Goethe and the Indo-European religiosity

 

Goethe and the Indo-European religiosity

Hans Friedrich Karl Günther

Posted by Eurocontinentalism Journal 

The greatest ideas of mankind have been conceived in the lands between India and Germania, between Iceland and Benares (where Buddha began to teach) amongst the peoples of Indo-European language; and these ideas have been accompanied by the Indo-European religious attitude which represents the highest attainments of the mature spirit. When in January 1804, in conversation with his colleague, the philologist Riemer, Goethe expressed the view that he found it “remarkable that the whole of Christianity had not brought forth a Sophocles”, his knowledge of comparative religion was restricted by the knowledge of his age, yet he had unerringly chosen as the precursor of an  Indo-European religion the poet Sophocles, “typical of the devout Athenian… in his highest, most inspired form”,⁴¹ a poet who represented the religiosity of the people, before the people (demos) of Athens had degenerated into a mass (ochlos). But where apart from the Indo-European, has the world produced a more devout man with such a great soul as the Athenian, Sophocles?

Where outside the Indo-European domain have religions arisen, which have combined such greatness of soul with such high flights of reason (logos, ratio) and such wide vision (theoria)? Where have religious men achieved the same spiritual heights as Spitama Zarathustra, as the teachers of the Upanishads, as Homer, as Buddha and even as Lucretius Carus, Wilhelm von Humboldt and Shelley?

Goethe wished that Homer’s songs might become our Bible. Even before the discovery of the spiritual heights and power of the pre-Christian Teuton, but especially after Lessing, Winckelmann and Heinrich Voss, the translator of Homer, the Indo-European outlook renewed itself in Germany, recalling a world of the spirit which was perfected by great German poets and thinkers during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Since Goethe’s death (1832), and since the death of Wilhelm von Humboldt (1835), the translator of the devout Indo-European Bhagavad Gita, this Indo-European spirit, which also revealed itself in the pre-Christian Teuton, has vanished.

 Goethe had a premonition of this decline of the West: even in October 1801 he remarked in conversation with the Countess von Egloffstein, that spiritual emptiness and lack of character were spreading — as if he had foreseen what today characterises the most celebrated literature of the Free West. It may be that Goethe had even foreseen, in the distant future, the coming of an age in which writers would make great profits by the portrayal of sex and crime for the masses. As Goethe said to Eckermann, on 14th March 1830, “the representation of noble bearing and action is beginning to be regarded as boring, and efforts are being made to portray all kinds of infamies”. Previously in a letter to Schiller of 9th August 1797, he had pointed out at least one of the causes of the decline: in the larger cities men lived in a constant frenzy of acquisition and consumption and had therefore become incapable of the very mood from which spiritual life arises. Even then he was tortured and made anxious, although he could observe only the beginnings of the trend, the sight of the machine system gaining the upper hand; he foresaw that it would come and strike (Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Third Book, Chapter 15, Cotta’s Jubilee edition, Vol. XX, p. 190). In a letter to his old friend Zelter, on 6th June 1825, he pronounced it as his view that the educated world remained rooted in mediocrity, and that a century had begun “for competent heads, for practical men with an easy grasp of things, who [...] felt their superiority above the crowd, even if they themselves are not talented enough for the highest achievements”; pure simplicity was no longer to be found, although there was a sufficiency of simple stuff; young men would be excited too early and then torn away by the vortex of the time. Therefore Goethe exhorted youth in his poem Legacy of the year 1829:

In increasing degree since approximately the middle of the nineteenth century poets and writers as well as journalists — the descendants of the “competent heads” by whom Goethe was alarmed even in the year 1801 — have made a virtue out of necessity by representing characterlessness as a fact. With Thomas Mann this heartless characterlessness first gained world renown. Mann used his talent to conceal his spiritual desolation by artifices which have been proclaimed by contemporary admirers as insurpassable. But the talent of the writers emulating Thomas Mann no longer sufficed even to conceal their spiritual emptiness, although many of their readers, themselves spiritually impoverished, have not noticed this.

The freedom of the Press, which was introduced through the constitution of May 1816 into the Duchy of Weimar and which had already been demanded by Wieland with his superficial judgment would, Goethe declared, do nothing more than give free rein to authors with a deep contempt of public opinion (Zahme Xenien, Goethes Sämtliche Werke, Cotta’s Jubilee edition, Vol. IV, p. 47; Annalen (Annals) 1816, same edition, Vol. XXX, p. 298). In the Annalen of 1816, he remarked that every right-thinking man of learning in the world foresaw the direct and incalculable consequences of this act with fright and regret. Thus even in his time, Goethe must have reflected how little the men of the Press, were capable of combining freedom with human dignity.

When the descendants of the competent heads of the beginning of the nineteenth century rose, through their talents, to the upper classes, where due to a lower birthrate their families finally died out, the eliminating process of social climbing in Europe seized hold of less capable heads and bore them away into the vortex of the time. Their culture has been described most mercilessly by Friedrich Nietzsche in his lectures of the year 1871-72: Concerning the Future of Our Educational Institutions (Pocket edition, Vol. I, 1906, pp. 314, 332-333, 396). Nietzsche above all concentrated on famous contemporary writers, “the hasty and vain production, the despicable manufacturing of books, the perfected lack of style, the shapelessness and characterlessness or the lamentable dilution of their expressions, the loss of every aesthetic canon, the lust for anarchy and chaos” — which he described as if he had actually seen the most celebrated literature of the Free West, whose known authors no longer mastered their own languages even to the extent still demanded by popular school teachers around 1900. These vociferous heralds of the need for culture in an era of general education were rejected by Nietzsche who in this displayed true Indo – European views – as fanatical opponents of the true culture, which holds firm to the aristocratic nature of the spirit. If Nietzsche described the task of the West as to find the culture appropriate to Beethoven, then the serious observer today will recognise only too well the situation which Nietzsche foresaw and described as a laughing stock and a thing of shame.

In the year 1797, Friedrich Schiller composed a poem: Deutsche Grösse. Full of confidence in the German spirit he expressed the view that defeat in war by stronger foes could not touch German dignity which was a great moral force. The precious possession of the German language would also be preserved. Schiller (Das Siegesfest) certainly knew what peoples had to expect of war:

 

For Patrocles lies buried
and Thersites mes back;

 

but he must have imagined that the losses of the best in the fight could be replaced. The dying out of families of dignity and moral stature (megalopsychia and magnanimitas), had then not yet begun in Europe.

In the year 1929, just a decade after the First World War had ended, that Peloponnesian war of the Teutonic peoples, which caused both in England and in Germany excessively heavy losses of gifted young men, of officers and aristocrats, Oskar Walzel (Die Geistesströmungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, 1929, p. 43), Professor of German literature at the university of Bonn, gave it as his opinion that after this war the trend to de-spiritualise Germany had gained ground far more rapidly than hitherto: “Is there in German history in general such an identical want of depth in men to be observed as at present?” But for the Germans it is poor consolation that this “de-spiritualising” is just as marked in other Western countries. Another sign of this trend is that today many famous writers are no longer capable of preserving the precious possession of the German language. Other Western languages are also neglecting their form and literature, but this again is poor consolation for the Germans. Such neglect is considered by many writers today as characteristic of, and part of the process of gaining their freedom and liberation from all traditional outlooks. Goethe criticised this as a false idea of freedom (Maxims and Reflections, Goethes Sämtliche Werke, Cottas Jubiläumsausgabe, Vol. IV, p. 229) in the following words:

“Everything which liberates our spirit, without increasing our mastery of ourselves, is pernicious.”

Thus, by freedom Goethe also understood the dignity of the freeborn, not the nature and mode of life of the freed slave.

From The Religious Attitudes of The Indo-Europeans, London 1967. Translated by Vivian Bird.

L'importance des études indo-européennes par Jean Haudry

L'importance des études indo-européennes par Jean Haudry

La notion de tradition indo-européenne par Jean Haudry

La notion de tradition indo-européenne par Jean Haudry

Nos ancêtres à la conquête de la Méditerranée, il y a 130.000 ans

Nos ancêtres à la conquête de la Méditerranée, il y a 130.000 ans

Ex: http://tpprovence.wordpress.com/

Une découverte archéologique au sud de la Crète bouleverse l’histoire de la conquête des mers et des peuplements des îles méditerranéennes. La nouvelle, annoncée à l’origine par Hesperia

, bulletin de l’Ecole américaine d’archéologie d’Athènes, a été saluée par le magazine Archeology comme l’un des dix événements de l’année 2010.

 

 

3 janvier 2011. Le ministère grec de la culture annonce que des recherches archéologiques menées en Crète, dans le sud de la Grèce, ont livré la première preuve au monde que les ancêtres de l’homme prirent la mer il y a plus de 130 000 mille ans. A l’issue de deux ans de fouilles autour de la localité de Plakias, dans le sud de l’île de Crète, une équipe gréco-américaine a mis au jour des pierres taillées paléolithiques, remontant à 130 000 ans au moins. Ces trouvailles, qui attestent pour la première fois d’une installation d’hominidés sur l’île avant le néolithique (7000 – 3000 avant notre ère), apportent aussi « la plus ancienne preuve de navigation au monde », précise encore le communiqué officiel. Les outils, des « haches », ont été trouvés près de vestiges de « plate-formes marines remontant à au moins 130 000 ans, ce qui apporte la preuve de voyages marins en Méditerranée des dizaines de milliers d’années plus tôt que ce que nos connaissances établissaient jusque là » relève le ministère. Et de conclure : ces découvertes, faites près de la très touristique plage de Prévéli, « modifient aussi l’estimation des capacités cognitives des premières espèces humaines », les outils retrouvés renvoyant à des populations d’ « Homo erectus et Homo heidelbergensis ».

La découverte d’outils de pierre taillée

Cette formidable aventure scientifique commence sur la côte sud de la Crète, près du site de Plakias, où existe aujourd’hui une station balnéaire dont la baie, très ventée, attire – clin d’œil de l’histoire – de nombreux véliplanchistes. On trouve là de hauts reliefs de calcaire forgés par la tectonique des plaques, des terrasses laissées par la baisse du niveau de la mer qu’elles surplombent d’une centaine de mètres, des grottes et des abris rocheux. Ce n’est pas par hasard si l’Américain Thomas Strasser, professeur au Providence College de Rhode Island, aux Etats-Unis, et la Grecque Eleni Panagopoulou, de la direction de la paléoanthropologie et de la spéléologie de la Grèce du sud, ont engagé des fouilles précisément à cet endroit. L’équipe a été guidée par des critères simples, comme la présence d’eau potable et de cavités habitables, critères qui ont déjà permis de localiser des implantations préhistoriques en Grèce continentale.

La baie de Plakias

Au cours de campagnes de fouilles réalisées en 2008 et 2009, les chercheurs découvrent un véritable trésor. Plus de 2000 pierres taillées, façonnées dans du quartz blanc, du quartzite et du chert – une roche siliceuse – dont la taille varie de vingt centimètres pour les plus grands, à moins de un centimètre pour les plus petits éclats. On y trouve des bifaces, des hachereaux, des racloirs, des grattoirs, des perforateurs, des burins. « Notre première réaction a été l’incrédulité, a déclaré Eleni Panagopoulou. Nous étions tout à la fois heureux, stupéfaits et troublés. Puis nous avons dû nous rendre à l’évidence. Car ces outils sont très caractéristiques ».

Restes de haches retrouvés sur le site

L’œuvre d’Homo erectus ou d’Homo sapiens ?

Les pièces mises à jour sont impossibles à dater directement. Mais les couches sédimentaires et les terrasses marines où ils ont été retrouvés laissent présager deux vagues de peuplement. La plus récente, au début de l’holocène, voilà 9000 à 11000 ans, et la plus ancienne au pléistocène, il y a 130 000 ans au moins. Cette phase d’occupation, pense la chercheuse grecque, a même sans doute été « beaucoup plus précoce ». Pascal Depaepe, directeur scientifique de l’INRAP (1) et spécialiste du paléolithique, qui a examiné la facture plutôt grossière de ces vestiges, pense, lui, que les plus anciens pourraient avoir en réalité plusieurs centaines de milliers d’années. Toutefois, précise-t-il, « pour les dater avec certitude, il faudrait pouvoir les associer à des ossements humains qui font défaut ».

Un biface qui daterait de plus de 130 000 ans !

Cette découverte extraordinaire pose bien des questions. Premier mystère : quels représentants du genre humain en furent les artisans ? Si les plus vieux objets lithiques remontent « seulement » à 130 000 ans, ils pourraient bien avoir été façonnés par des néandertaliens ou des hommes modernes, les Homo sapiens. Certes, si l’on en croit la doxa imposée par la science officielle, ceux-ci sont censés n’avoir quitté leur supposé berceau est-africain, où ils seraient nés voici 200 000 ans, il n’y a qu’environ 60 000 ans, pour « conquérir » l’Asie et l’Europe. Dogme quasi religieux, remis en question par nombre de découvertes, ainsi par exemple, ces dents datant de 400 000 ans, trouvées récemment par des chercheurs israéliens, qui auraient appartenu à des Sapiens archaïques. Si, en revanche, les outils ont plusieurs centaines de milliers d’années, ils seraient alors l’œuvre de très anciens cousins, Homo erectus ou Homo heidelbergensis…

Les premiers navigateurs !

Un second mystère, plus insondable encore, se pose aux scientifiques. Effectivement, la Crète est séparée du continent depuis plus de cinq millions d’années, sans qu’aucune glaciation ou baisse de niveau n’aient jamais permis de la rejoindre à pied. Les tailleurs de pierre du pléistocène y sont donc obligatoirement arrivés sur une embarcation. Il suffit de lire une carte pour mesurer l’exploit accompli. Même en imaginant des eaux plus basses d’une centaine de mètres, comme lors du dernier maximum glaciaire, il y a 21 000 ans, la bathymétrie (2) montre qu’il leur a fallu parcourir plusieurs dizaines de kilomètres en haute mer, en partant soit de la Grèce continentale, soit de la Turquie, en tenant compte d’éventuelles escales sur les îles de Cythère et d’Anticythère dans le premier cas, de Karpathos et de Kasos dans le second. Depuis la côte libyenne, ils auraient dû voguer sur 200 km, ce qui rend cette troisième hypothèse peu probable.

Le plus vraisemblable, suppose le linguiste Christophe Coupé (3), qui travaille sur les liens entre langue et navigation, est que les premiers marins hauturiers furent « des peuples familiers de la mer, habitués à voyager le long des rivages », qui se sont ensuite enhardis et aventurés plus loin. Evacuons le scénario selon lequel quelques naufragés, emportés par les courants, auraient échoué à Plakias. « Le très grand nombre d’outils trouvés, comme le seuil de population nécessaire à sa survie et à sa reproduction, laisse penser que la colonie devait compter au moins une cinquantaine d’individus » évalue Eleni Panagopoulou. Et qu’il y a donc eu, sans doute, « plusieurs voyages ».

Jusqu’à présent, les paléoanthropologues tenaient pour établi que les premières implantations humaines sur les îles méditérranéennes (Sicile, Sardaigne, Corse) remontaient à une période plus récente. Les colons de Plakias font reculer de plus de cent mille ans, et probablement bien davantage, les débuts de la navigation en Méditerranée, devançant largement les Sapiens qui, il y a 60 000 ans, accostèrent en Australie, où leur présence est attestée par des outils de pierre, mais également des ossements et un bouleversement de l’écosystème fatal à de gros marsupiaux. Ils restent cependant battus par les premiers occupants de l’île de Florès, en Indonésie, où a été mis au jour un outillage lithique datant, lui, de 700 000 à 800 000 ans. Mais le chapelet formé par les îles indonésiennes permettait, lors des pics glaciaires, de passer de l’une à l’autre en franchissant des bras de mer d’une dizaine de kilomètres au maximum.

Pour les professeurs Strasser et Panagopoulou, ces fouilles jettent une nouvelle lumière sur l’histoire « de la colonisation de l’Europe par des hominidés venus d’Afrique ». Dans un article publié par Hesperia, ils écrivent : « L’approche d’un peuplement de l’Europe seulement par la terre doit clairement être repensée (…) il y a peut-être eu des routes maritimes empruntées par des navigateurs sur de longues distances ». Par contre, ils relèvent ne pas pouvoir, en l’état, déterminer d’où venaient les navigateurs paléolithiques de Crète, « une origine africaine ou proche-orientale étant aussi probable qu’une provenance d’Anatolie ou de Grèce continentale ». Encore un effort, Messieurs les chercheurs, pour vous affranchir du dogme de l’out of Africa, et conclure qu’une provenance d’Anatolie ou de Grèce continentale est aussi probable qu’une origine africaine ou proche-orientale !

Jean-François Vilhet, Hyperborée, automne-hiver 2011, n°12.

Notes

(1) Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives.

(2) Mesure des profondeurs marines.

(3) Chargé de recherche au Laboratoire dynamique du langage, CNRS-Université de Lyon.

Références :

Thomas Strasser, Eleni Panagopoulou, Curtis Runnels, Priscilla Murray, Nicholas Thompson, Panayiotis Karkanas, Floyd McCoy, et Karl Wegmann, « Stone Age Seafaring in the Mediterranean: Evidence from the Plakias Region for Lower Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Habitation of Crete », Hesperia, 79.2, pp. 145-190.

The genesis of India according to Bernard Sergent

 

The Genesis of India Acording to Bernard Sergent

A review

Dr. Koenraad ELST

Ex: http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/sergent.html/

1. A remarkable book

The debate concerning the theory of an Aryan invasion in India has taken off at last. In spite of the mutual deafness of the pro- and anti-invasionist schools, the increasing awareness of a challenge has led prominent scholars groomed in the invasionist view to collect, for the first time in their careers, actual arguments in favour of the Aryan Invasion Theory. As yet this is never in the form of a pointwise rebuttal of an existing anti-invasionist argumentation, a head-on approach so far exclusively adopted by one or two non-invasionists.

Nonetheless, some recent contributions to the archaeological and physical-anthropological aspects of the controversy pose a fresh challenge to the (by now often over-confident) noninvasionist school.

An extremely important new synthesis of various types of data is provided by Dr. Bernard Sergent in his book Genèse de l'Inde (Genesis of India), as yet only available in French (Payot, Paris 1997). The book comes as a sequel to his equally important book Les Indo-Européens (Payot 1995). Sergent is a Ph.D. in Archaeology with additional degrees in Physical Anthropology and in History, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and chairman of the French Society for Mythology.

One of Sergent's objectives is to counter the rising tide of skepticism against the AIT with archaeological and other proof. In particular, he proposes a precise identification of a particular Harappan-age but non-Harappan culture with the Indo-Aryans poised to invade India: the Bactrian Bronze Age culture of ca. 2500-2000 BC. At the same time, he is quite scornful of AIT critics and neglects to take their arguments apart, which means that he effectively leaves them standing. He dismisses the non-invasion theory in one sentence plus footnote as simply unbelievable and as the effect of nationalistic blindness for the shattering evidence provided by linguistics (Genèse de l'Inde, p.370 and p.477 n.485).

Nonetheless, it is important to note that, unlike Indian Marxists, he does not show any contempt for Hinduism or for the idea of India. Most people who analyze Indian culture into different contributions by peoples with divergent origins do so with the implicit or explicit message that "there is no such thing as Indian or Hindu culture, there is only a composite of divergent cultures, each of which should break free and destroy the dominant Brahminical system which propagates the false notion of a single all-Indian culture". Sergent, by contrast, admits that the ethnically different contributions have merged into an admirable synthesis, e.g.: "One of the paradoxes of India is its astonishing linguistic diversity compared with its cultural unity." (p.9) Rather than denying the idea of India, he strongly sympathizes with it: though a construct of history, India is a cultural reality.

2. Evidence provided by physical anthropology

Bernard Sergent treads sensitive ground in discussing the evidence furnished by physical anthropology. Though not identifying language with race, he maintains that in many cases, a certain correlation between language and genes may nonetheless be discernible, as explained earlier by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and other leading population geneticists. The underlying logic is simple: people who speak a common language do so by living together as a community, and as such, they will also intermarry and pass on their genes along with their language and culture to their children. Yet, to say that there was an original Proto-Indo-European (PIE) community whose language got diversified into the existing IE languages, and whose "heirs" we IE-speakers are, is already enough to attract suspicions of Nazi fantasies, even in the case of so authoritative and objective a scholar as Bernard Sergent.

Indeed, oblique aspersions have been cast on Sergent by Jean-Paul Demoule ("Les Indo-Européens, un mythe sur mesure", La Recherche, April 1998, p.41), who uses the familiar and simple technique of juxtaposition, i.c. with the term "mother race", used off-hand by Emmanuel Leroy-Ladurie in a review of Sergent's book Les Indo-Européens. Demoule's explicit thesis is that "not one scientific fact allows support for the hypothesis of an original [PIE-speaking] people". In fact, there are no known languages which are not spoken by a living community or a "people", either in the past (e.g. Latin) or in the present. Plain common sense requires that the PIE dialects were also spoken by some such "people". If postmodernists like Demoule want to deny to the hypothetical PIE language the necessary hypothesis that it was used by a community of speakers, it is up to them to provide an alternative hypothesis plus the "scientific facts" supporting it.

A related political inhibition obstructing the progress of research in IE studies is the post1945 mistrust of migratory models as explanations of the spread of technologies, cultures or indeed languages. Sergent goes against the dominant tendency by insisting that the IE language family has spread by means of migrations (p.153-156, criticizing non-migrationist hypotheses by Jean-François Jarrige and Jim Shaffer). Prior to the telegraph and the modern electronic media, a language could indeed only be spread by being physically taken from one place to the next. In the case of India, while we need not concede Sergent's specific assumption of an Aryan immigration, it is obvious that migrations have been a key factor in the present distribution of languages. One scholar who still agrees with Dr. Sergent's commonsense position is Dr. Robert Zydenbos ("An obscurantist argument", Indian Express, 12-12-1993): "And it should be clear that languages do not migrate by themselves: people migrate, and bring languages with them."

As Sergent points out, the historical period in India has witnessed well-recorded invasions by the Greeks, Huns, Scythians, Kushanas, Arabs, Turks, Afghans and Europeans.

So, there is no need to be shy about surmising the existence and the linguistic impact of migrations, including violent ones, in the proto-historical period. It so happens that migrations may leave traces in the physical-anthropological "record" of a population, thus adding modern genetics to the sciences which can be employed in reconstructing ancient history.

Sergent claims that the oldest Homo Sapiens Sapiens racial type of India, now largely submerged by interbreeding with immigrant Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and IE populations, is the one preserved in the Vedda and Rodiya tribes of Sri Lanka. While the purely black skin is associated (by Sergent) with the population which "brought" the Dravidian languages, the Veddoid traits are found to an extent among tribal populations in south India and as far north as the Bhils and the Gonds. Perhaps Nahali is the last remnant of the lost language of this ancient layer of the Indian population, for all the said tribes including the Veddas now speak the languages of their non-tribal neighbours. (p.38)

Sergent questions the neat division of the South-Asian population into "Mediterranean", "Melano-Indian" (black-skinned, associated with the Dravidian languages) and "Veddoid" or "Australoid", introduced by British colonial anthropologists: "the Vedda, the Melano-Indians and the Indus people and the actual inhabitants of the northern half of India, which classical anthropology used to class as Mediterraneans, all belong to one same human 'current' of which they manifest the successive 'waves'. Everything indicates, physical traits as well as geographical distribution, that the Vedda have arrived first, followed by the Melano-Indians, and then the Indus people." (p.43) Note that he does not mention "Aryans" as a distinct type separate from and arriving after the "Indus people". Indeed, he joins the list of anthropologists who acknowledge the absence of a genetic discontinuity at the end of the Harappan age marking the Aryan invasion.

Sergent rejects the classical view that populations having traits halfway between the typical Veddoid and Mediterranean traits must be considered "mixed". Instead, rather than assuming discrete racial types subsequently subject to miscegenation, he posits a racial continuum, corresponding with the continuum of migrations from northeastern Africa via West Asia to South Asia. The Dravidian-speakers largely coincide with a racial type called "Melano-Indian", which is very dark-skinned but in all other respects similar not to the Melano-Africans but to the Mediterranean variety of the white race, e.g. wavy hair, a near-vertical forehead, a thinner nose. Sergent thinks they arrived in Mehrgarh well before the beginning of the Neolithic, in ca. 8,000 BC, and that they were subsequently replaced or absorbed by the real Harappans, who belonged to the "Indo-Afghan" type. (p.50)

At this point, it is customary to point to the Dravidian Brahui speakers of Baluchistan (living in the vicinity of Mehrgarh) as a remnant of the Dravidian Harappans. However, Sergent proposes that the Brahui speakers, far from being a native remnant of a pre-Harappan population of Baluchistan, only immigrated into Baluchistan from inner India in the early Muslim period. Given that Baluchi, a West-Iranian language, only established itself in Baluchistan in the 13th century ("for 2000 years, India has been retreating before Iran", p.29; indeed, both Baluchistan, including the Brahminical place of pilgrimage Hinglaj, and the Northwest Frontier Province, homeland of Panini, were partly Indo-Aryan-speaking before Baluchi and Pashtu moved in), and that the only Indo-Iranian loans in Brahui are from Baluchi and not from Pehlevi or Sindhi, Sergent deduces that Brahui was imported into its present habitat only that late. (p.130) We'll have to leave that as just a proposal for now: a Central-Indian Dravidian population migrated to Baluchistan in perhaps the 14th century.

The Harappan civilization "prolongs the ancient Neolithic of Baluchistan [viz. Mehrgarh], whose physical type is West-Asian, notably the type called (because of its contemporary location) Indo-Afghan". (p.50) This suggests that the "Indo-Afghan" type was located elsewhere before the beginning of the Neolithic in Mehrgarh, viz. in West Asia. If so, this means that the last great wave of immigrants (as opposed to smaller waves like the Scythian or the Turco-Afghan or the English which did not deeply alter the average genetic type of the Indian population) took place thousands of years before the supposed Aryan invasion. And the latter, bringing Aryans of the Indo-Afghan type into an India already populated with Harappans of the Indo-Afghan type, happens to be untraceable in the physical-anthropo-logical data.

No new blood type or skull type or skin colour marks the period when the Aryans are supposed to have invaded India. So, one potentially decisive proof of the Aryan invasion is conspicuously missing. Indeed, the physical-anthropological record is now confidently used by opponents of the AIT as proof of the continuity between the Harappan and the post-Harappan societies in northwestern India.

3. The archaeological evidence

3.1. Tracing the Aryan migrants

Though the question of Aryan origins was much disputed in the 19th century, the Aryan invasion theory has been so solidly dominant in the 20th century that attempts to prove it have been extremely rare in recent decades (why prove the obvious?), until the debate flared up again in India after 1990. In his attempt to prove the Aryan invasion, Bernard Sergent uses the archaeological record, which, paradoxically, is invoked with equal confidence by the noninvasionist school (e.g. B.B. Lal: New Light on the Indus Civilization, Aryan Books, Delhi 1997).

The crux of the matter is: can archaeologists trace a population migrating through Central Asia and settling down in India? There seems to be new hope to pin down this elusive band of migrants: "Today, thanks to the extremely rich findings in Central Asia in the past twenty years, the discovery of the 'pre-Indian Indians' has become possible." (p.33) Sergent has tried to identify a crucial stage in this itinerary: the 3rd-millennium Bactrian culture as the base from which the Indo-Aryans invaded India.

Bactria, the basin of the Amu Darya or Oxus river, now northern Afghanistan plus southeastern Uzbekistan, is historically the heartland of Iranian culture. In an Indian Urheimat scenario, the Iranians left India before the heyday of the Harappan cities. The next waystation, where they developed their own distinct culture, was Bactria, where Zarathushtra lived (in the city of Balkh). In that framework, it is entirely logical that a separate culture has been discovered in Bactria and dated to the late 3rd millennium BC. However, Bernard Sergent identifies this Bronze Age culture of Bactria, "one of the most briliant civilizations of Asia" (p.157), as that of the Indo-Aryans poised to invade India.

Though not figuring much in the development of his own theory, evidence for similarities in material culture between Harappa and Bactria is acknowledged by Bernard Sergent, e.g. ceramics resembling those found in Chanhu-Daro. This Harappan influence on the Bactrian culture proper is distinct from the existence of six fully Harappan colonies in Afghanistan, most importantly Shortugai in Bactria, "a settlement completely Harappan in character on a tributary of the Amu Darya (...) on the foot of the ore-rich Badakshan range (...) with lapis lazuli, gold, silver, copper and lead ores. Not one of the standard characteristics of the Harappan cultural complex is missing from it." (Maurizio Tosi: "De Indusbeschaving voorbij de grenzen van het Indisch subcontinent", in UNESCO exhibition book Oude Culturen in Pakistan, Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis, Brussels 1989, p.133)

Logically, the close coexistence of Harappan colonies and Bactrian settlements was a conduit for mutual influence but also a source of friction and conflict. Indian-Iranian conflict has been a constant from the Bronze Age (replacement of Harappan with Bactrian culture in Shortugai ca. 1800 BC, Genèse de l'Inde, p.180) through Pehlevi, Shaka and Afghan invasions in India until Nadir Shah's sack of Delhi in the 18th century. Any Bactrian-Harappan antagonism would fit this pattern of hostility between Indo-Aryans and Iranians. Sergent's first job is to disprove the Iranian and prove the Indo-Aryan character of the Bactrian culture; the second is to show a Bactrian immigration in late- or post-Harappan India and a subsequent overwhelming Bactrian cultural impact on Indian society.

Sergent cites Akhmadali A. Askarov's conclusion that the Harappan-Bactrian similarities are due to "influence of northwestern India on Bactria by means of a migration of Indus people to Central Asia after the end of their civilization". (p.224, with reference to A.A. Askarov: "Traditions et innovations dans la culture du nord de la Bactriane à l'âge du bronze",Colloque Archéologie, CNRS, Paris 1985, p.119-124) The acknowledgment of a Harappa-to-Bactria movement is well taken, but this poses a chronological problem, for the Bactrian culture was not subsequent to but contemporaneous with Harappan culture. Sergent solves the problem by pointing out that Askarov and other Soviet scholars who first dug up the sites in Margiana (eastern Turkmenistan) and Bactria, used an obsolete form of C-14 Carbon dating, and that newer methods have pushed the chronology of these sites back by centuries, making Bactrian culture contemporaneous with Harappa. (p.160)

For Sergent, this chronological correction is essential: if the Bactrian culture was that of the Indo-Aryans who brought down the Indus civilization, it is necessary that they lived there before the end of the latter. But this synchronism is equally compatible with a dim pre-Harappan kinship between the Bactrian and Harappan cultures, which were different yet partly similar, a similarity which Askarov and Sergent attribute to Harappa-to-Bactria influence (which must inevitably have existed), but which may also owe something to a common origin.

Sergent then mentions a number of similarities in material culture between the Bactrian culture and some cultures in Central Asia and in Iran proper, e.g. ceramics like those of Namazga-V (southern Turkmenistan). Some of these were loans from Elam which were being transmitted from one Iranian (in his reconstruction, Indo-Iranian) settlement to the next, e.g. the so-called "Luristan bronzes", Luristan being a Southwest-Iranian region where Elamite culture was located. Some were loans from the "neighbouring and older" (p.158) culture of Margiana: does this not indicate an east-to-west gradient for the Indo-Iranians?

Well, one effect of Sergent's chronological correction is that what seem to be influences from elsewhere on Bactrian culture, may have to be reversed: "From that point onwards, the direction of exchanges and influences gets partly reversed: a number of similarities can just as well be explained by an influence of Bactria on another region as one of another on Bactria." (p.160) Note that this fits the Iranian east-to-west expansion implicit in the Avestic data and in the first chapter of the Zoroastrian Vendidad, which puts Afghanistan in the centre of the Iranian world, with the Caspian region hardly on the horizon yet. So, even for the relation between the Bactrian culture and its neighbours, the proper northwest-to-southeast direction required by the AIT has not been demonstrated, let alone a movement all the way from the northern Caspian region to India. And if there was transmission from other cultures to Bactria (as of course there was), this does not prove that the Bactrians were colonists originating in these other cultures; they may simply have practised commerce. Conversely, if they were colonists from elsewhere, they may have been colonists originating in pre-Harappan India.

At any rate, all the sites related in material culture to the prototypical Bactrian settlement of Dashli are in present-day Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan or Iran proper, without exception regions which were Iranian at the time they made their appearance in written history, mostly in the last millennium BC. While migrations are obviously possible, this Iranian bias says something about the burden of proof. It is entirely reasonable to accept as a starting hypothesis that the Dashli settlement, like its sister settlements, was Iranian. Those who insist it was something else, should accept the burden of proving that Dashli was Indo-Aryan, that migrations took place in which the Indo-Aryans there made way for Iranians.

3.3. Bactria vs. Harappa

A new insight based on archaeology and detrimental to the stereotypical Harap-pan/Aryan opposition, is that the Harappans were not matriarchal pacifists after all, that they did have weapons and fortifications, "just like" the Aryans (see e.g. Shereen Ratnagar: Enquiries into the Political Organization of Harappan Society, Ravish Publ., Pune 1991; note that Prof. Ratnagar is a virulent critic of all Indocentric revisions of the Aryan question, as in her article "Revisionist at work: a chauvinistic inversion of the Aryan invasion theory", Frontline, 9-2-1996, an attack on Prof. N.S. Rajaram). Yet, Sergent insists that the old picture still holds good: relatively unarmed mercantile Harappans versus heavily armed Aryans preparing their invasion in Bactria. The Bactrian settlements abound in metal weaponry, and this does present a contrast with the relative paucity of weapons in Harappa. The latter was a well-ordered mercantile society, Bactria a frontier society.

This contrast actually reminds us of a contrast between Iranian and Indian in the historical period. In pre-Alexandrine Iranian royal inscriptions, we come across truly shameless expressions of pride in bloody victories, even defiantly detailing the cruel treatment meted out to the defeated kings. By contrast, in Ashoka's inscriptions, we find apologies for the bloody Kalinga war and a call for establishing peace and order. Far from being a purely Buddhist reaction against prevalent Hindu martial customs, Ashoka's relative pacifism presents a personal variation within a broader and more ancient tradition of Ahimsa, nonviolence, best expressed in some sections of the Mahabharata. Though this epic (and most explicitly its section known as the Bhagavad Gita) rejects the extremist non-violence propagated by Mahatma Gandhi and also by the wavering Arjuna before the decisive battle, Krishna's exhortation to fight comes only after every peaceful means of appeasing or reconciling the enemy has been tried, whence the Hindu dictum Ahimsa paramo dharma, "non-violence is the highest religious duty".

True, the Vedas seem to be inspired by the same martial spirit of the Iranian inscriptions, but in the Indocentric chronology, they predate the high tide of Harappan civilization, belonging to a pre-Harappan period of conquest, viz. the conquest of the northwest by the Yamuna/Saraswati-based Puru tribe. Their westward conquest was connected with a larger westward movement which included the Iranian conquest of Central Asia (later continued into the Caspian area and West Asia). By way of hypothesis, I propose that Ahimsa was a largely post-Vedic development, and that the Iranians (who had a taste of it through Zarathushtra's strictures against animal sacrifice and the like) missed its more radical phase, sticking instead to the more uncivilized glorification of victory by means of force. This would concur with the finding of a more military orientation of Bactrian culture as compared with the post-Vedic Harappan culture.

3.4. The Bactrian tripura

In the principal Bactrian site of Dashli, a circular building with three concentric walls has been found. The building was divided into a number of rooms and inside, three fireplaces on platforms were discovered along with the charred remains of sacrificed animals. In this building, its Soviet excavator Viktor Sarianidi recognized an Iranian temple, but Sergent explains why he disagrees with him. (p.161) He argues that the Vedic Aryans were as much fire-worshippers as the Iranians, and that they sacrificed animals just like the early Iranians did (prior to the establishment of Zarathushtra's reforms, and even later, cfr. the bull sacrifice in the Roman-age Mithras cult), so that the excavated fire altars could be either Indo-Aryan or Iranian.

Of course, India and Iran have a large common heritage, and many religious practices, mythical motifs and other cultural items in both were the same or closely similar. But that truism will not do to satisfy Sergent's purpose, which is to show that the Bactrian culture was not generally Indo-Iranian, and definitely not Iranian, but specifically Indo-Aryan. There is nothing decisively un-Iranian about the Dashli fire altars, and I think Sarianidi's identification of Dashli as Iranian remains undisproven.

In fact, there may well be something un-Indic and specifically Iranian about it. First of all, roundness in buildings is highly unusual in Hindu culture, which has a strong preference for square plans (even vertically, as in windows, where rectangular shapes are preferred over arches), in evidence already in the Harappan cities. Moreover, Sergent notes the similarity with a fire temple found in Togolok, Margiana. The Togolok fire altar has gained fame by yielding traces of a plant used in the Soma (Iranian: Haoma) sacrifice: laboratory analysis in Moscow showed this to be Ephedra, a stimulant still used in ephedrine and derivative products.

