Edwin Bryant's book is out

[Guest guest]

Today I received a copy of the following book, finally released only

a few days ago -

 

Title: The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture. The Indo-Aryan

Migration Debate

Author: Edwin Bryant

Publisher: Oxford University Press, New York

Year: 2001 pp. 387, price = $45.00

Available from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com (search using the

category `books' and then enter `Edwin Bryant' as the author's name).

 

The inner flaps of the jacket of the book read:

 

QUOTE

"As a result of the discovery of similarities between Sanskrit and

the classical languages of Europe, scholars hypothesized the

existence of an early "proo-Indo-European" people, who spoke the

language from which the others evolved. The solution to the Indo-

European homeland has been one of the most consuming intellectual

projects of the last two centuries. At first it was assumed that

India was the original home of all the Indo-Europeans. Soon, however,

western scholars were contending that the Vedic culture of ancient

India must have been the by-product of an invasion or migration

of "Indo-Aryans" from outside the subcontinent. Over the years,

Indian scholars have raised many arguments against this European

reconstruction of their nation's history. Yet western scholars have

generally been unaware or dismissive of these voices from India

itself.

 

"In this book, Edwin Bryant offers a comprehensive examination of

this ongoing debate. He presents all of the relevant philological,

archaeological, linguistic, and historiographical data and shows how

they have been interpreted both to support the theory of Aryan

migrations and to contest it. Bringing to the fore those hitherto

marginalized voices that argue against the external origin of the

Indo-Aryans, he shows how Indian scholars have questioned the very

logic, assumptions, and methods upon which the data is based, and

have used the same data to arrive at very different conclusions. By

exposing the whole endeavor to criticism from scholars who do not

share the same intellectual history as their European peers, Bryant's

work newly complicates the Indo-European homeland quest. At the same

time he recognizes the extent to which both sides of the debate have

been driven by political, racial, religious, and nationalistic agends.

 

"The only complete and up-to-date survey of the evidence and

arguments for and against the Indo-Aryan migration theory, this

volume is of crucial importance to the study of early Indian history

and the origins of Vedic culture."

END OF QUOTE