EJVS 7-2 (part 2) DETAILED DISCUSSION § 1 Stratification of the Rgveda In the rest of this review, the points I have made summarily in sections 1-10 will be discussed at some length. Due to their importance to the rest of his work, points 1 and 2 are outlined in special detail. Like most ancient Indian works, the Rgveda is a heavily stratified text composed by many authors living in different eras. Like many such texts, whether Vedic, epic, Buddhist or classical, it has been arranged by its redactors according to the length of its subsections. In the case of the Rgveda, the obvious and well-known subdivisions are those involving 10 maNDala (usually, though ahistorically, called "books"). Each maNDala is further broken into a number of sUktas (hymns), and each sUkta into a number of Rc (verses). This is the well-known division into 10 books -- containing 191+ 43+62+58+87+75+104+103+114+191 hymns and some 10,500-odd verses. However, as soon as one searches beyond this obvious division, which is clearly distinguished in the manuscripts (and in the still available, superior traditional oral recitation), one discovers an older arrangement underlying the maNDala-sUkta-Rc division. While to a large degree it mirrors the present division, on closer inspection certain deviations are evident. Obviously, books 1 and 10, which each contain 191 hymns, stand out from the generally ascending pattern found elsewhere in the length of books (from 42 to 104 hymns in books 2-7). It has been long noticed that book 10 is linguistically younger and that it in part overlaps with sections of the atharvaveda (AV). Pushing things still further back, it was already noticed some 130 years ago, by Abel Bergaigne and Hermann Oldenberg, that the so-called family books (2-7) form the old core of the RV. This finding has been taken over by T. without comment, quoting as his only witness the summaries of earlier research compiled by the promising, but ill-fated, Bh. K. Ghosh (who received a Ph.D. from Munich and a D.Litt. from Paris in the 1930s but died of leprosy sometime after returning to India). If one prefers to add up the verse count for books 2-7 -- rather than counting the hymns -- one gets, according to T., 429+617+589+727+841 verses. (Cf. Satvalekar's RV edition, p. 809-826, which gives 2006 + 429+617+589+727+ 841+ 1108+ 1754 verses for the whole text.) All this is not new. However, on further analysis, first carried out by Oldenberg in his groundbreaking Prolegomena in 1888, we find that the family books (RV 2-7) contain other organizational factors that involve the authors (RSi), deities (devatA) and meters (chandas) of the hymns. Even today, all three are still uttered before any formal Vedic recitation of a hymn. The result is that each book in the "family" collection -- from the 43 hymns of book 2 to the 104 of book 7 or (with some deviations, even the 114 of book 8) -- is internally arranged as I summarized it in 1997: "...the RV is structured according to several clear principles best visible in the family books (RV 2-8): (1) the number of hymns per book increases, (2) the family books begin with a small saMhitA addressed to Agni, Indra and other gods, all arranged according to decreasing total number of hymns in each deity collection. (3) Inside a deity series the hymns progress from longer to shorter ones. The meter decides further: jagatI, triSTubh hymns precede those in anuSTubh, gAyatrI" (Witzel 1997). Incidentally, similar arrangements are also seen in the Pali canon of early Buddhist texts, and elsewhere in Indian texts. Analogous principles are also found in the Zoroaster's gAthAs, pointing to formal links between Vedic and Avestan traditions that invite further investigation. Any deviation from this strict numerical arangement has to be explained. The reason, as demonstrated again by Oldenberg, is that various hymns or sections of hymns have at later points been interpolated into the text. This is found especially often in hymns of unusual length: small individual collections of 3 verses (tRcas) or 2 verses (pragAthas) were added to certain hymns or were combined into a new hymn during the final standard RV redaction. This was carried out by zAkalya in the late brAhmaNa period -- in other words, shortly before the time of the Buddha (c. 500/400 BCE). All such additions result in hymns that are too long and deviate from the strict pattern. Later on, after zAkalya, more hymns, such as the zrIsUkta, were added to the text, some of them clearly reflecting medieval ideas. They were gathered together in the Kashmir khila collection -- and always stand out insofar as they are not found in zAkalya's padapATha and reflect post-Rgvedic grammar and contents. None of the well-known structural principles in the nucleus of the RV -- found in books 2-7 (and in a wider sense 1.51-8.66; see Witzel 1995: 309, 1997) -- are discussed by or even mentioned by Talageri. This gives him the freedom to propose his own additions, based, e.g., on some rather secondary and late evidence (these involve parts of RV 3 discussed in AB 6.18, which is found in a late stratum of that text; this issue is discussed below). Talageri also views as interpolations the vAlakhilya hymns of 8.49-59 (although these are, in fact, included and analyzed in zAkalya's padapATha), some hymns mentioning the "tRkSi dynasty" and a few minor but unspecified additions. All the rest of the text T. considers to be genuine creations of RV-time seers. As already noted, the redaction history of the RV is well-known, but is nowhere discussed in Talageri's book. Summarizing this history, we can distinguish five major steps in the redaction of the text (for details, see Witzel 1995, 1997, etc.): 1. Stage one involved the original collection of the so-called family books, in the kuru or Mantra period, which were organized using the numerical principles described by Oldenberg. 2 Stage two involved the addition of materials that now comprise books 8, 1, 9, and 10, which were added at several distinguishable moments (for details, see Oldenberg 1888 and Witzel 1995, 1997). 3. Stage three involved individual additions of whole hymns and of many tRcas and pragAthAs to various RV books. As again shown by Oldenberg 1888, these are often identifiable by the violation of the numerical principles found in the first redaction of the family books and/or on linguistic grounds. 4. Stage four involved the redaction and final ordering of the text by zAkalya in his padapATha. (For simplicity, we can ignore some minor phonological changes that were later made to zAkalya's text.) The work ascribed to zAkalya occurred in the late brAhmaNa period, as is evident from his Eastern style, his grammatical misunderstandings of some RV forms (Witzel 1989, 1997), and from further evidence found in the ZB tradition (ZB 11.5.1.10). 5. The final stage included the addition of RV Khila that do not appear in the padapATha. Close analysis of these redaction stages demonstrates that the composition of the RV occurred in complex layers -- not in the tidy sequential patterns imagined by Talageri (cf. again the chart noted in §6). Once these complexities are recognized, it becomes obvious that many hymns can no longer be securely claimed to have been composed by the authors they are attributed to in many late traditions. In fact, many interpolated hymns (e.g., in the partial list given in Witzel 1995) clearly stand out as late additions due to their late book-10-style and AV-like grammatical forms and contents (e.g., sorcery hymns). All of this is well known -- but not to Talageri (and apparently not to his proclaimed Western helper, Dr. K. Elst, who did not alert Talageri to the problem.) Even one look at Geldner's scholarly translation of the RV (Vol. I, xiv-xix) would have done the trick. I have briefly explained these principles (discussed in my 1995 paper used by T.; also in Witzel 1997) to Talageri via email, in the summer of 2000, to no avail (rebroadcast in Indic Traditions, 11/12/2000, see: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indictraditions). Far from being outdated or 