Asko Parpola has tried to identify the Togolok temple as Indo-Iranian and possibly proto-Vedic, citing the Soma sacrifice there as evidence: the Rg-Vedic people reproached their Dasa (Iranian) enemies for not performing rituals including the Soma ritual, so Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", in Studia Orientalia, vol.64, Helsinki 1988, p.195-265) identifies the former with the "Haumavarga Shakas" or Soma-using Scythians mentioned in Zoroastrian texts. However, every testimony we have of the Scythians, including the Haumavarga ones in whose sites traces of the Soma ceremony have been found, is as an Iranian-speaking people. It is possible that the sedentary Iranians included all nomads in their term Shaka, even the hypothetical Vedic-Aryan nomads on their way to India, but it is not more than just possible. The use of Soma was a bone of contention within Mazdeism, with Zarathushtra apparently opposing it against its adepts who were equally Iranian. There is nothing against characterizing the Togolok fire temple as Iranian.

And even if Thomas Burrow ("The Proto-Indoaryans", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1973, cited with approval by Sergent: Genèse de l'Inde, p.232) were right with his thesis that the Mazdean religion originated in a sustained reaction against the Indo-Aryans present in Bactria and throughout the Iranian speech area, making the non-Zoroastrian faction in Greater Iran an Indo-Aryan foreign resident group, it remains to be proven that these dissident Indo-Aryans made way for Zoroastrian hegemony in Iran by moving out, and more specifically by moving to India, somewhat like Moses taking the Israelites out of Egypt. There is neither scriptural nor archaeological evidence for such a scenario: the normal course of events would be assimilation by the dominant group, and the only emigration from Iranian territory (if it had already been iranianized) by Indo-Aryans that we know of, is the movement of the Mitannic Indo-Aryans from the southern Caspian area into Mesopotamia and even as far as Palestine.

In the Dashli building, Asko Parpola recognized a tripura such as have been described in the Vedic literature as the strongholds with three circular concentric walls of the Dasas or Asuras (Asura/Ahura worshippers), whom Parpola himself has identified elsewhere as Iranians ("The coming of the Aryans", Studia Orientalia, vol.64, p.212-215, with reference to Shatapatha Brahmana 6:3:3:24-25; and: "The problem of the Aryans and the Soma", in G. Erdosy ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.368 ff.). So, chances are once more that the Soma-holding fire-altars, like the tripura structures around them, in both Togolok and Dashli, were Iranian. Parpola (in Erdosy, ibid.) makes this conclusion even more compelling when he informs us that a similar building in Kutlug-Tepe "demonstrates that the tradition of building forts with three concentric walls survived in Bactria until Achaemenid times" -- when the region was undoubtedly Iranian.

Moreover, Parpola points out details in the Vedic descriptions of the tripura-holding Dasas and Asuras which neatly fit the Bactrian culture: the Rg-Veda "places the Dasa strongholds (..) in the mountainous area", which is what Afghanistan looks like to people from the Ganga-Saraswati-Indus plains; it speaks of "a hundred forts" of the Dasa, while the Vedic Aryans themselves "are never said to have anything but fire or rivers as their 'forts'. The later Vedic texts confirm this by stating that when the Asuras and Devas were fighting, the Asuras always won in the beginning, because they alone had forts. (...) The Rg-Vedic Aryans described their enemy as rich and powerful, defending their cattle, gold and wonderful treasures with sharp weapons, horses and chariots. This description fits the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex in Bactria, with its finely decorated golden cups, weapons with ornamental animal figurines including the horse, and trumpets indicative of chariot warfare." (in Erdosy, ibid.)

This may pose a chronological problem to those who consider the Rg-Veda as pre-Bronze Age, or perhaps not, e.g. Parpola notes that the term tripura was "unknown to the Rg-Veda" and only appears later, "in the Brahmana texts" (in Erdosy, p.369) which noninvasionists date to the high Harappan period, contemporaneous with the Bactrian Bronze Age culture. At any rate, it affirms in so many words that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was Dasa or Asura, terms which Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans", Studia Orientalia, vol.64, p.224) had identified with "the carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran". It also constitutes a challenge to those who make India the Urheimat of IE or at least of Indo-Iranian: if the presumed tripuras are a distinctly Dasa/Iranian element, identified as such in Vedic literature, and if the Vedic Aryans fought the Dasas in India, as the Rg-Vedic data indicate, should we not be able to find some tripuras in India too? Or did the Iranians only develop them after leaving India but while still waging occasional wars on the Indian border?

3.5. Were the Bactrians Indo-Aryans?

Other artefacts in Dashli have the same Iranian/Indo-Aryan ambiguity with a preference for the Iranian alternative. A vase in Dashli shows a scene with men wearing a kind of shirt leaving one shoulder uncovered. In this, Sergent recognizes the upanayana ceremony, in which a youngster is invested with the sacred shirt or thread. (p.163) But this is both a Vedic and a Zoroastrian ritual, with the latter resembling the depicted scene more closely: in India, only a thread is given, but among Zoroastrians, it is an actual shirt.

Some vases display horned snakes or dragons carrying one or more suns inside of them: according to Sergent, this refers to an Indo-Iranian dragon myth, attested in slightly greater detail in the Rg-Veda than in the Avesta (but what else would you expect, with Vedic literature being much larger, older and better preserved than the Avestan corpus?), about Indra liberating the sun by slaying the dragon Vrtra, or in the Avesta, Keresaspa killing the snake Azhi Srvara, "the horned one". (p.163-164, ref. to Rg-Veda 1:51:4, 1:54:6) The sources which drew his attention to this picture, both Soviet and French (Russian articles from the 1970s by Viktor Sarianidi and by I.S. Masimof, and Marie-Hélène Pottier: Matériel Funéraire de la Bactriane Méridionale à l'Age du Bronze, Paris 1984, p.82 ff.), are agreed that it is specifically Iranian, and we have no reason to disbelieve them. What Sergent adds is only that, like with the fire cult, it could just as well be Indo-Aryan; but that does not amount to proof of its Indo-Aryan rather than Iranian identity.

Several depictions (statuettes, seals) of a fertility goddess associated with watery themes have been found. Sergent points out that they are unrelated to Mesopotamian mythology but closely related to the "Indo-Iranian" goddess known in India as Saraswati, in Iran as Anahita. Which shall it be in this particular case, Iranian or Indian, Avestan or Vedic? Sergent himself adds that the closest written description corresponding to the visual iconography in question is found in Yasht 5 of the Avesta. (p.163)

Of course we must remain open to new interpretations and new findings. In this field, confident assertions can be overruled the same day by new discoveries. But if Sergent himself, all while advocating an Indo-Aryan interpretation of the known Bactrian findings, is giving us so many hints that their identity is uncertain at best, and otherwise more likely Iranian than Indo-Aryan, we have reason to believe in the Iranian identification established by other researchers. On the strength of the data he offers, the safest bet is that the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was the centre of Iranian culture.

This happens to agree with the evidence of Zoroastrian scripture, which has dialectal features pointing to the northeast of the historical Iranian linguistic space, meaning Bactria, and which specifically locates Zarathushtra in Bahlika/Balkh, a town in northern Afghanistan. It tallies with the list of regions in the opening chapter of the Vendidad, corresponding to Bactria, Sogdia, Pamir, Margiana, southern Afghanistan and northwestern India (Hapta Hendu, the Vedic Sapta Sindhavah), which happens to put Balkh near the geographical centre. Iran proper was iranianized only well after Zarathushtra's preaching. As Sergent notes, in ca. 1900 BC, the Namazga culture in Turkmenistan changes considerably taking in the influence of the then fast-expanding Bactria-Margiana culture (p.179): I read that as the Iranian expansion from their historical heartland westward into the south-Caspian area. From there, but again only after a few more centuries, they were to colonize Kurdistan/Media and Fars/Persia, where their kingdoms were to flourish into far-flung empires in the 1st millennium BC.

It is only logical that the dominant religious tradition in a civilization is the one developed in its demographic and cultural metropolis: the Veda in the Saraswati basin, the Avesta in the Oxus basin, i.e. Bactria. That Bactria did have the status of a metropolis is suggested by Sergent's own description of its Bronze Age culture as "one of the most brilliant in Asia". Though provincial compared with Harappa, it was a worthy metropolis to the somewhat less polished Iranian civilization.

3.6. Clarions of the Aryan invaders

Another distinctively Aryan innovation attested in Dashli was the trumpet: "Bactria has yielded a number of trumpets; some others had been found earlier in Tepe Hissar and Astrabad (northeastern Iran); Roman Ghirshman proposed to connect these instruments with the use of the horse, with the Iranian cavalry manoeuvring to the sound of the clarion. (...) In ancient India, the trumpet is not mentioned in the written sources". (p.162) Would it not be logical if the same type of cavalry manoeuvres had yielded the Aryans both Iran and India? In that case, we should have encountered some references to clarions in the Vedas. But no, as per Sergent's own reading, the Rg-Veda, supposedly the record of Aryan settlement in India, knows nothing of trumpets; though post-Harappan depictions of riders with trumpets are known.

All this falls into place if we follow the chronology given by K.D. Sethna and other Indian dissidents: the Rg-Veda was not younger but older than the Bronze Age and the heyday of Harappa. So, the trumpet was invented in the intervening period, say 2,500 BC, and then used in the subsequent Iranian conquest of Bactria, Margiana and Iran.

The comparatively recent migration into Iran of the Iranians, who supposedly covered the short distance from the Volga mouth to Iran in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC (losing the wayward Indo-Aryans along the way), has not been mapped archaeologically, in contrast with the successive Kurgan expansion waves into Europe. Jean Haudry reports optimistically: "Since the late 3rd millennium BC, an undecorated black pottery appears in Tepe Hissar (Turkmenistan), together with violin-shaped female idols and esp. with bronze weapons, the horse and the war chariots, and -- a detail of which R. Ghirshman has demonstrated the importance -- the clarion, indispensible instrument for collective chariot maneuvers. We can follow them from a distance on their way to the south." (J. Haudry: Les Indo-Européens, p.118, with reference to R. Ghirshman: L'Iran et les Migrations des Indo-Aryans et des Iraniens, 1977) But this is not necessarily the entry of "the" Iranians into Iran, and if it is, it need not have the Kurgan area as its starting-point.

In the account of Roman Ghirshman and Jean Haudry, the proto-Iranians with their clarions travelled "to the south". Rather than Indo-Iranians on their way from South Russia to Iran and partly to India, these may just as well be the Iranians on their way from Bactria (and ultimately from India), via the Aral Lake area, to Iran and Mesopotamia. Indeed, viewed from Iran, entrants from Russia and from India would arrive through the same route, viz. from the Aral Lake southward. A look at the map suffices to show this: rather than go in a straight line across the mountains, substantial groups of migrants would follow the far more hospitable route through the fertile Oxus valley to the Aral Lake area, and then proceed south from there.

Even in Bernard Sergent's erudite book, I have not found any data which compel us to accept that a particular culture can be identified with the very first Indo-Iranian wave of migrants; Central Asia was criss-crossed for millennia by variegated Iranian-speaking tribes. Nonetheless, Haudry's clarion-wielders of "the late 3rd millennium BC" and Sergent's occupiers of Namazga "in ca. 1900 BC" may of course be the first Iranian intruders into Turkmenistan and Persia, but that would serve the Indocentric theory even better, for Sergent's data show that these intruders came from Bactria, not from Russia.

3.7. Bactrian invasion in India

Thus far, the archaeological argument advanced by some scholars in favour of an Aryan invasion into India has not been very convincing. Consider e.g. this circular reasoning by Prof. Romila Thapar ("The Perennial Aryans", Seminar, December 1992): "In Haryana and the western Ganga plain, there was an earlier Ochre Colour Pottery going back to about 1500 BC or some elements of the Chalcolithic cultures using Black-and-Red Ware. Later in about 800 BC there evolved the Painted Grey Ware culture. The geographical focus of this culture seems to be the Doab, although the pottery is widely distributed across northern Rajasthan, Panjab, Haryana and western U.P. None of these post-Harappan cultures, identifiable by their pottery, are found beyond the Indus. Yet this would be expected if 'the Aryans' were a people indigenous to India with some diffusion to Iran, and if the attempt was to find archaeological correlates for the affinities between Old Indo-Aryan and Old Avestan."

Firstly, if no common pottery type is found in Iran and India in 1500-800 BC, and if this counts as proof that no migration from India to Iran took place, then it also proves that no migration from Iran to India took place. In particular, the PGW, long identified with the Indo-Aryans, cannot be traced to Central Asia; if it belonged to Aryans, then not to Aryan invaders. So, if substantiated, Prof. Thapar's statement is actually an argument against an Aryan invasion in ca. 1500 BC. Secondly, if the absence of migration in either direction in the period from 1500 BC onwards is really proven, this evidence remains compatible with an Indo-European emigration from India in another time bracket, say between 6000 and 2000 BC.

In spite of the impression created in popular literature, archaeology has by no means demonstrated that there was an Aryan immigration into India. Even the new levels in accuracy do not affect the following status quaestionis of the Aryan Invasion theory: "The question of Indo-European migrations into the subcontinent of India can, at best, be described as enigmatic." (David G. Zanotti: "Another Aspect of the Indo-European Question", Journal of Indo-European Studies, 1975/3, p.260) Thus, among those who assume the Aryan Invasion, there is no consensus on when it took place, and some AIT archaeologists alter the chronology so much that the theory comes to mean the opposite of what it is usually believed to mean, viz. an affirmation of Aryan dominance in Harappa rather than an Aryan destruction of Harappa: "[This] episode of elite dominance which brought the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family to India (...) may have been as early as the floruit of the Indus civilization (...)" (C. Renfrew: "Before Babel", Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 1, p.14)

Enter Bernard Sergent. He builds on a corpus of findings (some of them already used by Asko Parpola) pertaining to the apparent entry of elements from the Bactrian Bronze Age culture into late- and post-Harappan northwestern India. He also offers a theory of how these Bactrians may have caused the downfall of the Harappan civilization, parallel with the contemporaneous crisis in civilizations in Central and West Asia.

Civilization and urbanization are closely related to commerce, exchange, colonization of mining areas, and other socio-economic processes which presuppose communications and transport. When communication and transport cease, we see cultures suffer decline, e.g. the Tasmanian aboriginals, living in splendid isolation for thousands of years, had lost many of the skills which mankind had developed in the Stone Age, including the art of making fire. One of the reasons why the Eurasian continent won out against Africa and the Americas in the march of progress, was the fairly easy and well-developed contact routes between the different civilizations of Europe, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. So, one can force decline on a culture by cutting off its trade routes, a tactic routinely used for short periods (hence only with limited long-term effect) in wartime, but which seems to have troubled the ancient civilizations in ca. 2000 BC with devastating effect for several centuries. It was in reaction to this destabilization of international trade links that the civilizational centres started building empires by the mid-2nd millennium, e.g. the Kassite empire in Mesopotamia where there had only been city-states (Ur, Uruk, Isin, Larsa, etc.) prior to the great crisis.

Or so Sergent says. Dismissing the thesis of a climatological crisis (though such a crisis would by itself already trigger an economic crisis even in the areas not directly affected climatologically), he argues that only an economic crisis can explain the simultaneous decline of cities in widely different locations, some near rivers and some on hills, some in densely populated agglomerations and some overlooking thinly populated steppes or mountain areas, some in hot and some in colder areas. The ones to blame are -- who else? -- the Aryans. They, and "specifically Indo-Aryans" (p.198-99), played a role in the Hurrian and Kassite invasions disrupting Mesopotamia (while the IE or non-IE identity of the Guti and Lullubi invaders remains unknown, though attempts are made to link the Guti with the Tocharians); and from Bactria, they by themselves disrupted the economy of the Indus-Saraswati civilization.

They didn't physically destroy the Harappan cities, as Mortimer Wheeler and others of his generation thought: "No trace of destruction has been observed in these cities." (p.201) But by creating insecurity for the travelling traders, they bled and suffocated the economy which made city life possible, and thus forced the Harappans to abandon their cities and return to a pre-urban lifestyle. The declining and fragmented Harappan country and society then fell an easy prey to the Indo-Aryan invaders from Bactria.

This scenario has been attested in writing in the case of Mesopotamia. Sergent quotes other experts to the effect that "from ca. 2230 BC, (...) the Guti had cut off the roads, ruined the countryside, set the cities on fire" (p.199, quoting Paul Garelli: Le Proche-Orient Asiatique, PUF, Paris 1969, p.89-93), that the Assyrian trade system was disrupted by the Mitannic people, etc. But is there similar evidence for the Indus-Saraswati civilization?

Sergent cites findings that in the final stage of Mohenjo Daro, we see the large mansions of the rich subdivided into small apartments for the poor, the water supply system neglected, the roads and houses no longer following the plan. (p.200) This certainly marks a decline, the rich losing their power and the powerful losing their control and resources. Same story in Harappa, Chanhu Daro, Kalibangan, Lothal: a great loss of quality in architecture and organization in the last phase. Moreover, all traces of long-distance trade disappear (just as in Mesopotamia, all signs of commerce with "Meluhha"/Sindh disappear by 2000 BC), and trade is the basis of city life. So, "these cities didn't need to be destroyed: they had lost their reason for existing, and were vacated". (p.201) But that doesn't bring any Indo-Aryan invasion into the picture. Indeed, it is perfectly compatible with a hypothesis of Iranian Bactrians disrupting a Harappan economy manned by Indo-Aryans.

3.8. Aryan invader settlements in India

To Bernard Sergent, the "strategic" key to the Aryan invasion puzzle has been provided by the discovery, by a French team in 1968, of the post-Harappan town of Pirak, near the Bolan pass and near Mehrgarh in Baluchistan. Pirak was a new settlement dating back only to the 18th century BC. Culturally it was closely related to the societies to its north and west, especially Bactria. Sergent sums up a long list of precise material items which Pirak had in common with those non-Indian regions. (p.219 ff.) So, this was a settlement of foreign newcomers bringing some foreign culture with them.

Sergent will certainly convince many readers by asserting that in Pirak, "the horse makes its appearance in India, both through bones and in figurines", and this "connotes without any possible doubt the arrival in India of the first Indo-European-speaking populations". (p.221) That depends entirely on how much we make of the limited but real evidence of horses in the Harappan civilization. Note moreover that while the horse was important to the Indo-Aryans, the Bactrian two-humped camel was not; but in Pirak, both camel and horse are conspicuous, both in skeletal remains and in depictions.

If the Bactrian culture and those to its west were Iranian-speaking, which is likely, then Pirak is simply an Iranian settlement in an Indian border region, a southward extension of the Bactrian culture. Indo-Iranian borders have been fluctuating for millennia, while different groups of Iranians down to Nadir Shah have again and again tried to invade India, so the Iranian intrusion in Pirak (which may have ended up assimilated into its Indo-Aryan environment) need not be the momentous historical breakthrough which it is to Sergent. It would only be that if it can be shown that the Pirak innovations are repeated in many North-Indian sites in the subsequent centuries, where we know that the dominant culture was Indo-Aryan.

A related culture is the Cemetery H culture on the outskirts of Harappa itself. Sergent offers a detail which is distinctly non-Vedic and Mazdean (Zoroastrian): "The dead, represented by unconnected skulls and bones, were placed, after exposure, in big jars". (p.224; emphasis added) Exposure to birds and insects is still the first stage in the Zoroastrian disposal of the dead. Sergent also reports that the influence of the native Harappan civilization is much greater here than in Pirak. So, as the Iranian invaders moved deeper inland, across the Indus, they soon lost their distinctiveness. Considering that Afghan dynasties have ruled parts of India as far east as Bengal, using Persian and building in a West-Asian style, this post-Harappan Iranian intrusion as far as the Indus riverside is not that impressive.

Indeed, from the Indus eastwards, we lose track of this Bactrian invasion. Sergent himself admits as much: "For the sequel, archaeology offers little help. The diggings in India for the 2nd millennium BC reveal a large number of regional cultures, generally rather poor, and to decree what within them represents the Indo-Aryan or the indigenous contribution would be arbitrary. If Pirak (...) represents the start of Indian culture, there is in the present state of Indian archaeology no 'post-Pirak' except at Pirak itself, which lasted till the 7th century BC: the site remained, along with a few very nearby ones, isolated." (p.246-247) So, the Bactrian invaders who arrived through the Bolan pass and established themselves in and around the border town of Pirak, never crossed the Indus, and never made their mark on India the way the Indo-Aryans did.

This confirms the statement by the American archaeologist Jim Shaffer that "no material culture is found to move from west to east across the Indus" (personal communication, 1996), or more academically, that the demographic eastward shift of the Harappan population during the decline of their cities, i.e. an intra-Indian movement from Indus and Saraswati to Ganga, "is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium BC", while the archaeological record shows "no significant discontinuities" for the period when the Aryan invasion should have made its mark. (Jim Shaffer and Diane Lichtenstein: "The concepts of 'cultural tradition' and 'palaeoethnicity' in South-Asian archaeology", in G. Erdosy, ed.: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.139-140)

The Pirak people were not the Vedic Aryans conquering India. The Aryan invasion of India has somehow gone missing from the archaeological record, and this is admitted by Sergent himself in the very section containing his decisive piece of evidence for the Aryan Invasion Theory.

3.9. Scriptural evidence

To fortify his reconstruction of the Aryan invasion, Bernard Sergent repeats some well-known scriptural references. Indian authors are right in pointing out that this is systematically the weakest part in AIT argumentations, as the knowledge of Vedic literature among Western scholars is either too limited or too distorted by AIT presuppositions. Sergent's arguments at this point repeat well-known claims about the contents of the Vedas. Thus, the Rg-Veda was written by foreigners because it doesn't know the tiger nor rice nor "the domesticated elephant which existed in the Harappan Indus culture". (p.241)

As for the tiger, it is often said that India was divided in a lion zone in the west and a tiger zone in the rest. This image persists in the symbolism of the civil war in Sri Lanka: the Sinhalese, originating in Gujarat (where lions exist even today), have the lion as their symbol, while the separatists among the Tamils, originating in southeastern India, call themselves the Tigers. However, to judge from the Harappan seal imagery, tigers did originally exist in the Saraswati and Indus basins as well, overlapping with the lion zone. As Sir Monier Monier-Williams (Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p.1036, entry vyâghra) notes, in the Atharva-Veda, "vyâghra/tiger is often mentioned together with the lion". It is simply impossible that the Rg-Vedic seers, even if they were unfamiliar with the Ganga basin (quod non), had never heard of tigers.

As for the domesticated elephant, if it was known in Harappa, does anyone seriously suggest that it was not known in the same area in subsequent centuries by the Vedic Aryans?

While regression in knowledge and technology does sometimes happen, there is no reason whatsoever why people who could domesticate elephants would have lost this useful skill, which is not dependent on foreign trade or urbanization, when the Harappan cities declined. Isn't the mention of how "the people deck him like a docile king of elephants" (Rg-Veda 9:57:3, thus translated by Ralph Griffith: Hymns of the Rg-Veda, p.488) a reference to the Hindu custom of taking adorned domesticated elephants in pageants?

Rice, according to Sergent himself, made its appearance in the Indus basin in the late Harappan period, and was known to the Bactrian invaders in Pirak. (p.230) He identifies those Bactrian invaders as the Vedic Aryans, so why haven't they mentioned rice in their Rg-Veda? One simple answer would be that the Rg-Veda is pre-Harappan, composed at a time when rice was not yet cultivated in northwestern India. This chronological correction solves a lot of similar arguments from silence. Thus, there was cotton in Harappa and after, but no cotton in the Rg-Veda. Bronze swords were used aplenty in the Bactrian culture and in Pirak, but are not mentioned in the Rg-Veda; a short knife can be made from soft metals like gold or copper, but a sword requires advanced bronze or iron metallurgy. (Ralph Griffith uses "sword" twice in his translation The Hymns of the Rg-Veda, p.25, verse 1:37:2, and p.544, verse 10:20:6, both already in the younger part of the Rg-Veda, but in the index on p.702 he corrects himself, specifying that "knife" or "dagger" would be more appropriate.) Likewise, the core stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the ones most likely to stay close to the original versions even in their material details (unlike the many sideshows woven into these epics, often narrating much more recent events), feature only primitive pre-Bronze Age weapons: Rama's bow and arrow, Hanuman's club.

Camels were part of the Bactrian culture and its Pirak offshoot, but are not mentioned in the Rg-Veda except for its rather late 8th book, which mentions Bactrian fauna, possibly in the period when the early Harappans were setting up mining colonies like Shortugai. It all falls into place when the Rg-Veda is considered as pre-Harappan. Incidentally, the late appearance of Afghan fauna in the Rg-Veda contradicts an Afghanistan-to-India itinerary, and argues in favour of an India-to-Afghanistan movement during the Rg-Vedic period.

For a very different type of scriptural evidence, Sergent sees a synchronism between the archaeologically attested settlement of Pirak and the beginning of the Puranic chronology, which in his view goes back to the 17th century BC, in "remarkable coincidence" with the florescence of Pirak. (p.223) Reference is in fact to Kalhana's Rajatarangini, which starts a dynastic lists of kings of Kashmir in 1882, i.e. the early 19th century BC. But if Kalhana can be a valid reference, what about Kalhana's dating the Mahabharata war to the 25th century BC? If Puranic history is any criterion, Sergent should realize that its lists of Aryan kings for other parts of India than Kashmir go way beyond 2,000 BC.

Another classic scriptural reference concerns everything relating to the enemies of the Vedic Aryans, such as the "aboriginal" Dasas. Very aptly, Sergent identifies the Dasas and the Panis as Iranian, and the Pakthas (one of the tribes confronting the Vedic king Sudas in the Battle of the Ten Kings) as the Iranian Pathans. (p.241-244) He specifically rejects the common belief that the Dasas were black-skinned, in spite of their occasional description as "black-covered" or "from a black womb", pointing out that even the fair-haired and white-skinned Vikings were called the "black foreigners" by the Irish, with "black" purely used as a metaphor for "evil". (This is even the case in some African languages, for there is no relation between colour symbolism and skin colour: white is the sacred colour to dark-skinned Indian tribals, while black is auspicious to the whitish Japanese, who consider white as the colour of mourning, just as Sanskritic Hindus do.)

Yet, Sergent doesn't identify the said Iranian tribes with the Bronze Age Bactrians, arguing that in Alexander's time, Greek authors locate the Parnoi and Dahai just south of the Aral Lake. But that was almost two thousand years after the heyday of the Bactrian Bronze Age culture and arguably even longer after the Rg-Veda. The only mystery is that these ethnonyms managed to survive that long, not that during those long centuries, they could migrate a few hundred miles to the northwest -- centuries during which we know for fact that the Iranians expanded westward from their Bactrian heartland across rivers and mountains to settle as far west as Mesopotamia.

Moreover, the Vedas locate the confrontations in the prolonged hostility between IndoAryans and Iranians not on the Saraswati (which could in theory be identified as the homonymous Harahvaiti/Helmand in Afghanistan) (p.242), but on the riverside of the Parush-ni/Ravi and other Panjab rivers, unambiguously in India. This is only logical if the Vedic Aryans were based in the Saraswati basin and their Iranian enemies were based in an area to their west near the Khyber pass: they confronted halfway in Panjab. So not only did these Iranian tribes (Dahai, Parnoi) move from Bactria to the Aral Lake area in 2000-300 BC, but they had started moving northwestward centuries earlier, in the Rg-Vedic period, in Panjab.

With every invasionist attempting to strengthen his case by appealing to the testimony of Hindu scripture, the collective failure becomes more glaring.

3.10. Comparison with archaeological reconstruction in Europe

The westward expansion of the Kurgan culture has been mapped with some degree of accuracy: "If an archaeologist is set the problem of examining the archaeological record for a cultural horizon that is both suitably early and of reasonable uniformity to postulate as the common prehistoric ancestor of the later Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and possibly some of the Indo-European languages of Italy, then the history of research indicates that the candidate will normally be the Corded Ware culture. At about 3200-2300 BC this Corded Ware horizon is sufficiently early to predate the emergence of any of the specific proto-languages. In addition, it is universally accepted as the common component if not the very basis of the later Bronze Age cultures that are specifically identified with the different proto-languages. Furthermore, its geographical distribution from Holland and Switzerland on the west across northern and central Europe to the upper Volga and middle Dniepr encompasses all those areas which [have been] assigned as the 'homelands' of these European proto-languages."

(J.P. Mallory: In Search of the Indo-Europeans, Hudson & Hudson, London 1989, p.108)

This is a very important insight for understanding the large common (partly pre-IE substratal) element in the European IE languages, distinguishing them collectively from Anatolian, Tocharian and Indo-Iranian: "The study of the lexicon of the Northern European languages, especially Germanic and Baltic, reveals that a large number of terms relevant to the ecology of the habitat of the early populations of the area and to their socio-economic activities have no plausible Indo-European etymology. (...) it is possible to ascribe to the pre-Indo-European substrate in the Baltic area a number of names of plants, animals, objects and activities characteristic of the Neolithic cultures." (Edgar C. Polomé: "The Indo-Europeanization of Northern Europe: the Linguistic Evidence", Journal of Indo-European Studies, fall 1990, p.331-337) Many of these terms also extend to Celtic, Slavic and sometimes Italic and Greek.

Examples include the words barley, Russian bor ("millet"), Latin far ("spelt"); Irish tuath, Gothic thiuda, "people", whence the ethnic names Dutch/Deutsch; German wahr, Latin verus, Old Irish fir, "true"; Latin granum, Dutch koren, English grain and corn; Lithuanian puodas, Germanic fata, whence Dutch vat, "vessel"; Dutch delven, "dig", Old Prussian (Baltic) dalptan, "piercing-tool"; Old Irish land, Old Prussian lindan, Germanic land; Latin alnus (<alisnos), Dutch els, Lithuanian elksnis, "alder", also related to Greek aliza, "white poplar"; Dutch smaak, "taste", Gothic smakka, "fig, tasty fruit", Lithuanian smaguricu, "sweet, treat"; from an ancient form *londhwos, Dutch lenden, Latin lumbus, "waist". Likewise, the Germanic words fish, apple, oak, beech, whale, goat, elm, (n)adder have counterparts in other European languages, e.g. Latin piscis, Old Irish aball, Greek aig-ilops or krat-aigos (possibly related to Berber iksir, Basque eskur, as suggested by Xavier Delamarre: Le Vocabulaire Indo-Européen, Maisonneuve, Paris 1984, p.167), Latin fagus, squalus, haedus, ulmus, natrix; but they have no attested counterparts in the Asian IE languages. Archaeology and linguistics reinforce each other in indicating the existence of a second centre of IE dispersal in the heart of Europe, the Corded Ware culture of ca. 3000 BC, whence most European branches of IE parted for their historical habitats.

Even earlier demographic and cultural movements have been mapped with promising accuracy. The sudden apparition of full-fledged Neolithic culture in the Low Countries in about 5,100 BC can clearly be traced to a gradual expansion of the agricultural civilization through Hungary (5700) and southern Germany (5350 BC), from the Balkans and ultimately from Anatolia. (Pierre Bonenfant & Paul-Louis van Berg: "De eerste bewoners van het toekomstige 'België': een etnische overrompeling", in Anne Morelli ed.: Geschiedenis van het eigen volk, Kritak, Leuven 1993, p.28) It is this gradual spread of agriculture and its concomitant changes in life-style (houses, tools, ceramics, domesticated animals) which the leading archaeologist Colin Renfrew has rashly identified as the indo-europeanization of Europe, but which Marija Gimbutas and many others would consider as the spread of the pre-IE "Old European" culture.

It remains possible that in some outlying regions, the early Indo-Europeans arrived on the scene in time to capture this movement of expanding agriculture, but it did not originate with them, because Anatolia and the Balkans were demonstrably not the IE Urheimat. On the contrary, in the northeastern Mediterranean, the presence of pre-IE elements in the historically attested IE cultures and languages (Greek, Hittite) is very strong, indicating that the Indo-Europeans had to subdue a numerous and self-confident, culturally advanced population. It is this Old European people, known through towns like Catal Hüyük and Vinca, which gradually spread to the northwest and civilized most of Europe before its indo-europeanization.

So, that's archaeology in action. After the wave of agriculture spreading to the farthest corners from the southeast in the 7th-4th millennium BC (linguistically unidentified), the wave of the horse-riding late-Kurganites has been identified as bringing the IE languages. There is as yet no parallel map of a Kurgan-to-India migration. Thus, the material relation between the Andronovo culture in Kazakhstan (often considered as the Indo-Iranians freshly emigrated from the Kurgan area) and the Bactria-Margiana culture (presumed to be the Indo-Aryans and the Iranians on their way to India and Iran) has been established only vaguely, certainly not well enough to claim that the latter was an offshoot of the former (which would support the AIT). As we saw, even tracing a migration from Bactria across the Indus has not succeeded so far.

But then, neither has a reverse migration been mapped archaeologically. If the Bactrian Bronze Age culture was Iranian and the Iranians had earlier been defeated in India, where is the archaeological trail of the Iranians from India to Bactria? And earlier, where is the evidence of Proto-Indo-Europeans on their way from India to the Kurgan area? Those who consider India as the Urheimat of IE should suspend their current triumphalism and take up the challenge.

3.11. Indo-Aryans in West Asia

Another challenge to the Indocentric school has been thrown by Bernard Sergent without his realizing it. On p.206 ff., he adds some new data about the large IE and specifically Indo-Aryan presence in West Asia: Indo-Aryan names are quite common in Syria and Palestine in the 15th-13th century BC, e.g. the Palestian town of Sichem was ruled by one Birishena, i.e. Vira-sena, "the one who has an army of heroes", and Qiltu near Jerusalem was ruled by one Suar-data, i.e. "gift of Heaven"; to Sergent, this also proves that the Indo-Aryans maintained a separate existence after and outside the Mitannic kingdom until at least the 13th century BC.

A fairly serious problem for the non-invasionists in this regard concerns the term Asura: in the Rg-Veda a word for "god" (cfr. Germanic Ase, Aesir), in later Vedic literature a word for "demon", obviously parallel and causally related with the Iranian preference for Asura/Ahura as against the demonized Deva/Daeva, the remaining Hindu term for "god". On p.211 and p.280, Sergent makes the very popular mistake of seeing "the Asuras" as a separate class of gods next to "the Devas". In fact, the distinction and opposition between them is a late-Vedic development connected with the Irano-Indian (or Mazdeic-Vedic) conflict. In the Rg-Veda, Deva and Asura are not two tribes of gods; they are as synonymous as "God" and "Lord" are in Christian parlance.

That state of affairs seems to persist in the Indo-Aryan diaspora in West Asia of the 2nd millennium BC, i.e. long after the completion of the Rg-Veda in the non-invasionist chronology.

Sergent has found quite a few personal names with Asura in West Asia, e.g. the Mitannic general Kart-ashura, the name Biry-ashura attested in Nuzi and Ugarit, in Nuzi also the names Kalm-ashura and Sim-ashura, the Cilician king Shun-ashura, while in Alalakh (Syria), two people were called Ashura and Ashur-atti. (p.210) He explicitly deduces a synchronism between early Vedic and Mitannic-Kassite, which tallies splendidly with the AIT chronology. But in that case, the problem which I am drawing attention to, disappears: of course the West-Asian Indo-Aryans practised a form of the Vedic religion consistent with the early Vedic data, because theirs was the early Vedic age. And that is why Sergent doesn't see the problem which arises when the wild non-invasionist chronology is accepted: if two millennia have passed between the Rg-Vedic seers and the said testimony of an Indo-Aryan presence in West Asia, how is it possible that these West-Asian Indo-Aryans have missed the late-Vedic developments which turned the revered Asuras into demons?

At present, this problem for the non-invasionists can only be solved at the level of hypothesis. It is perfectly possible, even if not yet attested archaeologically or literarily, that along with the Iranians, a purely Indo-Aryan-speaking group emigrated from India in the Rg-Vedic period to seek its fortune in the Far West. Perhaps it is from them that Uralic speakers borrowed the term Asura, "lord", along with Sapta, "seven, week", Sasar, "sister", and a few other Indo-Aryan words. Some of these Indo-Aryans, organized as bands of warrior, engineered the conquests of their Mitannic and Kassite host populations. Considering that Vedic names are still given to Hindu children today, thousands of years after Vedic Sanskrit went out of daily use, and often in communities which speak a non-Indo-Aryan language, it is conceivable that the Indo-Aryans in West Asia managed to preserve their Vedic tradition from the time of their emigration from India during the Vedic age until the mid-2nd millennium BC. And if so, they had to preserve it in the form it had at the time of their emigration, i.c. complete with the veneration for Asura, the Lord.

A related problem concerns the Kassites, who were also Indo-Aryan to a extent. Non-in-vasionists have made much of the presence of Sanskrit names in the Kassite dynasty in Babylon. However, we have information from Semitic Mesopotamians about the Kassite language, and it was not Indo-Aryan. A number of known Kassite words are apparently unrelated to any known language, e.g. mashu, "god"; yanzi, "king"; saribu, "foot". They also seem to have a formation of the plural unknown in IE, viz. with an infix, e.g. sirpi, sirpami, "brown one(s)", or minzir, minzamur, "dotted one(s)". (Wilfred van Soldt: "Het Kassitisch", Phoenix, Leiden 1998, p.90-93) Assuming that the language described as "Kassite" and located by the Babylonian sources in the hills east of Mesopotamia was indeed the language of the Kassite dynasty (for language names sometimes change referent), does this not refute the Indian connection of the Kassites?

