Fwd: [Ind-Arch] Implications of Dassow (2008) for Indo-European linguistics

[Guest guest]

---------- Forwarded message ----------mkelkar2003 <swatimkelkarWed, Apr 23, 2008 at 7:21 PM

[ind-Arch] Implications of Dassow (2008) for Indo-European linguisticsIndiaArchaeology

 

 

 

 

Dassow has dealt a devastating blow to perhaps the most cherishes

assumption of Indo-European linguistics; that there was an

identifiable group of people, the so called Mittani Indo-Aryans who

specialized in horse –drawn chariotry, spoken the Mittani Indo-Aryan

languages, founded or dominated the Mittani kingdom before making an

appearance in the Indian subcontinent where there language evolved

into Vedic Sanskrit. Dassow (2008, scroll down for extracts) makes

it abundantly clear that NO SUCH ETHINICALLY AND LINGUISTICICALLY

DISTINCT GROUP CAN BE IDENTIFIED IN THE VAST LIETERARY AND

ARCHAEOOLGICAL MATERIALS AT ALALAH. The evidence of a few numerals

and a few " Indo-Aryan " sounding names in a list of thousands of other

non-Indo-Aryan ones is too sparse, late and isolated to warrant such

a grand conclusion. Eva Von Dassow's work vindicates Prof S. S.

Misra (1992) who demonstrated that the supposedly " Indo-Aryan " words

in the Kikkuli text as few as they are, can and should be derived

from Vedic Sanskrit in contrast to the currently acceptable Indo-

European linguistic theory.

Dassow (2008) on the supposed Mittani Indo-Aryan aristocracy

 

" The invaders supposedly transmitted the technology and techniques of

chariotry to the lands and peoples they conquered or contracted, while

their noble blood and warlike vigor were soon diluted through

admixture with Hurrians and Semites. IN a variation on this my of

Indo-Aryan supremacy, the scope of the invasion is reduced in favor of

portraying the new ethno-linguistic element as a kind of vitamin, the

injection of which infused the Hurrian population with the capacity to

form a coherent state (Mittani) possessing military potency and

imperial ambition (Dassow 2008, p. 79). "

 

" Writing in 1967, Cornelieus described Aryans entering the Near East

in too small numbers to become autonomous people, " but they offered

themselves to the native races as princes, " …whereas in India the

Aryans, invading in greater numbers, found the dark-skinned natives so

physically alien that mixed marriage was virtually unthinkable (p.

12), so that " the blood of the subjects trickled only slowly into the

ruling stratum " (p. 178), (Dassow 2008, p. 79, fn 191). "

 

" The advent of Indo-Aryans in the Near East, whether construed

principally as an invasion or as blood transfusion, has been made to

serve as the mechanism of historical change. In such constructions of

the past, the maryanni class has either been equated with the

postulated Indo-Aryan population, or used as an index of Indo-Aryan

influence. It can have been neither (Dassow 2008, p. 79). "

 

" The mid second millennium Indo-Aryans have by now lost the role of

introducing the horse into the Near East, since horses are known to

have appeared in Mesopotamia soon after the midpoint of the third

millennium BCE and perhaps earlier in Anatolia. Other elements of the

construct linking the chariot, Indo-Aryans(s), Mittani and, maryanni

have also been eroded through inquiry (Dassow 2008, p. 80). "

 

" Littauer and Crouwel concluded, based on their investigation of the

development of wheels vehicles in the ancient Near East, that the

evidence indicates " a local evolution of the light spoked wheel

horse-drawn chariot in the Near East itself, in contrast to the long

held theory that this was introduced…by Indo-European-speaking steppe

tribes (1979: 68), Their assessment has met a partial challenge on

the basis of new evidence, has since been reaffirmed on logical as

well as evidentiary grounds (Dassow 2008, p. 81). "

 

" The Kikkuli text exists in a thirteenth-century copy of an original

from the Middle Hittite period, roughly the late fifteenth-early

fourteenth century BCE. But by the late fifteenth century,

horse-drawn chariotry had been a standard component of Near Eastern

military forces, in particular Hittite ones, for several generations.

