Asko Parpola

Book published in New York by Oxford University Press, summer 2015. xvi, 363 pp., 190 ill.
Hb 99 USD, ISBN 978-0-19-022 690-9.
Pb 35 USD ISBN 978-0-19-022 692-3.
Contents: Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Defining ’Hindu’ and ’Hinduism’ -- 2. The early Aryans -- 3. Indo-European linguistics -- 4. The Indus civilization -- 5. The Indus religion and the Indus script -- Part I: The Early Aryans -- 6. Proto-Indo-European homelands -- 7. Early Indo-Iranians on the Eurasian steppes -- 8. The BMAC of Central Asia and the Mitanni of Syria -- 9. The Rigvedic Indo-Aryans and the Dasas -- 10. The Asvins and Mitra-Varuna -- 11. The Asvins as funerary gods -- 12. The Atharvaveda and the Vratyas -- 13. The Megalithic Culture and the Great Epics -- Part II: The Indus Civilization -- 14. The language of the Indus civilization -- 15. Fertility cults in folk religion -- 16. Astronomy, time-reckoning and cosmology -- 17. Dilmun, Magan and Meluhha -- 18. Royal symbols from West Asia -- 19. The Goddess and the buffalo -- 20. Early Iranians and ’left-hand’ Tantrism -- 21. Religion in the Indus script -- Conclusion -- 22. Prehistory of Indo-Aryan Language and Religion -- 23. Harappan Religion in Relation to West and South Asia -- 24. Retrospect and prospect -- Bibliographical notes -- References -- Index.

This paper compares Jaimini-Gṛhya-Sūtra 1,1-4 (Pārvana-sthālīpāka) with the corresponding section of Sāma-Smārtta-Caṭaṅṅu, the Malayāḷam language manual for performing domestic rites of the Sāmavedic Nampūtiri Brahmins of Kerala. This is a reprint of the edition published in 2011.

Volgo-Kama Neolithic resulted from an expansion of the Elshan culture to Lower Kama c. 5700 BCE. Cor- responding “Indo-Uralic” linguistic parallels attest to an expansion of pre-Proto-Indo-European speakers to the area of pre-Proto-Uralic speakers. This supports the evidence of linguistic palaeontology (Proto-Uralic words for ‘cembra pine’ and for ‘bee’ and ‘honey’) for the Kama River Valley as the Uralic homeland. Proto-Uralic had loanwords from pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian, whose speakers can now be traced to the Abashevo culture of 2200–2000 BCE: the Abashevo expansion from Lower Kama to the Ural-Tobol interfluve created the Sintashta culture (2000–1900 BCE), which has the earliest archaeological evidence for horse-drawn chariots, matching Proto-Indo-Iranian chariot vocabulary. Between 2200 and 1900 BCE, the Sejma-Turbino network (ST) of warrior-smith-traders distributed high-quality weapons along the border of taiga and steppe between the Upper Ob and Finland. This long but narrow corridor matches the distribution of the intermediate proto-languages of the Uralic family. It is argued that the ST came into being when Abashevo smiths moved from Balanbash on Lower Kama to Turbino on Mid-Kama and there created the ST metal axe-celt to replace the local stone-celt. The metal axe and Abashevo-like lance-heads and other weapons were then traded west and east, to hunter- fisher-cultures of Europe and Siberia (where weapons of tin-bronze were produced), establishing Proto-Uralic as the language of the areas of ST rule.

Hypotheses of a Mesopotamian origin for the Vedic and Chinese star calendars are unfounded. The Yangshao culture burials discovered at Puyang in 1987 suggest that the beginnings of Chinese astronomy go back to the late fourth millennium BCE. The instructive similarities between the Chinese and Indian luni-solar calendrical astronomy and cosmology therefore with great likelihood result from convergent parallel development and not from diffusion.

Close iconographic parallels between Mesopotamian and Harappan glyptic art (seals and statuettes)-published in detail and with illustrations elsewhere and only summarised here-indicate that during the latter half of the 3rd millennium BC the Indus civilisation was an integral if peripheral part of the western Asian cultural sphere. The Harappans adopted a number of Mesopotamian royal symbols and cults, including the 'Sky Garment' embroidered with stars, two kinds of hairdo, a mode of sitting, the 'contest' motif and 'victory pose', and above all the cult of the feline-related Goddess of Fertility and War worshipped with a 'sacred marriage' ritual involving and a human/bull sacrifice. These traditions persisted in South Asia to later times, and were inherited in the subsequent Vedic and Hindu cultures. It is nowadays generally agreed that the country called Meluhha in cuneiform sources denotes the Harappan realm. In the introductory part, I propose new explanations for two expressions associated with Meluhha: the magillum boats and the 'black country'. 2

