Michael Witzel Quotes (13 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Famous Michael Witzel Quotes

“The Indo-Aryan influence, whether due to actual settlement, acculturation, or, if one prefers, the substitution of Indo-Aryan names for local ones, was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river-names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus civilization, where one would have expected the survival of earlier names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England, with the name of the State of Massachussetts next to the Charles River formerly called the Massachussetts River, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc. next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri. The failure to preserve old hydronomes even in the Indus Valley (with a few exceptions noted above) indicates the extent of the social and political collapse experienced by the local population.”

Michael Witzel

p 107
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“Between the arrival of the Aryans … and the formation of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda a much longer period must have elapsed than is normally thought.”

Michael Witzel

Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“This leads to the conclusion that the Indo-Aryan influence, … was powerful enough from early on to replace local names, in spite of the well-known conservatism of river names. This is especially surprising in the area once occupied by the Indus Civilisation where one would have expected the survival of older names, as has been the case in Europe and the Near East. At the least, one would expect a palimpsest, as found in New England with the name of the state of Massachussetts next to the Charles river, formerly called the Massachussetts river, and such new adaptations as Stony Brook, Muddy Creek, Red River, etc., next to the adaptations of Indian names such as the Mississippi and the Missouri.”

Michael Witzel

Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“River names in northern India are thus principally Sanskrit, with few indications of Dravidian, MuNDa or Tibeto-Burmese names. However, Kosala, with its uncharacteristic -s- after -o- may be Tibeto-Burmese (Sanskrit rules would demand KoSala or KoSala, a corrected form that is indeed adopted in the Epics).”

Michael Witzel

... To sum up, what does the evidence of
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“In South Asia, relatively few pre-Indo-Aryan place-names survive in the North; however, many more in central and southern India. Indo-Aryan place-names are generally not very old, since the towns themselves are relatively late.”

Michael Witzel

p 104
Early Indian history: Linguistic and textual parametres

“Other writers in Kazanas’ class, including D. Frawley, K. Elst, and N. S. Rajaram, have already caused significant damage to linguistics, philology, Indology, archaeology, and history…. In the fundamentalist/nationalistic circles from, which Kazanas draws support – despite his pretense of political naivete.”

Michael Witzel

‘Ein Fremdling im Rgveda’ (Journal of Indo-European Studies, Vol. 31, No.1-2: pp.107-185, 2003)

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.”

Michael Witzel

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.”

Michael Witzel

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.”

Michael Witzel

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.

“India possesses, it is true, a class of texts that proclaims to be a history of the subcontinent, the Puranas. ….. Nevertheless, they have been used uncritically, e. g., by some historians such as R. Thapar, and by modern archaeologists as materials to establish their identifications of particular pre-historic cultures.”

Michael Witzel

1990. On Indian Historical Writing. pp. 1-57 in ‘Nihon Minami Ajia Gakkai: Hatsubai Tokyo Daigaku Shuppanaki. Tokyo

“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.”

Michael Witzel

[....] “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.”

Michael Witzel

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.”

Michael Witzel

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