The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity.

Coningham, Robin

This volume is the first in a new series, Indian Philology and South Asian Studies, published by Walter de Gruyter of Berlin. Michael Witzel, series editor and contributor to the current volume, states that it aims to provide 'a brief and structured presentation of reliable knowledge in each particular field' (p. viii). He further notes that although the present volume, papers delivered at a conference in Toronto, is an example of how a particular topic - the Indo-Aryans - may fall between a number of disciplines, it 'offers an up-to-date view of the problems confronting the study of the earliest (pre-) and historic period in South Asia' (p. ix). This valuable volume clearly illustrates the latter and demonstrates that archaeologists and philologists are far from agreeing, even within their separate fields, on the relationship between Indo-Aryan languages and South Asian archaeology.

Rather than following the volume's own divisions, it will here be divided into papers which favour a physical, diffusionist model and papers favouring internal dynamics. The former consists of philologists, linguists and archaeologists who hypothesise that the presence of Indo-European languages in South Asia is the result of the movement of Indo-Aryan speaking people during the 2nd millennium BC. It is notable that most of these scholars refute Wheeler's model of a torrent of Aryans (Wheeler 1953), and offer a 'soft aryanisation' through a gradual trickle of people. Norman (no. 12), using dialectic variation in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan, and Southworth (no. 11), using Indo-Aryan and Dravidian interrelations, both present papers based on this principle. Witzel (no. 4), however, comments that the oral 'Vedic texts represent the only contemporary literary sources for most of early Indian History' (p. 85). He also offers a summary of the state of Vedic literature, and furnishes examples of misuse. His critique is useful, but when he accepts the Rigveda as a reliable topographical description many archaeologists will flinch (p. 98). In his second paper, Witzel (no. 14) attempts to demonstrate the historical, geographical and chronological elements which can be gleaned from the Rigveda. Further demonstrations of the misuse of Vedic texts are illustrated by Deshpande (no. 3) with an interesting discussion of identity and bilingualism. This pattern is repeated by Skaervo (no. 6) who, whilst accepting that the Avesta is an historical source, suggests that such texts should only be used with great care as they are not topographical descriptions, but descriptions of 'mythical' homelands that moved and adapted as its believers did (p. 166).

This model also attracts 3 archaeologists. Hiebert (no. 8) outlines the expansion of the archaeological complex known as the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC) into South Asia and suggests that it brought with it new politico-economic structures and languages (p. 201). Further support for this identification is provided by Fairservis (no. 9) and Parpola (no. 15), the latter being one of the strongest proponents for a 2nd-millennium BC movement of Indo-Aryans into the subcontinent (Parpola 1994). He strongly argues that archaeology should serve philology: 'pots and pans alone cannot tell what languages their owners spoke' (p. 363). Peoples, material culture and languages are blended together to provide such statements as 'If the Pit grave culture was still Proto-Indo-European, the Hut Grave and Catacomb Grave culture was probably Proto-Aryan. Afterwards, at the beginning of the second millennium BC, a major eastward expansion took place, which led to the splitting of the tradition into two strands. I would like to equate this archaeological pattern with the division of the Indo-Iranian languages into the principle "Iranian" and "Indo-Aryan" branches' (p. 356).

The latter group consists of those who are loosening the grip of culture-historical approaches on South Asian archaeology. Starting at basics, or rather bones, Kennedy (no. 2) provides a historical summary of the search for the Aryans but, more importantly, states that there is no recognisable phenotype marking past, or present, Indo-European speakers. Erdosy (no. 1) offers a review of the relationship between language, material culture and ethnicity within South Asia and the archaeological evidence for Indo-Iranian speakers and stresses that 'It would be futile to search for languages in material culture' (p. 9). Offering a model in which language change occurs through factors other than demographic replacement, he concludes that many of the archaeological models used by linguists are obsolete, but the relationship between the two disciplines should continue to cross-fertilise (p. 24). Shaffer & Lichtenstein (no. 5) offer a similar model, suggesting that when the 'mature' Harappan was transformed from a single 'regional' focus into a number of 'localised' ones, old social systems and identities were transformed and new ones created, accompanied by the adoption of a new language. They state that the understandings of the internal mechanisms involved are 'unlikely to be achieved without major paradigm changes in South Asian archaeology' (p. 139); perhaps this itself is an example of a 'subdued interpretation'? Kenoyer's paper (no. 10) augurs well for this future change. He demonstrates that Harappan urban craft activities were supported by vast networks linking raw material, manufacturer and consumer. Although these were altered during the shift from the 'regionalisation' or urban era (Shaffer 1991) to the 'localisation' era, this was a time of internal reorganization and expansion rather than a 'dark age' (Shaffer 1993; Coningham 1995). As these changes can be explained by models of internal change and transformation, there is no evidence for migration. Salomon's paper on divisions within Old Indo-Aryan (no. 13) offers a further demonstration of the limitations of socio-linguistic identity: '"Aryan" and "non-Aryan" ethnic groups and cultural features . . . are so inextricably intertwined from the earliest documented period that any attempt to separate them is probably ultimately doomed' (p. 304).

This volume underlines the current conflict surrounding archaeological correlations of the Indo-Aryan languages, both between and within disciplines. The disunity is even stressed in the series' title, where Indian philology sits unhappily with South Asian Studies. This is undoubtedly compounded by the format of a conference volume; there is unnecessary repetition of elementary points whilst other sections are missing - for example, the Aryans and South Asian nationalism, in both historical and modern times; each paper has its own references, and although there is a general index and an index of authors, there is no index of illustrations or general conclusion. The cost of the book also makes it probable that scholars will only photocopy individual papers and probably continue the 'vicious circle in the interpretation of the various materials which still persists in the exchange of opinions and results between archaeologists, linguists, philologists and historians' (p. viii). Finally it should be noted that the papers only consider the Indo-Aryan question of the 2nd millennium BC. The relationship between Indo-Aryan languages, material culture and ethnicity is a complex and on-going process; our understanding of the mechanisms of the adoption of such languages in Sri Lanka in the 4th century BC is developing slowly, despite evidence in the form of scriptural graffiti and oral traditions preserved a few centuries later (Coningham et al. 1996), suggesting that linguists, philologists and archaeologists face a very complex challenge for understanding such changes in prehistoric South Asia!

ROBIN CONINGHAM Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford R.A.E.Coningham@bradford.ac.uk

References

CONINGHAM, R.A.E. 1995. Dark age or continuum? an archaeological analysis of the second emergence of urbanism in South Asia, in F.R. Allchin (ed.), The archaeology of Early Historic South Asia: the emergence of cities and states: 54-72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CONINGHAM, R.A.E., F.R. ALLCHIN, C.M. BATT & D. LUCY. 1996. Passage to India? Anuradhapura and the early use of the Brahmi script, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 6.1: 73-97.

PARPOLA, A. 1994, Deciphering the Indus script. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SHAFFER, J. 1993, Reurbanisation: the eastern Punjab and beyond, in H. Spodek & D.M. Srinivasan (ed.), Urban form and meaning in South Asia: the shaping of cities from prehistoric to colonial times: 53-67. Washington (DC): National Gallery of Art.

WHEELER, R.E.M. 1953, The Indus civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.