'Romantic', as another self-proclaimed specialist of Old Indian history, N.S. Rajaram, in the Organiser, will have it, Oldenberg's analysis has not been challenged or refuted so far. We may hope, however, that the English translation of Oldenberg's 545 pp. book (Motilal Banarssidass, c. 2001), which is finally making it to English over 100 years too late, will help would-be historians like T. understand the structure of the RV. *** The result of all this is that T.'s book is based on what is essentially the wrong Rgveda text -- the late Vedic compilation by zAkalya, which had already been subjected to several earlier redactions, and which mixed up materials from several eras in each of the books. Talageri, unlike all serious Vedic scholars after Oldenberg, makes no attempt to reconstruct the more ancient text on which that compilation was based. The result is that all the far-flung historical conclusions that he draws regarding the time and location of individual books, their authors, etc., are totally unreliable. Many of his individual items of "proofs" (such as the designation of the gaGgA in RV 6, gAGgya) immediately fall off the board as late, not as being part of the "earliest RV" as T. claims (see §7) . Amusingly, T. does not even exclude from his RV evidence stanzas that were added long after zAkalya's padapATha. This includes 7.59.12 -- a tryambaka verse, a late interpolation to the already older interpolated stanzas 7.59.7-11 -- and similar late additions found at 10.20.1; 10.121.10; and 10.190.1-3. Instead, T. accepts as "major interpolations" (p. 74) only the well known vAlakhilya hymns (RV 8. 49-59) and RV 3.21, 30. 34, 36, 38-39 (with 68 verses). His reasoning here follows from his observation of a discrepancy in the ascending number of the sums of verses for each of the RV family books 2-7, which he tells us (per his zAkalya and anukramaNI sources) contain 429-617-589-727-765-841 verses (p. 73-74). Noticing that book 3 has too high a number, T. explains this as an obvious result of an interpolation. It is important to note that his claims concerning which verses were stuck in here do not come from any internal study of the text but from his reading (or misreading) of a much later text, AB 6.18. According to Talageri, AB 6.18 tells us that RV 3.21, 30, 34, 36, 38-39, together numbering 68 verses, were "misappropriated by vAmadeva," the traditional composer of RV 4. In fact, however, it is far from clear that AB 6.18 makes any such claim. The text only tells us that vizvAmitra "saw" the saMpAta hymns in question first and that vAmadeva actually "created" them (in RV 4). vizvAmitra (of RV 3) therefore "created" counter-saMpAta hymns. The whole section has other poets contributing to this endeavor as well: bharadvAja (of RV 6), vasiSTha (of RV 7), nodhas (of part of RV 1). AB 6.18 continues by listing the beginnings of RV hymns 3.48, 3.34, 3.36, 3.30, 3.31, 3.38 (= 81 verses) -- not, as T. tells us, RV 3.21, 30, 34, 36, 38-39 (= 68 verses). The result is that the list in his own cited sources does not agree with the contents of his proposed "major interpolation." A little countercheck of T.'s actual data is always useful, as shown further below. Dozens of cases that I have doublechecked show marked discrepancies of the sort found here. Nothing in the AB passage in question speaks about the actual verse numbers of RV 3 or 4, as T. suggests. The discussion revolves instead about which RSi actually contributed some verses, not to the RV but to the hotrakas' recitations. The story told at AB 6.18 comes from the late brAhmaNa period, from North Bihar, where zAkalya's codification of the RV took place (see Witzel 1997) and where the early layers of kAtyAyana's anukramaNI took shape (see below). The underlying lesson to be learned from studying the representations of the RV in such late sources -- a lesson missed by Talageri -- is that the politics of later priests and competing Vedic schools (zAkhAs) and redactors active at the Sanskritizing court of Videha often skewed the historical evidence found in the original RV. Note, e.g. the wrangling between the various types of Veda proponents in BAU 3.3 (Witzel 1987); and cf. the "adoption" schemes among certain poets' clans (Witzel 1995) as well as a divergent Rgveda at ZB 11.5.1.10. On the issue of interpolations, it is critical to note again that Talageri never bothers to check his claims against the accepted findings of a long line of Vedic scholars. The 68 verses that he excludes in his "major interpolation" turn out not to be interpolations using Oldenberg's well-tested method (cf. Witzel 1995 : 311) -- while different nearby verses that T. assumes are authentic do turn out to be late additions (e.g., RV 3.26?-27?, 28, 29, 51?, 52-53, 62?). The importance of definitively identifying late and early strata in individual RV books is obviously essential to T.'s endeavor, since his announced aim is to unlock the historical truths hidden in this "hoariest" of all documents. In passing, T. does mention other "incidental" interpolations in the text. Talageri writes (p. 68): "There are other actual or alleged cases of interpolations in the Rigveda (all interpolations made during different stages of compilation of the Rigveda before the ten-maNDala Rigveda was finalized), but all of them are incidental ones pertaining to ritual hymns or verses" (p. 68). Talageri does not specify which verses he has in mind besides (p. 70) quoting a note culled from Griffith's "hoary" translation (as T. might put it) claiming that RV 4.42.8-9 and 7.19 are later additions. Not surprisingly, both hymns turn out not to be interpolations when judged by Oldenberg's well-tested criteria. Evidence suggests instead that they belonged to the original, late Rgvedic "kuru saMhitA" (Witzel 1997). Even if T. were right in dismissing certain RV interpolations as "incidental," standard scholarly practice would demand that he identify those interpolations and explain how he identified them. Otherwise, he would have a free hand in tossing out any verses in the text that conflicted with his "revolutionary" conclusions concerning the place and time of the composition of different RV books. This he has not done (cf. pp. 68, 73-4). This is just one of countless examples of the methodological laxness that characterizes his entire book. § 2 The anukramaNIs: Garbage in, Garbage out If all of this were not enough to discredit T.'s book, any examination of his use of the anukramaNIs would do an equally good job. Among his most startling claims is one found at the start of his book (p. 7), where we find that the anukramaNIs were "part and parcel of the Rigvedic text from the most ancient times." Nothing, however, suggests that the anukramaNIs (or any putative lost predecessors) existed in the RV period. In fact, this possibility is immediately ruled out due to the way that our present RV gradually developed out of a series of earlier redactions (see prior section). It should be pretty obvious to most readers that vAc ("Speech") is not likely to be the author of RV 10.125, as the anukramaNIs claim -- although the hymn does deal with speech (vAc). Nor is it very likely that all the hymns of book 4 (which includes known late hymns) were composed by one seer, vAmadeva -- as they also tell us. The anukramaNIs also give us the names of ancient poets, deities, and meters for many further hymns that are known to Vedic scholars (but not to Talageri) to be late. These include RV 6.75, a long AV-like sorcery hymn intended to make one's weapons victorious; the version of the anukramaNIs used by Talageri identifies the hymn's deities as "Bow, Arrows," etc. ! It is important to point out -- as Talageri does not -- that different anukramaNIs attached to the RV, SV, YV, and AV often disagree concerning the poets of the very same hymns or verses. This fact is more than enough to demonstrate the absurdity of his absolute reliance on these late- and post-Vedic texts, which he tells us (p. 4) must be the "very basis" of any analysis of the RV. Remarkably, in his long discussion of these lists (pp. 3-20), Talageri