No: this state of affairs suggests a third scenario, viz. that a non-IE population in Iran used Sanskrit names referring to Vedic gods. This would be the same situation as in the Dravidian provinces: a non-IE-speaking population maintains its own language but adopts Sanskritic lore and nomenclature. It would mean that Vedic culture had spread as much to the west as we know it has spread to the east and south, and that a part of western Iran (well before its iranianization) was as much part of Greater India as Kerala or Bali became in later centuries.

4. Linguistic arguments

4.1. East-Asian influences

Bernard Sergent traces practically all Indian language families to foreign origins. He confirms the East-Asian origins of both the Tibeto-Burmese languages (Lepcha, Naga, Mizo etc.) and the Austro-Asiatic languages (Santal, Munda, Khasi etc.). Though many tribals in central and southern India are the biological progeny of India's oldest human inhabitants, their adopted languages are all of foreign origin. To Sergent, this is true of not only Austro-Asiatic and Indo-Aryan, but also of Dravidian.

The Himalayan branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family, distinct from Tibetan, already has a very long but inconspicuous presence in northern India. Originating in China, this group of now very small languages once embraced parts of the northern plains. Of greater historical importance is the Austro-Asiatic family, which Sergent describes as once the predominant one in a continuous area from central India to Vietnam, but now reduced to a series of pockets in between the riverine population centres dominated by the immigrant Thai and Tibeto-Burmese languages (originating in China) and in India by the Indo-Aryan languages.

Sergent is merely following in others' footsteps when he assumes that mayura, "peacock", gaja, "elephant", karpasa, "cotton", and other Sanskrit fauna or flora terms are loans from Austro-Asiatic. (p.370) In most such cases, the only ground for this assumption is that similar-sounding words exist in the Munda languages of Chotanagpur, languages which have not been committed to writing before the 19th century. Chances are that in the intervening millennia, when these words were attested in Sanskrit but not necessarily in Munda, they were borrowed from Indo-Aryan ino Munda, or from an extinct language into both. At any rate, the hypothesis of an Austro-Asiatic origin should only be accepted in case the term is also attested in non-Indian branches such as Khmer.

The alleged loans only start appearing in the 10th and youngest book of the Rg-Veda and really break through in the Brahmanas. Sergent follows the classical interpretation, viz. that this shows how the Vedic Aryans gradually moved east, encountering the Austro-Asiatic speakers in the Ganga basin. While I am not convinced of the existence of more than a few Munda terms in Sanskrit (more in the adjoining Indo-Aryans Prakrits: Hindi, Bengali, Oriya), I would agree that there are other Munda influences, notably in mythology, as we shall discuss separately. Non-invasionists will have to account for this Munda contribution.

Here too, I suggest that chronology is all-important. It is quite possible that Munda had not arrived in India at the time of the Rg-Veda. When the Harappans migrated eastward (as demographically expansive populations do), or when the post-Harappans fled eastward from the disaster area which the Indus-Saraswati basin had become, the Munda-speaking people they encountered in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar may have been recent immigrants from the agricultural civilization of what is now Thailand and southwestern China. All the same, it remains possible that for local flora and fauna, the Indo-Aryans did adopt some Munda terminology.

Broadly, the Austro-Asiatic expansion can be compared with the gradual spread of the Old European Neolithic from Anatolia and the Balkans to the far corners of Europe, and with the spread of India's Northwestern Neolithic to the rest of the subcontinent. In that case, the Munda-speaking farmers in the eastern Ganga basin must have assimilated into the Indo-Aryan population, with only the peripheral populations in the hills retaining their imported languages. This Munda contribution is by no means incompatible with a native status of IE.

4.2. Is Dravidian native to India?

In one of his most innovative chapters, Sergent reviews all the evidence of Dravido-African and Dravido-Uralic kinship. In African languages spoken in the entire Sahel belt, from Sudan to Senegal, numerous semantic and grammatical elements are found which also exist in Dravidian. The similarity with the Uralic languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Samoyedic) is equally pronounced. Sergent offers the hypothesis that at the dawn of the Neolithic Revolution, some 10,000 years ago, the Dravidians left the Sudan, one band splitting off in Iran to head north to the Urals, the others entering India and moving south.

Within this scenario of a Dravidian immigration, it is tempting to speculate that upon entering India, the Dravidians first of all founded the Indus civilization. Surprisingly, Sergent rejects this otherwise popular hypothesis, on the impeccably rational ground that there is no evidence for it. Thus, except in coastal Sindh and Gujarat, geographical terms in the Indus-Saraswati area are never of Dravidian origin. There is also no continuity in material culture between Harappan culture and the oldest known Dravidian settlements.

True to scholarly norms, Sergent pleads for a provisional acceptance of our ignorance about the identity of the Harappans. However, as a concession to impatient readers who insist on having some theory at least, he gives one or two very slender indications that the Burushos (who preserve their Burushaski language till today in Hunza, Pak-Occupied Kashmir) may have played a role in it. (p.138) However, he finds no Burushaski lexical influence on Indo-Aryan except possibly the word sinda, "river", connected in one direction or the other with Sanskrit Sindhu, "river, Indus", not otherwise attested in IE. (Remark that the Iranian name Hindu for "Indus", hence also for "India", indicates that the Iranians have lived near the Indus. If they had not, then Sindhu would have been a foreign term which they would have left intact, just as they kept the Elamite city name Susa intact rather than evolving it to Huha or something like that; but because Sindhu was part of their own vocabulary, it followed the evolution of Iranian phonetics to become Hindu.)

Sergent is also skeptical of David MacAlpin's thesis of an "Elamo-Dravidian" language family: what isoglosses there are between Elamite and Dravidian can be explained sufficiently through contact rather than common origin.

Like many others, Sergent suggests that the early Dravidians can be equated with the "southern Neolithic" of 2500-1600 BC. Their round huts with wooden framework are the direct precursors of contemporary rural Dravidian housing. Two types of Hindu vessel have been discovered in southern Neolithic sites, including a beaked copper recipient still used in Vedic fire ceremonies. (p.48, with reference to Bridget and Raymond Allchin and to Dharma Pal Agrawal) Though the prehistory of the southern Neolithic is difficult to trace, it can be stated with confidence that the best candidate is the Northwestern Neolithic, which started in Mehrgarh in the 8th millennium BC. It is, by contrast, very unlikely that it originated as an outpost of the Southeast-Asian Neolithic, which expanded into India at a rather late date, bringing the Austro-Asiatic languages. According to Sergent, a link with the mature Harappan civilization is equally unlikely: neither in material culture nor in physical type is such a link indicated by the evidence. The Dravidians were certainly already in the Deccan when the mature Harappan civilization started. Sergent suggests that the Dravidians formed a pre-Harappan population in Sindh and Gujarat, and that they were overwhelmed and assimilated, not by the invading Aryans, but by the mature-Harappan population. (p.52)

The picture which emerges is that of a multi-lingual Indus-Saraswati civilization with Dravidian as the minor partner (possibly preserved or at least leaving its mark in the southern metropolis of Mohenjo Daro) who ended up getting assimilated by the major partner, a non-Dravidian population whom we may venture to identify as Indo-Iranian and ultimately Indo-Aryan.

4.3. Afro-Dravidian kinship

One of the most remarkable findings related in some detail by Bernard Sergent, on the basis of three independent studies (by Lilias Homburger, by Tidiane Ndiaye, and by U.P. Upadhyaya and Mrs. S.P. Upadhyaya) reaching similar conclusions, is the multifarious kinship of the Dravidian language family with African languages of the Sahel belt, from Somalia to Senegal (Peul, Wolof, Mandé, Dyola). As Sergent notes, all Melano-African languages have been credibly argued to be related, with the exception of the Khoi-San and Korama languages of southern Africa and the Afro-Asiatic family of northern Africa; so the kinship of Dravidian would be with that entire Melano-African superfamily, though it would be more conspicuous with some of its members.

Thus, between Dravidian and Bantu, we find the same verbal endings for the infinitive, the subjunctive, the perfect, the active participle or nomen agentis, related postpositions or nominal case endings, and many others. In over-all structure, Dravidian and the Melano-African languages (as distinct from North-African and Khoi-San languages) form a pair when compared with other language families: "The tendency to agglutination, the absence of grammatical gender, the absence of internal vowel change, the use of pre- or postpositions instead of flection are some of the main traits which set the Negro-African and Dravidian languages jointly apart from the Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic groups." (p.55) Here I would say that this doesn't prove much: the first trait is shared with some more, and the other ones are shared with most language families on earth; it is IE and Semito-Hamitic which stand out jointly by not having these traits.

That Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) and IE stand jointly apart and may have a common origin in Mesopotamia, has been argued by B. Sergent himself (Les Indo-Européens, p.431-434). Critics such as the reviewer in Antaios 10, Brussels 1996, have suggested that with this position, he is playing a political game. This much is true, that by design or by accident, Sergent is pulling the leg of far-rightist adepts of IE studies who consider the reduction of IE to sisterhood with Semitic as sacrilege. All the same, his position is quite sound linguistically.

But between Melano-African and Dravidian, there are more specific similarities: "A simple system of five basic vowels with an opposition short/long, vocalic harmony, absence of consonant clusters in initial position, abundance of geminated consonants, distinction between inclusive and exclusive pronoun in the first person plural, absence of the comparative degree in adjectives, absence of adjectives and adverbs acting as distinct morphological categories, alternation of consonants or augmentation of nouns noted among the nouns of different classes, distinction between accomplished and unaccomplished action in the verbal paradigms as opposed to the distinction of time-specific tenses, separate sets of paradigms for the affirmative and negative forms of verbs, the use of reduplicated forms for the emphatic mode, etc." (Genèse de l'Inde, p.55)

Sergent himself adds more isoglosses: "Preference for open syllables (i.e. those ending in vowels), the rejection of clusters of non-identical consonants, the generally initial position of the word accent in Dravidian and in the languages of Senegal". (p.56) The similarity in the demonstrative affixes is among the most striking: proximity is indicated by [i], initial in Dravidian but terminal in Wolof; distance by [a], intermediate distance by [u].

Knowing little of Dravidian and nothing at all of African languages, I don't feel qualified to discuss this evidence. However, I do note that we have several separate studies by unrelated researchers, using different samples of languages in their observations, and that each of them lists large numbers of similarities, not just in vocabulary, but also in linguistic structure, even in its most intimate features. Thus, "the preposed demonstratives of Dravidian allow us to comprehend the genesis of the nominal classes, the fundamental trait of the Negro-African languages". (p.53)

To quite an extent, this evidence suggests that Dravidian and some of the African languages (the case has been made in most detail for the Senegalo-Guinean languages such as Wolof) have a common origin. At the distance involved, it is unlikely that the isoglosses noted are the effects of borrowing. Either way, Proto-Dravidian must have been geographically close to the ancestor-language of the Negro-African languages. Did it come from Africa, as Sergent concludes? Should we think of a lost Saharan culture which disappeared before the conquests of the desert? Note that earlier outspoken fans of Dravidian culture (e.g. Father H. Heras: Studies in Proto-Indo-Meditarranean Culture, 1953, and Alain Daniélou: Histoire de l'Inde, 1983) didn't mind describing the Dravidians as immigrants: unlike the Aryans, they were bringers rather than destroyers of civilization, but they were immigrants nonetheless. Or should we follow Tamil chauvinists in assuming that the Dravidians came from Tamil Nadu and the now-submerged lands to its south, and took their language and civilization to Africa?

4.4. Additional indications for Afro-Dravidian

Bernard Sergent argues against the Indian origin of Dravidian. One element to consider is that the members of the Dravidian family have not diverged very much from one another. The relative closeness of its members suggests that they started growing apart only fairly recently: a thousand years for Tamil and Malayalam (well-attested), perhaps three thousand for the divergence of North- from South-Dravidian. This would indicate that Dravidian was still a single language covering a small area in the early Harappan period, after having entered the country from the West.

That the "genealogical tree" of the Dravidian family seems to have its trunk in the coastal West of India, i.e. to the northwest of the main Dravidian area, has long been recognized by scholars of Dravidian. A map showing this "tree" is given in G. John Samuel, ed.: Encyclopedia of Tamil Literature, Institute of Asian Studies, Madras 1990, p.45, with reference to Kamil Zvelebil, who locates the Proto-Dravidians in Iran as late as 3500 BC. It also fits in with the old Brahminical nomenclature, which includes Gujarat and Maharashtra in the Pancha-Dravida, the "five Dravida areas of Brahminical settlement" (as contrasted with Pancha-Gauda, the five North-Indian ones). The northwestern coast was the first part of India to be dravidianized, the wellspring of Dravidian migration to the south, but also an area were Dravidian was gradually displaced by Indo-Aryan though not without influencing it.

Another indication for the Dravidian presence in Gujarat is the attestation in Gujarati Jain texts of inter-cousin marriage, typically South-Indian and quite non-Indo-European. (p.51) The IE norm was very strict in prohibiting even distant forms of incest, a norm adopted by both Hinduism and Christianity. Linguists had already pointed out, and Sergent confirms, that Dravidian has left its mark on the Sindhi, Gujarati and Marathi languages (as with the distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural) and toponymy. So, it is fairly well-established that Dravidian culture had a presence in Gujarat while spreading to South India.

It is possible that Gujarat was a waystation in a longer Dravidian migration from further west. Whether the itinerary of Dravidian can ultimately be traced to Sudan or thereabouts, remains to be confirmed, but Sergent already has some interesting data to offer in support. Africans and Dravidians had common types of round hut, common music instruments, common forms of snake worship and tree worship. A South-Indian board game pallankuli closely resembles the African game mancalal; varieties of the game are attested in Pharaonic Egypt and in a pre-Christian monastery in Sri Lanka. (p.59)

A point which I do not find entirely convincing is the distinction, based on Mircea Eliade's research, between two types of Shamanism, one best known from Siberia and in evidence among all people originating in North and East Asia including the Native Americans and the Indian Munda-speaking tribes, another best known from Africa but also attested among some South-Indian tribes. (p.62) This is a distinction between Shamanism properly speaking, in which the Shaman makes spirit journeys, despatches one of his multiple souls to the spirit world to help the soul of a sick person, etc.; and the religion of ghost-possession, in which the sorcerer allows the ghost to take him over but at the same time makes him obey. The latter is perhaps best known to outsiders through the Afro-Caribbean Voodoo religion, but is also in evidence among South-Indian tribals such as the Saora and the Pramalai Kallar.

If anthropologists have observed these two distinct types, I will not disbelieve them. It does not follow that there must be a link between Africa and South India: Sergent himself notes that the same religion of ghost-possession is attested among the Australian aboriginals, who may be related with the Veddoid substratum in India's population. (p.62) On the other hand, this theme of ghost-possession is but one of Sergent's numerous linguistic and anthropological data which all point in the same direction of Afro-Dravidian kinship.

4.5. Uralic-Dravidian kinship

If Dravidian migrated from Africa to India through the Middle East, it could have left traces in Egypt and countries under Egyptian influence as well, explaining the data which led earlier researchers to the thesis of a Dravidian "Indo-Mediterranean" culture, most influentially Father H. Heras: Studies in Proto-Indo-Mediterranean Culture, 1953. Sergent links Indian forms of phallus worship with Sahel-African, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Mediterranean varieties of the same. The Egyptian uraeus ("cobra"), the snake symbol on the pharaonic regalia, has been linked in detail with Dravidian forms of snake worship, including the priest's possession by the snake's spirit. Dravidian cremation rituals for dead snakes recall the ceremonial burial of snakes in parts of Africa. Others have added the similarity between the Dravidian nâga-kal (Tamil: "snake-stone", a rectangular stone featuring two snakes facing one another, their bodies intertwined) and the intertwined snakes in the caduceus, the Greek symbol of science and medicine.

It has consequently been suggested that some Dravidian words may also have penetrated into the European languages. Thus, Dravidian kal, "stone", resembles Latin calculus, "pebble", and Dravidian malai, "mountain", resembles an Albanian and Rumanian word mal, "rock, rocky riverside". (Sorin Paliga: "Proto-Indo-European, Pre-Indo-European, Old European", Journal of Indo-European Studies, fall 1989, p.309-334) But this hypothesis is a long shot and we need not pursue it here.

Far more substantial is the Dravidian impact on another language family far removed from the present Dravidian speech area, viz. Uralic. The influence pertains to a very sizable vocabulary, including core terms for hand, fire, house (Finnish kota, Tamil kudi), talk, cold, bathe, die, water, pure, see, knock, be mistaken, exit, fear, bright, behind, turn, sick, dirty, ant, strong, little, seed, cut, wait, fish (Hungarian men, Tamil min) tongue, laugh, moist, break, chest, tree; some pronouns, several numerals and dozens of terms for body parts. (p.66-67) But it goes deeper than that. Thus, both language families exclude voiced and aspirated consonants and all consonant clusters at the beginning of words. They have in common several suffixes, expressions and the phonological principle of vocalic harmony.

As the Dravidian influence, like that of IE, is more pronounced in the Finno-Ugric than in the Samoyedic branch, we may surmise that the contact took place after the separation of the Samoyedic branch. But the main question here is how Dravidian could have influenced Uralic given their actual distance. Sergent suggests that a lost branch of Dravidians on the way from Africa strayed into Central Asia and got assimilated but not without influencing their adopted language.

On the other hand, he rejects the theory that Dravidian forms one family along with Uralic, Turkic, Mongolian and Tunguz. The latter three are often grouped as "Altaic", a partly genetic and partly areal group which may also include Korean and Japanese, and all the said languages including Japanese have at one time or another been claimed as relatives of Dravidian, with which they do present some isoglosses. However, the isoglosses are fragmentary and mostly different ones for every language group concerned. Moreover, some Dravidian influences are also discernible in Tocharian, or Arshi-Kuchi (Tocharian A c.q. Tocharian B) as Sergent appropriately calls it, which is obviously a matter of influence through contact. So Sergent concludes that this is a matter of areal influence rather than genetic kinship: Dravidian was a foreign language entering Central Asia at some point in time to briefly exert an influence on the local languages before disappearing. (p.71-76) This goes against a fairly popular theory locating Dravidian origins in Central Asia whence a Dravidian immigration preceded the Aryans one.

I am not sure this will convince everyone: if Dravidian is not genetically linked with all the said language groups, it might still be so with one of them, viz. Uralic, at least on the strength of the data Sergent offers. Tamil chauvinists may well be tempted to complete the picture by claiming that before the Indo-Europeans from India colonized Central Asia and Europe, it was the turn of the Dravidians to colonize Central Asia and, after mixing genetically and linguistically with the natives, to develop the Uralic languages. At a time when subtropical Neolithic cultures had a tremendous technological and demographical edge over the hunter-gatherers in the inhospitable northern countries, it would not even be so far-fetched to imagine that a small wayward group of Dravidians could enter the vast expanse of Central Asia and completely change the linguistic landscape there.

At any rate, Sergent's observations represent a clean break with earlier theories which had the Dravidians originate in the Uralic speech area and preceding the Indo-Aryans in an invasion of India from Central Asia.

4.5. Geographical distribution of IE languages

Since Bernard Sergent doesn't take the Indocentric case for IE seriously, he doesn't bring out all the linguistic data which to him support the Kurgan scenario. One classical argument from linguistics is nonetheless developed at some length: "In Europe one finds the most numerous and geographically most concentrated IE language groups. Such a situation is not unique, and invariably denotes the direction of history: the Indo-Iranian languages represent a branch extended to the east and south, starting from Europe and not the other way around. It is obviously not the IE languages of Europe which have come from India". (p.29-30)

This early in his book (p.30 of 584 pp.), he is already so sure that "obviously" the central question of the Urheimat has been decided to the disadvantage of India. That is a great pity, for it is the reason why he has not applied himself to really developing the argument against the Indian Urheimat. If anyone is capable of proving the AIT, it must be Sergent. Yet, because he assumes no proof is necessary, he gives the question much less attention than

e.g. the much less contentious (though more original) question of the geographical origins ofDravidian.

To be sure, the pattern of language distribution invoked by Sergent as "not unique", is indeed well-attested, e.g. in sub-Saharan West Africa, there are about 15 language families, while in the much larger region of sub-equatorial Africa, a very large majority of the people speaks languages belonging to only one family, Bantu. Though it is only a branch of a subfamily of the Niger-Kordofanian language family, Bantu easily outnumbers all the other branches of this family combined: "Africanists conclude that Bantu originated in a small area, on the border between Nigeria and Cameroon." (p.30)

But in fact, India is in this respect more akin to West Africa, and Europe more to subequatorial Africa. India has more language families: Nahali, Andamanese, Burushaski, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic (Munda and Mon-Khmer), Sino-Tibetan (Himalayan, Tibetic and Burmese) and IE (Iranian, Kafir, Dardic, Indo-Aryan, and possibly proto-Bangani). Europe is almost entirely IE-speaking, with Basque serving as the European counterpart to the Khoi-San languages in subequatorial Africa, a left-over of the original linguistic landscape largely replaced with the conquering newcomer, IE c.q. Bantu; and Uralic (Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian) a fellow if perhaps slightly later intruder in the European landscape, vaguely comparable to the intrusion of an Austronesian language in a part (viz. Madagascar) of southern Africa.

Therefore, I reject the argument from the geographical distribution. If the spread of the IE languages to Europe was often a matter of assimilating divergent native populations, this process promoted the speedy diverging of the IE dialects into distinct language groups. Though this is not a conclusive argument against the possibility of IE settlement in Indian being younger than in Europe, it at least terminates the impression that there was a compelling case in favour of that possibility. So, even under Bernard Sergent's hands, the fabled "linguistic evidence" has failed to decide the IE Urheimat question once and for all.

5. The evidence from comparative religion

5.1. Aryan contributions to indigenous culture

Unlike most invasionists, who minimize the IE contribution by seeing "pre-Aryan" origins behind every (post-Harappan) Hindu cultural item, Sergent admits the IE origin of numerous elements of Hinduism usually classified as remnants of earlier populations. This is one of the most elaborate and original sections in his book.

In invasionist sources, and more so in politicized writings against the "Aryan invader religion" Hinduism, it is claimed that the two most popular gods, Vishnu and Shiva, are (the former partly, the latter wholly) sanskritized pre-Aryan indigenous gods. Sergent argues that they are in fact neat counterparts of IE gods attested in distant parts of the IE language domain, Vishnu corresponding to the Germanic god Vidar, Shiva to the Greek and Thracian and Phrygian god Dionysos and to an extent also to the Celtic god Dagda. (p.310, p.402) He notices the puzzling fact that the classical Shiva is unattested in the Vedas (though Shiva's persona includes some elements from Indra, Rudra and Agni who are not counterparts of Dionysos); so he suggests that the Shiva tradition, definitely part of the common IE heritage, was passed on through a Vratya or non-Vedic Indo-Aryan circle. (p.323-324) This is an important acknowledgment of the fact that the Vedic tradition is only one tradition in the Indo-Aryan religious landscape, a key element in Shrikant Talageri's reconstruction of ancient Indian history (The Aryan Invasion Theory, a Reappraisal, Ch.14): just as Sanskrit is not the mother of all Indo-Aryan languages (rather an aunt), the Vedas are not the wellspring of the whole of Hindu tradition.

Sergent goes into great detail in showing how the IE trifunctionality model does apply throughout the Vedic and Puranic worldview, in fact far more splendidly than in any other IE culture. (p.252-278) Thus, the first function is juridical-religious and corresponds with sattva, the transparent and truthful quality in the Hindu triguna or three-qualities model; the second function is martial-political and corresponds with rajas, the passionate and energetic quality; the third function is production and consumption, corresponding with tamas, the quality of materiality and ignorance. This threesome also corresponds with the trivarga ("three categories") model, where dharma or religious duty is sattvik, artha or striving for worldly success is rajasik, kama or sensuous enjoyment is tamasik, though there is a fourth (nirguna, "quality-less") dimension, viz. moksha, liberation. Likewise for the three states of consciousness: dreaming, waking, sleeping, surpassed by "fourth state", turiya, the yogic state. This scheme can then be applied to the Hindu pantheon, e.g. Brahma the creator is rajasik, Vishnu the maintainer is sattvik, Shiva the dissolver is tamasik; or the white mountain goddess Parvati is sattvik, the tiger goddess Durga rajasik, the black devouring goddess Kali tamasik.

Many more IE elements in Hinduism could be cited to the same effect, such as the numerous correspondences in epic motifs between Hindu and European sagas, which Sergent discusses at length. But the interesting ones for our purpose are those which already existed in the Harappan civilization.

5.2. The linga

Dr. Sergent goes quite far in indo-europeanizing the alleged aboriginal contribution to Hinduism. He even asserts that "the linga (or Shiva's phallus) cult is of IE origin". (p.139) An important detail is that Aryan linga worshippers venerated the linga by itself, not in the linga-yoni combination common in Hindu shrines, for "the yoni cult is without IE parallel". (p.139) Sergent makes a distinction between the sculpted stone phallus and the unsculpted variety. The first type is attested in the Harappan area and period, as well as in Africa and the Mediterranean, while the second type is common in historical and contemporary Hinduism. However, on linga worship in the Harappan cities, we find conflicting presentations of the facts, with Sergent assuming that the same Mediterranean-type phallus worship flourished, while no less a scholar than Asko Parpola claims the exact opposite. Parpola (Deciphering the Indus Script, p.221) contrasts the "earliest historical (1st-2nd century BC) lingas", which are "realistic", with the "abstract form of the Harappan conical stones". If Parpola is right, the Harappan linga cult was more akin to the classical Hindu form than to Mediterranean phallus worship. However, the crucial point of comparison in this case is not Harappa but the Indian tribals.

Votaries of the Indo-Mediterranean school claim that the cult of phallus-shaped stones is unknown among the indigenous (though in many cases historically dravidianized) tribal populations of India, implying that the Dravidian immigrants brought it from abroad, first to the Indus Valley, next to the whole of India. The same claim, that the untainted tribals are unattracted to the urban Hindu depravity of phallus-worship, has often been made by Christian missionaries as an argument in support of their doctrine that "tribals are not Hindus". But is this true?

First of all, many Indian tribals do practise linga worship. Pupul Jayakar (The Earth Mother, Penguin 1989/1980, p.30) situates both Shiva and the linga within the culture of a number of tribes, e.g. the Gonds: "There are, in the archaic Gond legend of Lingo Pen, intimations of an age when Mahadeva or Shiva, the wild and wondrous god of the autochthons, had no human form but was a rounded stone, a lingam, washed by the waters of the river Narmada. Even to this day there are areas of the Narmada river basin where every stone in the waters is said to be a Shiva lingam: '(...) What was Mahadev doing? He was swimming like a rolling stone, he had no hands, no feet. He remained like the trunk (of a tree).' [Then, Bhagwan makes him come out of the water and grants him a human shape.]" Till today, Shiva or a corresponding tribal god is often venerated in the shape of such natural-born, unsculpted, longish but otherwise shapeless stones.

At the same time, female yoni symbols are common enough among Indian tribals, esp. inverted triangles, the origin of the Hindu plural-triangle symbols called yantra, venerated in such seats of orthodoxy as the Shankaracharya Math in Kanchipuram, where celibacy is the rule and thoughts of fertility unwelcome. In a palaeolithic site in the Siddhi district of Madhya Pradesh (10th or 9th millennium BC), a Mother Goddess shrine has been found containing well-known Hindu symbols: squares, circles, swastikas and most of all, triangles. (Pupul Jayakar: The Earth Mother, p.20-22) A participant in an excavation in Bastar (Jan Van Alphen, of the Etnografisch Museum, Antwerp) told me of how a painted triangular stone was dug up, and the guide, a Gond tribal, at once started doing puja before this ancient idol. Such is the continuity of indigenous Indian religion across eleven thousand years.

However, these two-dimensional triangles constitute a different symbolism from the three-dimensional ring-shaped or oval-shaped sculpted yoni symbols used in the linga-yoni combination. Sergent sees these sculpted yoni symbols as part of the Dravidian tradition with African links, while the triangles, like the unsculpted linga stones, might be older in India than even the Dravidian invasion as imagined by Sergent.

Quite separate from these abstract triangles and unsculpted stones, explicit sexual imagery is also common among the "untainted" tribals: "When the Bhils, primitive people of western India, paint their sacred pithoras, they include in an obscure corner a copulating man and woman. When asked to explain, they say, 'without this, where would the world be?'" (Pupul Jayakar: The Earth Mother, p.36) When they want to express the fertility process, they do so quite explicitly, and they don't have to make do with a shapeless stone. Conversely, when they do choose to use a shapeless stone, it must be for a different purpose. Therefore, it is logical that the tribal linga cannot be equated with the sexually explicit sculptures of the ancient Mediterranean cultures.

Like the tribals, Vedic Hindus worship unsculpted lingas without explicit sexual connotation. Most Hindus will reject the Western interpretation of their idol as a phallic symbol, and the quoted details of tribal linga worship tend to prove their point, as would the abstract uses of the term linga ("sign", "proof", one of the terms in a syllogism, and symbol of the nirguna/undefined primeval reality; for a serious discussion of the profound meanings of linga worship, see Swami Karpatri & Alain Daniélou: Le mystère du culte du linga, Ed. du Relié, Robion 1993). The pebbles picked up from the Narmada river are hardly phallus-shaped, in contrast to the phallic pillars in the Mediterranean.

When Hindus object to the purely sexual reading of their symbols by Western authors, the latter, irritated with the "refusal of prudish Indian hypocrites to face facts", retort that "after all, anyone can see that this is explicit sexual imagery". Or for a more academic variation: "The Brahmans succeeded in concealing the alcoholic and sexual-orgiastic character of the adoration of the phallus (lingam or linga) and transformed it into a pure ritualistic temple cult", according to Max Weber: The Religion of India, Munshiram Manoharlal, Delhi 1992 (ca. 1910), p.298.

Clearly, both conflicting interpretations have their validity, and linga worship in India is probably a syncretic phenomenon. If "phallus worship" was scorned in the Rg Veda (in the much-discussed verses where the enemies are abused as shishna-devâh, "those who have the phallus for god", Rg-Veda 7:21:5 and 10:99:3.), we do not perforce have to deny, as most anti-AIT authors do, that this concerned non-Aryan people who worshipped phallic stones. There were non-Aryans in many parts of India, though these phallus worshippers may equally have been Indo-Aryan-speaking cultists. We have at any rate a testimony for an ancient religious dispute. A clue has perhaps been given in Sergent's information that the lone linga ("objects which are interpreted as phalli", p.139; emphasis added) has been found in the northern half of the Indus-Saraswati civilization, the yoni-linga couple with ring-shaped yoni stones in its arguably Dravidian south.

Anyway, the point for now is that the alleged tribal and Vedic Aryan forms of linga worship are very similar. If this linga worship was IE, as Sergent claims, and if it is an age-old Indian tribal tradition at the same time, may I suggest that the Indo-Europeans discovered or developed it in India itself? Could this be an instance of what should at present be the Holy Grail of non-invasionist researchers, viz. a case of decided continuity between native tribal and IE cultures, distinguishing both together from imported cultures such as that of the Dravidians?

5.3. Harappan and Vedic fire cult

Most invasionist accounts of Hindu history acknowledge that classical Hinduism has included elements from the "Indus civilization". Thus, the unique water-supply system in the Indus-Saraswati system and the public baths so visibly similar to the bathing kunds still existing in numerous Indian cities have been interpreted as early witnesses to the Hindu "obsession" with purity. Though open to correction on details, this approach is not controversial. However, it runs into difficulties when items are discovered which are not typical for the Indian IE-speaking culture alone, but for the whole or larger parts of the IE-speaking family of cultures: how could these have been present in Harappa when the IE contribution was only brought in during or after Harappa's downfall by the Aryan invaders?

The bathing culture which the Harappans shared with the later Hindus is often cited as a pre-IE remnant which crept into Hinduism. However, this is also attested (with local differences, of course) among such IE tribes as the Romans and the Germanic people, and may therefore be part of the common IE heritage. Of course, a general concern about cleanliness is not a very specific and compelling type of evidence. More decisive would be a case like the famous Harappan seal depicting the so-called Pashupati (Shiva as Lord of Beasts), long considered proof that the Shiva cult is indigenous and non-Aryan. It is found to have a neat counterpart, to the detail, in the horned god Cernunnos surrounded by animals (largely similar ones and in the same order as on the Pashupati seal) on the Celtic Gundestrup cauldron made in central Europe sometime in the last centuries BC. So, this Harappan motif may well be part of the common IE heritage.

For another very general trait, the absence of distinct temple buildings in the Harappan cities constitutes a defect in the AIT postulate of a Vedic-Harappan cultural opposition. The fact that no temples are attested is a common trait of Harappa, of some ancient IE cultures (Vedic, Celtic, Germanic), and of that other acclaimed centre of Aryanism, the South Russian Kurgan culture, where "no real sanctuaries have ever been found; they probably had open sanctuaries" (M. Gimbutas: "Proto-Indo-European Culture: The Kurgan Culture during the Fifth, Fourth and Third Millennia BC", in George Cardona et al., eds.: Indo-European and Indo-Europeans, p.191). It contrasts with Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures and with the bhakti cult in later Hinduism, which venerates the deity as if it were a human person and consequently gives the deity a house to live in: a temple. Harappans, Vedic Aryans, many ancient IE-speaking Europeans and contemporary Indian tribals have this in common: they worship without temple buildings.

For a more specific example: fire plays a central role in most historically attested IE religions, most emphatically in the Indo-Iranian branches. A fire-cult was present in the Indus-Saraswati civilization, and it resembled the practices of the Vedic people. The presence of Vedic fire-altars in several Harappan cities (Lothal, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi) has been noticed by a number of authors, but is somehow always explained away or ignored. Parpola ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", Studia Orientalia, Helsinki 1988, p.238) admits as "quite plausible" the suggestion (made to him by Raymond and Bridget Allchin) that they form an Indo-Aryan element within Harappan civilization, but he explains them as imported by "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran, who had become quickly absorbed into the Indus Civilization, culturally and linguistically".

Likewise, Sergent admits that "the Indian Vedic fire altar seemed to have borrowed its construction principles from the Indus civilization", all while "the very idea of the fire cult was Indo-Iranian". (p.161) This falls neatly into place if we equate proto-Harappan with Indo-Iranian: the idea of a fire cult was taken along by the emigrating Iranians, while the Indo-Aryans stayed on in the Indus-Saraswati region to develop their altars' distinct Indian style of construction.

At any rate, how deeply had these Aryan fire-worshippers not penetrated the Harappan civilization, that they had installed their altars in patrician mansions of three of the largest Harappan cities, all three moreover very far from the northwestern border? If they were imported from outside, it rather seems they came from the east, which would bring us back to Shrikant Talageri's thesis that IE originated in the Ganga basin and entered the Harappan area from there. Leaving aside this question of ultimate origins, the very fact of the Vedic fire-altars in the Indus-Saraswati culture is a serious problem for the AIT.

5.4. More on Harappan vs. Vedic

The stellar cult is common to the Harappan and Vedic religions. This is explained by Asko Parpola as the effect of borrowing: the barbarian invaders adopting the religion of the empire they just conquered, somewhat like the Heathen Germanic tribes did when they conquered the Christian Roman empire. In fact, the whole of Vedic and core-Puranic literature has been explained as essentially translations of non-Aryan Harappan traditions.

A similar explanation is given for the "soma filter", often depicted on Harappan seals, and of which an ivory specimen has been discovered by J.M. Kenoyer's team. Iravathan Mahadevan (interviewed by Omar Khan, Chennai, 17-1-1998, on http://www.harappa.com/script/mahadevantext.html) proposes that "the mysterious cult object that you find before the unicorn on the unicorn seals is a filter. (...) Since we know that the unicorn seals were the most popular ones, and every unicorn has this cult object before it, whatever it represents must be part of the central religious ritual of the Harappan religion. We know of one religion whose central religious cult [object] was a filter, that is the soma [cult] of the Indo-Aryans." If this is not an argument for the identity of Vedic and Harappan, I don't know what is. Yet, Mahadevan dismisses this conclusion citing the well-known argument that the Vedas know of no cities while Harappa had no horses, so "the only other possibility is that a soma-like cult (...) must have existed in Harappa and that it was taken over by the Indo-Iranians and incoming Indo-Aryans." This is a case of multilying entities without necessity.

Speaking of the unicorn: Prof. R.S. Sharma ("The Indus and the Saraswati", interview published on http://www2.cybercities.com/a/akhbar/godown/history/RSSIndus.htm) defends the AIT pointing out that the unicorn/ekashrnga is popular on Indus seals and in late- or post-Vedic literature but is not mentioned at all in the Rg-Veda. Within the AIT, this would be an anomaly: first the Harappans had unicorn symbolism, then the Vedic-Aryan invaders didn't have it, and finally the later Aryans again had it. The implied and slightly contrived explanation is that native unicorn symbolism went underground after the Aryan invasion, but reasserted itself later. But this pro-AIT argument is circular in the sense that it is dependent on the AIT-based chronology, viz. of the Rg-Veda as post-Harappan. Its force is dissolved (along with the anomaly) if the possibility is considered that the Rg-Veda was pre-Harappan, with the Unicorn an early Harappan innovation attested in both the the archaeological and the late-Vedic literary record.

