The Date of the Rigveda and the Aryan Migration: Fresh Linguistic Evidence (An Old and Rare Book)

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The present work entitled "The Date of the Rigveda and Aryan Migration Fresh Linguistic Evidence' is a revised and enlarged version of ten lectures delivered by me in the Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, University of Pune, during August, 1997.

Two decades back in 1977. I had visited USSR as a delegate of the Government of India, where I had to attend a symposium on the Aryan Problem, held in Dushanbe, the capital of the then Soviet Tajikistan. I was asked to present a paper on "The Bearing of the Indo-European Comparative Grammar on the Aryan Problem'. I am chiefly a scholar of Indo-European comparative linguistics and I have written comparative grammars of several Indo-European languages. This area of Aryan problem was untouched by me as a researcher. While collecting material for my paper, I realised that many of the theories were rather blindly accepted by the scholars. While taking part in the discussions of the symposium, I was more convinced that I should work more diligently in this line and contribute some of my busy hours to solve some of the questions of Aryan problem. The result of my further research was published in 1992, with the title "The Aryan Problem: A Linguistic Approach" where I have dealt with several aspects of the problem like the date of the Rigveda, original home of Aryans as well as iron, cotton and several other items related with the problems of Aryans.

Since I remained interested in this problem I was automatically making further studies on the date of the Rigveda and the original home of Aryans, along with my research on comparative grammar of Indo-European.

When I was asked to deliver lectures on this topic by the Director, Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, I decided to include all my further researches in my lectures. By this time, I was convinced that the languages like Greek, Hittite, Avestan etc. are, from the point of view of linguistic structure, comparable to Middle Indo-Aryan, as they show many linguistic changes like loss of final consonants, assimilation of heterogeneous consonants, syncretism etc. Therefore, on the basis of antiquity in structure Sanskrit deserves a much more ancient date than Greek, Hittite, Avestan and Old Persian etc. Formerly Greek was given the second place from the point of view of the antiquity of structure for retention of IE a, e, o but in this work I have conclusively shown that a, e, o are late develompments in Greek and others, and Sanskrit a as proposed by Schleicher, Bopp, Grimm etc, presents the original picture of Indo-European vowel, Thus now Iranian gets the second position in antiquity. Other evidences are also presented as complementary.

A K. C. Verma, an Indologist, drew my attention to the comparison of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan, made by R. Swaminath Aiyar. mangeulobni to 20W In my "Aryan Problem; A Linguistic Approach" I devoted some pages on the common origin of Dravidian and Indo-Aryan for which my studies were based chiefly on the researches of R. Swaminath Aiyar and J. Harmatta. After studying that part of my book, one American young scholar, Edwin F. Bryant requested me to make a full-fledged study of this area. As I was busy with several other researches, I asked Dr. Sushila Devi, my former student to work in this line. She has done a lot of work constantly consulting me and discussing with me. I have taken some points from this unpublished material and added here to bring it to the notice of scholars, that Dravidian is comparable to New Indo-Aryan, both chronologically and structurally.

Lastly I must thank some scholars who have helped me a lot by sending some books and articles/xerox copies of books. and articles which made my research more complete than it could have been. They are K. C. Verma, Krsna Deva, and Edwin F. Bryant.

It gives me great pleasure to place this monograph in the hands of Scholars who are interested in the study of Ancient Indian Civilization. This volume contains ten lectures delivered by my teacher Prof. Satyaswarup Misra, Department of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University. The date of the Rigveda and the theory of Aryan Migration have still remairted problems which have been handled by different scholars from various angles. In this monograph Prof. Misra has made a fresh attempt to handle this problem on the basis of fresh linguistics evidences. Recently, the problem of Aryan Migration has attracted attention of many scholars and many are working from various angles to approach the solution of the problem. Prof. Misra's lectures should be treated as one amongst many such attempts. Prof. Misra holds a distinct view and has attempted to demonstrate his views with Linguistic evidences. He has made his point very clear and I am sure this will create genuine interest in the study of the problem afresh. If what Prof. Misra said is accepted, one will have to revise all the theories connected with the problem of the date of the Rigveda and Aryan Migration proposed by various Scholars. I hope the volume will be received by Scholars with earnest interest.

I am thankful to Prof. Misra for having accepted my invitation to deliver these lectures at our Centre and for submitting his lectures in typed form for publication. I am also thankful to him for sparing time for seeing the first proofs of the monograph. I want to place on record the help rendered by Dr. Niranjan Jena of CASS for seeing the proofs through the press.