does not bother to mention which version of the anukramaNIs he is following. Analysis of his book, however, shows that he is using the least ancient of the two extant versions of the RV anukramaNI text, which we will later see was compiled in the early Middle Ages! What the anukramaNIs actually preserve, especially for the family books, are traditional attributions to a clan, or to individual poets (real or mythical), or to poets possibly assuming the name/title of a real or mythical ancestor. In many sections of the family books, it is only the relationships of certain hymns to each other that are correctly portrayed by the AnukramaNI while the names of the poets involved are altogether unknown. This usually involves a (group of) hymn(s) by the same (small family of) known or frequently, by unknown author(s). Their names may occasionally be preserved inside the hymns themselves (or they may have artificially been derived by the anukramaNI from the text). It is well known that traditional attributions of this sort may change over time: from the oldest surviving in Sumerian texts to modern Polynesian lists of chieftains, we can observe that there is no such thing as a fixed list. Changes occur in part when texts originating in one school or tradition are co-opted by late-coming rivals. This makes use of attributions like this an extraordinarily tricky business, as has again been known (but not to Talageri) since the 19th century. In using this evidence, each case has to be carefully evaluated on the grounds of internal evidence before we can assume that poet X mentioned in the anukramaNIs was indeed the real-life poet of ascribed hymn Y. This careful approach is followed by Geldner in his translation of the RV (1951) and is further noted in my work (1995, 1997). T., however, is quite innocent of any principles of the philological enterprise: he does not mind using a later text as primary source to explain an older one in front of him, just as he does not use the archaic Sanskrit text of the RV front of him but only a Victorian English translation three thousand years more recent. But, all later texts always view older ones through the lenses of their own time (such as T. through his own peculiar ones -- of which color, we shall see by the end of this review). Instead of depending on late sources like the anukramaNIs --with the motives of their composers remaining unstudied-- T. should have first carefully collected the poet/clan names mentioned in the hymns themselves. Of course, to get this job done, he would need to study the original Old Vedic text -- not Griffith's badly outdated Victorian translation. In the original, he would not only find references to authors who do not appear in his Late Vedic list, but would also discover apparent poet or clan names hidden away in Sanskrit anagrams (see, e.g., RV 10.24.2, where we find vi ... made for "Vimada"). *** Despite his enthusiastic claims for the anukramaNIs, it should be noted that Talageri does not hesitate to change them when he is embarrassed by their contents (see pp. 19 ff.). We hence find that his list of supposed RV authors (pp. 7-19) varies considerably from what is found in any anukramaNI. Talageri writes: "There are obviously corruptions in the anukramaNIs in the form of ascriptions to fictitious composers .... we have replaced the fictitious names in the anukramaNIs with the names of the actual composers, ... the RSi of the hymn or the RSi of the maNDala." Talageri's free-form adjustments of such evidence, late as it may be, is still another distinctive mark of his book. The method by which he determines the "actual composers" in such cases remains a mystery. Again, for unclear reasons he also wants to limit the clans involved in the composition of the Rgvedic hymns to ten families: "The composers of the Rigveda are divided into ten families. These ten families are identified on the basis of the fact that each family has its own AprI-sUkta" (read AprI-! - p. 21). However, the attribution of at least some of them to certain families depends on --what else could it be-- the anukramaNI; and there are more AprI hymns found elsewhere, such as in the Atharvaveda. Thus, the AprI hymn RV 1.142 is by an unknown poet, but traditionally attributed to the AGgirasa dIrghatamas, and 1.188 is attributed to agastya. There are two AprI hymns in book 10: RV 10.70 is attributed to one sumitra, and 10.110 is attributed to jamadagni or his son rAma. Obviously, T.'s statements are inconsistent and are a clear indication of how cavalierly he establishes his divisions of the RV. Incidentally, no study of the AprIs is mentioned, neither that by K.R. Potdar (1945) nor the last one by van den Bosch (1985). *** I have already mentioned, as T. does not, that not one but a number of anukramaNIs are extant. Some particulars concerning these texts are found in A.A. Macdonell's specialized study from 1886 and in his succinct summary on pp. 272-4 of his History of Sanskrit Literature. The best-known anukramaNI (the one used by T., though he does not mention it by name) is the sarvANukramaNI attributed to kAtyAyana, the alleged author of the White Yajurveda zrautasUtra (the kAtyAyana ZS) -- one of the latest texts of this genre (cf. also kAtyAyanI in BAU and kAtyAyana, the author of the pANinean vArttikas). These attributions suggest that kAtyAyana was a late- or early post-Vedic Eastern figure, implying that Eastern influences might be looked for in his anukramaNI as well. And indeed, we find that the Eastern countries of aGga (1.116, in S.E. Bihar, at the bend of the Ganges) and kASi (10.179, the Benares area) are prominently mentioned in it, as well as a poet aGga aurava, 10.138. The language of the text (displaying late compounds, use of perfect, etc.) is certainly not Rgvedic, not even upaniSadic, but follows a terse sUtra style. (In other anukramaNIs, zlokas even are the norm.) All this points to late/post-Vedic and Eastern origins as well. (For discussion, see H. Oldenberg, Zur Geschichte des zloka, 1987: 1188-1215; Horsch 1966; and Macdonell 1886.) Note, for comparison, the typical difference between the prose dharmasUtras (early) and the metrical smRtis (later), or the older prose and the metrical middle upaniSads. The ArSAnukramaNI is a text of some 300 zlokas (Macdonell, 1886 p. v-ix). A hint about the general age of such texts may be contained in the fact that the anuvAkAnukramaNI of zaunaka is quoted (Macdonell 1886: vii) by Apastamba dharmasUtra 1.3.11.6 -- which P. Olivelle (1999: xxxiv) now wants to date to the beginning of the third century BCE. Since the anukramaNI used in Talageri's book knows of a king of kASi, Talageri -- who does not mention the country of aGga -- provides us with this curious analysis (p.118): ".... the anukramaNIs provide us with a priceless [geographical] clue: hymns IX.96 and X.179.2 are composed by a late bharata RSi who ... attributes his compositions to his remote ancestor, pratardana. He accordingly uses the epithets of his ancestors: in ... X.179.2, the epithet is kASIrAja (King of kASI) [read kASirAja, kASi in Vedic! --MW]. pratardana was a king of kASI, which is in eastern Uttar Pradesh. This can only mean that the bharata Kings of the Early Period of the Rigveda were Kings of kASI; and, in the light of the other information in the Rigveda, the land of the bharatas extended from kASI in the east to kurukSetra in the west." Here we have T.'s historical logic in full bloom. Unfortunately for his views, kASi and other Gangetic lands mentioned here do not show up in the RV at all. When the term kASi first occurs, in AV 5.22 (Witzel 1980, 1987, 1995, 1997 n. 259), the kASi tribals were still regarded as despised outsiders to whom one sends illnesses. Even in the late Vedic ZB 13.5.4.19, they still are not regarded highly. The rise of kASI comes only in much later periods. In Vedic times, they remained a small tribal area (which was conquered, by the time of the Pali texts, first by kosala and then by magadha). Predictably, T., makes much use of this late reference to the kASi in the anukramaNI to argue that the oldest