
स यौ – आय अनु ह इवेयम यथना ।
राजाः -
- भगवा का यपः शा वते िण ि थत इित काशः ।
अनसूया -
- शृणो व् आयः । गौतमीतीरे पुरा िकल त य राजष े
तपिस वतमान य िकमिप जातश ै दवैमनकानामा सराः
ेिषता िनयमिव नका रणी ।
ि यंवदा -
- आय धमचरणेऽिप परवशोऽयं जनः । गुरोः पुनर या
अनु पवर दाने संक पः ।
# 345
शकुं तला -
- इमामस ब लािपन ि यंवदां आयायै गौत यै
िनवेदिय यािम ।
ि यंवदा -
- तेन िह नाह य लीयकम लीिवयोगम् । आय य
वचनेनानृणेदानीमेषा ।
स यौ -
- आय अनेनार यकवृ ा तेन पयाकु लाः मः ।
अनुजानीिहन उटजगमनाय ।
स यौ- आय अस भािवताितिथस कारं भूयोऽिप े-

णिनिम ंल ामहे आय िव ापियतुम् ।
स यौ – इत इत आया गौतमी ।
गौतमी – ( शकुं तलामुपे य )
जाते अिप लघुसंतापािन तेऽ ािन ।
शकुं तला – आय अि त मे िवशेषः ।
Appendix - Table 3
हला ि यंवदे आयपु दशनो सुकाया अ या मपदं

प र यज यादुःखेन मे चरणौ पुरतः वतते ।
345
# 346
346
गौतमी -
- आय िकमिप व ु कामाि म । न मे वचनावसरोऽि त ।
कथिमित ।
आय य प रणय एव संदेहः । कु त इदान मे

Appendix - Table 3
दूरािधरोिह याशा ।
शा रवः– मा तावत् ।
आयपु –
( इ यध े )
संशियत इदान प रणये नैष समुदाचारः ।
सनुमती – नाि त संदेहः । महा भावो राजिषः ।

थमा -
- आय कित िदवसा यावयोिम ावसुना राि येण भ -
नीपादमूलं ेिषतयोः । अ च नौ मदवन य पाल-
नकमसमिपतम् । तदाग तुकतयाऽ ुतपूव आवा यामेष
वृ ा तः ।
क ुक – भवतु । न पुनरेवं वितत यम् ।
उभे -
# 347
- आय कौतूहलं नौ । य नेन जनेन ोत यं
कथय वायःिकि िम ं भ ा वस तो सवः ितिष ः ।
चतु रका -
- आय माध य अवल ब व िच फलकं यावदाग-
छािम।
तापसी – ( उभौ िनव य )आ चयमा चयम् ।

राजाः – आय िकिमव ।
तापसी -
- अ य बालक य तेऽिप संवािद याकृ ित रित िवि म-
ताऽि म ।
दय समा विसिह समा विसिह ।

प र य म सरेणानुकि पताि म दैवेन । आयपु ः ख-
वेषः ।
राजाः – ि ये ।
( इित यथो मनुित ित )

शकुं तला – ( नाममु ां ा )
Appendix - Table 3
आयपु इदं तद लीयकम् ।

राजाः -
347
# 348
348
-अ माद लीयोपल भा खलु मृित पल धा ।
- िवषमं कृ तमनेन य दाऽऽयपु य ययकाले
दुलभमासीत् ।
राजाः -
- तेन िह ऋतुसमवायिच ं ितप तां लता कु सुमम् ।
Appendix - Table 3
- ना य िव विसिम । आयपु एवैत ारयतु ।
Kumārasambh-avam सगः १-८ Ārya used as a term of
आया य धती त यापारं कतु अहित । address for a man or
ायेणैवंिवधे काय पुर ीणां ग भता ॥ ६।३२॥ woman with cultured
refinement and noble
Raghuvamśam सग ६ qualities
तथागतायां प रहासपूव स यां सखी वे भृदाबभाषे ।
आय जामोऽ यत इ यथैनां वधूरसूयाकु िटलं ददश ॥
६-८२॥