The article describes the royal cart burials excavated at the Late Harappan site of Sanauli near Delhi in the spring of 2018 on the basis of the available reports and photographs. The author then comments on these finds, dated to about 1900 bce, with the Sanauli cart burials being the first of their kind in Bronze Age India. In his opinion, several indications suggest that the Sanauli “chariots” are actually carts yoked to bulls, as in the copper sculpture of a bull-cart from the Late Harappan site of Daimabad in Maharashtra. The antennae-hilted swords associated with the burials suggest that these bull-carts are likely to have come from the BMAC or the Bactria and Margiana Archaeological Complex (c.2300–1500 bce) of southern Central Asia, from where there is iconographic evidence of bull-carts. The ultimate source of the Sanauli/BMAC bull-carts may be the early phase of the Sintashta culture in the Trans-Urals, where the chariot (defined as a horse-drawn light vehicle with two spoked wheels) was most probably invented around the late twenty-first century bce. The invention presupposes an earlier experimental phase, which started with solid-wheeled carts that could only be pulled by bulls. An intermediate phase in the development is the “proto-chariot” with cross-bar wheels, attested in a BMAC-related cylinder seal from Tepe Hissar III B in northern Iran (c.2000–1900 bce). The wooden coffins of the Sanauli royal burials provide another pointer to a possible Sintashta origin. The Sanauli finds are considered in the context of the author’s archaeological model for the prehistory of the Indo-Iranian languages, which is adjusted to meet recent justified criticism.

Foreword Few questions have excited as much interest in recent years as who the ancestors of present-day Indians were, where they came from, and when. Studies that address this theme have been carried out in a range of disciplines including archaeology, climatology, history, linguistics, anthropology and, most recently, molecular biology. However, with regard to the broader conclusions that have been drawn, there are signifi cant differences among scholars who approach the issue from diverse areas of study. In a famous paper on the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, Luis Alvarez listed the central questions as What, When, Where, How and Why. It would be interesting to see how much common ground can be found in the way students of the peopling of India respond to them. One reason for discordance has been a lack of agreement on what exactly the objects of study should be, how they should be categorised, what the relevant questions are, how one should go about answering them, and how much leeway is permissible in sifting and weighing the evidence-in short, on methodological issues. Further, the set of observations on which these methodologies are to be applied, is extremely heterogeneous. The simplistic attitude could be expressed by saying that since a unique series of events must have led to the present, all that one needs to do, in order to identify and order those events is to invest suffi cient time, effort and skill. That expectation is belied by the fact that cross-disciplinary expertise is hard to come by. The 'units' and terms of discourse used in archaeology, linguistics, history anthropology and genetics are very unlike, and it is not obvious to what extent they can be reconciled. On top of that, disputes regarding classifi cation, sampling, standards of accuracy and interpretation abound within each area of study. As a step towards addressing the state of affairs, a Discussion Meeting titled "Human Diversity and Ancestry in India" was held in Bengaluru during 19-21 September 2018. An aim of the meeting was to bring together experts from a range of disciplines and get them to engage in critical exchanges on the theme. The minimal expectation was that this would lead to clearing the air. Beyond that, the hope was that once some of the underlying issues had been clarifi ed, a consensus would be reached on how to move ahead. The meeting consisted of thematic sessions comprising formal talks followed by discussions initiated by a small set of panellists. Comments and questions from the audience were interspersed throughout. Gratifyingly, the discussions were quite intense. Differing viewpoints, not just between researchers in the social and natural sciences, but also among those within each broad area, were openly expressed. Therefore, to some extent, the fi rst aim, to clear the air, was achieved. But it was obvious that achieving the second aim would require several such meetings. The meeting was split into fi ve thematic sessions under the heads Archaeology and Prehistory, History and Language, Anthropology and Sociology, Genetics-Ancient DNA and Genetics-Modern DNA. Each session consisted of formal lectures by 'discussion leaders' followed by comments and critiques by 'lead panellists'. Most discussion leaders agreed to provide textual versions of their talks. The primary papers in this special issue of Journal of Biosciences consist of surveys of various aspects of the theme of the meeting. Accompanying each paper is a Commentary. The task assigned to the commentator (who may or may not have attended the meeting) was to tease apart features of the main paper and draw attention to what remains to be done; and to do so from a specialised but subjective viewpoint-rather like a traditional Bha ¯shya, in fact. It is for the reader to judge to what extent these goals have been met. The papers that follow appear in the same order as the talks, moving-so to speak-from ancient history to modern DNA. Shireen Ratnagar (Trails, footprints, hoofprints; commentator, Barun Mukhopadhyay) outlines the archaeological and textual evidence for early Indo-Europeans and Indo-Iranians and draws attention to pitfalls in the conventional manner of naming tribal groups. Michael Witzel (Early 'Aryans' and their neighbors outside and inside India; commentators, Shyam Sundar Bhattacharya and Satarupa Dattamajumdar) tells us why Indo-Aryan speakers are likely to have had a western Central Asian origin followed by gradual migration and acculturation. Rajesh Kocchar (Ancient Indian history: What do we know and how?; commentator, Asko Parpola) points out discordances in the evidence from archaeology and sacred texts and draws attention of the importance of studying the archaeology of Central Asia for developing a synthesis. Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi (Linguistic history and language diversity in India: Views and counterviews; commentator, Pritha Chandra) outlines the methods of historical linguistics, compares the relative strengths of the 'substratum' and 'Aryan migration' explanations as an illustrative example, and concludes that the latter comes off better. K. C. Malhotra and T. S. Vasulu (Development of typological classifi cation and its relationship to microdifferentiation in ethnic India; commentary by A. J. S. Bhanwer) outline the origins