parts of the RV are Eastern in origin. Here we get more vintage Talageri (my italics added): "The above conclusion is inescapable: the information in the anukramaNIs cannot be rejected on any logical ground (short of suggesting a conspiracy theory), and it fits in with all the other evidence: ... [purANic and] even the rest of the Vedic literature. The geography even of the yajurveda is clearly an Uttar Pradesh centred geography [-- however, as generally understood, the center of gravity shifted there in post-RV times -MW]. That the geography of the Rigveda is also the same has escaped the recognition of the scholars purely and simply because these scholars are so mesmerised by the Aryan invasion theory, and so obsessed with the vital need to locate the Rigveda in the northwest and the Punjab for the sheer survival of the theory, that their ideas and conclusions about the geography of the Rigveda are based on the tenets of this theory rather than on the material within the hymns of the text" (p. 119). Conspiracy theories created by whom? Ironically, of course, the text where the "early" kASi appear is not in the RV itself, but in Talageri's late- or post-Vedic list, which he wrongly assumes is as old as the RV itself. In order to evaluate the information in the anukramaNI, given its late/post-Vedic nature, it has to be compared with the various late-Vedic lists of gotras and pravaras in the zrautasUtras, which trace the origin of gotra names to many of the same RSis who show up in the anukramaNIs (cf. J. Brough 1953, not mentioned by T). When making such comparisons, one can deduce some of the political and social reasons why such lists appear, and why they differ substantially among themselves. More often than not, we find again that Late-Vedic Brahmanical rivalries underlie specific attributions -- as I have pointed out in relation to political "adoption" schemes (Witzel 1995, 1997; cf. Thapar 1984). Similar transformations can also be traced in the "historical" sections of the purANas. It is therefore no surprise that genealogies suggested in different anukramaNIs agree with those found in the similarly late zrautasUtras or even later purANas. But all this has little bearing on genuine RV genealogies, since traditions obviously repeatedly shifted in the long centuries between the RV and late-Vedic periods (Witzel 1995: 339 sq.). Against this background it hardly surprises us that Talageri finds in the anukramaNIs exactly what he hoped to find there: confirmation of Epic-purANic data! By contrast, my own RSi lists in my 1995 paper were based on the RV itself, not on such outside information: the anukramaNI was cited there only as one, actually the last of the several means to assess RV traditions. *** To crown it all, as earlier suggested, the sarvAnukramaNI of kAtyAyana that T. uses throughout -- without identifying it by name or further discussion -- is the younger one of our two preserved versions of that text. This was shown way back in 1922 by Isidor Scheftelowitz (Zeitschrift fuer Indologie und Iranistik, 1, 1922, p. 89-90). Scheftelowitz also gave us the first edition of the RV Khilas, which is preserved today only in Kashmir. In his 1922 study, he demonstrated that the Kashmir version of the sarvAnukramaNI as well preserves a version of kAtyAyana's text that is shorter and much older than the normal, received version. Scheftelowitz also provided evidence that the longer version used by Talageri --which the latter fantasizes goes back to RV times-- may date no earlier than the middle of the first millennium CE! (On this see further M. Tokunaga 1997: xv, xliv, lii.) § 3 Victorian Sanskrit? I noted at the start of this review that Talageri shows no evidence that he possesses anything remotely approaching an adequate knowledge of Sanskrit -- not to speak of the archaic and enigmatic forms of Rgvedic Sanskrit. He depends instead on a dated English translation and a modern Sanskrit word list -- scarcely adequate tools to approach India's most ancient text. Talageri does not admit his linguistic deficiencies, of course, but they are nonetheless immediately evident in his frequent misreporting of Rgvedic phrases. Thus his book consistently gives us the Sandhi variant vara A pRthivyA (RV 3.23.4) instead of the correct non-Sandhi form vara A pRthivyAH ("at the best place on earth"), the way the expression is reported at RV 3.53.11-- but not by Talageri (cf. p. 115, 136, 210, etc.). Similar mistakes are made (p. 117) in regard to nAbhA pRthivyA at 1.143.4, etc. for the correct nAbhA pRthivyAH -- which again occurs in non-Sandhi form in 3.5.9. Even more glaring are Talageri's chanda for chandas "meter" (frequently, e.g. on p. 3), and his misreporting of aprI-sUkta for AprI-sUkta (p. 21 ff.). And so on throughout his book. The translation that Talageri adopts as his authoritative text, as already noted, is Griffith's Victorian version, which was first published in 1889. Next to the even more antiquarian one by Wilson, Griffith's is the only complete version of the work readily available to English speaking readers without Sanskrit. Serious researchers would be expected to consult the far more accurate scholarly translations made by K.F. Geldner (1951, German), L. Renou (1955-1969, French) and now T. Elizarenkova (1989-99, Russian). Talageri has not consulted any of these, nor (lacking German) Oldenberg's still unsurpassed Noten (1909-12), which deal with each hymn and verse in the book. Every legitimate scholar knows that blindly using any translation -- let alone one as inadequate as Griffith's -- can easily lead one astray. Talageri, however, defensive about his dependence on the text, goes out of his way to praise it as "the best, most complete, and most reasonably honest English translation to this day" (p. 339). As noted earlier, how someone who is incapable of reading an ancient text in the original is capable of making such judgments remains a mystery. Pace Talageri, the RV is a highly technical text composed in an archaic literary tradition that is still poorly understood -- and whose poetic forms are very imperfectly captured by Griffith. The forms of the RV are not those of the later kAvya style but of those prevalent in the preceding Indo-Iranian and Indo-European periods. To date, those forms have not been adequately described as a complete system. Typically enough, Talageri ignores all the detailed work that has been conducted over the past 200 years in this direction. He dismisses all such research as the disdained product of "the scholars" -- the academic philologists and linguists who serve as straw men throughout his book. Meanwhile he pretends to proceed as his own man -- despite his dependence on Griffith's ancient translation! -- "invincible" in interpretation, as he often suggests. § 4 Failures in the 'Petty Conjectural Pseudo-Science' of Linguistics Serious Vedic scholars need a thorough knowledge of the archaic forms of Sanskrit (Old Vedic) and closely related languages in order to correctly interpret obscure words, metaphors and similes, grammatical forms, etc., unknown in later Vedic texts. Frequently by comparing the RV with kindred documents, like the Avesta, or with other old Indo-European texts, new insights arise concerning its more obscure passages. While Talageri obviously is no Old Vedic scholar, he is not altogether anti-linguistically minded (p. 309, 412, 415) -- unlike many of his colleagues in what he refers to as the "the Voice of India family of scholars." Rajaram, as noted before, denounces linguistics outright as a "petty conjectural pseudo-science," without understanding its theoretical basis and certainly without any knowledge of its procedures. Linguistics is a "hard science, certain so far as sounds are concerned (the linguistic subfield of phonetics). Sounds are, after all, produced by physical instruments at various positions in the throat, mouth and nose. Grammatical formations and the syntax of particular languages are for the most part produced subconsciously by native speakers, but they follow certain abstract rules (so well defined by pANini