Asko Parpola (in G. Erdosy: The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, p.370) has developed the theory that there is at least one clearly identifiable Hindu deity whose trail of importation from abroad we can follow. In the Bactrian Bronze Age culture, deemed Indo-Iranian if not specifically Indo-Aryan, ample testimony is available of the cult of a lion goddess, known in Hinduism as Durga, "the fortress", and who is "worshipped in eastern India as Tripura, a name which connects her with the strongholds of the Dasas". Politicized Indian invasionists usually claim goddess worship as a redeeming native, non-Aryan, "matriarchal" and "humanist" contribution to the "patriarchal" and "oppressive" Hindu religion, but now it turns out to have been brought along by the Bactrian invaders: how one invasionist can upset another invasionist's applecart.

However, Parpola himself reports elsewhere ("The coming of the Aryans to Iran and India and the cultural and ethnic identity of the Dasas", Studia Orientalia, Helsinki 1988, p.238) that the same lion or tiger goddess was worshipped in the Indus-Saraswati civilization as well.

Discussing "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" as having been "quickly absorbed into the Indus civilization", he finds support in "the famous Kalibangan seal showing a Durga-like goddess of war, who is associated with the tiger". For now we retain Parpola's confirmation of a common religious motif in a Harappan city and an Aryan culture (on top of the indications mentioned above of a soma cult in both the Harappan cities and the Bactria-Margiana Bronze Age culture); but whether this shows an early Bactrian penetration of India as far as the Saraswati riverside remains to be seen. The hypothesis that both Harappa and Bactria were Aryan, is less contorted.

Just like those few colleagues who have paid attention to the elements of continuity between Harappa and Aryan India, Sergent fails to discuss the most plausible conclusion that could be drawn from all this material: that Harappan and post-Harappan or Aryan are phases of a single civilization.

5.5. The impact of East-Asian mythology

Indo-European mythology, or some of its branches, has certain motifs and stories in common with mythologies of non-IE cultures. Some of these are a common heritage dating back to long before a separate IE linguistic and cultural identity existed.

Conversely, some myths can be shown to have been transmitted in a fairly recent time,

e.g. the Excalibur myth known to most readers through the King Arthur saga has an exactparallel in a North-Iranian myth, with the sword being drawn from the stone (a poetic reference to the mystery of metallurgy, transforming shapeless ore into metal implements), making its bearer invincible, and finally getting thrown into a lake. This is not because of a common IE heritage of the Celtic and Iranian communities, but because in the 2nd century AD, Sarmatian mercenaries in the Roman army were garrisoned in Britain and, well, told their story. (Shan

M.M. Winn: Heaven, Heroes and Happiness. The Indo-European Roots of Western Ideology, p.34-35) Through Mongolia and Korea, elements of this myth have even reached Japan when the supremacy of the sword was established there. So, myths are not necessarily witnesses from the night of time; their invention and transmission can sometimes be dated.

In the case of the transmission of East-Asian myths into Hindu tradition, by medium of the Munda-speaking culture of the eastern Ganga basin, the apparent date might pose a problem. Some contributions are fairly late: "The puja, that extremely common and important practice of covering the gods' idols with flowers and perfumes, is rather late in India, and succeeds wholly different practices: could that also be an East-Asian substratum?" (p.483, n.639, with reference to Louis de la Vallée Poussin: "Totémisme et végétalisme", 1929, who emphasizes the similarity with devotional practices among the Kol tribe and among the Semang, a tribe in Malaysia. The more usual explanation is that puja came from the Dravidian south.) On the other hand, Sergent mentions several apparently East-Asian contributions to Vedic and Puranic lore which point to the ultimate beginning of those traditions themselves.

The name of Ikshvaku, founder of the Solar Dynasty of Ayodhya, whom the Puranic genealogies place several dozen generations before the Rg-Vedic seers, literally means "bitter gourd". Likewise, Sumati, wife of the early Ayodhya king Sagara, is said to produce offspring with the aid of a bitter gourd. Sergent attributes this to the Southeast-Asian mythic motif of the birth of humanity from a bitter gourd: "The Austro-Asiatic myth has visibly been transposed in the legends of Sumati and Ikshvaku". (p.386)

The birth of Vyasa's mother Satyavati from a fish equally refers to a Southeast-Asian myth, unknown in the IE world. The Brahmanas have a story of Brahma or Prajapati, the Creator, taking the form of a boar and diving to the bottom of the ocean to extract the earth and bring it to the surface (p.372, citing Taittiriya Brahmana 7:1:5:1-2 and Shatapatha Brahmana 14:1:2:11). This myth of the "cosmogonic plunge" is widespread in Siberia, among the native Americans, and among some Southeast-Asian peoples, but is foreign to the IE mythologies and to the Vedic Samhitas. The same is true of another innovative mythic motif appearing in the Brahmanas: Brahmanda, the cosmic egg which, when broken, releases all creatures.

Sergent explains that the Rg-Veda could not yet know these myths, just as it had not yet adopted items of Munda vocabulary, because its horizon was still confined to the northwest (note that Ikshvaku is first mentioned in the youngest part of the Rg-Veda: 10:60:4). But once the Vedic Aryans settled in the Ganga basin, they started assimilating the mythic lore of the Munda people, also immigrants, but who had settled there earlier. So, this seems to confirm the classic picture of the Aryans moving through North India from east to west.

However, even the non-invasionist school accepts that the Vedic tradition spread eastwards during and after the Harappan period, just as it spread to South India in subsequent centuries; but it maintains that the Ganga down to Kashi or so, already had an Indo-Aryan (but non-Vedic) population. This population was obviously exposed to influences from its eastern neighbours, immigrants from Southeast Asia. And their non-Vedic, partly borrowed traditions were incorporated in later Vedic and especially in Puranic literature. By contrast, the IE-speaking people living to the west of the Vedic Puru tribe, those who migrated to the west and formed the other branches of IE, were not exposed to this Austro-Asiatic lore, which is why their mythologies have not adopted elements from Southeast-Asian myths, just as their languages have not borrowed from Munda (or if they have, those words or those mythic motifs would be pan-IE and consequently not recognizable as borrowed).

If Ikshvaku, one of flood survivor Manu Vaivasvata's immediate successors, was indeed a historical figure, and if his name really refers to an Austro-Asiatic myth, then that would prove either that Manu and his crew had come from the southeast (but then why hasn't the bitter gourd myth become a pan-IE myth?), or that the Mundas were already in the Ganga basin at the beginning of IE history as narrated in the Puranic genealogies (6776 BC?). In that case, shouldn't non-invasionists be able to find more points of contact between IE and Munda, linguistically too?

A parallel argument could be made from the commonly assumed etymology of Ganga, a name already appearing in the oldest part of the Rg-Veda (6:45:31), viz. as an Austro-Asiatic loan cognate to Chinese kiang/jiang, "river". This would mean that the Munda presence in the (western!) Ganga basin well precedes the beginning of the Vedic period, and that they were either the first or the dominant group, so that they could impose their nomenclature. However, Zhang Hongming: "Chinese etyma for river", Journal of Chinese Linguistics, January 1998, p.1-43, has refuted the derivation of Chinese kiang from Austro-Asiatic, arguing among other things that the reconstructed Austro-Asiatic form is *krong, still preserved in the Mon-Khmer languages. This makes the Munda origin of Ganga less likely. A third language family may be involved, or an obscure IE etymon. How about kinship with Middle Dutch konk-el, "twist, turn, whirlpool"? Or simply a Vedic reduplication, nasalized for onomatopoeic effect, of the root ga-, "go", meaning "the fast-flowing"?

How exactly should we imagine the beginning of IE history in India, in what cultural and linguistic environment? For example, one could imagine that the Aryans overran the Indus basin, then Afghanistan and beyond, because they had been pushed to the west by invading Mundas from the east. If the idea of the fierce Aryans being put to flight by the fun-loving Mundas seems strange, remember that the invasion of the Roman Empire by the fierce Germanic tribes was partly caused by their being pushed westward by the Slavs. For another question: does this evidence of Munda contributions support the mainstream indological position that the entire Puranic history of the Vedic and pre-Vedic age in Ayodhya, Kashi or Prayag is but "reverse euhemerism", i.e. the transformation of myth into fabulated history, so that Ikshvaku and his clan never existed except as projections by aryanized Mundas of their gourd-god onto the ancestry of their conquerors? This is worth a discussion in its own right.

For now, I propose a hypothesis which takes care of all the data: there was a period of neighbourly coexistence of Indo-Aryans and Mundas in the Ganga basin, with a very limited exchange of cultural items (mythic motifs, vocabulary), which suddenly increased when the

Indo-Aryans started incorporating parts of the Munda territory and assimilating its inhabitants. This does not exclude that the Mundas entered India in the late-Vedic period; after all, even a pre-Munda population of the lower Ganga basin may have known some Southeast-Asian myths. But the main point is that North India was big enough to contain both Indoa-Aryans and Mundas, and that a Munda presence does not imply an Aryan invasion from outside India.

5.6. Some caveats to comparatists

Mythology is a large subject, and numerous myths are not well-known even to aficionados of the subject. This way, it sometimes happens that a Hindu myth gets classified as non-IE because it is not reported in any other IE mythology, only to show up in some far corner of the IE world upon closer scrutiny. Sergent provides one example.

Everyone knows the Hindu myth of the "churning of the ocean" with which the gods and demons jointly produce the amrta, the immortality drink. Sergent assures us that this myth "has no parallel in the IE world" (p.116), that it "is ignored by Vedic India and the IE world outside India" (p.378-379) but present in Mongolian mythology and in the Kojiki, a kind of Japanese Purana. Yet, he also informs us of a lesser-known Germanic myth in which the god Aegir churns the ocean to make the beer of the gods. (p.378-79, with reference to Georges Dumézil: Le Problème des Centaures, Paris 1929, p.51-60) But that one finding, even if it is in only one (but certainly distant) corner of the IE world, completely nullifies the earlier statement that the myth "has no parallel in the IE world". It is in fact possible that the Mongolian version (which is closer to the Germanic one, with a single deity doing the churning) and the Japanese version have been adapted from an IE original, just like the Excalibur myth.

Secondly, eastern contributions to Hindu tradition are not exclusively from the Mundas. The Rajasuya ceremony described in the Shatapatha Brahmana has an exact counterpart, not in Rome or Greece, nor in Chotanagpur or Japan, but in Fiji. The latter coronation ceremony has been analyzed into 19 distinct elements, and practically all of them are found in the Rajasuya. (p.381, with reference to Shatapatha Brahmana 5:3-5, and Arthur M. Hocart: Kingship, OUP 1927, p.76-83) This island culture is part of the vast expanse of the Austronesian language family. And indeed, a number of scholars have pointed out remarkable lexical similarities between IE and Austronesian. Unlike in the case of the Mundas, contacts of the Indo-Europeans with the Austronesians are hard to locate even in theory, unless we assume that the Austronesians at one time had a presence in India.

Finally, if a myth or religious custom is attested in India but not in the other IE cultures, this need not mean that the Indians have borrowed it from "pre-Aryan natives" or so. It can also mean that the other Indo-Europeans have lost what was originally a pan-IE heirloom. All of them have started by going through the same bottleneck, passing through Afghanistan, immediately plunging themselves into a very different climate from India's permanent summer, so that they had to adopt a very different lifestyle. And as they moved on, the difference only got bigger. Of practically all IE myths attested in some IE cultures, we know that they have been lost in other (generally in most) IE cultures; it is statistically to be expected that some myths have survived only in the Hindu tradition. And because of the full survival of Pagan religion in India plus the long centuries of literacy, it is in fact to be expected that a much higher percentage than the statistical average has only survived in India. So, probably, some myths attested only in Hinduism are purely IE, and if they are also attested in a non-IE neighbouring culture, the possibility remains that the latter has borrowed it from the Indo-Europeans rather than the reverse.

5.7. Harappa, teacher of China?

Quite separate from the importation of Southeast-Asian myths through the Austro-Asiatic population of the Ganga basin, Sergent also notes similarities between Harappan and Chinese civilizations unrelated to Munda lore. An important myth is that of the cosmogonic tortoise, the Chinese symbol of the universe; also the vehicle of Varuna, god of world order, and the form which, in the Shatapatha Brahmana, Prajapati takes to create the world. A tortoise-shaped construction forms part of the Yajur-Vedic fire altar, and the tortoise has also been depicted in a giant sculpture found in Harappa, indicating a similar myth. (p.116, with reference to John Marshall: Mohenjo Daro and the Indus civilization, London 1931) The tortoise as a cosmogonic symbol may well be one such mythic motif which is purely IE yet not attested in the non-Indian branches of IE. There is no indication for a foreign origin, and the tortoise's association with the Yamuna river (like the crocodile with the Ganga, the swan with the Saraswati) adds to its indigenous Northwest-Indian character.

Sergent also mentions the common origin of the Chinese and Hindu systems of 27 lunar mansions (Xiu, Nakshatra), which we have already considered. He admits that it could only have originated in an advanced culture, and that this was not Mesopotamia. He also notes that the Nakshatra system starts with the Pleiades/Krttika, which occupied the vernal equinox position in the centuries around 2,400 BC, exactly during the florescence of the Indus cities. This date, approximately, has been accepted by Jean Filliozat: "Notes d'astronomie ancienne de l'Iran et de l'Inde", Journal Asiatique 250, 1962, p.325-350; Albert Pike: "Lectures on the Arya", Kentucky 1873; and A.L. Basham: The Wonder That Was India, London 1954, according to Bernard Sergent: Genèse de l'Inde, p.422, n.65. We'll stick to this date for the present discussion, but not without mentioning that Asko Parpola (Decipherment of the Indus Script, p.206, p.263-265) himself gives reasons for thinking that Aldebaran had been the starting-point earlier, which would push back the birthdate of the Nakshatra system to ca. 3054 BC, the time of the pre-Harappan Kot Diji culture.

So, Harappa is the best bet as originator of this system, which spread to China and later also to West Asia. Sergent wonders aloud whether the similarities should be attributed to Harappa being "the teacher of China, whose civilization's beginning is contemporaneous". (p.380)

He informs us that the Nakshatra division of the heavens is unknown in other IE cultures, and in this case I would not speculate that they had known it but lost it along the way: rather, the system was invented after they had left India. This simple fact that there already was IE history before the genesis of the Nakshatra system also explains another fact he mentions: "The Rg-Veda doesn't allude to it, except in its 10th mandala, the youngest one occording to most indologists." (p.118) And even the youngest book only mentions "constellations" (RV 10:85:2), a concept known to all cultures, without specifying them as lunar mansions. At any rate, it is only at the end of (if not completely after) the Rg-Vedic period, well after the European branches of IE had left India, that the Nakshatra system was devised. This indicates once more that the Rg-Veda was pre-Harappan.

This chronology is confirmed by another fact related by Sergent: "Another aspect of the continuity between Indus and historical India is marked in the personal names: the oldest in Vedic India are in perfect conformity with Indo-European customs and highlight mostly the attributes with which an individial (or his family) adorns himself. In a later period astral names appear in India, which is foreign to the customs observed elsewhere among the Indo-Europeans". (p.121) Exactly: the Rg-Vedic people lived before the heyday of astronomy in Harappa and before the starry sky acquired a central place in the late-Vedic "and" in the Harappan religion.

5.7. The Harappan contribution

Sergent has identified the Oriental origin of so many Hindu myths, and the Dravidian (ultimately even African) origin of so many Hindu customs, including even the purity concept underlying post-Vedic caste relations: "As the same importance of purity is found in other societies, e.g. Semitic societies including even Islam and sub-Saharan Africa, it is not impossible that we have here another substratum: that of the ex-Dravidians of North India [Sindh-Gujarat], for instance?" (p.483, n.639) Yet, he has said relatively little about specifically Harappan contributions, eventhough these should logically have made a much larger impact. After all, the Harappans were more numerous, more advanced and more literate than the Mundas, and it is in their territory that the invading Aryans settled before scouting around in the then peripheral and relatively backward Munda-speaking region.

To be sure, Sergent devotes a chapter to the Harappan heritage in Hindu civilization. Thus, the weights and measures found in Lothal are the same ones which Kautilya has defined in his Arthashastra. (p.113) Personally, I would add that apart from being an important fact in itself, this continuity may also be symptomatic for a profounder continuity pertaining to fundamental cultural traits. Thus, the same search for standardization visible in the decimal measurements and in the orderly geometrical lay-out of the Harappan cities is evident in the rigorous structure of the Vedic hymns; in the attempt in the later Vedic literature to categorize all types of phenomena in neat little systems (from verbal conjugation classes listed by the grammarians through the Manu Smrti's artificial genealogy of the occupational castes in society to the Kama Sutra's varieties of sexual intercourse); and in the laborious ritual and architectonic details laid down in Brahminical texts for the proper construction of Vedic altars.

Sergent correctly notes that statuettes of mother goddesses have been found in large numbers in the Harappan cities, that mother goddesses are equally common in popular Hinduism, and that these are very uncommon in the historic IE religions. He also adds that in Europe, mother goddesses originated in the neolithic Old European culture, and remained popular all through the IE Pagan period to be picked up for christianization as Our Lady, suggesting a parallel: in India like in Europe, the popular pre-IE mother goddess survived and even asserted itself against the male-dominated IE official religion.

But clearly, IE religion was not hostile to the goddess cult: when the Church sought to win over the devout by accepting their goddess worship in a christianized form, most of Europe had been IE-speaking for several thousand years. All memory of a pre-IE period had vanished, yet these Celts and Romans and Germans venerated goddesses. In their mythologies, goddesses played only a supporting act, but this is the same situation as in Puranic Hinduism, in which goddess worship is widespread eventhough most myths have the male gods in the starring roles. It is like in real life: men need to dramatize their importance with all kinds of heroism, women simply are important without making such fuss over it. The Virgin Mary is by far the most popular Catholic saint, still present on every rural street corner around my village, much more popular than Jesus and His Father, yet the parts about her in the New Testament and the stories confabulated about her are very few. Therefore, our view of IE religion may be distorted by the fact that we rely on textual sources and myths, which belong to the public and official part of the religion; while by contrast, of Harappan religion we only have cult objects, showing us religion as it was lived by the people.

Sergent mentions the association of gods with animals as their respective "vehicle" (vahana: Vishnu's eagle, Shiva's bull, Saraswati's swan etc.) as an element of Hinduism which is commonly attributed to the pre-Aryan Harappans. But he minimizes this contribution, pointing out that such associated animals are common throughout the IE pantheon, e.g. Athena with her owl, Wodan with his raven, Jupiter who can appear as an eagle, Poseidon as a horse, Demeter as a cow. (p.115) In one case, the correspondence is even more exact: like Hindu goddess Saranyu (mother of the Ashwins), Celtic goddess Epona is imagined as either mare or rider.

Several more astronomy-based amendments to IE customs are mentioned as effects of Harappan influence, e.g. the fixation of the goddess festival (which existed in other parts of the IE world as well -- see that the Indo-Europeans had goddess cults of their own?) at the autumnal equinox. Very significant is the "stellar vestment": the shirt worn by the famous Harappan "priest-king" shows little three-petaled designs (also in evidence on other Harappan depictions), which Sergent, following Parpola, interprets as depictions of stars, exactly like in the scriptural description of the tarpya coat which the king must wear at some point in the Rajasuya ceremony. (p.121, with reference to Asko Parpola: Deciphering the Indus Script, p.201-218) In post-Harappan centuries, Mesopotamian kings are known to have worn such stellar vestments, and the China court ritual was likewise full of celestial symbolism.

What we see happening in the Harappan period is that a particular IE culture transforms itself under the impact of the florescence of what I would call a first scientific revolution; there is no indication of a foreign impact. Sergent has the facts under his own eyes without realizing their significance: "Shiva, Varuna, Yama, Durga-Parvati, we already said it, are deities of IE origin, the rituals concerning fire, soma and the person of the king are equally of IE if not Indo-Iranian origin. But it is now obvious that the Indo-Aryans, upon arriving in India, have amply harvested the Harappan heritage and included its ritual customs (construction of hearth-altars, rites inside buildings, use of the stellar vestment, ritual baths, fixation of feasts on the stellar equinoxes...) in their own religion." (p.124) Well, building facilities had been vastly improved, astronomical knowledge had been developed, so these innovations are not a matter of syncretism, merely of material and intellectual progress.

What more continuity was there? Apart from numerous material items, we note Harappan depictions of men wearing a tuft of hair on their backheads like Brahmins do, and of women wearing anklets. Some pictures suggest the notion of the "third eye". Most importantly, the Harappan people have remained in place: "the Italian anthropologist has emphasized not only that the skulls of Mohenjo Daro resemble those of today's Sindh and those of Harappa resemble those of today's Panjab, but even that the individual variability is identical today to what it was four thousand years ago." (p.128, quoting Mario Cappieri: "Ist die Indus-Kultur und ihre Bevölkerung wirklich verschwunden?", Anthropos 60:22, 1965, p.22)

Though Sergent considers it exaggerated to say that "the Indus civilization is still alive today", I would comment that it is not very exaggerated. (p.128; the quoted phrase, which Sergent dismisses in footnote 146, p.425, as "a Hindu nationalist myth", is from Dharma Pal Agrawal: L'Archéologie de l'Inde, CNRS, Paris 1986, p.2) But the point for now is that we really have seen very little evidence of the incorporation in Vedic tradition of elements which are foreign to it and which are traceable to the Harappan civilization. Compared with the limited but very definite list of items borrowed by Hindu tradition from cultures of East-Asian origin, the harvest in the case of the Harappan contribution is of a different type, larger but murkier. In spite of the ample archaeological material (quite in contrast with the zero objects identified as Vedic-age Austro-Asiatic), we don't get to see a sequence of "now it's in Harappa, and now it enters Vedic tradition". We don't get to see that clear contrast between Harappan and Vedic which most scholars have taken for granted. What we see is on the one hand plenty of elements which are simply in common between the Vedic and Harappan cultures, and on the other certain late-Vedic innovations which match the Harappan data and which constitute a departure from the common IE heritage: they are perfectly explainable through internal developments, particularly in proto-scientific knowledge and material control of the environment.

6. Conclusion

Bernard Sergent has written a book of incomparable erudition to narrate the genesis of the "composite culture" of Hinduism from what to him are the separate sources of Harappan, Dravidian, Indo-European and Austro-Asiatic elements. As part of this effort, he has tried to pinpoint the arrival of the Indo-Aryans in India, and this attempt has become the heroic failure of his book. Even in his two fields of expertise, he has not succeeded in finding decisive evidence for the Aryan invasion: in archaeology, he has not shown where a Bactrian or otherwise foreign culture crossed the Indus into India (indeed, the one entry he identifies as the Indo-Aryan invasion doesn't get farther than Pirak in Baluchistan); and in physical anthropology, he has not been able to identify an immigration wave coinciding with the supposed aryanization of northwestern India.

In comparative religion and mythology, he has thrown a few interesting challenges to non-invasionists, giving them some homework to do in fact-finding as well as in interpreting the data. But here too, he has not presented any insurmountable difficulties for a noninvasionist reading of the Harappan and Vedic information. On the contrary, many bits of information which he has either discovered or synthesized from secondary sources actually add substance to the emerging outlines of a non-invasionist version of ancient Indian and Indo-European history. For once the trite reviewer's phrase fully applies: one need not agree with Sergent's position, but his work is highly thought-provoking and bound to stimulate further research.

This is a shorter version of a chapter of Koenraad Elst's new book: Update on the Aryan Invasion Debate, Aditya Prakashan, Delhi.

 

 

Hermann Parzinger: "Die frühen Völker Eurasiens"

Die frühen Völker Eurasiens

Der international renommierte Vor- und Frühgeschichtsforscher Hermann Parzinger legt mit diesem höchst informativen, reich bebilderten Band ein Grundlagenwerk über Geschichte und Kultur der frühen Völker zwischen Ural und Pazifik vor.
Die Ausstellungen über Skythen und Mongolen haben das Interesse von Hunderttausenden Besuchern auf sich gezogen, und doch stellen diese beiden Völker nur einen kleinen Ausschnitt der zahlreichen Kulturen dar, die in dem gewaltigen Territorium zwischen Ural und Pazifik von der Jungsteinzeit bis zum Mittelalter entstanden sind. Den Völkern in diesem Gebiet kommt eine entscheidende Bedeutung für die Frühgeschichte der Alten Welt insgesamt zu, und so erscheinen sie als ein fester Bestandteil unseres gemeinsamen kulturellen Erbes. Nach dem Fall des Eisernen Vorhangs konnte der Austausch zwischen westlichen Wissenschaftlern und den Forschern auf dem Gebiet der ehemaligen Sowjetunion intensiviert werden, so daß mit dem Werk von Hermann Parzinger erstmals eine große Synthese des heutigen Wissensstandes über die archäologische Erforschung dieses Gebiets vorgelegt werden kann. Im Zentrum der Darstellung stehen die Verbreitungsgeschichte der Völker, ihre materielle Kultur, ihre Siedlungs- und Wirtschaftsweise, ihre Bestattungsbräuche und ihre künstlerischen Ausdrucksformen. All dies wird systematisch erschlossen und in enger Verbindung von Text und Bildern präsentiert. Auf diese Weise ist eine differenzierte und zugleich anschauliche Darstellung eines bedeutenden Kulturraums der Menschheitsgeschichte entstanden.

Afbeelding en tekst: Verlag C.H. Beck.

Le n°12 d’Hyperborée est paru !

Le n°12 d’Hyperborée est paru !

« Hyperborée magazine, aux sources de l’Europe ». Notre plus lointain passé, notre plus proche avenir. La revue HYPERBORÉE se donne pour mission de recenser les éléments intangibles et permanents qui, d’un cycle à l’autre, permettent à nos peuples européens de se régénérer et de recommencer leur fabuleuse histoire.

HYPERBORÉE, revue semestrielle, 112 pages sur le symbolisme, la spiritualité, les origines de l’Europe, les peuples, les religions, les écritures, les langues anciennes, les terroirs, la tradition, l’environnement, les cycles du temps, la géographie sacrée, les phénomènes inexpliqués, les mythes, contes et légendes, la quête du Graal…

SOMMAIRE DU N°12

- Agartha, le royaume occulté des Indo-européens

- L’Iran ancien, une source d’eau pure

- Le calendrier luni-solaire iranien

- La province du Gîlan, berceau de la dualité iranienne

- Nan Madol, la cité cyclopéenne

- Du nord au sud ou du sud au nord ?

- L’Out of Africa : la fin du mythe

-L’art : le temps des imposteurs

- La promotion de l’horrible

- Les buildings des Titans

- La fonction sacerdotale du barde

- Marie-Madeleine, l’archétype du principe féminin

- La quête initiatique de Tintin

www.hyperboreemagazine.fr

The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia

The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia

 

This book provides an overview of Bronze Age societies of Western Eurasia through an investigation of the archaeological record. The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia outlines the long-term processes and patterns of interaction that link these groups together in a shared historical trajectory of development. Interactions took the form of the exchange of raw materials and finished goods, the spread and sharing of technologies, and the movements of peoples from one region to another. Kohl reconstructs economic activities from subsistence practices to the production and exchange of metals and other materials. Kohl also argues forcefully that the main task of the archaeologist should be to write culture-history on a spatially and temporally grand scale in an effort to detect large, macrohistorical processes of interaction and shared development.


Afbeelding en tekst: Cambridge University Press.

Dr. R. Schmoeckel - Die Indoeuropäer

 

Reinhard Schmoeckel Die Indoeuropäer Aufbruch aus der Vorgeschichte Bastei-Lübbe-Verlag (Taschenbuch) 576 S. mit 24 Karten und Übersichten ISBN 3-404-64162-0 1. Auflage 1999, 4. Auflage vergriffen Überarbeitete und aktualisierte Neuauflage des erstmals 1982 im Rowohlt Verlag erschie- nenen Buches "Die Hirten, die die Welt ver- änderten – Der Aufbruch der indoeuropä- ischen Völker"

Ganze Bibliotheken füllen die Bücher über die Geschichte der Griechen und Römer, Völker, die oft und gerne als Wiege unserer Zivilisation zitiert werden. Doch was geschah eigentlich, bevor die Griechen ihre Tempel bauten und die Römer ihre Legionen ausschickten ? Wer waren die Menschen, die dafür sorgten, dass man von Indien bis hin zu den äußersten Gestaden Westeuropas Sprachen spricht, die denselben geheimnisvollen Ursprung zu haben scheinen ?
Dr. Reinhard Schmoeckel machte sich auf die Suche nach unseren Ahnen, den Ahnen fast aller Europäer . Dieses Buch ist jenen Völkern gewidmet, aus deren Zeit keine oder so gut wie keine Dokumente überliefert sind: der Vorgeschichte. Dennoch weiß man heute schon sehr viel darüber. Man muss es nur wagen und das in Tausenden von dicken wissenschaftlichen Büchern verstreute Wissen allgemein verständlich darstellen. Das Buch versucht, die frühen Erlebnisse unserer Vorfahren, über die der historisch Normalgebildete sonst praktisch nie etwas erfährt, wenigstens in einem groben Überblick zu erhellen, Zusammenhänge deutlich zu machen und das Wichtigste über die wichtigsten frühen Kulturen und Völker indoeuropäischer Abstammung zu erzählen.

Stimmen zum Buch

...Sehr anschaulich und mit verblüffender Quellenkenntnis...
(Rheinische Post)
...Spannender als mancher Abenteuerroman...
(Fuldaer Zeitung)
Dieses Buch beinhaltet all das Wissen über die indoeuropäischen Völker, das ich mir mühevoll aus zig Büchern zusammensuchen musste. Nie war umfassender komplexes Wissen so zugänglich.
(Leserurteil bei Amazon)


Een vulgair-wetenschappelijke inleiding tot de problematiek, die evenwel vlot leest en wetenschappelijke feiten afwisselt met een fictief verhaal.

The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World

 

 

The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World

• Written to fulfil the needs of students, specialists, and the general readers
• Provides a complete account of Proto-Indo-European by subject and location
• Offers unique insights into a lost civilization
• Accessible and entertaining style

This book introduces Proto-Indo-European and explores what the language reveals about the people who spoke it. The Proto-Indo-Europeans lived somewhere in Europe or Asia between 5,500 and 8,000 years ago, and no text of their language survives. J. P. Mallory and Douglas Adams show how over the last two centuries scholars have reconstructed it from its descendant languages, the surviving examples of which comprise the world's largest language family. After a concise account of Proto-Indo-European grammar and a consideration of its discovery, they use the reconstructed language and related evidence from archaeology and natural history to examine the lives, thoughts, passions, culture, society, economy, history, and environment of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Our distant ancestors had used the wheel, were settled arable farmers, kept sheep and cattle, brewed beer, got married, made weapons, and had 27 verbs for the expression of strife. The subjects to which the authors devote chapters include fauna, flora, family and kinship, clothing and textiles, food and drink, space and time, emotions, mythology, religion, and the continuing quest to discover the Proto-Indo-European homeland.

Proto-Indo-European-English and English-Proto-Indo-European vocabularies and full indexes conclude the book. Written in a clear, readable style and illustrated with maps, figures, and tables, this book is on a subject of great and enduring fascination. It will appeal to students of languages, classics, and the ancient world, as well as to general readers interested in the history of language and of early human societies.



Readership: Students of the Indo-European languages, ancient societies, and comparative philology and historical linguistics in departments of classics, archaeology, cultural anthropology, and linguistics. General readers interested in the history of language and early human societies. The book can be used as a handbook for anyone involved in studying Indo-European or comparative classical languages, and as a basic introduction to Proto-Indo-European comparative philology and lexical studies.

Kratylos / JIES

Indogermanische Gesellschaft - Kratylos 

Journal of Indo-European Studies

 

Ex: http://fromdublintodelhi.blogspot.com/

 

Dé bekendste academische organisatie die zich in het Duitse taalgebied - en in continentaal Europa tout court - onledig houdt met de interdisciplinaire studie van de Indo-Europeanistiek, is de Indogermanische Gesellschaft.
Haar tijdschrift Kratylos staat boordevol interessante artikelen en kan besteld worden via uitgeverij Reichert (http://www.reichertverlag.de/, Kreidlerstr. 9, D-70806 Kornwestheim, Deutschland; Tel: (0049) (0)7154/ 13270; e.mail: [e-mail] [e-mail]).

Het pendant van dit tijdschrift in de Engelstalige wereld is het vermaarde Journal of Indo-European Studies, wiens hoofdredactuer, James Patrick MALLORY, de auteur van het sinds de jaren 1980 vele malen heruitgegeven en vertaalde standaardwerk In Search of the Indo-Europeans, garant staat voor een onafgebroken stroom publicaties.
Te bestellen rechtstreeks via de website: http://www.jies.org/.

Institute of Archaeomythology

Institute of Archaeomythology

 

Ex: http://fromdublintodelhi.blogspot.com/

 

In navolging van vorig stukje verdient ook dit onderzoeksinstituut de nodige vermelding.
Het onderzoeksinstituut Institute of Archaeomythology (http://www.archaeomythology.org/) bouwt principieel voort op de interdisciplinaire Indo-Europeanistiek, zoals deze werd vorm gegeven door de Litouwse archeologe Marija GIMBUTAS.

Het Instituut wordt mede gedragen door Harald HAARMANN, bekend van allerlei werken over de geschiedenis van beschavingen, talen, volkeren, alfabetsystemen en tijdsberekeningen.
In 2010 verscheen van zijn hand in de serie C.H. Beck Wissen (http://www.chbeck.de/trefferliste.aspx?toc=3343) de misschien wel beste, beknopte én up-to-date inleiding op de problematiek van de (Proto-)Indo-Europeanen: Die Indoeuropäer. Herkunft, Sprachen, Kulturen (nummer 2706 van de reeks).

 

In deze handige pocket geeft Haarmann een stand van zaken van onze kennis inzake de oertaal van de (Proto-)Indo-Europeanen en inzake hun oorspronkelijke bakermat in de Zuid-Russische steppe - hij volgt in dezen dus duidelijk de lijn-Gimbutas, net zoals Mallory, Anthony, Sergent en Lebedynsky, om er maar enkelen te noemen. Hij licht toe hoe deze steppenomaden te paard vanaf de 4de eeuw voor onze tijdrekening in westelijke en in oostelijke richting zijn uitgezwermd, en hoe ze zich geleidelijk aan vermengden met andere culturen en tenslotte sedentair werden in Iran, India, West-Europa en tot aan de grens met China. Van dit proces getuigen niet enkel de talen van de Indo-Europeanen, maar ook hun mythen en talrijke archeologische vondsten.

 

Jürgen Spanuth's "Atlantis of the North"

Jürgen Spanuth's Atlantis of the North

Anglo Pyramidologist

Ex: http://www.wermodandwermod.com/ 

Jürgen Spanuth was a German classicist and theologian. He wrote three major works on Atlantis, atleast two being translated into English shortly after their German publication, the first being Atlantis: the Mystery Unravelled (1953, tr. 1956), the second solely titled Atlantis (1965) and the third Atlantis of the North (1976, tr. 1979).

Spanuth's approach to Atlantis was professional, as a classical scholar he had access to many ancient inscriptions, writings and fragments (especially Greek) and his expertise in this field meant he could quote and examine them in great detail. His original book 'Atlantis the mystery unravelled' was the most comprehenesive containing a massive amount of referenced classical sources. The purpose of Atlantis of the North (as the introduction states on the first few pages) was merely to be a ''shorter version'' of the original, for better access and understanding for the reader. There are still hundreds of classical sources however found cited throughout the book.

Spanuth made some unique identifications and discoveries about Atlantis no other had before his time, all of these are presented in his excellent book. Firstly, he was the first to discover that the 'Atlantic Ocean' of the ancient Greeks was not confined to the Atlantic we know today in the west, but also the Arctic Ocean or North Sea. Ancient Greek poets (i.e Euripides) placed Atlas (the bearer of the world-pillar) in the extreme north, not the west. The waters that surrounded Atlas were called the 'Atlantic sea', and as Spanuth discovered most ancient Greek writers placed this sea in the far north. There are many other unique findings Spanuth wrote about, he identified the Atlanteans Plato wrote about who invaded Libya and Egypt as being the mysterious 'Sea Peoples' who attacked parts of Southern Europe and North Africa around 1200BC. His evidence again being professional - translated egyptian inscriptions and papyrus such as the Medinet Habu texts, which identify the 'Sea Peoples' as coming a homeland from the far north. Spanuth identified this homeland, as being the North Sea.

Spanuth's personal identification of Atlantis was with Heligoland, a small Island within the North Sea - just off the coast of Germany. Now he may have been wrong about specifically Heligoland, but his identification with the North Sea i believe was spot on. Buy and read his work to see all the evidence. This is top scholar material, backed up with lots and lots of classical documentation. Spanuth stuck to Plato's original writings on Atlantis, which is precisely why his work should be read, he was not a crackpot linking Atlantis to aliens or powerful technology you today hear with New-Ager type authors, he was a genuine well educated classicist. I believe Spanuth got very close to the absolute truth regarding Atlantis, and he did this just soley by studying Plato's account and classical sources. Other men for hundreds of years made the mistake of adding to Plato's writings on Atlantis and twisting or inventing what they wished to see.

