8.0 The Aftermath

Subsequent to publication of the first version of this webpage on 8 October 2000, Professor Witzel responded on the Internet several times. Unfortunately, most of his comments were irrelevant to the issue at hand. His first response, on 10 October 2000, was that it contained numerous misrepresentations, mischaracterizations etc. and that the matter was complex and so on. The reader can read his response online as message number 879 on the Indian Civilization list or as message number 969 on the Indic Traditions list on the same day. He attributed it again to a ‘misplaced parenthesis’, an explanation that is meaningless as I have argued above. In addition, his first response alleged that I perceived his version of AMT dependent on the single pin of this passage. Readers will note that this is incorrect. In fact, I have not said anything to this effect above. Moreover, I already addressed all his objections contained in his response when I had uploaded this webpage on 8 October 2000 for the first time.



Then, writing on the Indology list on 5 April 2001, Witzel said:



I have repeatedly dealt with that dead horse, also in INDOLOGY. The matter is, in short, a mistranslation (it should have been a paraphrase), based on misplacing one parenthesis. How happy people are in having found one wrong translation in nearly 30 years of publications!

(Incidentally, the Baudh. Srauta Sutra passage in question cannot prove or disprove an “Aryan immigration” – and that was not my aim either. I used it as additional evidence. The matter is complex, and can be found discussed, in margin, in the forthcoming issue of EJVS, 7-3, in footnotes 44-46.)



This is yet another explanation from Michael Witzel, repeating the same old misleading remarks nevertheless.



First, his point that he merely used the passage as an ‘additional evidence’ is meaningless, because he does present this passage as the solitary direct literary evidence for AMT, and one that has the most pregnant memory of the AMT. Nor can Witzel dismiss this webpage on the grounds that I have tried to refute his thesis of AMT in toto by referring to his mistranslation. In fact, this webpage DID NOT attempt to do so. The scope of this webpage was MERELY to examine the direct literary evidence found by Witzel in support of AMT. This should be clear from the title of this webpage also, which specifically has the word ‘Literary’. Moreover, the importance and centrality that Witzel has given to this ‘evidence’ has in-fact not been missed by others, who have then used it as an important proof of AMT. In a lecture [Ref. 36] delivered on 11 October 1999 at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), Marxist historian Romila Thapar said:



…and later on, the Srauta Sutra of Baudhayana refers to the Parasus and the arattas who stayed behind and others who moved eastwards to the middle Ganges valley and the places equivalent such as the Kasi, the Videhas and the Kuru Pancalas, and so on. In fact, when one looks for them, there are evidence for migration.



Another Marxist historian of India, Ram Sharan Sharma considers this passage as an important piece of evidence in favor of the AMT. He writes, quoting the very words of Witzel [Ref. 37; pg. 87-89] –



More importantly, Witzel produces a passage from the Baudhayana Srautasutra which contains ‘the most explicit statement of immigration into the Subcontinent’. This passage contains a dialogue between Pururava and Urvasi which refers to horses, chariot parts, 100 houses and 100 jars of ghee. Towards the end, it speaks of the birth of their sons Ayu and Amavasu, who were asked by their sons to go out. ‘Ayu went eastward. His people are the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas. This is the Ayava kin group. Amavasu stayed in the west. His people are the Gandharas, the Parsavas and the Arattas. This is the Amavasava kin group.’



Sharma is so confident of the ‘evidence’ of the AMT produced by Witzel that he even goes to the extent of co-relating these two groups with various pottery types attested in the archaeological record. He says [ibid:89]-



Perhaps members of the Amasava kin group used grey pottery and those of the Ayava kin group used Painted Grey Ware and Northern Black Polished Ware. Possibly the former spoke the r- only dialect of the Indo-Aryan language of the north, and the latter spoke its r- and –l dialect in the north eastern part of north India.



In his chapter on the conclusions of his book, Sharma [ibid:99] finally adds:



Some later Vedic texts clearly speak of a migration from the west.



This obviously refers to Baudhayana Srautasutra 18.44. Therefore it is futile for Witzel use phrases like ‘additional evidence’ in order to deny the importance that he gave to this (mis)translated passage himself.



Second, Witzel now seems to admit that he could have mistranslated the passage, although it is unclear how calling it a ‘paraphrase’ could bail him out. I have reproduced his ‘revised’ translation above and it still speaks of one-way migration from the West. Anyways, partial admission of his error should now absolve Erdosy of any wrong editing. Incidentally, a book [Ref. 38] containing a collection of articles on Old Indo-Iranian studies has been published from Germany, in the memory of late Dr. Johanna Narten. In this book, Witzel has contributed an article titled “The Home of Aryans” (pp. 283-338) wherein he has tried to place the Aryans even further west, in the ‘greater Ural region’ (pp. 283-286). In the same book, the relevant passage (Baudhayana Srautasutra 18.44) has been studied closely and has been translated into German by Toshifumi Goto [Ref. 39]. The translation of Goto goes totally against that of Witzel [pp. 102-103] and clearly refers to migration to the west as well as to the east, just as Elst did. Consequently, Witzel now has no choice but to accept his own ‘paraphrase’ or ‘translation’ as wrong. However, if we are to infer from his latest message on the Indology list, we could expect some other innovative explanation such as - ‘the matter is complex’, ‘the manuscripts have textual variants’, ‘text is corrupt’ or ‘this is not the only evidence’ and so on.



Third, this mistranslation is found not only in Witzel:1995 and Witzel:1989, but in a third and an even earlier publication [Ref. 40; pg. 202] dating back to 1987 wherein he says:



The other passage tells the origin of two groups of Aryans, the Amavasu “who stayed at home” and who include the Gandhari, the Parsu and Aratta, and that of the Ayava “who moved eastwards”: the Kuru-Pancalas and the Kasi-Videhas.



Thus, we see that Witzel has relied on his mistranslation in 3 of his publications that appeared over a period of 8 years. In reality, he has used this mistranslation in drawing conclusions in his other publications as well, but we will let the matter rest here. In conclusion then, Erdosy stands exonerated.