for Classical Sanskrit). It is strange that many Hindutvavadins want us to believe that linguistics (minus pANini of course!) is not a science. Deciding linguistic questions becomes more difficult when it comes to items of meaning and when linguistic reconstruction of pre-historic meanings are concerned. But even here, we can argue within the realm of probabilities and do not have to resort to fantasies of the sort found in Talageri, which are discussed below. While Talageri's attitudes towards linguistics are more favorable than Rajaram's, he too has little theoretical grasp of its principles and is inept in carrying out linguistic investigations. His lack of linguistic training is devastating, since linguistics is vitally important to nearly all the questions that he treats in his book (see below on river, place and tribal names!). Let us look here at a single example, involving his interpretation of the female name "jahnAvI" (pp. 99-100; cf. also pp. 111-112), which he wants us to believe is another name for the Ganges river. Talageri's object is to use the word to support his claim that the RV originated in the East, in the Ganges region. This is one of the few places where he disagrees with Griffith's translation, which clearly conflicts with that view. Talageri's discussion here is so revealing -- and convoluted -- that it is worth quoting in detail; my comments are added between brackets: "jahnAvI, which is clearly another name of the gaGgA, is named in two hymns; and in both of them, it is translated by the scholars as something other than the name of a river: Griffith translates it as "jahnu's children" (I.116.19) and "the house of jahnu" (III.58.6). The evidence, however, admits of only one interpretation: a. jahnAvI is clearly the earlier Rigvedic form of the later word jAhnavI: the former word is not found after the Rigveda, and the latter word is not found in the Rigveda. The word clearly belongs to a class of words in the Rigveda which underwent a particular phonetic change in the course of time: jahnAvI in the Rigveda becomes jAhnavI after the Rigveda; brahmANa becomes brAhmaNa in the Rigveda itself (both words are found in the Rigveda while only the latter is found after the Rigveda) [I fail to find brahmANa in the RV; T. or his source apparently misunderstood a plural form of brahman]...; and the word pavAka has already become pAvaka in the course of compilation of the Rigveda... the actual pronunciation of the word pAvaka must have been pavAka in the Rigvedic age [an old chestnut: see the 19th cent. discussion of RV diaskeuasis]. b. The word jAhnavI and therefore also the word jahnAvI ... literally means "daughter of jahnu", and not "jahnu's children" or "the house of jahnu" [but see below!] and ... has only one connotation in the entire length and breadth of Sanskrit literature: it is a name of the GaGgA. c. One of the two references to the jahnAvI in the Rigveda provides a strong clue to the identity of this word: jahnAvI (I. 116.19) is associated with the ziMzumAra (I.116.18) or the Gangetic dolphin. The dolphin is not referred to anywhere else in the Rigveda. [But T.'s Gangetic dolphin is also found in the Indus river! And RV 1.116.18-19 are not as closely connected as T. wants us to believe; this is part of along 25-verse list of the miracles of the Azvins.] " The three different examples given by T. have three different linguistic explanations and cannot be used to support his claims: his claim that RV jahnAvI > Post-RV jAhnavI is demonstrably false (see below); his second example involving brahmANa is fatuous, since that word is not found in the RV at all; and his third case, involving the phonetic change pavAka > pAvaka is a peculiarity of recitation schools. T.'s "linguistic explanation" of the word jahnAvI thus is empty. The meaning of that word can, however, be explained along simple linguistic and grammatical lines as follows: female derivatives of masculine names often have vRddhi in the second last syllable; thus manu : manAvI, agni : agnAyI -- and consequently, jahnu : jahnAvI (cf. also analogous formations, such as indra : indrANI, varuNa: varuNAnI, etc.) That is all there is to it. Consequently, "the scholars" who followed older translators or even sAyaNa were closer to the truth than T. jahnAvI was the wife or a female relation of jahnu or otherwise connected to him or his clan. The "ancient home" (purANam okaH) specified here, which T. thinks is the "Ganges," is the territory of the jahnu clan, whose location is unknown, that also figures prominently in later post-RV Vedic texts (AB, PB). To turn the word jahnAvI into a name for the Ganges can be done only by retro-fitting the RV evidence to Epic-purANic concepts or to Talagerian conceits of a Gangetic (Uttar Pradesh) homeland of the RV and of the Aryans/Indo-Europeans (T., 1993). In short, jahnAvI "Ganges" is not found in the RV. This robs T. of one of his important pieces of "evidence" for a Gangetic home of the RV (for more, see below, s.v. pramaganda). In sum, purANic preconceptions, coupled with an obvious lack of grammatical and linguistic expertise, deliver for T. what he promised that he would deliver in the book's preface: "this detailed analysis of the Rigveda emphatically confirms our theory." Not in this case, and not in the important ones mentioned above and still further below. § 5 Trita's View From Inside the Well? Other Missing Sciences The quality of Talageri's research is no better when it comes to discussions of other fields that should have been included or consulted when he prepared his book. Little use is made of the secondary literature, even with the rich Bombay University library at hand. T., however, mostly used what was readily available and -- as he tells us at the start of his book -- what his Western helpers, such as K. Elst, sent him. It is clear that he used a very haphazard selection of sources. As was early noted, those sources excluded the most important works for the present undertaking, including studies of the structure of the RV by Oldenberg (1888) and of the various anukramaNIs by Macdonell (1886) and Scheftelowitz (1922), not to speak of more recent ones such as Tokunaga (1997). Nor did he consult any post-Victorian translations of the RV -- not even the inadequate partial one by O'Flaherty 1981 (Penguin), or even any one available in various Indian languages! In fact, leaving aside his sketchy and highly selective discussions in Chapter 8, the history of RV research does not exist for T. (In chapter 8, 'Misinterpretations of Rigvedic history', p. 335-424, he discusses a number of opinions, but the chapter is primarily arranged by figure or supposed "school" -- mainly focusing on supposed "invasionists" -- and not by subject, and is hardly comprehensive). T. usually refers derisively to past and present research, blanket style, as the work of "the scholars" (implying that he is not one?!). When he actually mentions the work of earlier scholars he tends to jumble their research together with very recent work, as if the state of the art and the opinions of the 19th century were identical to those of the year 2000. This is a favorite tactic of the present rewriters of old Indian history -- meant to demonstrate "contradictions" in Indology. In Talageri's discussions, large sections of relevant fields of the humanities and sciences remain untouched, although they have a direct bearing on the subject under discussion. A few examples here will illustrate the ways that T.'s judgment is hampered by a lack of information. His discussion of the "kingdoms" of his time frame of 3500-1500 BCE is not tempered by discussion (or apparent knowledge) of semi-nomadic, transhumance life style or the workings of early pre-state tribal societies. Nor does he display any familiarity with the realia needed to interpret a difficult text such as the RV. As noted earlier, all notions of RV poetics and their impact on interpretation are absent, since T. is only familiar with Griffith's Victorian translation. He does not know about geographical facts such as the nature of Panjab rivers and