Source: Amazon

Articles de Jean Haudry sur "centrostudilaruna"

Articles de Jean Haudry

sur http://www.centrostudilaruna.it

 

Le disque de Nebra

La tradition indo-européenne chez les Celtes

De l’indo-européen aux indo-européens

Pensée, parole, action dans la tradition indo-européenne

La religion cosmique et l’habitat circumpolaire des Indo-Européens

General characteristics of Indo-European Religion

Les Indo-Européens et la domestication du cheval

 

Les Indo­-Européens et la domestication du cheval

par Wilfried Peter A. FISCHER

Ex: http://vouloir.hautetfort.com/

L'article qui suit est extrait d'un ouvrage que nous avions reçu en service de presse depuis longtemps déjà. Cet ouvrage est si riche en informations sur le plus lointain passé de l'Europe que nous avions eu du mal à en faire la recension. Il nous est paru plus sage d'en publier une infime partie, afin de donner au lecteur l'envie de le lire en entier. La domestication du cheval est sans doute l'une des prestations les plus spectaculaires de l'humanité indo-euro­péenne au cours de cette période charnière entre la préhistoire et l'histoire. Les recherches de Wilfried Fischer permettent, par leur option interdisciplinaire, d'établir une nouvelle chro­nologie et de dégager des faits qui bouleversent la vision étriquée de la préhistoire que nous véhiculons toujours.

 

Notre thématique est très complexe : elle s'étend des domaines biologiques et archéologiques aux disciplines linguistiques, historiques et philoso­phiques. C'est pourquoi il m'apparaît opportun de partir des faits naturels. La famille des équi­dés était répandue dans l'ancien et le nouveau monde, même sous sa forme finale monodactyle. Peu avant la période de domestication attestée, toutes les formes américaines avaient disparu. Les mustangs, considérés erronément comme une variante du cheval sauvage, n'étaient en fait que des chevaux domestiques d'origine euro­péenne retournés à l'état sauvage. En Eurasie et en Afrique, un seul genre (genus) a survécu : le genre equus, dans une diversité d'espèces que certains spécialistes ont classées dans diverses sous-espèces. La seule unité de base taxono­mique réellement naturelle est l'espèce (species), laquelle, en règle générale, se subdivise en di­verses sous-espèces, en vertu de critères géo­graphiques dans la plupart des cas. Quant au concept de «race», il devrait être réservé aux hominidés actuels et aux espèces domestiques. Tous les représentants d'une espèce (quelle que soit leur sous-espèce) sont fertiles entre eux. Les bâtards entre les espèces d'un même genre (p. ex. les mules, les zébroïdes, etc.) sont stériles. Chaque forme d'animal domestique descend d'une espèce jadis sauvage. Depuis C. v. Linné, chaque espèce porte un nom double (p. ex. : equus africanus = âne sauvage), où le premier terme désigne le nom du genre. Les sous-­espèces reçoivent un troisième terme (p. ex. equus africanus atlanticus = âne sauvage de l'Atlas). Toutes les races d'animaux domestiques reçoivent également un troisième terme, que l'on fait toutefois précéder d'un f. (pour forma = forme domestique). Ainsi : equus africanus f. asinus = âne domestique. Toutes les races de la forme domestique d'une espèce sauvage sont bien sûr non seulement fertiles entre elles mais aussi fertiles avec toutes les sous-espèces de l'espèce de base en question. Il convient de tenir compte de ce fait, lorsque l'on recense les carac­téristiques spéciales des sous-espèces domes­tiques afin de rechercher des preuves quant à l'origine de leur domestication. Un flux de gènes de cette nature peut s'être produit à n'importe quelle période ultérieure. Un bon exemple est celui des chats domestiques, qui combinent des caractéristiques de deux sous-espèces : le chat fauve de Libye et le chat des forêts d'Europe. Sans attestation historique, le moment où ces ca­ractéristiques se sont combinées ne peut être re­constitué.

 

La domestication de l'onagre

 

Au départ de ces données de base, retournons au cheval. À côté de l'espèce «âne sauvage», il existe en Afrique plusieurs espèces zébrines à robe tigrée qui n'ont jamais été domestiquées. Au Proche-Orient, vit l'espèce «onagre» (equus hemionus). Les hommes n'ont pas seulement chassé l'onagre mais l'on maintenu en captivité à Çatal Hüyük vers -6000. À partir de -3200, l'onagre est utilisé comme bête de somme, avec anneau nasal, à Sumer. Les zoologues nient la domestication parce qu'on n'a pas découvert d'ossements mais les historiens l'affirment parce qu'il existe des représentations imagées. L'exemple des onagres est intéressant lorsque l'on aborde les problèmes analogues dans la domestication du cheval.

 

 

La désignation de l'espèce de base «cheval sau­vage» a été contestée pendant longtemps à cause de tendances inflationnaires. Ce n'est qu'en 1970 que Nobis a pu imposer le nom d'espèce : equus ferus, laquelle comprend toutes les sous-­espèces fossiles de l'âge glaciaire. La systèmatique zoologique des formes récentes préfère encore et toujours le nom d'equus przewalskii.

 

En pratique toutefois, on utilise les désignations ferus et przewalskii comme synonymes. À l'é­poque historique, il n'y avait que trois sous-es­pèces de cheval sauvage en Eurasie septentrio­nale, chacune ayant été considérée comme une espèce à part entière. Comme elles ont toutes disparue, du moins à l'état sauvage, plus aucun examen empirique n'est encore possible. Il s'agit des sous-espèces suivantes :

1) E.f. = p. silvaticus = le tarpan des forêts (robe éclaircie, petite taille, extinction vers 800) ;

2) E.f. = p. gmelini = le tarpan des steppes (robe gris souris, taille moyenne, extinction en 1871) ;

3) E.f. = p. przewalskii = le tarpan oriental (robe d'un jaune rougeâtre, grande taille, ex­tinction après 1946).

 

Ces trois espèces ont une crinière de poitrine et des lignes transversales sur les membres anté­rieurs.

 

La domestication originelle s'est faite en Europe

 

Il va de soi qu'une première domestication du cheval n'a pu s'effectuer que dans la région de son expansion naturelle. L'Orient, région des premières cultures et de la plus ancienne do­mestication des chèvres et des moutons, ne peut être retenu comme lieu de la première domes­tication du cheval. Pour l'histoire des sciences, il est intéressant de rappeler que l'on a longtemps cru que l'origine du cheval domestique (equus ferus = przewalskii f. caballus) se trouvait en Mongolie. Deux causes majeures président à cette erreur, me semble-t-il. D'abord, le tarpan oriental, cheval sauvage de Mongolie, est la seu­le forme sauvage encore vivante qui a pu être observée scientifiquement. Ensuite, chez les Eu­ropéens, il y avait encore le choc psychologique des invasions mongoles qui agissait inconsciem­ment. La maîtrise parfaite du cheval par les peuplades hunniques ne prouve rien. Il suffit de songer à l'exemple récent des Indiens d'Amé­rique qui ont su maîtriser à la perfection et très rapidement les chevaux européens capturés, après avoir été pris de panique en les apercevant pour la première fois. Pour prouver la fausseté de l'origine asiatique du cheval domestique, il suffit de signaler un fait : la civilisation chinoise, même arrivée à un degré de développement élevé, n'a appris à connaître le cheval que par l'intermédiaire de tribus indo-européennes orientales.

Si les Mongols ne sont pas les premiers domes­ticateurs du cheval, alors ce ne peuvent être que les Indo-Européens. Les traces de la plus ancienne domestication du cheval en Russie sont le fait d'Indo-Européens. L'opinion qui voulait attribuer une origine orientale au cheval do­mestique doit être reportée sur les Indo-Eu­ropéens. À ce sujet, Franz Hancar (2), profes­seur à Vienne, avait dès 1955 débroussaillé le terrain et conforté l'origine européenne du cheval domestique. Le sort de ce travail de grande valeur a été tragique, car il a été publié à une époque où toutes les dates du néolithique eu­ropéen avaient été erronément avancée de 2000 ans. Thenius, professeur de paléontologie, écrit dans un manuel publié à Vienne en 1969 : « Les chevaux ont été inclus dans l'oikos humain en Europe dès le néolithique. Un second centre de domestication a existé en Sibérie au 3ième mil­lénaire av. notre ère » (3). Cette assertion, claire et succincte, n'est pas passée dans le grand pu­blic ni dans la recherche dominante actuelle en matières indo-européennes.

 

Bref résumé de l'histoire de la domestication

 

Examinons, au moins brièvement, les origines de la domestication des animaux. Les racines les plus anciennes des rapports entre l'homme et des mammifères, outre la chasse, remontent à la phase finale des hommes de Néanderthal, il y a 40.000 ans en Europe. L'image que l'on se faisait de cette sous-espèce (homo sapiens neanderthalensis) de l'homme accompli a radi­calement changé au cours de ces cent dernières années : on avait cru qu'elle était à mi-chemin entre le singe et l'homme ; on sait désormais qu'elle était au moins égale au sapiens actuel et possédait un volume crânien plus important. Ces hommes ont laissé des autels de pierre dans les régions montagneuses de l'Europe centrale, sur lesquels étaient exposés des crânes et des fémurs d'ours des cavernes. Ce qui est important dans ce culte, c'est que les canines de ces crânes d'ours avaient été limées. Comme le prouve la présence d'une nouvelle couche d'émail, ces animaux ont vécu un certain temps sous la houlette de l'homme. Dans le Sud de la France (4), on a retrouvé trace d'une opération sem­blable sur des défenses de sanglier. Le culte de l'ours a été repris pas l'homo sapiens sapiens. Il s'est répandu à travers toute la Sibérie jusqu'à Hokaïdo, où des savants ont pu l'observer chez les Aïnous paléo-europides.

 

La domestication proprement dite commence avec celle du loup (canis lupus) en Eurasie sep­tentrionale. L'ancienne hypothèse, qui postulait que la domestication découlait du fait que les loups suivaient les hommes, n'est plus défendue aujourd'hui par les biologistes. Nos ancêtres ne vivaient pas dans une société de gaspillage. Hommes et loups étaient d'âpres concurrents. La cause première de la domestication serait une su­perposition d'instincts. Les jeunes animaux dé­clenchent, via le schéma de l'enfant, l'instinct nourricier de l'homme ; le jeune animal, via le schéma de l'animal dominant dans le cadre des instincts grégaires, en vient à voir l'homme qui le soigne comme son dominant.

 

 

Le premier objectif de la domestication, c'est d'obtenir de la docilité par voie de sélection génétique. Le second objectif, c'est, au départ, d'obtenir une source de protéines et de matières grasses aisément accessible. Cela vaut pour tou­tes les phases premières de la domestication, du chien au cheval. Ce n'est que lorsque des co­chons, des moutons et des chèvres domestiques ont été élevés que le chien a été réservé à d'autres tâches.

 

Chiens, cochons, moutons et chèvres

 

Les plus anciens ossements attestés de chiens domestiques (canis lupus f. familiaris) remon­tent à environ 8000 av. notre ère et ont été découverts dans le Yorkshire et dans le Senckenbergmoor (5). En 1986, j'ai pu prouver, grâce à un enchaînement d'indices, que déjà les chasseurs de mammouths il y a plus de 20.000 ans élevaient des chiens affublés de taches claires au-dessus des yeux (6). Les ossements les plus anciens de cochons domestiques (sus scrofa f. domestica) découverts jusqu'ici remontent à - 7500 et ont été découverts en Crimée. On remarquera que ces deux animaux domestiques n'impliquent aucunement la culture sur champ. Leurs éleveurs appartiennent encore au groupe linguistique boréen non fractionné tout en étant déjà les ancêtres des futurs Indo-Européens.

 

Dans la zone du Croissant fertile, l'agriculture commence vers -9000, de même que l'élevage des chèvres et des moutons. Les quatre espèces d'animaux domestiques sont des mammifères grégaires de taille moyenne. Ceux de la zone septentrionale sont omnivores ; ceux de la zone méridionale sont herbivores. Dès 1986, j'ai pu prouver, avec force arguments, que seuls le chien et le cochon étaient les premiers animaux domestiques des Indo-Européens. Une prière hittite-louvite le signale. En voici un extrait : « Dieu Soleil du ciel, mon seigneur, à l'enfant de l'homme, au chien, au cochon, à l'animal sauvage des champs, dites ce qui est juste, ô Dieu Soleil, dites-le jour après jour » (7).

 

Même si à l'époque de la transcription de cette prière, vers -1300, les Hittites, peuple indo-eu­ropéens, disposent déjà d'un large éventail d'a­nimaux domestiques, leur prière rappelle ce qu'il y avait avant. Dès 6000 av. notre ère, l'Europe et l'Orient s'étaient échangé leurs animaux do­mestiques. Mais jusqu'à ce jour, le chien et le cochon chez les Indo-Européens, le mouton et la chèvre chez les Hamito-Sémites, sont nettement privilégiés dans les cultes et dans les croyances populaires.

 

En Grèce, les Paléo-Egéens, qui, sur le plan lin­guistique, appartenaient probablement au groupe caucasien- anatolien, réussissent à domestiquer pour la première fois un mammifère de grande taille : le bœuf  domestique (bos primigenius f. taurus). Cette performance mérite une ample at­tention, surtout si l'on songe combien dangereux peuvent encore être les taureaux et au rôle qu'a joué le bœuf dans l'alimentation de l'homme. Les recherches récentes relatives à la domesti­cation ont découvert que la transformation phy­sique la plus frappante dans la phase initiale de la domestication, c'est une diminution de la taille. On peut encore voir de très petits bovidés do­mestiques en Anatolie aujourd'hui.

 

En Europe

 

Au nord des premiers éleveurs de bœufs, dans la péninsule balkanique, vivaient vers -6000, les porteurs de la culture des céramiques à ban­deaux. Ils adoptent, en même temps que la cul­ture des céréales, les animaux domestiques mé­diterranéens et transmettent ces formes d'éco­nomie à l'Europe Centrale en l'espace de 800 ans seulement. Il faut signaler dans ce processus trois stations de transmission au nord du cours supérieur du Danube pendant le néolithique : Müglitz/Mohelnice en Moravie ; Karbitz/Chaba­rovice en Bohème du Nord ; Olszanica en Haute-Silésie (8). Vers 5000 av. notre ère, la culture des céramiques à bandeaux linéaires s'étend déjà depuis l'Ouest de la France jusqu'à la Vistule. Les régions littorales du Nord et la Russie ne sont pas encore atteintes. Cela signifie que l'Europe du Sud-Est et du Centre possède à cette époque une avance culturelle et économique par rapport à toutes les autres régions du sous­-continent.

 

Cette nouvelle forme d'économie provoque un premier mouvement de population, accompagné du défrichage par incendie et de la construction de maisons longues rectangulaires. Les haches perforées qui, dans le Nord de l'Europe pré­historique, étaient des haches faites en bois de cervidés et avaient déjà une longue tradition derrière elles, se fabriquent désormais en pierre taillée. Les morts sont enterrés assis. On re­connaît les tombes des hommes aux bijoux faits de fragments de coquilles d'huîtres. Le type racial dominant est est-méditerranéen. La taille des corps augmente en direction du nord, en concordance avec les lois de la zoologie. Les crânes hauts, étroits et longs se rapprochent de l'aspect de ceux des Est-nordides. Ce groupe démographiquement important et culturellement homogène pour les critères de cette lointaine époque ne peut qu'être indo-européen du point de vue linguistique. Vu les preuves nombreuses et les indices dont nous disposons, je ne puis que me référer à mon livre de 1986. Idem pour la justification exacte de la chronologie que j'em­ploie.

 

La capture des chevaux

 

À côté de l'élevage des animaux domestiques, la chasse continue à jouer un rôle important pour la satisfaction des besoins en protéines et en matières grasses. Le cheval sauvage est compris dans les animaux chassés, comme le prouvent les découvertes du Solutréen près de Lyon en France (28.000 - 17.000 av. notre ère). À cet endroit, les Paléo-Européens ouest-boréens ont tué quelque 40.000 à 100.000 chevaux en profi­tant de la panique de cet animal qui fuit devant le danger ; les chevaux tombaient du haut d'une falaise en fuyant. Ce cheval du Solutréen est, croit-on aujourd'hui, une forme primitive et occidentale du tarpan des forêts.

 

Si déjà les Paléo-Européens du Solutréen pou­vaient organiser des chasses à battues efficaces, les représentants de la culture de la céramique en bandeaux devaient, eux aussi, en pratiquer. Grâce à leurs expériences acquises avec le bœuf domestique, ils savent comment s'y prendre avec les mammifères de grande taille. Dans les clai­rières, les lopins cultivés devaient immanqua­blement attirer les chevaux sauvages. D'après nos connaissances quant à la construction des bâtiments longitudinaux, il était possible de fabriquer des enclos vers lesquels on poussait les chevaux sauvages. De telles conditions n'exis­taient pas dans la steppe. De plus, même pour les représentants de la céramique à bandeaux linéai­res, nous ne possédons pas encore de preuves de la domestication du cheval.

 

Les découvertes de Woldrich

 

Environ vers -4800, l'unité de la grande culture centre-européenne se fractionne. Dans le vieux centre que fut la Bohème et la Saxe, se dé­veloppe une culture de la céramique à poinçon, qui dura jusque vers -4200. Tous les sites archéologiques démontrent qu'à cette époque, l'élevage des animaux joue un rôle beaucoup plus important. Mais il nous manque toujours des indices (des ossements en l'occurrence) prouvant une domestication du cheval. Dans un ancien rapport de fouilles, relatif au site de Karbitz/Aussig, le paléontologue J. Woldrich si­gnale toutefois des données intéressantes quant à la présence d'ossements dans les fosses cul­tuelles de la culture des céramiques à bandeaux. À l'époque de Woldrich, les dénominations en zoologie pour les animaux domestiques n'étaient pas encore uniformes et l'âge de la culture n'était pas encore déterminé avec certitude. Je remar­quai tout particulièrement que Woldrich signalait la présence de nombreux restes d'os d'equus caballus minor, puis de différents types de bo­vidés et aussi d'equus caballus. Ces noms d'es­pèce ne sont plus utilisés aujourd'hui. Mais ils correspondent à equus ferus = przewalskii, le cheval sauvage d'Eurasie. Nous venons de voir qu'il existait en Europe deux sous-espèces de cette espèce. Je tiens pour exclu que la dé­signation «minor» désigne le tarpan des forêts, plus petit et différent du tarpan des steppes. La région située entre les Monts Métallifères et les Monts de Bohème, à l'époque fort humide, était recouverte d'une épaisse forêt. Ce n'était pas du tout un espace adéquat pour le tarpan des steppes. De surcroît, les sous-espèces naturelles se sont précisément développées par isolation géographique. Souvenons-nous de cette con­naissance, établie récemment, qui prouve que la taille moyenne des premiers animaux domesti­qués diminuait par rapport à leur forme sauvage ; alors les descriptions de fouilles de Woldrich nous apparaissent sous un jour nouveau. À côté de quelques ossements de cheval sauvage (equus caballus ; dans la nomenclature moderne : e. f. = p.), Woldrich mentionne de très nombreux os­sements de cheval domestique, qu'il nomme equus caballus minor (dans la nomenclature moderne : e. f. = p. f. caballus).

 

La découverte de mors

 

Mais pour les règles très sévères établies pour les recherches relatives à la domestication, les résul­tats de Woldrich ne sont pas suffisants pour ser­vir de preuves. En revanche, il existe des dé­couvertes provenant de sites relevant de la cul­ture de la céramique à bandeaux poinçonnés, dé­couvertes qui étayent mes interprétations de façon convaincante. Il s'agit de la découverte de deux mors de bridon. Déjà en 1907, on en avait découvert une paire en bois de cerf poli dans un habitat à Goldbach près d'Halberstadt. Ces pièces auraient disparu. Je possède toutefois la publication originale avec photo. Le deuxième bridon provient de Zauschwitz près de Pegau en Saxe et se trouve au Musée de Dresde (9).

 

La découverte de mors de bridon, c'est pour la problématique que nous soulevons, une preuve beaucoup plus intéressante que la découverte d'ossements. Dans la plupart des cas, les indices de la domestication d'un animal n'apparaissent sur le squelette qu'après plusieurs siècles d'élevage. De plus, nous savons que l'objectif premier de la domestication est d'obtenir une ré­serve alimentaire. Les mors de bridon prouvent néanmoins que le cheval domestique primitif, petit de taille et dérivant de la sous-espèce «tarpan des forêts», était déjà utilisé comme bête de somme. Tandis que les bœufs sont attelés au moyen d'un joug, aux chevaux, on mettait, à l'origine, un bridon léger en cuir. Celui-ci re­posait sur l'espace sans dents, entre les incisives et les molaires et avait besoin de mors latéraux. Par l'intermédiaire de rênes, le cheval pouvait aussi être guidé depuis l'arrière. C'était un grand avantage pour le charriage de troncs d'arbre, pour tirer des objets ou des pièces ou pour les traîner sur la neige ou la glace. L'invention du mors et de la bride a été une condition indispensable à l'invention du char et pour les techniques de cavalerie, plus récentes encore.

 

On ne pouvait pas monter ces premiers et faibles petits chevaux domestiques. On ne peut conclu­re, au départ de ces premières tentatives d'atte­lage, que les Européens de cette époque possé­daient déjà des véhicules à roues. Même à Su­mer, beaucoup plus tard, vers 3500 av. notre ère ; on ne trouve que des traîneaux de bois, pas encore de chars à roues pleines. Ce que l'on peut concevoir de plus réaliste, c'est l'utilisation de traîneaux comme chez les Amérindiens et en Sibérie, où comme on l'a parfois revu en Europe récemment en période de détresse. Les traîneaux, pour les voyages sur glace ou sur neige, sont sans doute la deuxième étape dans les progrès de l'attelage. Quoi qu'il en soit, les indices récoltés dans les régions de Halberstadt, Pegau et Aussig proviennent du centre de la zone d'expansion des porteurs de la culture de la céramique à bandeaux et à poinçons, culture dans laquelle nous pou­vons situer les plus anciens éleveurs indo-euro­péens de chevaux.

 

Je voudrais brièvement rappeler ici que chez les porteurs de cette culture, on trouve, outre les haches de schiste en forme de semelles, des haches-marteaux à trous en pierre de roche. Mais la découverte la plus importante, après la do­mestication du cheval, se situe dans le domaine astronomique. À Leitmeritz, en Bohème du Nord, on a découvert une plaquette dans laquelle un calendrier lunaire avait été gravé (10). La disposition des traits gravés ressemble à un cercle de pieux de bois récemment découvert près de Quenstedt en Thuringe. Je rappelle au lecteur que, sur base de données établies grâce au C-14, nous nous trouvons entre -4800 et – 4200. À la même époque, les premiers méga­lithes apparaissent en Bretagne et, en Bulgarie, les premiers rudiments de la métallurgie du cuivre et de l'or.

 

Le cheval comme animal domestique

 

La culture des céramiques à bandeaux et à poinçons a été remplacée par la culture des vases en entonnoirs (Trichterbecherkultur) ; le littoral de l'Allemagne du Nord et le Sud de la Scan­dinavie sont désormais inclus dans la zone néo­lithique agricole. À cela s'ajoute l'inhumation individuelle sous tumulus / kourgan, avec ou sans bords de pierre : c'est en dernière instance une caractéristique archéologique des Indo-Eu­ropéens. Les tumuli du Groupe de Baalberg en Saxe/Thuringe sont plus anciens que les kour­gans en bordure de la Mer Caspienne. Au cours de la phase des tombes à couloir (-3200/-2800), dans les habitats le long du Lac Dümmer (Basse­-Saxe), le nombre d'ossements de chevaux dé­passe largement celui de tous les animaux à sabots (11). Chez les porteurs contemporains dé la culture de Bernburg (sur le territoire de la RDA), on a recensé une paire de mors de bridon fait dans des défenses de sanglier à Warn­stedt/Thale et des restes de crânes d'une race de petits chevaux domestiques près de Großquen­stedt.

 

On a également trouvé à Jordansmühl en Silésie des inhumations de chevaux datant de -3600/­3200 ; ces inhumations constituent les indices premiers d'une position cultuelle du cheval. Dans un site relevant de la culture de Baden en Basse-Autriche (-3200/-2800), on a retrouvé une pièce jugulaire en os provenant d'un mors. Le plus ancien point à l'Est, où l'on trouve trace d'une domestication du cheval, se situe en Ukraine occidentale. C'est dans cette région que la culture de Cucuteni-Tripolye, caractérisée par la présence de poteries peintes, a pris son envol à partir de -4200. Son origine doit être recherchée dans la plus ancienne des cultures de la cérami­que à bandeaux peinte dans les Balkans. Les os­sements de chevaux domestiques sont déjà pré­sents dans la phase de transition AB, laquelle commence vers ± -4000 ; on les retrouve à côté de traîneaux dans un territoire situé au Nord-Est de la zone de la culture de Tripolye. Parce qu'ils négligent les découvertes provenant des cultures plus anciennes de la céramique à bandeaux et à poinçons, les défenseurs de la thèse postulant une origine ouralienne des Indo-Européens af­firment que ces vestiges constituent les preuves les plus anciennes de la domestication du cheval. Il est certain toutefois que les preuves les plus anciennes de la domestication du cheval entre 4800 et 3200 av. notre ère se limitent à l'espace entre le Lac Dümmer (Basse-Saxe) et le Dniepr.

 

L'apparition de la roue

 

Dès que l'élevage des chevaux se confirme, l'érection de tumuli s'étend à partir de -3800 depuis l'Ukraine occidentale jusqu'à l'espace sud-russe. Sur la base de signes écrits sumé­riens, on peut dater l'apparition des premières roues pleines en bois de -3300. D'après le tour de potier connu à Sumer depuis environ -4000, on pense que la roue est une invention des Sumériens. Même en tenant à cette théorie, on doit admettre qu'il soit étonnant que des roues pleines de bois, que l'on peut dater avec exac­titude de -3000, aient été trouvées en Hollande et au Jutland, tandis que dès -3200 on trouve trace de massues cylindriques à l'époque des tombes à couloir de la culture des vases en entonnoir. Les massues cylindriques que j'ai pu observer ne présentent aucune trace d'usure prouvant qu'elles aient été utilisées. On peut évidemment penser qu'il s'agit de massues de cérémonie. Leur forme, présentant à l'évidence un moyeu affûté, correspond de manière frappante à des disques d'argile datant de la même époque et découverts en Hongrie. Dans ce site, on a également découvert un modèle miniature com­plet de char en argile datant d'environ -3000. Trois roues de bois bien conservées d'un diamètre variant entre 73 et 78 cm, trouvées près de Herning dans le Jutland, prouvent l'existence de chars dès -2800. Un char de la même époque a également été découvert dans le Sud de la Russie.

 

Le char, instrument de l'expansion indo-européenne

 

Dès que le char a été connu, il a dû se répandre en 300 ans de Sumer à l'Europe du Nord-Ouest. Le contact a dû indubitablement s'établir dans le Caucase. Les intermédiaires ont dû être ces Indo­-Européens qui, à partir de -4200, ont quitté leur patrie originelle de l'Europe Centrale pour traverser l'Ukraine et buter contre les montagnes du Caucase. Dans les régions du Sud de la Rus­sie, l'organisation économique se transforme : elle passe d'une structure de paysannerie nomade à l'élevage, avec une plus grande mobilité et une densité de population réduite. J'estime que c'est une erreur entachée d'idéologie de croire que ces tribus sont opposées et différentes, sur les plans de la langue et de la race, de leurs congénères paysans d'Europe Centrale. Hérodote nous rap­pelle pourtant que les Iraniens de son temps se répartissent en tribus d'élite paysannes et no­mades. Sachons aussi que les farmers et les cow-boys d'Amérique représentent des types humains dérivés d'une même matrice, retrouvant sans doute les mêmes réflexes que leurs plus lointains ancêtres des steppes russo-ukrai­niennes. D'après les preuves chronologiques que l'on a pu rassembler, les guerriers de l'Est, armés de haches de combat et dressant des tumuli pour leurs morts, ne sont ni les premiers Indo-Européens ni les inventeurs de la domesti­cation du cheval. Ils sont certainement des Indo-­Européens de la première heure, qui possédaient des chevaux et des chars ; ils ont assuré une diffusion rapide des ethnies et des langues indo-européennes de l'Atlantique à la Mer d'Aral.

 

Les Sumériens aux yeux bleus

 

J'aimerais évoquer encore le processus de transmission de la roue et signaler un état de choses que j'ai été le premier à mettre en évi­dence et à exploiter scientifiquement. On peut constater sur les reproductions photographiques de nombreux ouvrages illustrés que, dans le groupe de statuettes d'argile dit des «hommes en prière», ainsi que pour d'autres figures sumé­riennes, datant de -2700, un bon tiers des personnes représentées, appartenant aux castes supérieures ont un iris bleu incrusté en lapis-­lazuli. Les deux autres tiers ont un iris brun. La pierre de couleur bleue devait être importée d'Afghanistan. Personne ne se serait donné tant de mal si des hommes aux yeux bleus étaient in­connus. Par hétérozygotie, ce gène récessif ne survient que dans le phénotype. Les mutants de cette caractéristique n'étaient pas installés au départ dans les zones subtropicale et centre­asiatique. Les yeux bleus ne sont qu'un phé­nomène connexe sans valeur sélective naturelle dans le processus général d'éclaircissement des pigments. Les spécialistes ne s'entendent pas entre eux pour dire que les yeux bleus sont apparus au plus tard au début du néolithique en Europe centrale et en Europe du nord-ouest. Les éléments à yeux bleus dans les castes nobles de Sumer ne peuvent avoir immigré que d'une région située à l'Ouest. Lorsque je vis pour la première fois en 1979 la statuette du tronc d'un prince d'Ourouk, j'eus immédiatement l'impres­sion d'avoir en face de moi un conducteur de char. Archéologues et historiens de l'art ne pourront jamais expliquer la position des mains, s'ils persistent à croire que ce prince est en prière. Plus tard, je pus apprendre, dans la Propyläen-Kunstgeschichte, que dans les or­bites de cette figure, de 500 ans plus ancienne, on a découvert des restes de lapis-lazuli dans un noyau en coquillage blanc (12).

 

Grâce à cette découverte, je me suis convaincu que dès -3200 une première caste de conducteurs de chars a déboulé en Orient, exactement de la même façon que vers -1650 les Mitanniens indo­aryens surgiront en Syrie. Évidemment, il s'agissait encore de chars primitifs, dotés de roues de bois pleines, dont les chevaux n'étaient encore guère accoutumés au climat subtropical. Pour cette raison, ces tribus attelèrent des ona­gres. Mais il est possible de parler dès cette épo­que d'un contact culturel reliant Sumer à la Mer du Nord.

 

Peu après apparaissent également de riches tumuli érigés par des Indo-Européens orientaux dans la région du Kouban. À partir de cette ré­gion, des tribus s'élancent vers la Sibérie et vers l'Altaï, où se crée alors, au IIIième millénaire av. notre ère, un second centre de domestication du cheval. Déjà en Russie, l'espèce, de taille plus grande, qu'est le tarpan des steppes, s'était croi­sée avec le cheval domestique. Aux temps histo­riques, les étalons tarpans séduisaient et enle­vaient des juments domestiques, ce qui a con­duit, au siècle passé, à l'extermination des der­niers tarpans de Russie. Le tarpan oriental a pu se croiser en Mongolie avec des chevaux do­mestiqués. En Europe les chevaux de fjord nor­végiens constituent les derniers vestiges d'une forme ancienne de cheval domestique retournée à l'état sauvage et dérivée du tarpan des forêts. Ces chevaux sont toutefois plus forts et capables de meilleures prestations que les premiers che­vaux domestiques.

 

Les racines linguistiques des mots signifiant «chevaux»

 

En langue indo-européenne primitive, le mot commun pour désigner le cheval est *ekvos. En tokharien, il prend la forme de yakvé et celle-ci se retrouve jusqu'en Chine. Chez les Indo-ar­yens, le mot devient asva, à cause de la mutation consonantique qui transforme le k en s. La mu­tation iranienne, laquelle se retrouve également dans les nom de personnes en Thrace, donne aspa. Les Illyriens et les Celtes, originaires d'Europe Centrale, transforment le groupe con­sonantique kv en p. C'est ainsi que le cons­tructeur du Cheval de Troie se nomme Épeios et que la déesse chevaline gauloise s'appelle Épo­na. Cette forme s'est maintenue dans certains dialectes allemands et en grec ancien. Le terme allemand Mähre, que l'on retrouve dans le vo­cable péjoratif Schindmähre (rosse, carne), est dérivé du vieil-haut-allemand merila, signifiant jument. La racine de ce mot est mongole (*mörin). On peut penser que ce sont les Huns qui nous l'ont transmis. Le mot Pferd (nl : paard) dérive, quant à lui, du moyen-latin para­veredus, qui désignait les chevaux de la poste gallo-romaine. Le mot ouralique *kaväl nous est venu d'Asie centrale via le finnois et le slave. L'origine de *kob-moni n'est pas encore tout à fait élucidée. De ce mot dérive le terme greco-la­tin kaballe/us, que l'on retrouve â côté de hippos et equus. Nous l'avons conservé dans les mots français «cavalier» (Kavalier) et «cavalerie» (Kavallerie). La racine *mandus est westique-méditerranéenne : on la retrouve chez les Basques et les Étrusques. Celtes et Italiques utilisent le mot mannus pour désigner le poney.

 

Friedrich Cornelius (13) fut le premier à remarquer que la plus ancienne preuve ono­mastique d'une invasion venue de l'Ouest à Akkad en Mésopotamie date de -2270, sous le règne de Naramsin. Il s'agit des Erin Manda, guerriers montés sur chars appartenant très certainement au groupe des Hittites-Louvites. Ceux-ci avaient pénétré en Anatolie centrale et méridionale via Troie. C'est à eux que l'on doit l'invention du char à deux roues, lesquelles sont à rayons en bois de frêne. Mandus est ici la désignation particulière du cheval des chars. Les Hittites, au plus tard vers -1700, avaient mis sur pied des corps d'armée puissants montés sur des chars de combat et de chasse. Une organisation semblable se retrouve également chez la noblesse guerrière indo-aryenne des Hourrites. À côté de noms de dieux, on trouve des expressions pro­pres au dressage des chevaux parmi les vocables découverts sur documents écrits et relevant des Aryens au temps où ils vivaient non encore divisés en Asie Mineure.

 

Assyriens, Babyloniens et Égyptiens adoptent le cheval

 

En Grèce et dans la culture nordique de Scan­dinavie, le char léger de combat est attesté par des représentations depuis -1600 au moins. Très rapidement les Assyriens, les Babyloniens et les Égyptiens, sous l'influence des Kassites et des Hyksos, s'approprient la nouvelle arme. En Égypte, les dynasties d'après la libération des dominations étrangères sont très clairement mar­quées par les idéaux des guerriers charistes. Les femmes des pharaons et leurs suites, composées d'une noblesse aryenne-hourritique, ont certai­nement renforcer la tendance.

 

Il n'est pas étonnant que la toute première repré­sentation égyptienne d'un véritable cavalier au milieu de guerriers dans un camp de campagne date de -1325 (18ième Dynastie). Le cheval y est fringant et bridé ; le cavalier ne dispose pas de selle et est nu. Il s'agit peut-être d'un cheval de char mené à l'abreuvoir. Cornelius croit que l'origine de la cavalerie proprement dite (sans char) doit être recherchée chez les Amazones de l'Anatolie du nord-ouest. Il s'agirait de femmes originaires du pays d'Adzzi et des localités d'Amisos, d'Amasia et Amastris (Am- désignant «femme»). Par une étymologie vulgaire et erro­née, les Grecs en auraient fait a-mazi, c'est-à­-dire guerrières sans seins. D'après Cornelius (14), ce serait ces femmes-là qui seraient les in­venteurs de la cavalerie vers -1230. Dans l'Em­pire des Hittites, on ne montait les chevaux que pour les dresser à tracter des chars de course. D'après des gravures rupestres de Suède, Spa­nuth date trop tôt (de 200 ans) les premiers cavaliers, avec boucliers rectangulaires. Ce n'est pas avant -1200 que les guerriers cavaliers ap­paraissent simultanément en Europe, en Orient et en Sibérie.

 

Se représenter des Indo-Européens primitifs cavaliers venus de l'Est est donc une aberration. Car au moment de l'apparition du char léger de combat vers -2300, l'unité linguistique indo-­européenne n'existait déjà plus. Mais chez tous les Indo-Européens, qui descendent des plus anciens paysans d'Europe Centrale, on trouve une croyance commune : le dieu solaire est tiré le jour par un couple de chevaux. Dans le char so­laire de Trundholm, cette croyance est illustrée par l'une des plus belles pièces d'art de la «pré­histoire». En tant qu'Alces chez les Germains de l'Âge du Bronze, qu'Asvin chez les Aryens et que les Dioscures chez les Grecs et les Romains, le divin attelage chevalin a été personnifié. Les jumeaux divins aident les guerriers, les nau­fragés et les femmes qui accouchent dans la dé­tresse. À partir de -1380, à l'époque de la culture des champs d'urnes, la représentation du char solaire se couple au culte des cygnes. C'est pourquoi des têtes de chevaux et de cygnes or­nent les étraves des bateaux scandinaves depuis l'Âge du Bronze.