An instruction manual of such late date that uses a few words of

Indo-Aryan origin hardly serves to demonstrate any Indo-Aryan role in

introducing or developing the techniques of training horses for

chariot warfare, much less the leading role that has been claimed for

the Indo-Aryans, with allusions to the Kikkuli text as if it were

proof (Dassow 2008, p. 84). "

 

" Some form of this claim is reiterated in almost every redaction of

the Indo-Aryan myth, though often without actually identifying the

Kikkuli text or mentioning its date, languages and provenience,

perhaps because it would damn the hypothesis to observe that its

evidentiary basis is so late, isolated, and essentially non-Indo-Aryan

(Dassow 2008, p. 84, fn 207). "

 

" Direct evidence for the veneration of Indo-Aryan deities in Mittani

is isolated and late. Only once do Indo-Aryan deities appear as

divine actors, rather than as theophoric elements in personal names,

and that once is in the treaty between Hatti and Mittani whereby

Mittani was reduced to a puppet kingdom, in the late fourteenth

century BCE. There Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the Nasatyas, appear in

the middle of a list of two dozen divine witnesses of Mittani (Dassow

2008, p. 86). "

 

" While noting the paucity and vestigial nature of Indo-Aryan

linguistic material, which consists mostly of elements incorporated

into non-Indo-Aryan onomastica and lexica, Myarhofer (1974: 33),

Klinger (1988: 27), and Wilhelm (1989: 18-20) emphasize that the

tradition of Indo-Aryan royal names among Mittani's ruling families

signifies, nonetheless, that contact with Indo-Aryan speakers was

influential in that kingdom's formation and development (Dassow 2008,

p. 86). "

 

" Finally, identifying Indo-Aryan influence as a factor in Mittani's

formation leaves unexplained why the practice of taking Indo-Aryan

throne names, along with the sparse evidence for veneration of

Indo-Aryan deities and for the use of Indo-Aryan-derived terminology

in the context of horse-training, comes clearly into focus only at the

time of Mittani's decline (Dassow 2008, p. 87). "

" Four decades, ago, Mayrhofer pointed out that even the most basic

building-blocks for a historical description of the (Indo-) Aryan

presence in the Near East are missing….No New evidence has emerged

that would provide the basis for revising Mayrhofer's assessment and

giving form to the putative Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Bronze Age

Near East (Dassow 2008, p. 87). "

 

" It certainly does not appear that Indo-Aryan names were concentrated

in the maryanni class. Rather, they were distributed throughout

society, as exemplified by the fact that the name Suwatii (=Suwatiti)

was borne by members of three different classes (Dassow 2008, p. 88). "

" To extrapolate the existence of an Indo-Aryan population at Alalah IV

from the Indo-Aryan elements in the onomasticon, even if those

elements formed a less miniscule percentage of the total than they do,

would be logically unsound. In the absence of any evidence, such as

an ethnicon or gentilic, for the existence of an actual ethnic groups

that could be described as Indo-Aryan, this holds true not only for

the maryanni class and the population of Alalah, but for Mittani and

the Near East generally. And if there was no identifiable Indo-Aryan

population in the Near East, there can have been no Indo-Aryan

" military aristocracy, " (Dassow 2008, p. 89). "

 

" In sum, though the term maryanni is of Indo-Aryan origin, the

maryanni class was not. Neither the membership of the maryanni class

nor its most characteristic features, namely, nobility and association

with chariotry, were Indo-Aryan. The caste of noble Indo-Aryans

warriors who supposedly mastered the Orient from their horse drawn

chariots, founded Mittani, and ushered in the Late Bronze Age is a

product of modern imagination (Dassow 2008, p. 90) "

 

• Dassow, E. V. (2008). State and society in the late bronze

age:

alalah under the mittani empire. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press.

• Misra, S. S. (1992). The Aryan problem: a linguistic

approach. South Asia Books.

ISBN-13: 978-9993822141

 

M. Kelkar

 

 

 

 

-- Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within the reach of every hand.~:~ Mother Theresa ~:~