their constant building of natural dams (RV 7.18). In his interpretation of jahnAvI (p. 100, RV 1.116.19) as a supposed name of the Ganges, he thinks that the matter is clinched by the fact that a dolphin is mentioned in an adjacent(!) stanza, RV 1.116.18, given in a long list of miracles of the azvins (see above). However, the river dolphin (Platanista gangetica) is not just found in the Ganges but also in the Indus river, as a simple check of any encyclopedia would show (see the Encyclopedia Britannica, which he actually lists in his references), s.v. dolphin, susu, e.g., http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,108400+14,00.html . Archaeology is largely ignored by Talageri as well. If he had consulted any standard studies he would have found that all through the time frame that he assigns to the RV (3500-1500 BCE) his supposed Aryan homeland around the Ganges was exclusively inhabited by hunters and gatherers and by some scattered chalcolithic agriculturists -- with no sign of great pUru and bharata "kingdoms." The same applies to the absence of horse and chariot in the Gangetic basin during this period -- a topic that Talageri wisely never brings up. Nor is the Indus civilization (2600-1900 BCE) discussed at length. It covered at least the Western extremities of his imaginary "Westward march" of the Vedic tribes during T.'s late RV period, 2100-1500 BCE. Since this does not fit, we are informed that the Indus people were anu, -- Iranians, in T.'s opinion (p. 41), as we shall see below. The section on comparative mythology, p.478 sqq. is seriously misinformed as well. Discussions of the problems in it would lead us far astray here, but the topic may be taken up at a later occasion. The list of such cases could be easily amplified. Finally, there is the silly but infuriating use of irregular abbreviations of book titles which have to be learnt and re-learnt on any use of the book. This leads to obvious problems for anyone who wants to track down Talageri's amateurish uses of sources. What is ZTR or ZTH ? ZTH is R. Gnoli's "Zoroaster's time and homeland".... The same annoying baffle gab is also found, for example, in S.S. Misra's book "The Aryan Problem" (1992). In the age of computers, these acronyms could easily have been converted into something more recognizable, throughout the whole book, and within minutes. Amusingly, HINDUTVA (given just like this -- all in caps!), a book by the nationalist politician V.D. Sarvarkar, who closely worked with Italian and German fascists, is not further abbreviated in T.'s bibliography -- indicating, in an almost Freudian way, the bent of mind of the author under discussion here. Nomen plenum est omen. A short list of obvious omissions relevant to study of the RV, a few of which we have already noted, includes the following. The list could easily be expanded: * The dates provided by the Old Indo-Aryan words in the Mitanni documents of c. 1400 BCE are not mentioned anywhere in Talageri's book; the forms of these words are slightly *older* than the corresponding forms in the RV (ma-ash-da [mazd[h]a] for medhA, vaj'hana > vashana- [vazhhana] for vAhana. They certainly do not support the fantastically "hoary" chronology developed in Talageri's book. * The evidence of archaeology is neglected for areas inside and outside the Indus Civilization. As mentioned, it is certainly difficult to picture "Vedic" hunter-gatherers and early chalcolithic agriculturists in an Gangetic pUru "kingdom"! Talageri nowhere mentions the obvious conflicts in his work with accepted archaeological evidence. * Much other critical zoological and archaeological evidence is not discussed: horse and two-wheeled chariot are prominent at all levels of the RV, but are not found in South Asia before c. 2000/1700 BCE, more than 1000 years after T.'s early RV; river dolphins in the Indus are unknown to T.; and so on. * There is complete absence of discussion of social questions in the RV: "kings" in the semi-nomadic (only very partially village-based) society portrayed in early strata of the RV? Vedic "dynasties" reigning for millennia? What kind of "state" is represented by the RV hymns? Any search of the vast comparative literature on semi-nomadic peoples would have ruled out much of Talageri's fantasies. * There is no discussion of climate in the book. All of the RV indicates the presence of cold winters, a prominence of long dawns, and river flooding due to snow melt. All these conditions are typical of conditions in the Panjab, not of the more southern and warmer Gangetic plains under the heavy influence of the monsoon. § 6 Imaginary Chronologies: RSis of the Kali Yuga? Any evaluation of T.'s grand effort becomes even more devastating once the results of his discussions are pulled together and it is shown how procedurally erratic they are. We can begin by looking at T.'s conclusions as to the time period of the RV. Based on his analysis of the post-Vedic anukramaNIs and related data, T. attempts to interpret each maNDala as a unified text (with the exception of book 1, which he subdivides into three phases, and to some extent book 10). Each book, on his view, can therefore be studied as an individual corpus of one or more clans belonging to one time period. References from these 10 books are then taken to establish the time and the place of the author(s) of the individual hymns and of the whole book. All of them taken together are used to delimit the area of the RV and of the relative time frame of the whole corpus and its parts. It should be clear even to a superficial reader that T.'s rigid division of the RV into 10 books belonging to unique time periods contradicts well-known evidence, some of which we noted earlier. Further, several maNDalas overlap in time, as illustrated by the fact that they often mention the same chieftains (and sometimes, the same poets). One is due for a surprise when one examines T.'s treatment of these facts. The "family reminiscences," such as RV 3. 53, and the similar late, additional family hymns (as per Oldenberg 1888) RV 6.47 and 7.33, clearly show historical awareness in such clan traditions. However, the poets often do not say more than "we compose in the way of the atri (atri-vat)," or they may refer back to poets of the mythical past (aGgiras, uzanas, etc.). While we would expect, based on the internal evidence of the RV (Witzel 1995), a period for each family book that extends over roughly five generations -- with a few references thrown in to ancient predecessors and a few late (post-RV) additions -- T.'s schemes calculate the RV books each in term of many hundreds or even thousands of years (p.75 sqq.) : "It is clear that the Rigveda was not composed in one sitting, or in a series of sittings, by a conference of RSis [echoes of my 1997 paper - MW]: the text is clearly the result of many centuries of composition. The question is: just how many centuries? The Western scholars measure the periods of the various maNDalas in terms of decades, while some Indian scholars go to the other extreme and measure them in terms of millenniums and decamillenniums. A more rational, but still conservative [sic!- MW], estimate would be as follows: 1. There should be, at a very conservative estimate, a minimum of at least six centuries between the completion of the first nine maNDalas of the Rigveda and the completion of the tenth. 2. The period of the Late maNDalas and upa-maNDalas (V, VIII, IX, and the corresponding parts of maNDala I) should together comprise a minimum of three to four centuries. 3. The period of the Middle maNDalas and upa-maNDalas (IV, II, and the corresponding parts of maNDala I) and the gap which must have separated them from the period of the Late maNDalas, should likewise comprise a minimum of another three to four centuries. 4. The period of maNDalas III and VII and the early upa-maNDalas of maNDala I, beginning around the period of sudAs, should comprise at least two centuries. 