 

Le cheval domestique, dressé par les Indo-Eu­ropéens, est devenu l'animal le plus important de toute l'histoire mondiale.

 

► Wilfried Peter Adalbert FISCHER, Vouloir n°52/53, 1989.

(texte issu de Deutschland in Geschichle und Gegenwart, 36. Jg., Nr. 4, 1988 ; adresse : Grabert-Verlag, Am Apfelberg 18, Postfach 1629, D-7400 Tübingen 1.Trad. française : R. Steuckers).

 

Wilfried Peter A. FISCHER, Alteuropa in neuer Sicht : Ein interdisziplinärer Versuch zu Ursprung und Leistung der Indoeuropäer, LIT Verlag, Münster, 1986, 300 S., DM 58 ; adresse : Dieckstr. 56, D-4400 Münster, tel. : [phone].

 

La richesse de cet ouvrage est impressionnante : Fisher nous y initie à l'archéologie préhistorique, à la linguistique, à la raciologie. Son livre com­plète utilement les recherches des instituts amé­ricain (Journal of Indo-European Studies) et français (Institut d'Études indo-euro­péennes de l'Université de Lyon 3) des professeurs Marija Gimbutas, Jean-Paul Allard, Jean Haudry et Jean Varenne. Nous le recom­mandons chaleureusement.

 

Notes

 

(1) Wolf Herre u. Manfred Röhrs, Haustiere - zoologisch gesehen, Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, 1973, S. 29. (2) Franz Hancar, Das Pferd in prähistorischer und früher historischer Zeit, Verlag Herold, Wien/München, 1956.

(3) Erich Thenius, Phylogenie der Mammalia, Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin, 1969, S. 565.

(4) Burchard Brentjes, Die Haustierwerdung im Orient, Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, Stuttgart, 1965, S.10. (5) Wilfried Peter A. Fischer, Alteuropa in neuer Sicht, Lit Verlag, Münster, 1986, S. 35.

(6) Ibid., S.36f.

(7) Ibid., S.138.

(8) David u. Ruth Whitehouse, Lübbes archäologischer Weltatlas, Gustav Lübbe Verlag, Bergisch Gladbach, 1976, S. 134.

(9) WPA Fischer, op. cit., S. 72.

(10) Ibid., S. 238.

(11) Ibid., S. 36.

(12) Ibid., S. 136. D’après Marin Dinn, dans une thèse publiée en 1981, on trouve des modèles de roues de char en Roumanie dès -4200. Ces modèles sont donc plus anciens que ceux de Sumer, ce qui étaye mes considérations à propos des conducteurs de chars à yeux bleus.

(13) Friedrich Cornelius, Geschichte der Hethiter, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1976.

(14) Ibid., S. 269 ff.

Anatolia: Una indoeuropeizacion frustrada

Anatolia: Una indoeuropeización frustrada

por Olegario de las Eras

 

Ex: http://identidadytradicion.blogia.com/

La herencia indoeuropea, concretada en una jerarquía de valores y principios y en un tipo humano determinado que desde la Prehistoria han dado forma a ciclos de civilización análogos, conforma el nervio de la comunidad constituida por los pueblos europeos, comunidad sentida y vivida más allá de las contingentes «fronteras nacionales». En efecto, es un hecho que las sucesivas oleadas de pueblos septentrionales, migrando en grupos masivos y compactos, de celtas a eslavos de helenos a germanos, fueron los materiales sobre los que en el transcurso de milenios cristalizaron la práctica totalidad de pueblos de nuestro continente. Siendo esto así, resulta aparentemente contradictorio que un territorio como el de la península de Anatolia en el que se documenta una presencia indoeuropea desde fines del III milenio a. n. e. y que ha visto sobre su suelo a hititas, luvitas, helenos, tracios, frigios, persas, gálatas o latinos entre otros, se perciba por parte de los europeos como algo ajeno. Pero la realidad es que los indoeuropeos no pudieron permanecer en todas partes donde llegaron: «Los indoeuropeos no siempre han vencido»: no tenemos más remedio que dar la razón, aunque sea por una vez, a J. P. Mallory.

     La llegada a las costas del Mediterráneo de grupos indoeuropeos produjo siempre necesariamente enfrentamientos con las poblaciones autóctonas: de la derrota y sometimiento de éstas dependió la posibilidad de supervivencia de aquellos. En realidad, la historia de las civilizaciones indoeuropeas del Mediterráneo (Hélade, Roma, la Céltica...) es la historia de una incesante lucha contra el elemento humano y espiritual aborigen1. Éste fue el caso también de los pueblos que hablaban las lenguas indoeuropeas del grupo anatolio, pueblos que conservaban firmemente su tradición religiosa y jurídico-política indoeuropea en el momento de asentarse en sus sedes históricas2. A su llegada la península se encontraba densamente poblada por gentes pertenecientes al complejo racial mediterráneo, su cultura calcolítica, cuyas raíces se encuentran en el creciente fértil,  se estructuraba en esos momentos alrededor de centros urbanos que dominaban amplios espacios y su religión, omnipresente en el registro, estaba determinada por los cultos ctónios y de fecundidad. Con toda probabilidad la lengua hablada fue la que posteriormente será conocida como hático. Si bien los resultados de su inmigración fueron devastadores3, el impacto demográfico no alteró el predominio del substrato neolítico como han demostrado los trabajos de M. Senyürek: el impacto numérico del elemento indoeuropeo, étnicamente nórdico4, fue demasiado pequeño como para perdurar física y espiritualmente por demasiado tiempo. Con el transcurso de los siglos, la dünne Herrenschicht, el delgado estrato señorial hitita, resultó fatalmente «hurritizado», «mesopotamizado» y «haticizado» y la destrucción del Imperio a fines del II milenio por obra de grupos frigios procedentes de más allá del Helesponto signará la desaparición de la propia lengua hitita. Los llamados reinos neohititas surgidos tras el desastre en el borde meridional del antiguo Imperio utilizarán el luvita en sus textos. Esta lengua, hablada en las zonas occidental y meridional de la península por comunidades en las que el elemento indoeuropeo parece haber presentado una mayor densidad,  resistió el embate, sobreviviendo en el licio5.

    A ojos del observador contemporáneo podría parecer que la presencia de los helenos en  áreas de la franja costera occidental, de los grupos licios y lidios y los aportes indoeuropeos de las invasiones del 1200 acabaría por vincular el Asia Menor a Europa. Sin embargo, tanto los propios testimonios lingüísticos, que nos hablan de la profunda acción del sustrato no indoeuropeo en las lenguas del grupo anatolio, tanto antiguas como recientes, como las influencias no helénicas que podemos descubrir cada vez con mayor peso en toda la Jonia nos demuestran que el destino de los hititas volvía a repetirse en el occidente y el sur peninsular: en ambos ámbitos los cultos de naturaleza telúrica, enraizados en el neolítico anatolio, van recobrando fuerza mostrando la abrumadora presencia de una población «no receptiva» a las concepciones espirituales indoeuropeas6.

     Tras el periodo de dominio persa, las conquistas de Alejandro y de Roma son los últimos empujes en la historia de Anatolia de raíz occidental7. Empujes políticos que tienen como efecto la integración de este territorio en la ecúmene helenística y en el Imperio pero una escasa relevancia en términos étnicos8. Y es en época romana cuando se constata un fenómeno ciertamente revelador: la muy temprana y fácil cristianización del ámbito anatolio que contrasta con el carácter de secta y muy minoritario de los seguidores del Galileo en la parte occidental del Imperio y la misma Grecia9, fenómeno paralelo al resto de áreas no europeas del Imperio.

     El fracaso de la renovatio imperii de Justiniano y las posteriores concepciones teocráticas de lejanas raíces próximo-orientales preludian el destino «no europeo» de Anatolia: Bizancio se percibe por los occidentales romano-germánicos como algo profundamente ajeno: la matanza de latinos de 1182 y las conquistas cruzadas jalonan este desencuentro. Pero este destino quedará sellado a partir de 1071 cuando los selyúcidas ocupen la mitad oriental de Anatolia. Tres siglos después toda Anatolia pertenece a los otomanos. Los procesos de «turquización» étnica y lingüística y de islamización comenzados en el siglo XI, que culminan con las masivas deportaciones contemporáneas de griegos y armenios, borrarán todo resto lingüístico (excepción hecha del pueblo kurdo, cuya lengua pertenece al grupo iranio, que está padeciendo un etnocidio por parte del estado turco del cual no es este lugar para hablar) e ideológico indoeuropeo de la península. Sólo los rasgos nórdicos que muy de tarde en tarde se pueden observar en algún campesino de Capadocia, probablemente de sangre gálata, dan testimonio de aquellos antiguos ciclos de civilización hoy completamente agotados.    

 

---

1 Véase J. Evola, Rebelión contra el mundo moderno, Buenos Aires 1994, especialmente la Parte II capítulos V-X y la recopilación de textos del mismo autor sobre esta cuestión publicada por Ed. di Ar bajo el título La Tradizione Romana.

2 Véase, por ejemplo, E. Masson, Le combat pour L’inmortalité. Héritage indo-europeen dans la mytologie anatolienne, París 1991 y O. J. Gurney, Los hititas, Barcelona 1995, especialmente pp. 72 y ss.

3 P. Garelli, El Próximo oriente asiático, Barcelona 1982, pp. 27 y A. Romualdi, Los indoeuropeos. Orígenes y migraciones, Barcelona 2002, p. 173 n. 50.

4 V. Christian, «Die frühesten Spuren der Indogermanen in Vorderasien», en Rasse 1935 2ª año, nº 4, p. 121 y ss. y H.F.K. Günther, Rassenkunde des Jüdischen Volkes, Munich 1930, pp. 50-54. La extensión del rito de incineración ha dificultado enormemente el diagnóstico tipológico de los grupos conquistadores indoeuropeos: Gurney (op. cit., pp. 160 y ss.) llama la atención sobre las semejanzas entre los ritos de incineración descritos en las tablillas hititas y los homéricos. Entre las nuevas poblaciones que no incineran a sus muertos también se documentan tipos alpinos, inexistentes en Anatolia con anterioridad. Por otro lado, el proceso de «hurritización» del Imperio hitita se ve acompañado por una difusión desde el este del tipo armenoide o pre-asiático, actualmente muy bien representado entre la población turca (H.F.K. Günther op. cit., pp. 20-40).

5 Para una breve visión de conjunto de la problemática de las lenguas indoeuropeas del grupo anatolio véase F. Villar, Los indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa, Madrid 1996, pp.289 y ss. 

6 Baste recordar el culto de Ártemis Efesia como diosa de la fertilidad, el de Attys o el de la «frigia» Cibeles. 

7 Es preciso mencionar la aventura gálata que se inicia con los movimientos de diferentes grupos célticos en el siglo IV a. n. e. Algunos de estos grupos, apenas unos 20.000 individuos en su conjunto, de los cuales unos 10.000 guerreros, tras numerosas vicisitudes fueron asentados por Antíoco Soter en las llanuras frigias y sobre el Halys, tierras que desde entonces recibirán el nombre de Galacia. Derrotados por Atalo I, a cuyo sepulcro pertenecen las impresionantes estatuas helenísticas del guerrero gálata moribundo y de su caudillo quitándose la vida, fueron concentrados en su territorio donde dominarán a una población anatolia mucho más densa. Se helenizarán progresivamente pero conservarán su lengua hasta la cristianización. Sobre los gálatas véase H. Hubert, Los celtas y la civilización céltica, Madrid 1988, pp. 297-307.

8 Una aproximación muy interesante a los estados helenísticos en el que se aplican las categorías interpretativas de G. Dumézil puede verse en C. Preaux, El mundo helenístico, Barcelona 1984, 2 volúmenes.

9 Véase, por ejemplo, M. Simon y A. Benoit, El judaísmo y le cristianismo antiguo, Barcelona 1972, pp. 54.

Arkaïm: la cité mystère de l'Europe

Arkaïm : la cité mystère de l’Europe

Ex: http://tpprovence.wordpress.com/

Une partie de notre histoire toujours soumise à l’omerta d’une caste.

Les organisateurs se sont-ils sérieusement enquis de la possibilité ou ont-ils essuyé un refus? Toujours est-il que l’exposition sur Arkaïm, que nous avions brièvement évoquée, ne parcourra pas les musées de France pour faire connaître ce site archéologique exceptionnel. Elle a été démontée par l’Institut de paléontologie humaine de Paris et l’université d’Etat de Tchéliabinsk, le laboratoire départemental de préhistoire du Lazaret. Tous les objets ont quitté le musée des Merveilles à Tende et les confins des Alpes Maritimes pour reprendre la route de la steppe russe.

Nous éprouvons de l’amertume pour cette issue et aussi pour être le seul média à la stigmatiser, comme nous avons été le seul, avec la presse locale, à signaler cette exposition doublement inédite. C’était la première fois que l’occasion était donnée en France de prendre une connaissance détaillée de découvertes spectaculaires et de mesurer leur importance. Peu de monde l’aura vue. Elle en aurait éclairé plus d’un.

Quand on demandait à Charles de Gaulle de délimiter l’Europe, le fondateur de la Vème République était plus précis dans ces considérations que les politiciens actuels. Il répondait qu’elle allait de l’Atlantique à l’Oural. L’archéologie lui donne raison. Arkaïm est un élément probatoire de cette réalité en même temps qu’une des pièces majeure du puzzle continental dont la reconstitution, commencée au XIX, est loin d’être achevée pour réévaluer l’histoire ancienne des Européens dépréciée pendant de longs siècles et ans.

On savait que, entre -3 600 et -2 200, les steppes qui s’étendaient des Carpates et du Danube au Fleuve Jaune, soit une ceinture de 7.000 km de long sur 1.000 km de large, devenus l’Ukraine et la Russie Méridionale jusqu’à l’Oural, étaient occupées par des cultures pratiquant l’agriculture et l’élevage, recourant à la construction de tumuli funéraires, ayant domestiqué le cheval et pratiquant la métallurgie.

Après avoir évoqué des campements saisonniers, au mieux des fortifications faites de plusieurs enceintes de pierre entourant des maisons de fondations de pierre, l’archéologie, pour rester spectaculaire, faisait un saut directement à la grande culture scythe du 1^er millénaire. A l’époque où s’édifiaient, les premières grandes pyramides égyptiennes sur le versant méridional, on était accoutumé à sous-estimer ce qui existait au nord.

Le miracle d’Arkaïm : une cité sort du sol presque intacte

Tout à fait accidentelle puisque le lieu était devenu un vaste chantier à vocation hydrologique, la découverte d’Arkaim en 1987 va être un coup de tonnerre. On savait que cette « Contrée des Cités » recélait, à la latitude de Magnitogorsk et sur une distance de 400km, une vingtaine de sites occupés, distant les uns des autres d’une quarantaine de kilomètres. Mais les fouilles n’avaient donné que des résultats modestes. Et voilà que, discernable seulement des airs, émerge une cité qui se distingue des autres par l’état d’intégrité unique des ses ouvrages de fortification et ses sépultures, son architecture saisissante de modernité et son système de traitement des commodités, sans commune mesure avec les villages bâtis à la même époque qu’on nous avait présentés jusque là.

Et d’abord ses formes étranges : deux cercles enchâssés sur un puissant système défensif ingénieusement ramifié par des liaisons. Dans l’arrondi, des rangées d’habitations de forme parallélépipédique, accolées et orientées vers le noyau, avec une distribution précise de pièces dotées de foyer, des matériaux ignifuges sur les murs, un système alimentation et d’évacuation hydraulique branché en réseau. En partie centrale de cette ville, susceptible d’abriter 2.500 personnes, une esplanade de forme géométrique et dégagée : une sorte de forum.

Cette découverte  soulève aussi de multiples interrogations. A commencer pat le choix des formes. Quelle signification donner à une architecture inédite et d’abord à ces cercles concentriques qui renvoient tout aussi bien à une formalisation symbolique en érection à la même époque et à des milliers de kilomètres à l’Ouest, à Stonehenge. Mais renvoient aussi à l’Est du monde par son analogie avec une pièce de monnaie chinois ou à un mandala tibétain.

Une place dans la géographie sacrée ?

Dans la symbolique de la tradition, la roue représente le temps, l’univers, le cosmos dans lequel s’inscrit l’ordonnancement spatial du carré, c’est à dire de la croix, renvoyant au quatre points cardinaux. La construction d’Arkaïm et même la position géographique relèverait-elle, comme s’interroge Paul Catsaras dans la revue « Hyperborée » (CRUSOE 4642 route de Roquefavour 13122 Ventabren), d’une géographie sacrée et, par sa latitude et son orientation polaire, appellerait-elle un parallèle avec Stonehenge , déjà citée, et Tiahuanaco dans la Cordillère des Andes ?

Ces questions, on peut le déplorer, ne semblent nullement préoccuper des archéologues comme Jean Paul Demoule. 15 ans après, ce professeur de la Sorbonne se contente, dans un ouvrage tout récent dont il a la direction scientifique et sur lequel nous reviendrons – « L’Europe un continent redécouvert par l’archéologie » Gallimard) – d’indiquer que ce site « a transformé notre vision de l’âge du bronze des steppes en montrant de cités de forme inusuelles à l’élaboration complexe ». Comment et pourquoi ? Nous ne le saurons sans doute jamais, en tout cas en provenance de ces sectes scientifiques où règne une omerta sur bien des aspects de la pré et proto-histoire de l’Europe. Dégagez il n’y a rien à voir !

Mais, derrière la première série de questions, s’en profilent de plus fondamentales. Quels étaient les peuples qui ont façonné ces constructions  et quelle était leur origine? Que pensaient-ils ? Que parlaient-ils ? En quoi croyaient-ils ? Là encore, n’allons surtout pas chercher la réponse dans le travail de monsieur Demoule qui, soit n’a pas regardé, soit n’a rien vu des dessins ou des signes sur les objets, les poteries : cercles, carrés, losanges, triangles, zigzags et, « horresco referens », svastikas.

Les savants de l’ex-Union Soviétique, peut être même d’anciens communistes, ont été plus rapides dans leurs investigations sur les rites funéraires, l’organisation sociale. Ils sont aussi plus loquaces, se permettant de « supposer les prémices d’un pouvoir détenu par un chef de tribu unique et d’une certaine hiérarchisation avec l’existence d’une élite. L’autorité de ce groupe d’individus n’était pas fondée sur des contraintes économiques mais sur des valeurs religieuses traditionnelles.

Les cauchemars de Mr Demoule et le berceau de Zarathoustra

Les membres de l’élite tenaient le rôle de prêtres et disposaient également d’une position importante dans le domaine militaire. La richesse des sépultures féminines permet de percevoir que les femmes possédaient un statut social important. Il est même possible qu’il y ait eu des femmes prêtresses. »

Tout cela leur « semble correspondre à l’émergence  des sociétés divisées en trois classes : les guerriers, les prêtres et les artisans, typiques des civilisations indo-européennes ». On comprend que Jean Paul Demoule fasse des cauchemars, lui qui s’emploie à ne jamais prononcer ce terme dans ses travaux, dont on mesure tout de suite la sincérité.

Sommes-nous face aux représentants de la plus ancienne civilisation caucasienne, dans « le berceau du prophète Zarathoustra », comme l’avancent certains scientifiques enthousiastes ? Rappelons que dans les hypothèses avancées sur la localisation du foyer d’origine de l’indo-européen, qui se définit d’abord comme une réalité linguistique, mais avec forcément des locuteurs d’un type physique caractéristique, sur lequel nous ne nous étendrons pas ici, l’école de Marija Gimbutas élit justement l’aire géographique d’Europe centrale et de Russie méridionale.

Fait hautement symptomatique : deux visiteurs de marque se sont déplacés à Arkaïm : Vladimir Poutine et le Premier ministre indien Sing. Quel rapport entre les deux ? Le premier voit dans Arkaïm la capitale d’un « empire aryen » ; aryanité que le second endosse comme base de la culture polythéiste de l’Inde moderne. Rappelez-vous d’Arkaïm, faites en un but de voyage et même de pèlerinage. Le nom fera encore parler de lui. Peut être même que Jean Paul Demoule viendra à contrition et finira par cracher le morceau.

Albane Capuron

Source : Metamag.

Indoeuropeos y no indoeuropeos en la Hispania preromana

Recensión de Francisco Villar, Indoeuropeos y no indoeuropeos en la Hispania preromana.

Las poblaciones y las lenguas prerromanas de Andalucía, Cataluña y Aragón según la información que nos proporciona la toponimia. Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca. Salamanca 2000

El proceso de indoeuropeización de la Península Ibérica es uno de los problemas más complejos a los que, desde hace ya muchos años, se enfrentan tanto la Prehistoria como la Lingüística. Es tal la cantidad de elementos en juego y de cuestiones a resolver que no resulta difícil augurar que serán muchas las generaciones de arqueólogos, filólogos, historiadores de la religión y antropólogos que investigarán y debatirán sobre este campo.  El camino por recorrer es largo y, como es sabido, son pocos los puntos que han  sido firmemente establecidos y, en consecuencia,  aceptados por todos. No es este lugar para hacer balance de la cuestión: un muy breve resumen se podrá encontrar en un artículo que publicamos en un número anterior de Terra Nostra o una exposición mucho más detallada en la Parte V de otra obra del autor del que nos ocupamos aquí, Francisco Villar, Los Indoeuropeos y los orígenes de Europa, 2ª ed., Madrid 1996. Brevemente, recordaremos que parece clara la existencia de tres estratos lingüísticos indoeuropeos prerromanos: por un lado, el  correspondiente al Alteuropäisch, por otro, el de la lengua de las inscripciones lusitanas y, por último, el celtibérico, existiendo posiciones encontradas sobre la naturaleza de cada una y el tipo de relaciones que pudieran haber existido entre ellas.

Este ya de por sí complejo panorama se ha visto más complicado, si cabe, por la hipótesis que presenta F. Villar en esta obra. En efecto, a lo largo de sus casi 500 páginas el autor intenta demostrar, a través del análisis de una ingente cantidad de material lingüístico, la presencia en la Península Ibérica de un estrato lingüístico indoeuropeo diferente a cualquiera de los otros tres detectados hasta el momento, un estrato de rasgos muy arcaicos que de confirmarse atestiguaría que el proceso de indoeuropeización de la Península fue mucho más complejo y profundo de lo que  se había supuesto.

La obra comienza haciendo repaso de una serie cuestiones relativas a la Lingüística Comparada, en especial un alegato de la validez de su método y una descripción de sus características, para continuar con un amplio comentario de la historia de la investigación paleolingüística en España, desde los dislates del padre Astarloa hasta los autores contemporáneos como Gorrochategui o de Hoz, haciendo especial hincapié en la progresiva complejidad de las concepciones del substrato, desde el vasco-iberismo originario, tesis que no se cansa durante toda la obra de denostar, y con razón, hasta la identificación de los diferentes niveles actualmente admitidos: los ya mencionados indoeuropeos junto al vasco, tartesio, ibérico, etc.

Tras estos dos capítulos a guisa de introducción, se adentra en el examen del material recogido: topónimos, hidrónimos, antropónimos y etnónimos, material organizado en series en función de un componente principal que es estudiado en todos los aspectos filológicos posibles, tanto fonéticos como morfológicos, y del que ofrece su correspondiente distribución geográfica, tanto en la Península como en Europa, norte de África u Oriente Próximo. Así, uno a uno, van siendo analizados todos los elementos susceptibles de formar parte de este estrato, proponiendo el carácter indoeuropeo, entre otros, de los siguientes: uba-, relacionado con las raíces indoeuropeas para agua *ap, *ab, *up; ur, relacionado con el ide *(a)wer- / (a)ûr, agua, río, corriente; urc- con el ide *war- / *ur- más el sufijo ko; uc-, en el que se habrían reunido tres componentes diferentes: uko (diminutivo), uko (sufijo hidronímico que aparece en lituano) y un apelativo relacionado con ûkis (lugar de habitación) también presente en lituano, bai-, relacionado con el ide *gwhêi, brillar, etc. Al estudio de los elementos susceptibles de ser agrupados en series que califica de mayores sigue el de las series menores (tur-, turc- y murc-) y de aquellos, muy numerosos, que por su escasa aparición en las fuentes no pueden ser seriados, pero que responden a unas mismas características lingüísticas, así como el análisis de la antroponimia susceptible de ser relacionada con este estrato.

Una vez analizado el material, Villar se adentra en la caracterización de la lengua o lenguas responsables de esta hidronimia,  toponimia y antroponimia, llegando a la conclusión de que no corresponde a ninguna de las lenguas indoeuropeas conocidas, siendo imposible su identificación con ninguno de los tres estratos indoeuropeos conocidos en la Península por diferentes razones (aquí no podemos dejar de mencionar que en su obra mencionada anteriormente relaciona el elemento tur-, presente en nuestro Turia, con el Alteuropäisch pp. 507-509), y sosteniendo que este estrato presenta fuertes relaciones con las lenguas itálicas y con las bálticas, generalmente, aunque no siempre, en las innovaciones con las primeras y en los arcaísmos con las segundas.

Durante toda la obra, y mediante el estudio de la distribución geográfica de los testimonios de este estrato se va evidenciando una concentración de estos elementos en dos áreas principales: la meridional y la ibérico-pirenaica, como el autor las denomina, que se corresponden con el área que hasta ahora se consideraba no indoeuropea (baste recordar la famosa frontera de los briga-). Resulta evidente que las consecuencias de las propuestas de Villar pueden resultar revolucionarias para nuestra protohistoria. El autor es consciente de ello y en un último capítulo analiza algunos de los etnóminos del área ibérica (ilérgetes, indicetes, volciani, etc.) atribuyéndoles etimologías indoeuropeas relacionadas con el estrato objeto del libro (seguras para dieciséis entre veintitrés, aunque posiblemente sean más todavía), lo que implica un masivo substrato indoeuropeo en todo esta área (Aragón, Cataluña y norte de Valencia), pero, sin embargo, renuncia explícitamente a intentar explicar el mecanismo de entrada de estas lenguas, emplazando a arqueólogos y prehistoriadores a abordar esta cuestión. Lo que sí sostiene es la imposibilidad de relacionar los Campos de Urnas con esta toponimia debido a motivos distribucionales (son prácticamente inexistentes en Andalucía) y cronológicos (relaciona el topónimo Alube de la Ilíada con el Guadalquivir y con los hallazgos micénicos allí efectuados, lo que dataría este estrato con anterioridad a las penetraciones de esta cultura. Por otro lado, considera que la densidad de este estrato casa mal con unos «recién llegados» como los Urnenfelder). No obstante, no parecen argumentos excesivamente fuertes: Infiltración y transformación de la cultura material son fenómenos que a menudo van parejos y aunque en la actualidad se tiende a ver en las transformaciones del bronce final tartésico influencias mediterráneas, algunos de los nuevos elementos no dejan de estar relacionados con el ambiente de las urnas, aunque tampoco podemos dejar de señalar que se ha hecho responsable a influencias del Mediterráneo los elementos indoeuropeos presentes en el tartesio. Por otra parte, la relación del Alube homérico con la Península no deja de ser una conjetura toponímica, apoyada sobre conjeturas cronológicas y arqueológicas, y en cuanto a la excesiva densidad que pueda presentar un substrato depende más bien de la profundidad de la «limpieza étnica» que de la antigüedad del proceso. Todo esto, no obstante, no deja de ser un mero comentario ante la superposición de esta toponimia y los Campos de Urnas en el área nordoriental peninsular, que resulta bastante sugerente y ante la propia naturaleza lingüística del substrato (sobre todo la presencia de elementos compartidos con diferentes grupos del «indoeuropeo nordoccidental») que no deja de evocar constantemente las ideas de H. Krahe sobre el «estado líquido» (flüssige Zustand) del complejo de las urnas desde el punto de vista lingüístico. No obstante, evidentemente es todavía muy pronto para intentar elaborar hipótesis arqueológicas sobre esta cuestión.

Un punto que quizá llame la atención a quienes han seguido la labor de Villar es el escaso espacio dedicado al paleoeuropeo y a sus presuntas relaciones con este estrato recién descubierto. Ya que ambas son lenguas ciertamente arcaicas y siguen un modelo distribucional diferente, aunque muy determinado en ambas por los cursos de agua, cabría esperar un análisis comparativo de ambas lenguas que nadie mejor que Villar está en condiciones de realizar. Estamos convencidos de que no tardará en abordar este problema.

En definitiva se trata de una obra destinada a tener un gran eco entre los especialistas no sólo en paleohispanística sino también en indoeuropeística y que abre nuevos caminos para el conocimiento del pasado de nuestros pueblos.                                                                                                                          

 

Olegario de las Eras.        

Georges Dumézil, l'historien des origines

Georges Dumézil, l’historien des origines

par Rémi Soulié

Ex: http://tpprovence.wordpress.com

Immense savant, il parlait les langues les plus rares. Sa théorie de la « trifonctionnalité » indo-européenne entre le prêtre, le guerrier et le marchand reste une grille d’analyse de nos sociétés.

Quoi de commun entre Rome et l’Inde, entre un Irlandais et un Iranien ? En dépit des religions, des mœurs, des usages et des traditions qui les séparent aujourd’hui, un vaste espace symbolique et idéologique, découvert et exploré seulement au XXe siècle par un navigateur de l’esprit que n’effrayèrent jamais les tourmentes suscitées par ses audaces théoriques : Georges Dumézil (1898-1986).

Cet érudit, tout à sa recherche attaché, réussit le tour de force de traverser son temps sans jamais succomber aux sirènes du marxisme – il n’avait guère de considération, c’est un euphémisme, pour un Jean-Paul Sartre -, non plus qu’aux errances nombreuses de la corporation des « intellectuels » donneurs de leçons. Proche à la fois de l’historien Pierre Gaxotte et du philosophe Michel Foucault, suffisamment libre pour saluer Charles Maurras, il pratiqua ces «amitiés stellaires» chères à Nietzsche qui impliquent un certain aristocratisme, insupportable aux dévots de tous les camps.

Bordelais par son père, angevin par sa mère, Dumézil naît à Paris, mais l’enfance de ce fils d’officier se déroule en province, au gré des affectations militaires : collège de Neufchâteau, lycées de Troyes et de Tarbes, puis retour à Paris, au lycée Louis-le-Grand, pour préparer le concours de l’Ecole normale supérieure, qu’il intègre en 1916. Elève officier à l’école d’artillerie de Fontainebleau, il participe aux combats de la Grande Guerre puis passe l’agrégation de Lettres au mois de décembre 1919.

Une thèse sur l’ambroisie, la boisson des dieux

D’abord professeur au lycée de Beauvais, il poursuit sa carrière à l’université de Varsovie – où, lecteur de français, il prépare une thèse de doctorat consacrée à l’ambroisie, la boisson des dieux, publiée plus tard sous le titre Le Festin d’immortalité-, à l’université d’Istanbul où il enseigne pendant six ans et, enfin, à l’université d’Upsala, en Suède.

Dumézil regagne la France en 1933. Grâce à l’entremise du grand indianiste Sylvain Lévi – «mon sauveur», dira-t-il ! -, il est élu directeur d’études à l’Ecole pratique des hautes études avant que d’occuper la chaire de civilisation indo- européenne créée pour lui au Collège de France. Il y enseignera de 1949 à sa retraite, en 1968. Dix ans plus tard, il sera élu à l’Académie française au fauteuil de l’historien et diplomate Jacques Chastenet.

Linguiste, ethnologue, anthropologue, philologue, mythologue, Dumézil se définissait modestement comme un «comparatiste» et un «scribe», dont le domaine de recherche se situait en bordure de la préhistoire et de l’histoire, cette «ultra-histoire» déjà «éclairée par les premiers documents écrits», comme il le confiait au journaliste Didier Eribon dans un recueil d’Entretiens.

C’est en 1938 qu’il eut l’intuition qui allait orienter l’ensemble de sa recherche et de sa vie. En Inde, trois castes sont garantes de l’harmonie sociale : les prêtres, les guerriers et les agriculteurs-producteurs. Dans la Rome archaïque, avant la période étrusque, trois dieux sont associés : Jupiter, le plus sacré, Mars, le dieu de la guerre, et Quirinus, le dieu de la masse du peuple telle qu’elle s’organise dans les curies.

La «trifonctionnalité» ou «tripartition fonctionnelle» était mise en évidence : depuis l’Inde jusqu’à l’ouest de l’Europe, la quarantaine de langues que maîtrise Dumézil atteste d’une organisation commune originelle d’«Indo-Européens» dont on ne sait à peu près rien, sinon qu’ils furent animés par ces trois «schèmes» aussi bien culturels et religieux que politiques.

Plus précisément, Dumézil évoque «trois domaines harmonieusement ajustés qui sont, en ordre décroissant de dignité, la souveraineté avec ses aspects magiques et juridiques et une sorte d’expression maximale du sacré; la force physique et la vaillance dont la manifestation la plus voyante est la guerre victorieuse; la fécondité et la prospérité avec toutes sortes de conditions et de conséquences qui sont presque toujours (…) figurées par un grand nombre de divinités parentes…».

La Nouvelle Droite l’a fait connaître au grand public

Cette tripartition se retrouve dans les théologies, les mythes, les symboles, les épopées, les légendes, les rites et les contes, de la Scandinavie à la Perse. La division de l’ancienne France en trois ordres – clergé, noblesse, tiers état – peut elle-même être interprétée comme la résurgence de ce «vieil archétype» que la Nouvelle Droite, dans les années 1970, annexerait abusivement à son « néopaganisme » européen.

Parallèlement à ces travaux, Dumézil part apprendre le quechua en six mois au Pérou et se passionne surtout pour les coutumes et les langues du Caucase, la «deuxième vocation» de sa vie, dit-il, au point qu’il songe, un temps, à abandonner ses chers Indo- Européens. Il s’efforce en particulier de sauver l’oubykh, langue qui compte quatre-vingt-deux consonnes pour trois voyelles et dont il connaît le dernier locuteur. C’est avec lui, Tevfik Esenç, qu’il publie des études descriptives et comparatives sur Le Verbe oubykh après avoir travaillé à une grammaire, envisagé l’écriture d’un dictionnaire et rédigé, de 1960 à 1967, les Documents anatoliens sur les langues et les traditions du Caucase.

La réédition, en un volume, de trois grands livres de Dumézil dans la collection « Mille et une pages » de Flammarion – « Loki », considéré par Claude Lévi-Strauss comme son «discours de la méthode»,  « Heur et malheur du guerrier et, surtout, « Mythes et dieux des Indo-Européens », admirable choix de textes réalisé par Hervé Coutau-Bégarie en 1992 – est l’occasion de mesurer toute l’ampleur d’une pensée dont la Renaissance a été à la fois le modèle et l’espérance.

«Si j’avais à me choisir de saints patrons dans cette forme d’humanisme, écrivait Dumézil, je m’abriterais volontiers, pour la prudence et la tolérance, derrière Erasme et Montaigne, sages et modérés dans le triste affrontement des fanatismes.» Que n’ont-ils été plus nombreux, au siècle dernier, à partager une telle profession de foi ! »

Mythes et dieux des Indo-Européens, précédé de Loki et Heur et malheur du guerrier, de Georges Dumézil, Flammarion, 832p., 29€.

Par  Rémi Soulié – Le Figaro Magazine

Source : Métamag.

La tradition indo-européenne chez les Celtes

La tradition indo-européenne chez les Celtes

Jean Haudry

Ex: http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/

 

Avec les Celtes, nous entrons de plein pied, sans reconstruction préalable, dans les deux dernières périodes de la tradition indo-européenne: la société lignagère des quatre cercles et des trois fonctions, qui est celle des royaumes celtiques de la période historique, et la société héroïque, qui est celle des fianna. Tout ce qui, dans le monde gréco-romain, appartient à un passé mythique est encore vivant.

1. La société des quatre cercles et des trois fonctions

L’ancienne société irlandaise telle qu’elle ressort des textes en moyen-irlandais a pour base la tribu túath (*tewtā) gouvernée par un roi, rí (*rēg-s). La formule du serment des héros irlandais «je jure le serment que jure ma tribu» illustre l’importance de ce cercle d’appartenance. L’évolution de la société a entraîné la création d’unités supérieures et par suite une hiérarchie des rois: il y a des «hauts rois», des «rois des hauts rois», et au-dessus d’eux le roi d’Irlande. A chaque échelon est attachée une assemblée. En dessous de la tribu, il y a la famille de quatre générations, derb-fhine «famille certaine» qui succède à la fois au village clanique et à la famille de la société antérieure; la lignée proprement dite, fine, ici comme ailleurs, est réservée aux familles nobles.