The major first part of the paper collects as exhaustively as possible all mentions of words for 'mirror' occuring in Vedic literature (c.1200-300 bce). The occurrences are presented with sufficient context in Sanskrit and English in order to show how and why the mirror was used in Vedic rituals and Vedic culture in general, and what meaning was ascribed to it. The second part of the paper discusses a fact of major significance that emerges from this documentation: in the extensive older Vedic literature of the Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Śrautasūtras (excepting the late Kātyāyana-Śrautasūtra), there is no reference to the mirror at all. This suggests that the mirror was not known in Vedic India until it was introduced to South Asia by the Persian Empire at the end of the sixth century bce. The later Vedic literature, starting with the early Upaniṣads and comprising also the Gṛhyasūtras and Kātyāyana-Śrautasūtra, would therefore postdate 500 bce. In other words, the 'mirror' words seem to offer a criterion that for the first time enables a division of the Vedic literature into two clearly separate phases of development. Equally important is the firm historical basis that the mirror provides for dating the transition point.

The major first part of the paper collects as exhaustively as possible all mentions of words for ‘mirror’ occuring in Vedic literature (c.1200–300 bce). The occurrences are presented with suffi- cient context in Sanskrit and English in order to show how and why the mirror was used in Vedic rituals and Vedic culture in general, and what meaning was ascribed to it. The second part of the paper discusses a fact of major significance that emerges from this documentation: in the extensive older Vedic literature of the Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas and Śrautasūtras (excepting the late Kātyāyana-Śrautasūtra), there is no reference to the mirror at all. This suggests that the mirror was not known in Vedic India until it was introduced to South Asia by the Persian Empire at the end of the sixth century bce. The later Vedic literature, starting with the early Upaniṣads and comprising also the Gṛhyasūtras and Kātyāyana-Śrautasūtra, would therefore postdate 500 bce. In other words, the ‘mirror’ words seem to offer a criterion that for the first time enables a division of the Vedic literature into two clearly separate phases of development. Equally important is the firm historical basis that the mirror provides for dating the transition point.

The paper collects, as exhaustively as possible, all passages where the Vedic words prākāśá- and prāvepá- occur, together with all the explanations provided by medieval commentators and all the translations and exegeses of modern scholars. A new alternative etymology and meaning is offered for prākāśá-; it is supported by the prākāśá-‘s being a part of the chariot equipment and a gift in the daśapeya rite to the two adhvaryu priests, who represent the Aśvins.
Keywords: prākāśá-, mirror, whip, chariot, daśapeya.

This paper complements an earlier more extensive study of the Harappan glyptic motif of ‘unicorn’ bull by considering a previously unnoticed Mesopotamian parallel and its implications for our understanding of the Harappan and later Indian religion. Conclusions: The ‘unicorn’ bull motif together with its religious symbolism and ritual use in the victory parade to gratify the goddess of war and fertility was adopted by the Indus people from Mesopotamia in Late Early Dynastic / Early Akkadian times. A minor modification was the symbolic and iconographic fusion of the Mesopotamian aurochs (not present in South Asia) with the local nilgay or ‘blue bull’. From the Harappans this cultic package was adopted into the subsequent Vedic and Hindu religions; in Hinduism it has survived until our times.

Finnish vatsa 'stomach' < PFU *vaćća < Proto-Indo-Aryan *vatsá- 'calf' < PIE *vet-(e)s-ó- 'yearling' contrasts with Finnish vasa- 'calf' < Proto-Iranian *vasa- 'calf'. Indo-Aryan TS  versus Iranian S reflects the divergent development of PIE *-tst- in the Iranian branch (> *-st-, with Greek and Balto-Slavic) and in the Indo-Aryan branch (> *-tt-, probably due to Uralic substratum). The split of Indo-Iranian can be traced in the archaeological record to the differentiation of the Yamnaya culture in the North Pontic and Volga steppes respectively during the third millennium BCE, due to the use of separate sources of metal: the Iranian branch was dependent on the North Caucasus, while the Indo-Aryan branch was oriented towards the Urals. It is argued that the Abashevo culture of the Mid-Volga-Kama-Belaya basins and the Sejma-Turbino trade network (2200–1900 BCE) were bilingual in Proto-Indo-Aryan and PFU, and introduced the PFU as the basis of West Uralic (Volga-Finnic) into the Netted Ware Culture of the Upper Volga-Oka (1900–200 BCE).

This chapter introduces Indus seals, and provides a chronological overview of seals in the various phases of Indus civilization. It then addresses various aspects of Indus seals, including inscriptions, the photographic Corpus of Indus Seals and Inscriptions, seals as badges of authority and amulets, seals as administrative tools, and seal manufacture. As such, the chapter provides a brief but thorough introduction to the more detailed studies that comprise the rest of the volume.