Dimensions of The Aryan Problem Revisited in 2017 - Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram

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Dimensions of The Aryan Problem Revisited in 2017 - Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram

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Studies in Tamil Civilization

Infinity Foundation India

© Infinity Foundation India

The A of ABC of Indian chronology*:

– Manogna Sastry & Megh Kalyanasundaram

2 “Aryan” problem in 2017: Western

notion that Aryans were an “Indo-European tribe that invaded India”

In other words, even in 2017, a prescribed text in an undergraduate

version of the story titled “Debate on Aryan invasion theory revived”5 , by

theories where the IE was seen to be imparting a newer culture to

3 Dimensionalising the Aryan problem

thorough examination for evidences of the AIT in the Indian canon;

1. The approach: multi-disciplinary or only Linguistics?

3.1 Dimension 1: Approach: Multi-disciplinary or

In her review of what is perhaps the first attempt at publishing diverse

evidence, and scenarios that are highly implausible or impossible

begun to unlock the cross-disciplinary potential, so as to round out the

Indo-Europeanist’s data and method do not allow the question ‘When

1. What is the range of meanings evident from usage of ārya and

data presented below).” (Demoule 2016:165-74)

same book quoted above, wherein allusion is to examination of Indo-

3.2 Dimension 2: Analysis of relevant Indic sources

Among the host of Europeans who propagated the Aryan Migration

1 Occurrences of “ārya” and “drāviḍa” from 13 indigenous

While sources of research today can span several domains including

of the variety that attempts to comprehensively list and analyze—

Table 2.1: 204 occurences of Ārya and Drāviḍa

Indigenous source Ārya Drāviḍa

1. A careful study of the results compiled in the table above, as

flourished in perfection, by whom the fine arts, architecture,

Sāyaṇācārya have pushed the boundaries with their readings of

In light of much sagacious, faithful readings of not only the words

3.3 Dimension 3: Towards a pūrva-pakśa of Indo-

1 IE Historical Linguistics and Comparative Method: Differences

No less than the editors of the 2014 The Routledge Handbook of

University H.M. Hubey concludes:

By demonstrating—using what she calls “standard, quantitative

spectrum of possibilities.” (Elst 2013:95-6)

2 Genetic relationship between “Indo-Aryan” and “Dravidian”

More quantitative evidence that seems to challenge the dominant

order to critically evaluate the notion of South Asia as a linguistic area,

1. There is in fact no a real effect to be recovered from the data;

3. contrary to our expectations (see section 2), the LSI comparative

4. we need to look at other parts of the language than vocabulary in order

In their analysis of point 1 above, they include:

much stronger counterevidence than the results presented in this paper

3 Adding to Korada Subrahmanyam’s critique of the theories of

Korada Subrahmanyam’s account of specific appropriations by

Despite all the above, in a Harvard stratification of the History

“Compared with Pāṇini, the other linguistics from antiquity appears to

4 Adding to the first Insider pūrva -pakśa: Examining assump-

Unlike Mishka Sinha, whose thesis title is limited both geographically

derivational and inflectional suffixes, substitutional rules, zeroing etc.,

is predicated so much on the Indo-European hypothesis, when its own

attributed to Thomas Young in the year 1813 and of which Sanskrit

1. that Sanskrit offers “a simple vowel triad (/i,a,u/)” rather than

Where exactly in the Sanskrit native tradition are अ, इ, उ called “Vowels”

the palatal (or guttural) closure, giving k; and one intermediate

accompanied with import of Sanskrit and Rig Veda, and thirdly,

detail the impact of the altered British chronology in dating several

Ballantyne, James R. (1849). The Laghu Kaumudi: A Sanskrit Grammar

Bendall, Herbert (1874). A compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the

Benware, Wilbur A. (1974). The Study of Indo-European Vocalism in the

Borin, Lars; Saxena, Anju; Rama, Taraka; Comrie, Bernard (2014).

Campbell, Lyle (1998). Historical Linguistics An Introduction. First MIT

Campbell, Lyle and Poser, William J. (2008). Language Classification