La société comporte trois castes, celle des druides, celle des nobles, celle des hommes libres. Cette institutionnalisation de la triade des fonctions, qui ne se retrouve que dans le monde indo-iranien, peut être considérée soit comme une conservation commune et donc un archaïsme, soit comme une évolution parallèle et, vu l’éloignement géographique, indépendante. Comme dans le monde indo-iranien, les esclaves, qui sont ordinairement des prisonniers de guerre, ne font pas partie de la société. On sait que cette organisation a servi de modèle à la société des trois ordres du moyen âge occidental: la société germanique dont elle était issue ne comportait pas de caste sacerdotale et ne pouvait donc faire une place au clergé chrétien. La société irlandaise médiévale est donc plus proche de la société védique du deuxième millénaire que de la cité grecque ou à plus forte raison de la république romaine ou de l’empire romain. Ses institutions et ses coutumes confirment cet archaïsme. Le roi y est soumis à divers interdits (geis) dont la violation entraîne des calamités publiques; il en va de même pour son obligation de «vérité», c’est-à-dire surtout de justice. La pratique magique de l’énonciation de vérité, celle du jeûne du créancier sont aussi des archaïsmes. Les diverses modalités du mariage sont en partie parallèles à celles du droit indien. Louange et blâme sont les mécanismes essentiels de cette société où l’honneur est tenu pour la valeur centrale. C’est une société purement rurale, où la ville est inconnue. La monnaie l’est également: tous les paiement se font en bétail.

2. La société héroïque

En marge de cette société existe une contre société institutionnalisée qui reflète les idéaux, les valeurs et les comportements de la société héroïque: la f́ian, troupe de jeunes guerriers, les fianna, qui bien qu’issus de la noblesse vivent en dehors de la société comme les vrātyas indiens, les maryas iraniens, les berserkir scandinaves. En entrant dans la fían, ils quittent leur lignage. Comme l’indique une étymologie ancienne leur nom, fíanna a venatione, ils vivent de chasse, mais aussi de diverses formes de prédation. Marie-Louise Sjoestedt les a définis en ces termes: «Les fíanna sont des compagnies de guerriers chasseurs, vivant sous l’autorité de leurs propres chefs, en semi-nomades; on les représente passant la saison de la chasse en de la guerre (de Beltine à Samain) à parcourir les forêts d’Irlande, à la poursuite du gibier, ou menant la vie de guérilla; des récits plus récents en font les défenseurs attitrés du pays contre les envahisseurs étrangers, mais tout indique qu’il s’agit là d’un développement secondaire du cycle. Pendant la mauvaise saison (de Samain à Beltine) ils vivent principalement sur le pays à la façon de troupes cantonnées chez l’habitant. Ils n’obéissent pas au pouvoir royal, avec lequel leurs chefs sont fréquemment en conflit». Ce conflit avec les autorités de la société lignagère est typique de la société héroïque. Il se double de conflits internes aux clans fíanna dont on trouve nombre d’exemples dans le cycle de Finn.

En Gaule, la société lignagère des communautés naturelles est elle aussi concurrencée, mais de l’intérieur, par des solidarités électives, comme l’a observé César, La guerre des Gaules, 6,11: «En Gaule, non seulement toutes les cités, tous les cantons et fractions de cantons mais, peut-on dire, toutes les familles sont divisés en partis rivaux; à la tête de ces partis sont les hommes à qui l’on accorde le plus de crédit; c’est à eux qu’il appartient de juger en dernier ressort pour toutes les affaires à régler, pour toutes les décisions à prendre. Il y a là une institution très ancienne qui semble avoir pour but d’assurer à tout homme du peuple une protection contre plus puissant que lui: car le chef de faction défend ses gens contre les entreprises de violence ou de ruse et, s’il agit autrement, il perd tout crédit. Le même système régit la Gaule dans son ensemble: tous les peuples y sont groupés en deux partis». Inutile de préciser que César a tiré de cette situation un avantage décisif. On voit par là que les réalités de la société héroïque de l’âge du bronze coexistent avec celles de la société lignagère, qui remontent au néolithique.

3. Formulaire et groupes de notions

Or paradoxalement les textes ne nous conservent à peu près rien du formulaire traditionnel, et la triade des fonctions est absente des récits et en particulier de la mythologie. On ne saurait expliquer l’absence du formulaire par le caractère oral de la tradition, auquel les druides étaient aussi attachés que leurs homologues indiens et iraniens, car une foule de légendes nous ont été conservées de cette façon. La raison essentielle est que ces récits sont en prose; la poésie, domaine privilégié du formulaire, n’y figure que sporadiquement. L’absence des trois fonctions, surprenante dans une société trifonctionnelle, s’explique par le fait que les récits se fondent en grande partie sur des traditions qui remontent à la période la plus ancienne, celle de la «religion cosmique» et de l’habitat circumpolaire, dont l’Irlande conserve le souvenir avec ses «Iles au nord du monde», où les «tribus de la déesse Dana», c’est-à-dire les dieux du panthéon irlandais, ont «appris le druidisme, la science, la prophétie et la magie, jusqu’à ce qu’ils fussent experts dans les arts de la science païenne». C’est là une attestation directe de l’origine polaire de la plus ancienne tradition indo-européenne. Un bon exemple en est la conception du «héros» telle que l’a résumée Philippe Jouët à l’article correspondant de son Dictionnaire de la mythologie celtique à paraître: «On peut donc attribuer aux cultures celtiques une doctrine d’héroïsation, issue d’une conception préhistorique selon laquelle la survie effective dépendait de la capacité à traverser l’hiver. Traduite en métaphores, cette conception a engendré mythes et doctrines. Par son aptitude à dominer la ténèbre hostile, le héros gagne un lieu généralement insulaire, parfois souterrain quand la terre noire équivaut à la ténèbre, où il reçoit les marques de sa promotion: illumination solaire, faveur des Aurores, trésors, «fruits de l’été» découverts en plein mois de novembre, gloire et renommée. Le vieux schéma celtique de l’incursion dans le Síd, le monde des Tertres enchantés, prend tout son sens dans cette perspective. C’est par là qu’il faut expliquer les métaphores, les images, les scénarios mythologiques et épiques les plus archaïques de la tradition celtique». Un tel «héros» n’a pas grand chose en commun avec celui de la société héroïque, mais illustre la parenté formelle entre son nom grec hērōs et celui de la déesse Hērā «Belle saison».

* * *

De Les peuples indo-européens d’Europe.

Los Origenes de Europa

 

Los Orígenes de Europa

Por Teresa Inmaculada Cuenca Cabañas

Ex: http://idendidadytradicion.blogia.com/

 

Los primeros hombres, con ojos de color de cielo y cabellos de color de luz, engastaron en sus dagas de sílex la Piedra de Luna… pusieron en movimiento las aspas del sol y se adueñaron de la Tierra por añadidura. Buscaban Avalón en este mundo y la Piedra de Luna tuvo para ellos significado diferente. El Guía fue el primer Caminante de la Aurora y su nombre cambia en las Edades. La Piedra de Luna estuvo entre sus cejas. La daga de sílex en sus manos. La Tierra bajo sus plantas. La piel del Carnero fue el emblema que se mecía al viento de esas edades.
M. Serrano, Las Visitas de la Reina de Saba

En 1933 Werner Jaeger en la introducción a Paideia (2000, 4-5) afirmaba que “…nuestra historia -en su más profunda unidad-, en tanto que sale de los límites de un pueblo particular y nos inscribe como miembros de un amplio círculo de pueblos, “comienza” con la aparición de los griegos. “Comienzo” no significa aquí tan sólo comienzo temporal, sino también arjé, origen o fuente espiritual, al cual en todo grado de desarrollo hay que volver para hallar una orientación (…) No se trata sólo del sentimiento de un parentesco racial, por muy importante que este factor sea para la íntima inteligencia de otro pueblo. Cuando decimos que nuestra historia comienza en Grecia, es preciso que alcancemos clara conciencia del sentido en que en este caso empleamos la palabra “historia” (…) que se funda en una unión espiritual viva y activa y en la comunidad de un destino, ya sea la del propio pueblo o la de un grupo de pueblos estrechamente unidos. Sólo en esta clase de historia se da una íntima inteligencia y un contacto creador entre unos y otros (…) Esta comunidad existe entre a totalidad de los pueblos occidentales y entre éstos y la Antigüedad clásica. Si consideramos la historia en este sentido profundo, en el sentido de una comunidad radical, no podemos considerar a planeta entero como su escenario y, por mucho que ensanchemos nuestros horizontes geográficos los límites de “nuestra” historia no podrán traspasar nunca la antigüedad de aquellos que hace algunos milenios trazaron nuestro destino”. Esta extensa cita del helenista alemán condensa las ideas que han flotado en el ambiente ilustrado europeo sobre nuestros orígenes durante los últimos siglos: es en la Hélade donde nace, lo que en función de nuestra autopercepción, denominamos Europa. Y esta idea, permanece más de medio siglo después plena de vigor.

Efectivamente, es indudable que Europa es depositaria de un inmenso legado griego, legado rico en luces pero en el que existen también algunas sombras de las que proceden algunos de los rasgos más problemáticos que caracterizan al Occidente de un ayer reciente y a la práctica totalidad del mundo de hoy. Sin embargo, Grecia, más que nuestro origen, constituye el espejo más bello al que nos hemos asomado los hombres de Occidente buscando la imagen arquetípica que internamente sentimos como propia. El hombre europeo de todos los tiempos intuye que para los helenos al igual que para él, por decirlo con A. Romualdi (2003, 42), “El kòsmos es lo infinitamente grande y lo infinitamente pequeño, el Orden del Universo y el del cuerpo humano. La última instancia del mundo de los cuerpos y de la sociedad es el Orden, al igual que el del conocimiento es el Ser”. En realidad, Grecia no es el origen de Europa Grecia es Europa. Grecia constituye uno de los más bellos capítulos del devenir del hombre occidental sobre este mundo. Porque la Hélade no surgió de la nada, no fue una creación en el vacío, sino que sus raíces se hunden en lo más profundo de la prehistoria europea, raíces que comparte con el resto de pueblos de este continente. Y son esas raíces las que, floreciendo de esa manera única, han dado forma a esa imagen que permanecerá ya por siempre en el espíritu del hombre europeo.

Porque los orígenes de Europa se remontan muchos milenios atrás.

Hace alrededor de 40.000 años hace aparición repentinamente sobre la superficie de nuestro continente un tipo humano del que hasta ese momento no se ha tenido noticia. Su aparición casi simultánea por toda la superficie de Europa al sur del frente helado de los glaciares, o quizás su prodigiosamente rápida expansión, plantea en la actualidad incógnitas muy difíciles de resolver. Estos hombres, diseminados por vastísimos espacios, son portadores de una cultura material asombrosamente homogénea, que la arqueología conoce como Auriñaciense. Los restos fósiles, no muy abundantes, nos hablan de hombres de talla elevada y cráneos dolicocéfalos de una capacidad media superior a la actual, mandíbulas cuadradas y mentones prominentes. Es el denominado tipo de Cromañón, que subsiste en la actualidad, sin apenas variación, en el denominado tipo dálica, que se concentra especialmente en la Europa nordoccidental (1). Junto a este tipo se encuentra el denominado tipo de Brno que difiere del anterior por un frontal más estrecho y huidizo, de fuertes arcadas supraorbitarias y una cara más alta y prognata (2) (Delporte 1998, 29-35). La ruptura que supone la brusca irrupción del Auriñaciense es total. Pocos milenios después los neandertales desaparecen de la faz del continente y es probable que los últimos individuos que murieron en el sur de la Península Ibérica fueran los últimos de su especie.

Se ha afirmado a veces que el Paleolítico Superior en Europa parece más un prolongado epílogo que el prólogo de un amanecer. Todavía en el Avesta, en el Veda o en los testimonios tradicionales célticos podemos encontrar ecos de la nostalgia con la que los antepasados de celtas e indoiranios miraban hacia los hielos del Norte, de la memoria del Airyana Vaejo, la Patria de los Orígenes… Quien sabe, pero en todo caso la ciencia no está en condiciones de afirmar demasiado sobre los milenios que preceden a esta súbita aparición (3).

A. Romualdi (2002, 35-6) describe así los milenios que siguen a la llegada del hombre a Europa: “Durante decenas de miles de años una profunda cubierta de hielo se extendió por toda a Europa septentrional, alcanzando el curso inferior del Rin y los Cárpatos. En aquella época la Europa central era una tundra polar, mientras en la Península Ibérica vivían grandes manadas de renos y de bisontes. Las comunidades humanas que permanecieron en el continente se concentraban principalmente las costas atlánticas, donde el clima marítimo y la Corriente del Golfo, junto a una gran cantidad de abrigos y cavernas, ofrecían condiciones de vida más tolerables (…) En esta eterna estación de niebla y hielo, semejante a un día de noviembre, húmedo y frío, no lo suficientemente gélida como para impedir la vida pero sí lo bastante como para hacerla dura y difícil, creció un tipo humano de pigmentación débil y ojos claros, mal adaptado a la luz y al calor del sol, pero alto, robusto, duramente seleccionado y provisto de mesura, firmeza y tenacidad, a partir de la raza de Cromañón (…) en aquel clima de continuo invierno, este tipo humano desarrolló las características propias de la gente del Norte, características que encontraremos posteriormente entre los pueblos indoeuropeos: la actitud investigadora e inventiva, una cauta prevención y unos duros criterios selectivos”. Hacia el 20.000 B.C el complejo Auriñaciense se transforma para dando origen al periodo Solutrense, el cual se prolonga apenas durante dos milenios para dar paso al Magdaleniense, la era del arte parietal cuaternario, que durará aproximadamente hasta el 10.000 B.C. A partir de este momento la retirada de los hielos hacia el norte se acelera y un milenio después el hombre se ha asentado en la zona más septentrional del continente.

Siguiendo la retirada de los hielos y a las manadas, los humanos han poblado con relativa densidad la llanura nordeuropea y la cuenca del Báltico. Las comunidades del Norte comienzan a mostrar una acusada personalidad frente al complejo mediterráneo que comienza igualmente a afirmarse. Escribe C.H. Boettcher (1999, 28): “En resumen, se evidencian ya al menos desde el mesolítico una separación de Europa entre dos complejos de población, tal y como ocurre en mayor o menor medida en la actualidad. Uno presenta un tipo humano más robusto y más bien despigmentado, mientras que el otro es mas grácil y más bien oscuro. No obstante, ambos son európidos. Con todo el complejo nórdico no está circunscrito al territorio de la Europa septentrional y nordoccidental. Alcanza, presentando toda variedad de particularidades, desde las costas bretonas a los ríos ucranianos.” y algo antes (1991, 15): “Ambos grupos de población európidos se separaron al menos desde el Mesolítico y se diferenciaron también de manera llamativa en lo relativo a sus ritos funerarios. En el Norte se enterraba a los muertos en decúbito supino, con la mirada dirigida hacia el cielo, en el Sur flexionados, en el seno materno de la Tierra”. Dos ritos que testimonian el contraste entre dos mundos que no tardarán en entrar en colisión.

A partir del noveno milenio se constata toda una serie de desarrollos socioeconómicos que transforman las culturas epipaleolíticas de Hamburgo y Ahrensburg en el complejo de Maglemose, el cual abarca desde Gran Bretaña, entonces unida al continente, hasta las costas orientales del Báltico, un mar cerrado en aquella época (mapa 1). La caza estacionaria y el desarrollo de una pesca de bajura favorecieron el sedentarismo de las poblaciones asentadas en las cercanías de las costas. Los desarrollos técnicos, las características del Mar del Norte, entonces una especie de enorme bahía, y el arrojo de los hombres llevan a la pesca de altura: el resultado es el establecimiento de comunidades muy estables y prósperas. La caza zonal comunitaria y las exigencias de la vida en el mar contribuyen a desarrollar fuertes vínculos jerárquicos y tradiciones marciales entre los grupos masculinos.

A mediados del VI milenio, con su territorio dislocado por la crecida del nivel del mar, la cultura de Maglemose entra en crisis, transformándose en su zona central (Escandinavia meridional, Jutlandia y norte de Alemania) en la cultura de Ertebølle-Ellerbeck (mapa 2). En ésta se van a acentuar los rasgos antes citados: la navegación marítima y fluvial conoce un auge extraordinario y la red fluvial de Mitteleuropa septentrional se convierte en una tupida red de comunicación, con el Elba como eje principal. Se desarrollan una agricultura de azada y la ganadería, labores que quedan en manos de la mujer mientras que el hombre se dedica a la caza y a la pesca. Este complejo, muy próspero cultural y económicamente, se expande siguiendo las cuencas fluviales hacia el oeste, hacia Polonia (Cultura de Janislawice) y hacia Ucrania donde, con toda probabilidad, grupos salidos de su seno darán origen a la Cultura del Dnieper-Don. Es en la Cultura de Ertebølle-Ellerbeck donde comienza a cristalizar la lengua indoeuropea.

Medio milenio antes de que comenzase a tomar forma la Cultura de Ertebølle-Ellerbeck, empieza a producirse un fenómeno de naturaleza muy diferente. Desde la zona balcánica, el antiguo solar de la Cultura de Vinça, de lejanas raíces próximo-orientales, comienzan a migrar hacia el norte pequeños grupos de colonos agrícolas. Practicando una agricultura de rozas y un rápido abandono de las tierras esquilmadas, estas pequeñas células de hombres de raza mediterránea van infiltrándose por la Europa central siguiendo el curso de los ríos. Gentes pacíficas y desarmadas, portan consigo la costumbre del enterramiento flexionado y un sistema de creencias en el que el principio materno-colectivista juega el rol principal. Se trata de la denominada Cultura de la Cerámica de Bandas o Cultura Danubiana. Su progresión hacia el norte les lleva a entrar en contacto con la población mesolítica centroeuropea, al sur de la llanura septentrional. Estos encuentros tienen como consecuencia un proceso de aculturación mutuo y la cristalización de culturas como la de Rossen, en la que se conjugan tradiciones cazadoras y guerreras con las nuevas traídas por los colonizadores meridionales y en la que, a diferencia de otros casos paralelos, predomina el componente étnico nórdico.

El choque entre las dos culturas en expansión, una guerrera, Ertebølle-Ellerbeck, y otra pacífica, la Danubiana, era tan inevitable como previsible fue su resultado. A unas primeras épocas en las que los navegantes fluviales de Ertebølle-Ellerbeck comerciaron, saquearon y sometieron a tributo a las comunidades de la Bandkeramik, sucedió la gran era de la expansión y del sometimiento in situ. Una sociedad que ya había conocido un fuerte desarrollo jerárquico interno encontraba el camino abonado para establecer unas estructuras políticas y sociales de dominio, que bien podríamos calificar con C.-H. Boettcher de feudales, sobre las comunidades de colonos agrícolas. Y este proceso va conducir a la formación de lo que Marija Gimbutas calificó como el “Reich de los Vasos de Embudo”. Esta cultura aparece alrededor del 4.300 BC mostrando rasgos muy homogéneos. Su área de expansión puede verse en el mapa 4. Las fechas obtenidas muestran a los grupos septentrional y oriental como los primeros en constituirse, pero la formación del resto es casi inmediata y coetánea entre sí. Actualmente no existe controversia entre los especialistas sobre el hecho de que es en las presiones guerreras de los grupos septentrionales donde se encuentra la génesis de esta cultura (Boettcher 2000, 151-3) y que esta unidad sin duda se fundamentó en la expansión de un estrato dominante fuertemente vinculado entre sí que utilizó la navegación fluvial como vía de conquista y de interrelación.

Existe cierta tendencia a sobrevalorar el peso de los colonos sudorientales en la Cultura de los Vasos de Embudo o TBK, por ejemplo, Boettcher escribe (2000, 147): “No obstante, cada vez se evidencia con más claridad el carácter de cultura mixta, compuesta por diferentes elementos. Así, no existe un rito funerario unitario para la totalidad de la TBK. Estos pueden variar regionalmente. Enterramientos que siguen la costumbre de los cazadores, en decúbito supino, están junto a los que siguen las campesinas, flexionados. Esto indica que no existió tampoco una población homogénea Sin embargo, La cultura en su totalidad muestra una sorprendente gran uniformidad (…) Esta cultura debía su uniformidad, pesar de su multiplicidad, sin duda alguna a la energía formativa de su estrato señorial que ejerció su acción en vastísimos espacios”. Con todo, en el complejo de los Vasos de Embudo ha desaparecido toda huella del matriarcado, de representaciones femeninas y de colectivismo característicos de la Bandkeramik. Por otro lado, los enterramientos flexionados corresponden al grupo de Baalberg en el que se realizan siguiendo una estricta divergencia de orientación para hombres y mujeres, algo desconocido en la Cultura Danubiana. Son las concepciones espirituales e ideológicas del Norte las que se afirman y las que van a dar el tono tanto a la Cultura de los Vasos de Embudo como a las culturas que posteriormente derivarán de ésta.

Es en este marco político-cultural en el que se va a hablar lo que la investigación de los dos últimos siglos conoce como lengua indoeuropea. Con toda probabilidad, no se diferenciaría apenas de la lengua hablada por las gentes de Ertebølle-Ellerbeck, pero es en los 1.500 años que dura el devenir de la cultura de los vasos de embudo cuando madura como lengua y cuando crea muchos de los rasgos lingüísticos y socioculturales que han podido ser descubiertos o reconstruidos (4).

Una de las manifestaciones más impresionantes de la TBK es la arquitectura funeraria megalítica, expresión de una aristocracia de fuertes tradiciones sociales y testimonio del sedentarismo de las estirpes nobiliarias. Otro de los elementos característicos de esta cultura es la cerámica que “…evolucionando desde la forma sencilla del vaso de embudo, alcanza límites de gran belleza y racionalidad (…) las cerámicas nórdicas no conceden nada a la pura ornamentación. Todas las líneas subrayan la arquitectura de los vasos, las junturas y las separaciones. Günther contrapone la “lujosa proliferación de las formas ornamentales de la cerámica de bandas”, en la que se plasma la sensibilidad meridional de los danubianos, a la tendencia nórdica hacia “las robustas formas geométricas o tectónicas, hacia formas de un espíritu que une tensión y mesura”" (Romualdi 2002, 42). Esta cultura se corresponde con la imagen que la paleolingüística ha forjado del mundo técnico-cultural de la Urheimat indoeuropea: la ganadería y la agricultura, el metal, el carro, las naves y el hacha de combate, las fortificaciones y las huellas de una sociedad fuertemente jerarquizadas. También su entorno natural, faunístico y vegetal se corresponde con la misma imagen: la anguila, el castor, el lobo, la alondra… así como el tejo, el abedul, el olmo, etc. (Haudry 1999, 149-52). Es desde el mismo corazón del continente de donde partirán las corrientes indoeuropeas en las que Occidente encuentra su más profunda unidad.

En el paso del IV al III milenio la Cultura de los Vasos de Embudo se transforma en complejos en los que el elemento ganadero aumenta de importancia con relación al agrícola. La primera cultura que se forma es conocida como la Cultura de Baden, extendida por toda la cuenca del Danubio. Poco después, la Cultura de las Ánforas Globulares, que se extiende desde la llanura nordeuropea oriental hacia Ucrania. Poco después, alrededor del 2.800, el resto del área ocupado por la TBK tardía y parte del de las ánforas Globulares se transforma paulatinamente en la Cultura de la Cerámica de Cuerdas, cultura de marcado carácter guerrero que se expande muy profundamente hacia el este, donde encontrará en el territorio de la estepa con la Cultura de la Tumbas con Ocre, heredera de la cultura del Dnieper-Don. De su choque surgirá la individualización del ethnos indoiranio. Son típicos sus cerámicas decoradas con impresiones de cordoncillos, técnica ya conocida en sus culturas de origen la TBK y la Cultura de las Ánforas Globulares, así como sus hachas de combate y su rito funerario que repite el esquema del grupo de Baalberg de la TBK: los varones flexionados sobre la derecha y las mujeres sobre la izquierda. En esta cultura presenta en todo su enorme ámbito de expansión una extraordinaria homogeneidad étnica de carácter nórdico. Este es el tipo que puede aislarse como el más importante de los estratos superiores de los diferentes pueblos indoeuropeos (Günther 1936; Kilian 1988, 121-53; Haudry 1999, 165-8; Romualdi 2002, 105-34, 176 nota 59). Estos guerreros campesinos del hacha de combate van a protagonizar el primer gran movimiento de homogeneización indoeuropea de nuestro continente. La cristalización de estas culturas es el prólogo a las primeras gravitaciones indoeuropeas sobre a cuenca mediterránea y El Asia meridional (mapa 5). Posteriormente, entre el II y el I milenio los movimientos del complejo de los Campos de Urnas culminará el proceso de indoeuropeización de nuestro continente.

Pero el mundo que se ha convenido en denominar indoeuropeo no se limita a elementos de orden antropológico o histórico-cultural. Es en otro orden de ideas donde Europa encuentra su verdadero Principio, tomado este término en todos sus valores. Es fundamental que tengamos presentes las palabras de Jaeger con las que se iniciaba este artículo, porque, efectivamente, existe una comunidad espiritual y activa entre los pueblos occidentales del hoy y los ciclos de nuestro más remoto pasado. Podemos ver en le concepto de Orden el eje central de la concepción indoeuropea de lo sagrado: “Emerge ya del Rig-Veda el concepto central de la religiosidadindoeuropea y de al raza blanca: el concepto de Orden: El orden entendido como Lògos universal y colaboración de las fuerzas humanas con las divinas (…)El orden, en tanto que esencia, del universo indoeuropeo, está en el mundo y más allá del mundo. Constituye la fuente de a que surgen el kòsmos visible y el invisible. Los símbolos de ambos se superponen, significando los primeros sobre el plano del devenir natural lo que sobre el plano del Ser no deviene sino que naturalmente es” (Romualdi 2003, 24,26). Este Orden que se manifiesta en el equilibrio de todo lo manifestado es para el hombre indoeuropeo, a la vez una intuición y un horizonte en la propia construcción física y espiritual. Escribe H.F.K. Günther (S.F., 191): “El ario vive en un equilibrio de cuerpo y alma, aunque considera el alma y el cuerpo como dos cosas diversas y distintas. En general, se puede decir que el mundo indoeuropeo ha vivido siempre en la unidad cuerpo y alma; los germanos estuvieron incluso a considerar el cuerpo como una expresión del alma”, expresión del alma e instrumento de conquista espiritual en la que el desarrollo de una mesura interior se presenta como primer requisito: “Moderación y control (el latino iugum y el alemán Hoch), métron, temperantia son, como se ha mostrado anteriormente, caracteres específicos de la originaria religiosidad nórdica e indoeuropea: eusébeia como sinónimo de sofrosýne. A la religiosidad budista le es propia el precepto de la inmutabilidad de espíritu (en sánscrito upeksha y en pali upekha), exactamente cono en el estoicismo (ataraksía)” Günther (S.F., 207). Así, la única culpa (que no pecado) del hombre es la hýbris, la rebelión contra el Orden…

Un mismo fondo espiritual y ético que toma forma en unas imágenes del mundo divino y una práctica del culto sensiblemente parejas, vincula a los diferentes ciclos indoeuropeos. Jean Haudry (1999, 95-6) resume las características de lo sagrado entre los indoeuropeos, resaltando su carácter politeísta, y su diversificación, con dioses, ritos y fórmulas propios para cada grupo social, de donde derivan su tolerancia y antiproselitismo, así como la posesión de mitos y símbolos a cada nivel social, lo que testimonia la existencia de un trasfondo iniciático, y la ausencia de dogmas. Religión de acciones y no de fe, donde a estricta ejecución del rito es fundamental. Religión política de jefes y no de sacerdotes, donde el poeta puede estar poseído por el furor divino pero donde el oficiante es un magistrado digno y severo. Religión en la que la práctica de la magia deriva del conocimiento de la analogía de los diferentes planos, conocimiento que lleva a condenar severamente la brujería y los cultos estáticos extranjeros. Religión de la claridad, de la forma y de la luz. Religión del conocimiento, del despertar. Religión del Orden.

Estos rasgos que reconocemos como propios de la religiosidad helénica, los vemos reproducidos por doquier en el ámbito indoeuropeo. Sus raíces se encuentran muy al Septentrión de la Península Balcánica y muchos milenios antes de que los primeros helenos avistasen las riberas del Mediterráneo. En las Edades en las que los hombres todavía veían y sabían. En las nieblas de la Prehistoria. En los Orígenes de Europa.

* * *

(1) Alrededor del tipo cromañón-dálico existen algunas cuestiones llamativas: por ejemplo, los estudios de biología molecular realizados por Sykes (2001) han establecido que es precisamente en esta área del continente donde permanece la gran mayoría de individuos cuyo ADN mitocondrial presenta la variación que puede considerarse más arcaica de Europa. Y es igualmente llamativo que la raza dálica sea, curiosamente, la que presenta un mayor grado de despigmentación de todas las razas humanas, constatable también en sus reliquias norteafricanas y de las Islas Canarias. No podemos extendernos aquí sobre la periodización del Auriñaciense, ni sobre los debates acerca de su origen y sus relaciones tanto con el musteriense como con las presuntas “culturas transicionales” (Bacho Kiro, el Uluzziense o el Chatelperroniesnse) ni tampoco el reciente intento de desvincularlo del “hombre anatómicamente moderno”. Baste recordar que los intentos de situar origen el complejo auriñaciense en Oriente Próximo se han abandonado puesto que en esta zona es claramente intrusivo (Delporte 1998, 113-4) y que la opinión más extendida entre los especialistas es que la irrupción del Auriñaciense comporta una solución de continuidad radical en tipología física y comportamiento humanos y tecnología en relación a los neandertales y los tecnocomplejos a ellos asociados. Por otro lado, el simbolismo inherente a las manifestaciones culturales o artísticas del Paleolítico superior permitiría hipotetizar sobre la concepción del hombre con lo sagrado en aquellas edades. Las tesis avanzadas por el mundo científico, como el chamanismo, las tesis de un Leroi-Gourhan, o las relaciones del arte parietal con las representaciones del firmamento, se apoyan en datos en su casi totalidad de los periodos más recientes y parten de premisas ideológicas y metodológicas cuanto menos desenfocadas. Tal y como afirman los testimonios tradicionales posteriores y sugiere la “desnudez” del registro arqueológico, la relación del hombre con lo inefable en la Europa de aquel entonces debía seguir vías de conocimiento e identificación, más cercanas a la visión de los Rishis de la que nos habla la Tradición hindú que a las concepciones religiosas modernas.
(2) En el tipo de Brno se ha querido ver la prueba de una evolución neandertal hacia el “hombre moderno”. Sin embargo, los especímenes de Mladec, que son los mejor conservados de este tipo no muestran ningún rasgo vinculable con neandertal. Por otro lado los análisis de ADN realizados hasta la fecha a neandertales niegan rotundamente esta posibilidad: Estamos ante dos especies distintas.
(3) Sobre esta cuestión pueden verse las obras de Christian Levalois, Hiperbórea Regreso a los orígenes, 1987 Barcelona, o el fascinante libro de L. G. Tilak, The Artic Home in the Veda, Puna 1956 y la valoración de la cuestión que realiza J. Haudry (1999).
(4) A pesar de que, efectivamente, la lengua hablada por los colonos de la Cultura de la Cerámica de Bandas, que sin duda era muy diferente a las que hablaban los pobladores mesolíticos de la Europa central y septentrional a su llegada, pudo dejar una pequeña impronta en el indoeuropeo (véase Romualdi 2002, 164-5 notas 21, 22) e, incluso, colaborar como lengua de substrato en el proceso de dialectalización de aquel no podemos seguir a C.H. Boettcher cuando sostiene el carácter de lengua mixta del indoeuropeo, tesis rechaza por la mayoría de especialistas en la actualidad.

Referencias:

* Boettcher, C.H., (1999) Der Ursprung Europas, St. Ingbert.
* Delporte, H., (1998) Les Aurignaciens, premiers Hommes modernes, París.
* Günther, H.F.K., (1936) “Indogermanentum und Germanentum, rassenkundlich betrachtet”, en Helmut Arntz (ed.), Germanen und Indogermanen. Festschr. für H. Hirt, Heidelberg, 317-340.
* Günther, H.F.K., (Sin fecha) Humanitas, Platón, custodio de la vida, Religiosidad indoeuropea, sin indicación de lugar de edición.
* Haudry, J., (1999) Gli Indoeuropei, Padua.
* Jaeger, W. (2000) Paideia. Los ideales de la cultura griega, Madrid.
* Kilian, L., (1988) Zum Ursprung der Indogermanen, Bonn.
* Romualdi, A., (2002) Los indoeuropeos. Orígenes y migraciones, Barcelona.
* Romualdi, A., (2003) El problema de una Tradición europea, Valencia.
* Sykes, B., (2001) Las siete hijas de Eva, Barcelona.

Os Celtas do Xinjiang

Os Celtas do Xinjiang

Pierre Emile BLAIRON

Ex: http://legio-victrix.blogspot.com/

 

Um professor Girassol¹

A Cena se passou há bons quinze anos. Eu estava apoiado no bar (sim) do Salão de Ciências-Fronteiras em Cavaillon; como o seu nome talvez não indique suficientemente, este salão reunia todos os anos no mês de janeiro escritores e cientistas que, dispondo de bela notoriedade, se situavam às margens das convenções habituais e não hesitavam em flertar com conceitos extravagantes como este, por exemplo, de acreditar na idéia de que poderiam existir outros mundos vivos no espaço ou, sobre a nossa Terra, civilizações desaparecidas, que superariam bem a nossa. Nós sabemos atualmente, visto o seu estado de degradação (da nossa), que isso não seria muito difícil. Eu, portanto, encontrei na época Rémy Chauvin, Marie-Thérèse de Brosses, Didier Van Cauwelaert, Martine Castello, e vários pesquisadores de renome. 

 

Eu estava, pois, apoiado no bar, bebericando um xarope de romã, quando vi avançar na minha direção um homenzinho calvo com alguns fios longos ao redor das orelhas; visivelmente ele tinha vontade de debater, pouco importando o assunto; nós bebemos e ele falou; ou o contrário; ele tinha um velho sobretudo negro, cujas manchas eram muito grandes, óculos que eram verdadeiros binóculos e se exprimia com um sotaque curioso, que enrolava os “r”, vindo talvez de qualquer parte do leste. Uma mistura de professor Girassol com Bergier. Ele me contou uma história engraçada sobre múmias que foram descobertas na China em um deserto, múmias de “gigantes loiros”, dizia. Ele desapareceu no momento em que eu pagava a conta; eu me perguntei se ele não era uma aparição, de um ou de outro dos personagens anteriormente citados; sim, eu sei que o professor Girassol não existe que sob o lápis de Hergé, mas sabe-se lá. Paul-Georges Sansonetti deve saber. Eu havia esquecido esta história até os dias de hoje, quando eu fiz algumas pesquisas. Somente para saber que o homenzinho não brincava.

Mesmo escorpiões não conseguem viver nesse deserto

Situemos primeiro o local, um deserto árido, de areia, o maior depois do Saara, 337.000 km², o Taklamakan; nele corre, entretanto, um rio, o Tarim, que permite a vida em uma depressão chamada “bacia do Tarim”. Não muito longe – mas tudo é relativo nessas terras imensas – a noroeste, o Tajiquistão, o Uzbequistão, o Turcomenistão, o Quirguistão, um pouco mais baixo a oeste, o Afeganistão e o Paquistão, ao norte, a Mongólia. Nós estamos na província chinesa do Xinjiang; a Rota da Seda passava por esta região, contornando o deserto. Esta região é habitada pela etnia dos Uigures, muçulmanos desde o século XIV, data na qual encontramos ainda um bispo nestoriano.

Foi em 1978 que foram encontradas as primeiras múmias; serão contadas mais de quatrocentas ao todo. O clima extremamente seco da região as conservou. Elas teriam entre dois e quatro mil anos de idade. Os chineses temem que estas descobertas sejam um pretexto para os Uigures relançarem seu movimento independentista, reivindicando uma descendência original, visto que testes de DNA provaram a origem indo-européia das múmias. Assim, os chineses fazem todo o possível para minimizar a importância desta descoberta, desde que um professor de literatura chinesa da Pensilvânia, George Mair, descobriu alguns exemplares destas múmias em um pequeno museu da região no fim dos anos oitenta. Convém também dizer que isto aborreceria muitos chineses, que teriam, sob o seu sol, brancos suficientemente evoluídos para transmitir a eles alguns conhecimentos. É desta maneira que, verdadeiramente, técnicas de trabalho baseadas em conhecimentos gauleses são encontradas, mesmo na China, da mesma maneira que o invasor romano se apropriou delas, conquistando a Gália.

Quem são os Tokarianos?

É o turcólogo alemão F.W. K. Muller quem deu, em 1907, o nome de tokariana a uma língua que nós podemos decifrar facilmente nos manuscritos, pois eles estavam anotados de maneira bilíngüe tokariano – sânscrito. Os lingüistas teriam em seguida estabelecido os vínculos entre esta língua e as línguas indo-européias, essencialmente o celta e o germânico. Nós reencontraremos alguma sonoridade similar nestes exemplos, respectivamente em português², francês, latim, irlandês e tokariano: mãe, mère, mater, mathir, macer. Irmão, frère, frater, brathir, prócer (próximo do inglês “brother”), três, trois, tres, tri, tre (segundo Giovanni Monastra).

O povo tokariano realmente existiu; sabemos com qual facilidade utiliza-se o pretexto lingüístico para fazer com que se considere os povos como uma realidade virtual, ou mesmo inexistente, de acordo com o que interessa a alguns. Como temos aqui uma prova tangível – corpos – é difícil de refugiar-se nesse não dito. Ainda mais que esses corpos são acompanhados de indícios também bem conservados: suas roupas. Além disso, os documentos que foram descobertos são muito ricos em detalhes e nos dão uma visão muito precisa da sociedade tokariana. Nós nos reportamos com interesse ao trabalho minuncioso de Serge Papillon, La civilization tokharienne, na internet.

