I certainly would like to hear your debate. So please.
Thank you for this brilliant thread and invitation to debate this topic.
The world at the time of the indus valley civilization is hard to construct. I would generally think that a culture as rich and as developed as Hindu culture and Jain culture would and could only develop in an epicenter such as the Indus Valley. That said we certainly see evidences of migration as would be expected from any great civilization, let alone the largest of its time. Given these evidences how can we possibly suggest that migration was one sided.
This echoes my own thoughts and it actually in my opinion a really strong argument. At the time of IVC, the only other civilisations that were even near the same league, was Mesopotamian and Egyptian, and IVC was larger than both of them put together. The IVC is also the most advanced civilisation at time, technologically, economically and socially e.g. It has a highly advanced city planning, sanitation and underground sewage disposal system, water collection systems dockyards standardised system of weights and measures, seals for trading, advanced methods of irrigation and even methods to test purity of gold. There is evidence of massive trading with Mesopotamia through a network of harbours. The IVC are also considered to be the first to use wheeled transport.
The IVC is also the most socially advanced, if we define socially advanced as being more middle-class, democratic and egalitarian. There is no evidence of any centralisation of power, any massive monumental structures, rather a huge amount of emphasis has been put on providing people with basic amenities like like flush toilets, drainage pipes and even kitchens with ovens. There is strong evidence that this is a society which is artisan, has enough material abundance, that people can engage in leisure activities like games, play dice, play with dolls etc
In comparison Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilisation are slave-owning societies, power is highly centralised and society is controlled by priest-kings.
If any culture could have produced religions as sophisticated as Hinduism, Yoga and Jainism, it would have to be the IVC. The fact that Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilisation are given more importance in the bronze age than the IVC has probably a lot to do with the Abrahamic bias in history, which likes to think the Near East as the cradle of civilisation. A far more advanced, larger and richer civilisation in the Indian subcontinent is ignored because it is non-Abrahmic.
It seems to me that people have some penchant towardent the word Arya. Perhaps this is ego wanting to claim nobility. Without question we should see the richest culture and the richest language where the richest civilization existed.
If I was living in the Indus valley at the time and I knew of Mesopotamia and Egyptian civilisation, I could see why I would consider myself an Arya and the other non-Aryas or Mlecchas(barbarians). It is perhaps the bronze age equivalent of the the modern first-world vs second world label we use today. More advanced societies do define themselves in relation to those less advanced. It would sense to me why IVC wore the title of "Arya"
Do you happen to know when we see dravidian or proto dravidian borrow from PIE?
Two language behemoths such as these would surely show signs of admixture, correct? The idea that sanskrit appeared with enough structure to produce a 1500bce ancient sanskrit rigveda must mean the language existed in the region prior. But the ivc seems to have a formal of writing very different. Which leads us to the big question wtf. We certainly have texts in Turkey that are pie that date similar. But this is north of where mesopotamia was. And mesopotamia writings were not pie.
I will repeat my argument of linguistic complexity. Linguistic complexity does not arise in nomadic tribal cultures, because it requires stable advanced literate and scientific societies where it has to be developed. A language like C++ would not precede a language like English, because that means a more advanced language comes before a less advanced language. What we witness with the IE languages starting from the hypothetical PIE is that it starts as very advanced, almost completely artificial in nature with 8 cases, three genders, three numbers and highly complex system of declension. Then as we move along space from India to Europe, it becomes gradually less and less complex, until by the time it reaches Germany it loses 5 cases and its complex system of declension. This is ironic, because German today is considered a highly technical and refined language, but relative to English which has lost all the IE grammatical features.
It makes total sense to me, that languages do not start with 8 cases, three genders and three numbers, such a language would have to be developed with an intense study of language. It equally makes sense to me a nomadic tribal culture constantly moving from East to West would not be able to maintain the original complexity. We find of all ancient civilisations, the Indian civilisation is the ONLY civilisation(with Greek civilisation coming a fardistant second) that has made an intense scientific study of language. It has developed formal grammars with spoken languages with completely artificial features.
