Michael Witzel Quotes

Michael Witzel is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series .

Witzel is an authority on Indian sacred texts, particularly the Vedas, and Indian history. A critic of the arguments made by Hindutva writers and sectarian historical revisionism, he opposed some attempts to influence USA school curricula in the California textbook controversy over Hindu history. Wikipedia  

✵ 18. July 1943
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Michael Witzel: 13   quotes 0   likes

Famous Michael Witzel Quotes

Michael Witzel Quotes

“Given the scholarly inclinations among the expatriate communities in North America we may expect a slew of new interpretations, in fact, a whole new cottage industry. Their impact will appear especially on the internet.”

Witzel, M. N. Jha and N.S. Rajaram, The deciphered Indus script. Methodology, readings, interpretation. (2000) http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/R&J.htm

“Ironically, many of those expressing these anti-migrational views are emigrants themselves, engineers or technocrats like N. S. Rajaram… who ship their ideas to India from U. S. shores.”

About Indians criticising the theory of Aryan invasions or migrations.
Witzel, Michael and Steve Farmer. 2000. Horseplay in Harappa Frontline, 17(20), September 30-October 13.

“In general, the books of RV level I (RV 4-6) are thoroughly South Asian and have reference to local climate, trees and animals. We therefore have to take them seriously at their word, and cannot claim that they belong just to Afghanistan.”

WITZEL 2000: The Languages of Harappa. Witzel, Michael. Feb. 17, 2000. (WITZEL 2000a:§13). Quoted in Talageri, S. G. (2010). The Rigveda and the Avesta. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

“The river Yavyavati is mentioned once in the RV; it has been identified with the Zhob in E. Afghanistan. At PB 25.7.2, however, nothing points to such a W. localisation. The persons connected with it are known to have stayed in the Vibhinduka country, a part of the Kuru-PañcAla land.”

[....] “A dolphin lying on the sands, dried out by the North wind, could refer to the Gangetic dolphin, as in fact it does at 1.17.6...
India and the Ancient World: History, Trade and Culture Before A.D. 650 edited by Gilbert Pollet (Paper by Michael Witzel), Department Oriëntalistiek Leuven, 1987.

“The IAs, as described in the RV, represent something definitely new in the subcontinent […] The obvious conclusion should be that these new elements somehow came from the outside.”

Italics in the original. (WITZEL 2005:343) WITZEL 2005: Indocentrism: autochthonous visions of ancient India. Witzel, Michael. pp.341-404, in “The Indo-Aryan Controversy — Evidence and Inference in Indian history”, ed.Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, Routledge, London & New York, 2005. Quoted in https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-aryan-story-vs-true-aryan-history.html

“Chicken and still later exports from India are absent in common Laurasian ritual.”

Witzel Michael. Origins of the World’s Myths (Oxford University Press 2013) (p.395)

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