Podemos nos perguntar o que faziam lá celtas, tão longe de suas terras de origem? Lembremos que a sua terra de origem não é a Escócia ou a Irlanda, que são os últimos receptáculos desta brilhante civilização e onde encontramos ainda um grande número de falantes das línguas celtas originais. Seu lar de origem é localizado mais a leste e mais ao norte.

Além disso, os tokarianos não são os únicos, nesta região, cuja origem indo-européia é comprovada. Resta ainda nos nossos dias – mas por quanto tempo – os resíduos de um povo muito antigo que os exércitos de Alexandre ficaram surpresos de descobrir – já - no vale do Hindu Kush, a cavalo sobre o Paquistão e o Afeganistão, europeus que possuíam reais aptidões para o combate, pois as tropas de Alexandre não avançaram nesta zona a não ser muito lentamente. Os nuristaneses e os kalashes, pois é deles que se trata, estão implantados nesta região desde o segundo milênio antes da nossa era, portanto, ao mesmo tempo em que contamos os primeiros tokarianos do Tarim. Estes povos são atualmente alvos das perseguições islâmicas dos seus dogmáticos vizinhos, pois eles conservaram a religião pagã de seus ancestrais e estão verdadeiramente condenados a desaparecer, últimos vestígios vivos desta vanguarda européia na Ásia. Foi à procura de outro vestígio vivo, o Barmanu, o homem das neves, o Yéti, que Jordi Magrener perdeu a vida em 2002 nesta região, assassinado pelos talibãs.

As múmias

Elas são bem melhor conservadas do que as múmias egípcias, sem dúvida em função da por causa da baixíssima taxa de umidade do deserto e da sua salinidade, que impediram a proliferação de bactérias. Os corpos são grandes, e mesmo bem maiores que talhe médio atual, beirando para alguns os dois metros; as mulheres são quase tão grande quanto os homens.

Nós os veríamos passeando por Gstaadt, ou não importa qual estação de esqui luxuosa, estes personagens não fariam feio e não chamariam a atenção vestidos de belos casacos de pele, de sapatos bem feitos, de chapéus de pele do tipo tirolês com o detalhe elegante de uma pena fixada ao lado. Estas múmias estão frequentemente vestidas por “tartans”, com tecidos fabricados como kilts escoceses. Sabemos que suas cores provêm da maceração de plantas cuidadosamente escolhidas e colhidas no próprio local de utilização, o que permitia a cada um reconhecer o pertencimento a um clã, segundo o tipo de plantas que cresciam aqui e não lá. A reconstituição de seus rostos faz aparecer delgados e belos rostos de tipo europeu nórdico; eles são loiros ou castanhos, o nariz é íntegro e longo, os lábios bem desenhados, os olhos são azuis ou verdes. “Os chineses me diziam que estes corpos possuíam três mil anos, mas pareciam ter sido enterrados ontem”, dizia Victor Mair.

“O homem de Cherchen” ou “a bela de Loula” chamados assim segundo o local onde eles foram descobertos, e as outras múmias, dispunham de alguns objetos pessoais perto deles, pequenos sacos contendo facas e ervas medicinais, e espelhos, para as mulheres. Para os homens, freios em madeira, rédeas em couro, uma sela de couro cuidadosamente fabricada. Encontrou-se perto do corpo de uma criança em tenra idade (cujos olhos estavam cobertos por seixos azuis) uma espécie de mamadeira confeccionada com os pés de uma cabra.

Do tirolês Otzi aos tiroleses da China

Não se pode evitar, com esta descrição, de se pensar em Otzi, o corpo mumificado muito bem conservado também, descoberto em um glaciar do Tirol em 1991. Entretanto, Otzi é muito menor, 1,60 metro, suas vestimentas são quase idênticas às das múmias de Tarim; ele é mais antigo – salvo nova datação – que as múmias da China; mas um detalhe não deixa de intrigar, e parece estarmos bem embasados para fazer referência. Eis que nós contribuímos com a nossa pequena peça à montagem deste grande quebra-cabeça do qual nós falamos no editorial.

Otzi possui marcas em vários locais do corpo, como tatuagens, espécies de pequenos bastões cavados geometricamente na carne e sublinhados em negro com carvão; marcas tribais, cultuais? Que nada... Os especialistas vão fazer uma descoberta importante: estas marcas são destinadas a curar; mais precisamente, coincidentemente elas estão localizadas exatamente sobre pontos de acupuntura. Em número de uma quinzena, a maior parte destes pontos é destinada a curar a dor nas costas, tão conhecida nos nossos dias. Alguns outros permitem aliviar as dores intestinais. Acreditava-se que eram os chineses que haviam inventado esta terapia tradicional, cujas primeiras manifestações (entre os chineses) estão datadas em torno de mil anos mais tarde, dois mil anos antes da cristã... Eis o que poderia nos fazer pensar que os celtas teriam chegado à Ásia e teriam deixado alguns traços do seu eminente saber.

O homem será chamado de Otzi, o homem do gelo. Ele ainda faria com que falassem dele, pois se pretende que uma maldição semelhante àquela dos faraós está ligada a ele. As provas seriam as inúmeras mortes de pessoas ligadas à descoberta do seu corpo.

¹Nota do tradutor: professor Girassol é um cientista atrapalhado, personagem secundário nas histórias em quadrinho de Tintin, do genial artista belga Hergé.

²As palavras em português não constam do texto original. Foram acrescentadas pelo tradutor.

Artigo de Pierre-Émile Blairon, originalmente publicado na revista Hyperborée (www.hyperboreemagazine.fr), número duplo (10 e 11), do outono (europeu) de 2010, traduzido por Alexandre de Oliveira Villacian. Hyperborée é uma revista francesa destinada a divulgar a Sabedoria Hiperbórea e as fontes originais da cultura européia.

Un Simbolo Indoeuropeo: El Jabali

 

Un Símbolo Indoeuropeo: EL JABALÍ

Ex: http://idendidadytradicion.blogia.com/

“En la noche céltica, el jabalí cazado con ahínco y reproducido en algunas piedras de las citânias, era animal sagrado para los galos, afecto a Diana Ardeumi, como el oso a la diosa Artio, el perro al dios del Mazo y el caballo de Epona. Su figura alzada en la cima de un bastón o una horquilla, fue para muchas tribus germanas y galas una bandera venerable.” J.M.Castroviejo


Dentro de nuestro mundo indoeuropeo, como es sabido, los animales tienen una importancia y una trascendencia reveladora más que importante, ya que para nuestros antiguos la observación de la Naturaleza y de sus habitantes, eran constante y consciente fuente de inspiración y de sabiduría. Entre dichos animales de simbolismo positivo –y a veces dual- se encontraban, el caballo, el lobo, el ciervo, el oso y también el jabalí.

Entendemos pues que el símbolo no es sino el empleo de imágenes que encierran y engloban ideas suprasensibles. El símbolo no tiene límites precisos y en este caso en particular podremos observar que en el caso de animal tan noble, acontece tal cual. 

En este presente artículo nos aproximaremos al jabalí como símbolo identitario indoeuropeo de fuerza, valor, coraje y fecundidad, presente desde tiempos remotos tanto en Occidente -en nuestra península celtibérica, así como en el mundo céltico- como en Oriente – en el mundo indo-ario. Y comenzemos pues por estos últimos:

Dentro de la antigua Tradición Hindú, el símbolo del jabalí procede directamente de la Tradición Primordial, con sede en la Tierra de la Luz, Hiperbórea. Este origen netamente hiperbóreo, es igualmente compartido por los celtas, ya que como apunta René Guénon, “entre los celtas, el jabalí y la osa simbolizaban respectivamente a los representantes de la autoridad espiritual y a los del poder temporal, es decir a las dos castas, los druidas y los caballeros, equivalentes, por lo menos originariamente y en sus atribuciones esenciales, a lo que son en la India las de los brahmanes y los Kshatriya (guerreros)” 

El jabalí (varâha), es el animal representativo del tercer avatâra (encarnación) de Vishnú, símbolo que procede directamente de la Tradición primordial y que en el Veda- según R. Guénon – afirma expresamente su origen hiperbóreo, “además dentro de nuestro Kalpa íntegro, es decir, todo el ciclo de manifestación de nuestro mundo, se designa como el Çveta-varâha-kalpa, o sea el “ciclo del jabalí blanco”…por eso la”tierra sagrada” polar, sede del centro espiritual primordial de este Manvântara es denominada tambien Varâhi o “tierra del jabalí”. 

Algunos autores interpretan que según el texto sagrado del Ramayana, Brahma asumió la forma de un jabalí en su tercera encarnación, mientras que otros , según los cuentos tradicionales y remotos que conforman el Vishnú Purana, fue el dios Vishnú que en la forma del dios Brahma se convirtió en jabalí. Ambos coinciden en que bajo la forma del jabalí, Dios- Brahma que creó todo lo existente, viendo que todo era agua al principio, se sumergió en las profundidades de las aguas y con sus colmillos elevó la tierra a la superficie. El jabalí es un animal que entre sus diversos “placeres”, está el deleitarse con el agua, y según el Vishnú Purana, este deleite y purificación con el agua, se dice que es tipo de ritual de los Vedas, representación alegórica de la liberación del mundo de la inundación del adharma (falta de ley, orden, justicia, espiritualidad). 

Etimológicamente, en sánscrito el jabalí es como hemos dicho varâha y la raíz var-, según R.Guénon, tiene el sentido de “cubrir”, “ocultar”, “proteger”, mientras que las lenguas nórdicas su análogo sería bor- . Efectivamente, “Bórea”, Hiperbórea probablemente sería la “tierra del jabalí”, tierra oculta y de los elegidos, aunque este aspecto “solar” y “polar” fue posteriormente transferido del jabalí al oso, posiblemente por la rebelión de los representantes del poder temporal frente a la supremacía de la autoridad espiritual.

Igualmente R.Guénon nos dice que entre los antiguos griegos, la rebelión de los khsátriyas se figuraba por la caza del jabalí de Calidón, que al igual que en la tradición hindú, es blanco. Prosigue el autor con otra interesante analogía, con el nombre de Calidón, ya que el antiguo nombre de Escocia, Caledonia, “aparte de toda cuestión de “localización” particular, es propiamente el país de los “kaldes” o celtas; y el bosque de Calidón no difiere en realidad del de Brocelandia, cuyo nombre es también el mismo, aunque en forma algo modificada y precedido de la palabra bro- o bor-, es decir, el nombre del jabalí” 

Así pues, entre los antiguos indo-arios, como entre los antiguos celtas y también entre los griegos como hemos visto, el jabalí poseía un profundo simbolismo que venía de tiempos remotos, de la sede mítica y centro espiritual que era Hiperbórea, “ya que allí residía la autoridad espiritual primera, de la cual toda otra autoridad legítima del mismo orden no es sino una emanación, no menos natural resulta que los representantes de tal autoridad hayan recibido también el símbolo del jabalí como su signo distintivo y lo hayan mantenido en la sucesión del tiempo; por eso los druidas se designaban a sí mismos como “jabalíes”…una alusión al aislamiento en que los druidas se mantenían con respecto al mundo exterior, pues el jabalí se consideró siempre como el “solitario”; y ha de agregarse, por lo demás, que ese aislamiento mismo, realizado materialmente, entre los celtas como entre los hindúes, en forma de retiro en el bosque, no carece de relación con los caracteres de la “primordialidad”, un reflejo por lo menos de la cual ha debido mantenerse siempre en toda autoridad espiritual digna” 

En nuestra península celtibérica- “Keltiké”-, uno de los principales legados escultóricos que poseemos de nuestros finales de la Edad del Bronce, son los denominados “Verracos” o “Verrôes”, datados aproximadamente entre los siglos IV-III a.C. Tradicionalmente esta Cultura de los Verracos-Verrôes ocupó la zona comprendida por las tribus célticas de los Vettones, asentadas en la Beira Alta y Trâs-Os-Montes portugueses, Salamanca, Ávila y limitando al este con los ríos Eresma y Alberche y al norte con la Cultura Castrexa galaico-astur. Esta plástica zoomorfa labrada en granito, con trazos muy toscos y en posición erguida (de reposo y de acometida), de sexo masculino (con tendencia a mostrar cierto genitalismo), posee tipos básicos: Cerdos y toros en mayor abundancia, así como también jabalíes. 

La finalidad de los Verrôes-Verracos siempre ha estado envuelta en la controversia: Para unos estudiosos ha sido la expresión del culto egipcio de Osiris y Apis en nuestra península mientras que para otros serían como mojones terminales del territorio de un pueblo . Por ejemplo, para el profesor portugués Santos Junior serían totems relacionados con la virilidad, el coraje y la fuerza. Lo cierto es que según su ubicación podrían tener un simbolismo determinado, así pues a la entrada del castro de Las Cogotas en Ávila estaban ubicados estos verracos, como símbolo totémico de fuerza y valor, mientras que por otro lado en Chamartín de la Sierra podrían determinar un encerradero de animales, como símbolo de protección y de fecundidad. En ambos casos - aunque diferenciados- la finalidad sin duda es mágico-protectora 

Apuntaba el arqueólogo gallego Florentino López- Cuevillas en los albores del pasado siglo XX, que poco se podía decir de las ideas cosmogónicas de los habitantes de la vieja Gallaecia (Galiza, Asturies, Norte Portugal, León y Zamora), de los “galecos”, pero se aventuraba con datos arqueológicos a dar una extensa relación de los cultos practicados por los habitantes de la cultura Castrexa, entre los cuales citaba a “una divinidad en forma de cerdo o de jabalí” 
Por otro lado, dejando atrás la época prerromana, parece ser que estos verracos tuvieron finalidad de carácter funerario según atestiguan las inscripciones latinas en algunos animales, utilizadas a modo de estelas funerarias (siglo II d.C) 

En las Tradiciones Irlandesa y Galesa, el jabalí como animal simbólico igualmente aparece dentro de sus mitologías. Dentro del ciclo del Ulster, el héroe Diarmaid y su enamorada Grainne, -prototipos de los medievales Tristán e Isolda – dicho héroe tenía como mayor prohibición el matar al jabalí ya que su hermano fue muerto accidentalmente y metamorfoseado en jabalí mágico. Igualmente dentro de la interesante historia del druida irlandés, Tuàn Mac Cairill, personaje que es testigo de las cinco grandes invasiones de Irlanda, que sobrevivió metamorfoseando su cuerpo en ciervo, jabalí, halcón, salmón, antes de retornar a ser hombre, imagen del Hombre Primordial, capaz de restablecer aquella edad de oro del comienzo de la Humanidad, tiempos míticos en la que los animales y los hombres hablaban el mismo lenguaje y no se mataban entre ellos. De nuevo el mismo jabalí mágico reaparece dentro de los Mabinogion galeses, “no sólo en el relato de Kulhwch y Olwen en el que Arturo y sus compañeros acosan al jabalí Twrch Trwyth, sino también en algunas Tríadas de la Isla de Bretaña y en la Historia Britonnum de Nennius” 

Dentro del mundo céltico y sobre todo en la Galia, el jabalí ha sido un emblema guerrero indiscutiblemente ya que se han encontrado lábaros sagrados o pértigas coronadas por la representación de dicho animal, además de su aparición en monedas. Citemos por ejemplo el jabalí como enseña militar del arco de Orange, o bien la estatua de una Diana gala encontrada en las Ardenas montada sobre un jabalí. Ecuánimemente nos explica Jean Markale que “sobre una placa del Caldero de Gundestrup, que representa el rito de sofocación, todos los guerreros llevan un casco coronado por un jabalí. Todo estriba en saber si el jabalí representa la fuerza física y “solitaria” del guerrero, lo cual sería simbolismo, o si se trata del animal mítico considerado como el antepasado de la clase guerrera” Este atributo “kshatriya” del jabalí también lo encontraremos entre los pueblos bálticos de los letones, lituanos y antiguos prusianos, especialmente como animal relacionado con el dios Pekurnas, que sería el Thor nórdico, el Taranis galo. 



Y en época clásica grecorromana, igualmente el jabalí aparecía en estas culturas como fiera noble, valor salvaje al que vencer el héroe, tal como nos relata J.M.Castroviejo: “El Señor jabalí tiene su puesto en la Historia y no pequeño… El feroz puerco, perseguido hasta la hondura de su cubil, era un adversario que los dioses mismos no desdeñaban el atacar. Artemisa, la virginal. Lo seguía con su aljaba, tenaz e incansable, hasta lo profundo de las selvas de la Argólida, en veloz carro, acompañada de ladradora jauría y entre un tropel de ninfas galopantes. Y ¿no fue por culpa de un jabalí, primero herido por la diestra Atalante, por lo que el heroico Meleagro, que le da al fin muerte, enloquece y pierde a su vez la vida? Homero en la Odisea (XIX) nos deja un memorable retrato del jabalí que hirió a Ulises. El jabalí era presa noble y los emperadores…de Roma, tras las influencias de la Galia, de España, de Grecia, del Oriente Helenístico y de África, se alababan de su caza. Adriano, Marco Aurelio –cuya fuerza ante el jabalí destaca Dion Casio- y Caracalla, entre otros, se vanagloriaban de afrontarlo. Marcial nos dejará inmortalizado en hermoso latín, el epitafio de la valiente perra Lydia sucumbiendo al colmillo de un jabalí:
Fulmineo, spumantis sum dente perempta
Quantus erat, Calydon, aut, Erymanthe, tuus » 

 

Pero volvamos de nuevo a la relación simbólica entre el jabalí y el oso de la que antes hemos hablado y veamos una más que interesante interpretación del tema que estamos tratando. Según René Guènon, el jabalí y la osa no aparecen siempre en estado de lucha y oposición sino que igualmente podrían representar de forma armoniosa la relación de las castas de los druidas- sacerdotes-brahmanes con la de los guerreros-caballeros -kshatriyas y esto lo vería R.Guènon en la conocida leyenda de Merlín con Arturo: “En efecto, Merlín, el druida, es también el jabalí del bosque de Broceliande (donde al cabo, por otra parte, no es muerto como el jabalí de Calidón, sino sumido en sueño por una potencia femenina) y el rey Arturo lleva un nombre derivado del oso, arth; más precisamente, este nombre Arthur es idéntico al de la estrella Arcturus, teniendo en cuenta la leve diferencia debida a sus derivaciones respectivas del celta y del griego. Dicha estrella se encuentra en la constelación del Boyero, y en estos nombres pueden verse reunidas las señales de dos períodos diferentes: el “guardián de la Osa” se ha convertido en el Boyero cuando la Osa misma, o el “Sapta-Rksha”, se convirtió en los “Septem triones”, es decir, los “Siete bueyes” (de ahí el nombre de “septentrión” para designar el norte); …la autoridad espiritual, a la cual está reservada la parte superior de la doctrina, eran los verdaderos herederos de la tradición primordial, y el símbolo esencialmente “bóreo”, el del jabalí, les pertenecía propiamente. En cuanto a los caballeros, que tenían por símbolo el oso ( o la osa de Atalanta) puede superponerse que la parte de la tradición más especialmente destinada a ellos incluía sobre todo los elementos procedentes de la tradición atlante; y esta distinción podría incluso, quizá, ayudar a explicar ciertos puntos más o menos enigmáticos en la historia ulterior de las tradiciones occidentales” 

En la tierra mágica de la Españas, Galiza, de nuevo la memoria de la Tradición Primordial emerge, podríamos decir más que curiosamente, puesto que la “combinación” del jabalí con el oso toma forma de heráldica y Tótem para la otrora gran casa feudal de los Andrade, señores del norte de la actual provincia de A Coruña y parte de la de Lugo. “El jabalí, con el oso, fue tótem de la gran casa feudal de los Andrade, como puede verse en el magnífico enterramiento de la iglesia de San Francisco de Betanzos” . Efectivamente, el sepulcro gótico de Fernán Pérez de Andrade “O Bóo” está soportado por un oso y un jabalí, si bien el jabalí es la figura más ligada a la casa de los Andrade. Relacionado con el linaje de los Andrade, tenemos la leyenda novelesca de Roxín Roxal e a Ponte do Porco, que tan bellamente recogió Leandro Carré Alvarellos en sus “Leyendas Tradicionales Gallegas”. De nuevo la memoria céltica galaica se renueva con este héroe solar que combate al fiero “porco bravo”, un temido jabalí que asola la comarca y siembra el pánico entre los labriegos. Roxín Roxal, doncel del señor de Pontedeume, don Nuno Freire de Andrade, era un joven ”esbelto de cuerpo, rubio y roxiño como un sol, alegre y sonriente, valiente y sencillo”, que estaba enamorado de la hija de don Nuno, la joven Tareixa (Teresa), que “montaba a caballo igual que una amazona céltica y disparaba una flecha mejor que algunos arqueros de su padre” , pero que esta doncella fue obligada a casarse con otro señor feudal, don Henrique de Osorio, ya que el señor de Andrade descubrió el amor de Roxín Roxal por su hija . Don Nuno y don Henrique organizaron una cacería para dar muerte al fiero jabalí y en la desembocadura del río Lambre encontraron al animal en el puente. Don Henrique y la joven Tareixa fueron embestidos por el enorme jabalí, don Henrique le clavó su lanza pero saltó del puente y el animal atacó a la joven doncella, matándola. A los pocos días, en dicho puente apareció el jabalí con una daga clavada en el pescuezo, que don Nuno reconoció. Esa daga se la había regalado a su sirviente Roxín Roxal. He aquí la leyenda de Ponte do Porco, donde un héroe mata por amor y frente a la fiereza y el coraje del porco bravo se superpone la del héroe.

 

El Cristianismo medieval, desgraciadamente, fue severo con el fogoso animal de nuestros antepasados, según asevera el tradicionalista católico Louis Charbonneau-Lassay en su hermoso y extenso trabajo sobre simbolismo animal en la Antigüedad y Edad Media “El Bestiario de Cristo”, aunque durante los primeros cuatro siglos de Cristianismo fue representado en lámparas en las que parece representar la cólera divina, frente a la paloma y el cordero que representarían la dulzura de Cristo.

 

En un manuscrito francés del siglo XIV, el jabalí junto con el gallo (animal que como sabemos anuncia la salida del Sol, por lo tanto animal solar y pagano) representa a la Ira, la Lujuria. Así pues la Ira será representada por una mujer que lleva un gallo sobre su mano y que cabalga sobre un jabalí. Nuestra Edad Media europea, conoció salvo raras excepciones, al jabalí de David “asolador de la viña del Señor”, como nos lo relatan los Salmos del Antiguo Testamento. “El jabalí, sin embargo, fue aceptado a veces como imagen del justo, independiente y valeroso frente a los adversarios del Bien y a los enemigos de su alma. En este sentido, San Paulino de Nola, en el siglo V, incluso lo relacionaba con el cordero cuando escribía a uno de sus corresponsales: “Qué satisfacción encontrarme completamente cambiado; ver que el león tiene ahora la dulzura de un joven ternero; que Jesucristo habita en el jabalí, que conserva toda la ferocidad para con el mundo, pero que se ha convertido en cordero para con Dios; ya no eres el jabalí del bosque, te has convertido en el jabalí de la siega”

 

El polifacético y prolífico intelectual galaico Vicente Risco, nos cita siete animales cuya figura puede asumir el diablo, y curiosamente hay dos animales (Jabalí y Cuervo, aves de Odin- Wotan) significativos para las antiguas creencias célticas y germánicas que son marcados con este estigma; “como Jabalí, atemoriza a las gentes del campo, como Cuervo muestra su triste negrura fatídica, que se alimenta de la muerte” He aquí una muestra entre otras muchas mas, de cómo los símbolos paganos fueron tergiversados e invertidos por la nueva religión.

 

Simbólicamente al jabalí se le opuso frente al Cordero de Cristo, así pues frente a las virtudes cristianas del cordero estaban los defectos y pecados paganos del Jabalí. Pese al olvido parcial de animal tan noble como símbolo durante nuestra Edad Media, se representó frecuentemente su caza, siendo esta considerada de gran riesgo, valor y coraje junto con inteligencia, virtudes propias que debían poseer los guerreros. Quizás dentro de los animales salvajes cazados en nuestros montes europeos, la cacería del oso y del jabalí destacarían por ser de elevado peligro, frente a otras especies.

 

Como conclusión para este pequeño aporte al simbolismo del jabalí, apuntaremos esta duda con la que se preguntaba el católico L.Charbonneau –Lassay: “¿Cuál sería exactamente el pensamiento de Albert Durero cuando, cerca del pesebre en el cual puso María al Niño Dios, representó al jabalí y al león, en vez del buey y la mula tradicionales?”.

 

FEDERICO TRASPEDRA

Lughnasad 2004

Bibliografía:

“SIMBOLOS FUNDAMENTALES DE LA CIENCIA SAGRADA” René Guénon. Eudeba-Ediciones Colihue. Buenos Aires 1988. pág.141

Op.cit. René Guénon, pág.145

Op.cit. René Guénon, pág.142.

Cuadernos del Arte Español nº22 “Arte Céltico y Celtibérico” Historia-Grupo16 Madrid1992

“La Civilización Céltica de Galicia”, de Florentino López-Cuevillas. Ed. Istmo, Madrid 1989, pág.280

“Druidas” de Jean Markale, Ed Taurus Alfaguara, Madrid 1989. Pág.202

Op. Cit. Jean Markale, pág.203

“Viaje por los montes y chimeneas de Galicia” J.M. Castroviejo y Álvaro Cunqueiro.Espasa Calpe. Col. Austral. Madrid 1986. Pág.128

Op. Cit. René Guènon, pág 146-147.

J.M.Castroviejo, op.cit. pág 130

“Leyendas Tradicionales Gallegas” de Leandro Carré Alvarellos. Espasa-Calpe, Col.Austral. Madrid 2002 Págs.253-256

“El Bestiario de Cristo” de L.Charbonneau-Lassay, Ed. Olañeta, Palma de Mallorca, 1997. Pág. 174, 175,640.

Satanás, historia del diablo. V.Risco. EdGalaxia, pág.409.

Indo-European mummies in Central Asia and China

Indo-European mummies in Central Asia and China

 

J. Haudry: la vision cosmique des Indo-Européens (1987)

Archives - 1987

LA VISION COSMIQUE

 

 

DES INDO-EUROPÉENS

 

 

Entretien avec Jean Haudry

 

 

Jean Haudry est l'un des principaux spécialistes actuels du monde indo-européen. Il dirige le département de linguistique de Lyon III et enseigne les grammaires indo-européennes comparées à I'École Pratique des Hautes Études. Il est l'un des fondateurs de l'Institut des Études indo-européennes qui dépend de Lyon III. On lui doit notamment deux remarquables "Que sais-je" : L'indo-européen (n°1798, étude linguistique) et Les Indo-Européens (n°1965, sur l'organisation sociale, les divinités, la vision du monde, etc.), ainsi que de nombreux articles dans plusieurs revues. Nous l'avons interrogé à l'occasion de la parution de son ouvrage intitulé : La religion cosmique des Indo-Européens (coédition Archè-Les Belles Lettres). Ce livre est le résultat de nombreuses années de recherches. Il s'appuie principalement sur la linguistique et la mythologie comparées. Sans nul doute, il est un grand pas supplémentaire dans la compréhension du monde indo­-européen, et plus particulièrement de la vision du monde qui l'anime. Signalons aussi que cet ouvrage est accessible au lecteur non-spécialiste, ce qui n'est pas le moindre de ses mérites. Félicitons également les éditeurs pour la présentation et la mise en pages qui est sobre, claire, agréable à la lecture.

 

Ce livre approfondit la question de la tripartition propre au monde indo-européen. Celle-ci n'est pas seulement une organisation sociale, mais découle d'une vision du monde, c'est-à-dire d'une manière de voir et de concevoir l'univers. Aussi, cette tripartition est à la fois valable pour le macrocosme (l'univers) et pour le microcosme (l'homme). Dans un premier temps, Jean Haudry examine la tripartition céleste, ce qu'il nomme "les trois cieux". Puis, il explique l'analogie entre le jour, l'année et le cycle cosmique. Il poursuit par une étude comparative sur la déesse grecque Héra, épouse de Zeus. Celle-ci représente, entre autres, la belle saison de l'année, le printemps, mais aussi l'année toute entière. Il aborde ensuite la notion de héros en partant de l'étymologie qui provient de Héra. Le héros est précisément celui qui conquiert l'année et accède ainsi à l'immortalité. Pour cela il emprunte la "voie des dieux", aussi désignée par le mot védique svarga, "le fait d'aller dans la lumière­ solaire". L'accès à l'immortalité passe par la redoutable traversée de "l'eau de la ténèbre hivernale". Pour finir, Jean Haudry se penche sur la question de l'habitat originel des Indo-Européens (à ne pas confondre avec le dernier habitat commun qui est bien postérieur). Il examine avec attention les nombreuses indications qui ne sont compréhensibles que pour des peuples arctiques. Ce n'est là, bien sür, qu'un survol rapide de cet ouvrage dense, érudit et clair, précis et convaincant, qui captivera tous ceux qui s'intéressent aux mythologies, aux Indo-Européens et aux sociétés anciennes en général. (Christophe LEVALOIS)

 

********

 

Question : Tout d'abord le titre de l'ouvrage. Y avait-­il une religion commune aux différents peuples indo­européens ?

Jean Haudry : Je crois qu'il y a une tradition indo-­européenne commune, laquelle peut se définir de façon très précise en termes de linguistique. Mais une religion ? Je ne sais même pas s’il y avait une religion unique pour chacun des peuples indo-­européens. À toute époque il y a un sentiment religieux du plus superficiel au plus profond. Il y a une pratique sociale commune à tous les membres de la communauté et puis il y a des degrés d'initiation très différents selon les personnes. Nous, ce que nous arrivons à décrire ou à restituer c'est essentiellement la pratique commune, à savoir la plus superficielle. Par ex., quand on évoque la religion grecque il est plus évident de décrire la frise des Panathénées que de dire ce qui se passait dans les mystères d'Éleusis.

 

Q : Néanmoins, quelles sont les caractéristiques communes aux religions indo-européennes ?

J.H. : Le polythéisme, le caractère symbolique, non dogmatique, et le fait qu'elles étaient liées à la communauté du peuple dans tous ses aspects, d'où une grande diversité. Il n'y a aucune prétention universelle.

 

Q : Il y a pourtant des affirmations monothéistes dans certaines traditions indo-européennes, par ex. Ahura Mazda dans l'ancien Iran ?

J.H. : Il est seul dans les premières inscriptions achéménides et accompagné par Mithra et Anâhitâ dans les suivantes. Le monothéisme est profondément étranger à la tradition indo-européenne. Il fut à plusieurs reprises introduit chez des peuples indo­-européens par une propagande extérieure, mais il ne s'y est jamais implanté, sauf chez les peuples qui ont répudié la tradition indo-européenne.

 

Q : Pourtant, dans toutes les traditions indo­-européennes on trouve un dieu-origine, supérieur aux autres dieux ?

J.H. : Il y a toujours un dieu roi, de même que dans la société humaine le roi est au-dessus des autres hommes. Mais le dieu unique est aussi mal vu que le tyran ! De même que le roi est toujours entouré d'un conseil, le dieu suprême est toujours entouré d'un panthéon, le conseil et le panthéon n'étant pas élus !

 

Q : Pourquoi qualifiez-vous la "religion" indo-­européenne de "cosmique" ?

J.H. : Parce que les fondements de ce système que je reconstruis, et qui ne représente pas la totalité de la religion mais seulement un de ses aspects, sont des réalités cosmiques et plus précisément spatio-­temporelles. Par ex., le jour est personnalisé par Zeus, l'année par Héra, le cycle cosmique est à l'image des deux premiers,

 

Q : Vous émettez l'hypothèse que le symbolisme ternaire cosmique est antérieur aux autres tripartitions. Comment êtes-vous arrivé à cette conclusion ?

J.H. : Mon hypothèse sur la priorité du symbolisme ternaire cosmique dans l'univers mental des lndo-­Européens se fonde sur la motivation du symbolisme des trois couleurs, le noir (ou le bleu), le blanc et le rouge, c'est-à-dire leur identité avec les trois couleurs du ciel, ou, selon ma terminologie, les couleurs des "trois cieux". Les autres correspondances sont arbitraires, qu'il s'agisse des trois mondes, eux-mêmes diversement répartis selon les peuples, et des trois castes (même remarque), ainsi que des trois "natures" (ou "qualités", vieil-­indien guna). Par ex., il n'y a pas de lien naturel et nécessaire entre la couleur blanche et le "ciel" (qui change de couleur), la caste supérieure (qu'elle soit ou non sacerdotale), la nature supérieure. En revanche, il existe un lien de nature entre la couleur blanche et le "ciel diurne", la couleur noire et le "ciel nocturne", la couleur rouge et le "ciel auroral et crépusculaire".

 

Naturellement, cette hypothèse s'applique uniquement au domaine indo-européen. De plus, le raisonnement ne vaut que pour le rapport entre les couleurs des trois cieux, considérées comme une donnée de base, et les autres groupes ternaires (mondes, castes, natures). Mais à son tour le caractère ternaire des cieux dans la conception reconstruite appelle une explication. Bien que primitive par rapport aux autres structures ternaires, celle-ci ne peut être considérée comme une donnée immédiate de l'expérience. On peut en concevoir d'autres, par ex. une division binaire (jour/nuit), ou au contraire une division distinguant plus de trois couleurs. À cette question, l'hypothèse proposée n'apporte pas de réponse.

 

Q : Quelle est, selon vous, la signification de ces tripartitions ?

J.H. : On sait que les groupements ternaires sont fréquents dans les diverses cultures. Il peut s'agir tout simplement dé l'application aux cycles temporels (et, par delà, aux structures fondées sur eux) d'un quasi-universel. Dans ce cas, le caractère ternaire ne comporterait pas de signification particulière. Mais elle peut en comporter une. J'en vois un indice dans le rattachement étymologique proposé jadis par E. Benveniste (Hittite et indo­-européen, p. 86-87) du nom de nombre "trois", *tréy­es, à la racine *ter- "traverser", "dépasser" : « Par rapport à "deux", observe Benveniste, le nombre "trois" implique une relation de "dépassement" qui est justement celle que la racine *ter- signifie lexicalement ». Assurément, on peut en dire autant de chaque nombre. Il convient donc de trouver une justification plus précise, qui s'applique seulement à "trois". Peut-être faut-il la chercher dans cesnombreux récits mettant en scène un personnage quiparvient à se tirer d'une situation en apparence inextricable, exprimée sous la forme binaire d'un dilemme, en imaginant un troisième terme : ce qu'on ne peut faire "ni le jour, ni la nuit", on le fera à l'aurore, ou au crépuscule. Le troisième terme est celui qui permet à l'homme supérieur de surmonter l'obstacle des dilemmes qui bloquent le commun des mortels.

 

Q : Quelles sont les questions qui restent en suspens concernant les Indo-Européens ?

J.H. : Il y en a beaucoup du point de vue linguistique, liées à la reconstruction du système grammatical et phonologique. Il y a essentiellement la question de l'habitat primitif et des migrations. Autrement, de façon générale, les idéaux, les valeurs, la vision du monde sont restitués sans grandes difficultés. Il n'y a pas un nombre illimité de sociétés traditionnelles. On arrive assez bien à se les représenter. Il suffit de quelques indices pour les "classer" dans un type ou dans un autre. Par contre, savoir où et quand ils ont vécu est une autre affaire.

 

Q : Plus on recueille d'éléments sur les migrationsindo-européennes, plus on se rendcompteque celles­-ciont couvert une grande partie, sinonla totalitédu continent euro-asiatique. Quesait-onaujourd'huides poussées vers l'est ?

J.H. : Pour la Corée, il existe un témoignage indirect par l'archéologie. Nous situons cette présence au IIIe siècle av. JC, probablement des Iraniens. En Chine, les Tokhariens étaient établis au Turkestan chinois vers les VIe et VIIIe siècles de notre ère. D'eux nous possédons des inscriptions et des textes.

 

Q : Pour vous, d'où viennent les Indo-Européens ?

J.H.: Des régions circumpolaires. Un grand nombre d'éléments tirés des traditions indo-européennes prouvent de façon évidente cette origine.

 

Q : En-dehors de vous-mêmes, y-a-t-il d'autres spécialistes du monde indo-européen qui défendent l'hypothèse de l'origine arctique des Indo-Européens ?

J.H. : Chez les Soviétiques, l'idée fait son chemin. Mais cela est mal vu pour des raisons diverses. Néanmoins ils sont moins inhibés que d'autres !

 

Q : Avez-vous d'autres travaux actuellement en cours ?

J.H. : Oui, beaucoup. Sur différentes épopées du monde indo-européen, notamment sur l'épopée homérique et sur Beowulf. Il y a également un ensemble d'études sur les aurores, ainsi que sur les jumeaux divins. Par ailleurs, j'ai de nombreuses idées sur la Lune, le mois, leurs places dans le monde indo-européen. Enfin, bien entendu, il y a toutes les études linguistiques.

 

(Propos recueillis par Christophe Levalois)