The question needs to be asked WHY only India? If the PIE tribes migrated across Indo-Europe beginning from the Russian Steeps, why didn't the other IE cultures develop the same linguistic sciences? The argument that Indo-Aryans preserved the complexity because of the strict sacerdotal oral tradition from transmission and caste system, then makes one ask, then why didn't the other IE tribes? What is so special about the Indo-Aryan branch that it is the only one that has retained every feature of PIE, the only one that developed a rigorous study of language, the only one that preserved the Vedic chants, the only one that produced this vast philosophical religion called Hinduism?
To it the answer is obvious India is the original homeland of the Aryans. The Indo-Aryans never claimed any other home other than India. It is India they referred to as "Aryavarta" the land of the Aryans, no other land. The other tribes they called Mleccha, barbarians or simply unaryan. The irony of moving the Aryan homeland out of India to Russian steeps, is that before the Europeans arrived in India, they did not even know what "Arya" was, whether such a people existed. Initially, even they believed that Aryans were from India. So when they realised the common ancestry of Europeans as Arya and the huge Aryan footprint across Indo-Europe, they started to think of India as the original motherland of Europeans. This did not go down well with Christians -- this is no conspiracy, the early scholars who created the theory Aryans were from outside of India all communicated sometimes in public and sometimes in private their disdain, their hatred for Hindus, and their wish to destroy Hinduism and replace it with Christianity. I can provide you referenced quotes if your request it.
India's role in shaping civilisation whether from the bronze age or in the iron age has been marginalised to such an extent that it almost become synonymous with myth, or fairytale to talk of a putative "ancient glory" People who communicate such statements are labelled as "Hindu nationalists" Even to challenge Aryan Invasion or Migration theory makes you a Hindu nationalist. Fortunately, we are living in a world where the axis of the power is shifting towards a more mulipolalr world, one of them being the East, so we now challenge these old colonial fabrications.
If you have some linguistic links to help me understand, I would appreciate. And if others from alternate views have links those too would be well digested.
Thanks for your posts in other threads on the topic as well.
Therein lies the entire crux of the AIT/AMT or Aryan homeland outside of India debate. It is based on linguistic speculations. The fact that most of the IE languages are found between India and Europe, with the greatest proliferation in Central Asia and lowest in India, has lead some linguists to posit based on assumptions of linguistic centre of gravity that the homeland was central Asia. This is asserted with 100% certainty, taught even as fact, like 2+2 = 4. The kind of surety this field of linguistics(comparative linguistics) in its statements, is even more than the physical sciences, it claims to be as sure as mathematics. This is obvious nonsense, comparative linguistics has been proven wrong many times before. To claim to certainty it makes is hubris. It also feels that it can ignore all other evidence from other sciences. This is why despite all scientific evidence contradicting AIT to date, it is still maintained as AMT, which is a weaker version of the original AIT.
Former AIT proponents, such as a current Greek scholar, who was brought up to believe in AIT or AMT has become its biggest adversary today. It is repeated like some fact that 1500BCE as the arrival of Aryans into India in all text books, but the man who originally proposed the date himself, Max Muller, later on admitted he guessed the date. How he arrived at the original date i'm sure you would not find valid today. He used a combination of the old Mosaic chronology of 4004BCE as the creation of the world --- then he back calculated based on Adam, Eve, Cain, Able, Moses and great food, time for the waters to subside, for the time the Aryans could have arrived in India. The other method he used was too begin with an old ghost story in a Sanskrit text, and then he arbitrarily assigned a number of 200-250 years for each glass of Sanskrit literature -- so 250 for sutra period, another 250 for upanishads, another 250 for Brahmanas and 250 for Rig Veda to somehow arrive at 1500BCE the as arrival date to match with the Mosaic account.
You see a lot of people who repeat this 1500BCE date like it is some fact have no idea how it was arrived at. Even Muller's own students did not agree with the date. They showed that if you just change the estimated value of 200-250 years, to say 400, 500, 750 or 1000 years the arrival date of the Aryans could fall into 2000BCE, 2500BCE, 3000BCE, 4000BCE. This is assuming that there is an "arrival"
I am sure you can admit any true scientist or honest person should have very strong doubts about this 1500BCE date or whether there is any arrival at all.