5. The period of maNDala VI, from its beginnings in the remote past and covering its period of composition right upto the time of sudAs, must again cover a minimum of at least six centuries. Thus, by a conservative estimate, the total period of composition of the Rigveda must have covered a period of at least two millenniums [sic!- MW]." It is, incidentally, altogether unclear how T. arrives at these estimates. If the composition of the RV stretched out over more than two millennia, the text would be in the same language (except for some innovations in the late book 10). This is a virtual impossibility as far as any living language is concerned. Since T. assumes "at least 600 years" for the period of composition between RV 9 and the end of 10 (p. 77), we thus would arrive at 3500-2100 BCE for the bulk of RV composition. See here http://www.safarmer.com/pico/talageri.html, put together by Steve Farmer. Farmer attaches Talageri's own dates, provided in an online exchange on 21 July 2000 (for Talageri's own words, see the bottom, of the webpage) to an originally dateless chart that Talageri gives in his book. Here are the "conservative" dates and "lower limits" -- outrageous by normal historical standards -- that Talageri provided in that exchange: Mandala 6: 3500-2900 BC, Mandalas 3, 7, early 1: 2900-2700 BC, Mandalas 4, 2, middle 1: 2700-2400 BC, Mandalas 5, 8, 9, late 1: 2400-2100 BC, Mandala 10: 2100-1500 BC. In other words, the RV would be contemporaneous with the early village-like predecessors of the Indus civilization at Harappa itself. As far as T.'s U.P./Bihar "homeland of the RV" is concerned, the text would have evolved right among the hunter-gatherer bands of that area. That country did not see forts (pur), chariots, and horses for another 2000 years -- while the RV is full of them. Further, by 3500 BCE (the date for his oldest book, RV 6) horse-drawn chariots were not even invented (even the bullock cart was only first appearing in Mesopotamia about that time). Chariots only appear more than a thousand years later both in Mesopotamia and in the S. Russian-W. Siberian steppes. There also was no horse in S. Asia then either -- the "indigenous" Siwalik horse (Equus sivalensis) by that time had been long extinct. The modern horse (Equus caballus) first appeared, imported from Central Asia (Bokonyi 1997; Meadow and Patel 1997), around 1700 BCE (Pirak, Kachi plain in easternmost Baluchistan). But these glaring anachronisms do not pose a problem for T. All such historical, technological, zoological, and archaeological details do not detain him, since they are simply disturbing little facts; all of this will be discussed in further detail further below. *** In the same vein, T.'s conclusions on "Kings and RSis" (p. 59 sqq.) must be regarded with utmost caution, based as they are on his impossible view of the RV's internal chronology. For example, as soon as one applies Oldenberg's well-known principles in detecting late interpolations in the RV (i.e., looking for late violations of the original numerical order of the family books: see § 1 supra and my letter in the IndicTraditions list on 11/12/2000), one can simply forget the purANa-assigned "anu kings" of 6.45-46 -- where they appear in suspicious, additional hymns. (For T.'s purANic mindset, cf. p. 138 sqq.). The same applies to the yadu "king" vItahavya(?) at 6.15.2-3, where he is not a chieftain but the poet of the hymn, and in 7.19.3 (T. has a misprint) where the word does not seem to designate a "King" but is an adjective referring to the Great Chieftain sudAs. Not surprisingly by now, T. arranges his list of "Kings" by following the list found in the purANas (cf. Morton Smith 1973: 504). Talageri tells us: "The names of these Kings are given above in order of their relative positions in the dynastic list" (p.60). Then, he sets out to prove that the purANas, after all, are "right" as per his 1993 book. Tacitly following my 1995 historical paper, the close connection of sudAs with books 3 and 7 is accepted, as well as the tenor of book 6 where the prominence of sudAs' father divodAsa points to a slightly earlier time frame. However, the conclusion that Talageri draws from these data (p. 62) -- that all maNDalas after 6, 3, and 7 are "post-sudAs" is again unwarranted. There is no way that any RV book can be that easily declared "post-sudAs," since each book contains heterogeneous material from several or even many generations of poets. Only after the multi-axial investigations mentioned early in this paper (Witzel 1995) will have been carried out, will statements of this sort have a chance to be substantiated. Once again the principle "garbage in, garbage out" applies to Talageri's work. The chieftains of the RV are closely linked to certain priests' and poets' clans, according to T.'s traditional sources, and the hymns of these clans are concentrated in certain books. Therefore, the moment one (arbitrarily) orders these books in a fixed temporal pattern, guided by the anukramaNIs and purANas, etc., the "kings" and poets must come out in the same order as that of the books. In consequence, T.'s whole "historical analysis" is wrong, based, as it is, on the use of such late sources and his rigid maNDala scheme, which ignores the temporal layering of individual texts (see above). Someone else has to do this exercise all over again, taking into account not just traditional RSi names and maNDalas set in stone, but a multitude of parameters (Witzel 1995). Not surprisingly, T. ends up with a list of kinds that more-or-less agrees with those found in the purANas (p. 63). A little fudging helps, as a check of sudAs' ancestors in T.'s list (p. 63) indicates (cf. Witzel 1995). Morton Smith who worked in the footsteps of Pargiter's purANic studies, often comes to conclusions radically different from the ones in T. Smith's comparison of epic, purANic and Vedic sources (1973) is never mentioned by T. It is instructive to observe how T. has to twist and turn in order to explain, within his own erroneous framework, "the tRkSi dynasty" (p. 66-72). Facts at all times in Talageri's work have to agree with his theory, not the theory with the facts! § 7 Talageri's Geography: A Moveable Feast T.'s theory places Indo-Aryans impossibly in the Gangetic plains before they moved Westwards into the Panjab and beyond. It has already been shown (§ 4) that some of his "Eastern" data in the RV (jahnAvI as Ganges) evaporate as soon as we take a close look at his historical ordering of the text and his faulty grammatical analyses. The same applies to other river names. I restrict myself here to the ones found in what T. claims, on flimsy grounds, is the RV's "oldest book," RV 6. One can immediately throw out the reference to the Ganges that appears at RV 6.45.31 (gAGgya). This reference occurs in a series of long hymns to Indra 6.44-46 which follow a shorter Indra hymn (6.43 of 4 stanzas) and precede the appendix hymn 6.47. Applying the principles pioneered by Oldenberg, RV 6.45 can be shown to be a composite hymn built out of tRcas at an uncertain period. The ordering principle of the old family books clearly points to the addition of all these hymns in mixed meters at the end of an Indra series. Such late additions must not be used as an argument for the age of the bulk of book 6 (see my letter in IndicTraditions from 11/12/2000). Incidentally, it should be noted that such tRca and pragAthA hymns are not listed in the short list of additions that I gave in my 1995 paper. As I noted in the paper, however, they are prominently discussed by Oldenberg (1888). T. again falls prey to his lack of knowledge of Indological research -- not understanding my reference to Oldenberg -- when he accused me of inconsistencies in the nature of that list. The River sarasvatI found in book 6 (T., p. 102) may be discarded just like T.'s Gangetic jahnAvI. In the hymns 6.49, 50, 52, 61, the order of arrangement is disturbed and especially the group 6.49-52 is very suspicious. According to the RV ordering principles, we expect 5 hymns for sarasvatI, and do not obtain them even by a dissection of hymns 51 and 52. All this points to an addition of materials at an unknown time. Therefore, the Haryana River sarasvatI (mod. Sarsuti) is not found in the old parts of book 6. Incidentally, it is entirely unclear that the physical river sarasvatI is meant in some of these spurious hymns: in 6.49.7 the sarasvatI is a woman and in 50.12 a deity, not necessarily the river (Witzel 1984). (At 52.6, however it is a river, and in 61.1-7 both a river and a deity -- which can be located anywhere from the Arachosian sarasvatI to the Night time sky, with no clear localization). Interestingly, however, the other -- i.e. Western -- rivers remain in the older parts of RV 6, such as the yavyAvatI and hariyUpIyA: they still point to Eastern Afghanistan, to the river Zhob, and (perhaps) the Hali[-Ab], as the location of these parts of the book. It would lead us too far afield here to discuss all of T.'s identifications of rivers. Among the more ludicrous ones are precisely the last ones, the hariyUpIyA and yavyAvatI. Talageri writes (p.98 sq.): "hariyUpIyA is another name of the dRSadvatI [in eastern kurukSetra, just west of Delhi - MW]: the river is known as raupyA in the mahAbhArata, and the name is clearly a derivative of hariyUpIyA. The yavyAvatI is named in the same hymn and context as the hariyUpIyA, and almost all the scholars agree that both the names refers to the same river." The only item agreeing here is hari "tawny, etc." = raupya "golden." RV 6.27 mentions the hariyUpIyA in the context of the vRcIvants and the pArthava, -- uncommon Western names for the Rgvedic E. Panjab/Haryana. Of course, hariyUpIyA cannot be, as it is often alleged, the origin of the name of Harappa: medial -p- should have long disappeared, via -v- and zero, and cannot have resulted in double p. Mercifully, T. does not mention this. In fact, Harappan Civilization is almost completely absent in his book, only noted in passing in discussing some other scholars' views. According to his time table of the RV, however, the Rgvedic period overlaps exactly with the later parts of the Harappan civilization -- which he fantastically describes in one of his few references to it as "a joint civilization of the anus (Aryans belonging to the same linguistic stock as the latter-day Iranians and some other Indo-European groups)... and the pUrus (the post-Rigvedic Vedic Aryans), even perhaps more anu than pUru, at least in the case of the more well-known western sites" (p. 419). This neatly shifts the evidence away from the RV -- according to T. a pUru text of the Gangetic Plains. Unfortunately for Talageri, the mature Indus civilization covered all of RV territory, as it extended from E. Afghanistan to Haryana and Western U.P, and from the Himalayas down to the Indus delta and Kathiawar in Gujarat. His knowledge of the Indus Valley Civilization is hence as misinformed as his knowledge of RV culture. A few more curious points from his discussions of river names: prayiyu and vayiyu in 8.19.37 actually are (non-Indo-Aryan) men of the country of suvAstu (mod. Swat, just east of Afghanistan) -- not rivers at all, as Talageri assures us (p. 102)! For zveti RV 10.75.6 (in T. p. 103), read zvetyA! Talageri lists azmanvatI as an "Eastern" river (p. 98), but in RV 10.53.8 (p. 103) it is probably not a river on earth at all but a river in the night time sky (Witzel 1984). But what casual reader of Talageri's book could be expected to pick up on these points without spending weeks or months tracking down Talageri's spurious "evidence." Incidentally, the Avestan river "haroiiu" (map, opposite p. 104; for details on these Afghani rivers, see Witzel 2000) is a nonce word, a pseudo-stem, derived by T. from the Acc. harOiiUm; the stem would be *haraEuua-, but to know that you would need some linguistics! The map opposite p.120 gives a few more Avestan names, often in wrong form: read margu for mourv, haraEuua for harOiva, airiian@m vaEjah for airyana vaEjah; the latter Talageri improbably locates in Kashmir while the Avestan texts make it the central land of E. Iran -- i.e. the cool, central mountain pastures of Afghanistan (Witzel 2000). Also, note that kIkaTa, following 19th c. guesses, is located by T. in Bihar, while the RV gandhAri -- here with correct spelling -- are located in Arachosia! However, on p.131 Talageri quotes the AV as identifying the gandhAri with the mUjavants, which is not correct as these two (and the kAzi, aGga) are mentioned in parallel fashion as distant tribes, seen from the point of view of the central land of the kuru (Witzel 1980). T. thinks that such linguistic distinctions as mentioned just now are mere nitpicking -- again to his undoing. Speaking about Northwestern rivers, he tells us that "three of them, kosala, zutudrI and kubhA are clearly Indo-European names ("the hairsplitting about the letter -s- in kosala is a typical "linguistic" ploy....)" (p.248). However, even a brief look at the discussion of these words in Mayrhofer's etymological dictionaries (1956-1976, 1985-, unknown to T.!) and or my detailed study of Vedic river names (Witzel 1999) would have told him otherwise. There is nothing "clearly Indo-European" about them and words with is, us, es, os etc. are extremely rare in Vedic and stand out as loan words. The summary of river names and their location given on pp. 103-112, and the inherent "Westward expansion" of the Indo-Aryans in RV times is of course based on the philological and linguistic mistakes criticized above (§1-4) T.'s conclusions (exemplified in his table and insert on p.104) are therefore moot. We need a fresh investigation of references to rivers in the RV. The results should be close to those found in Witzel 1995,1999 which was based on text-internal evidence. T.'s lack of a linguistic background becomes painfully obvious when we consider his absurd analyses of RV place names. Since T. believes that all through the early Vedic period the Proto-Indo-Europeans were present in northern India, the Mundas in eastern India, and the Dravidians in southern India (but see Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999a), he is not surprised that the northwestern part of the subcontinent shows predominantly Indo-Aryan names during the Vedic period. Relying solely on my short 1995 paper, which provided only a terse summary of this topic, he takes the prominence of Indo-Aryan names in North India as a proof for an Indo-Aryan (and Indo-European) origin there and for their early settlement in northern India. Along the way, he excoriates me for failing to note what he considers to be that obvious conclusion (p.248). However, like most of my 1995 paper, the views presented here were just a short summary of a broader base of evidence. A much fuller treatment of Vedic place names can be found in my 1999 paper, which came out one year before T.'s book. The evidence assembled there suggests exactly the opposite of what T. assumes: Although the Northwest generally abounds in Indo-Iranian names, the remaining indigenous, non-Indo-Aryan names are of special interest. Their sounds and their word formations clearly show that they belong to a non-Indo-European, Greater Panjab substrate (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999a). This evidence renders all talk of an original Indo-European settlement of northwestern/northern India moot. In addition, the recent discussion of the substrate words common to both Indo-Aryan and Iranian (Witzel 1999a, Lubotsky forthc.) adds substantial new evidence for this view. Such common non-Indo-Iranian words differ from the typical Rgvedic and post-Rgvedic substrate and indicate that both the Proto-Indo-Aryans and Proto-Iranians, perhaps even the speakers of Proto-Indo-Iranian, entered a Central Asian/Afghan territory that was already occupied by a previous population speaking non-Indo-European language(s) (pace J. Nichols!) -- most probably the language(s) of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). (Continued with part 3) ======================================================== Michael Witzel Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University 2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages) home page: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs