Indo-Aryan migration

Overview

The spread of Indo-Aryan languages has been connected with the spread of the chariot in the first half of the second millennium BC. Some scholars trace the Indo-Iranians (both Indo-Aryans and Iranians) back to the Andronovo-Sintashta-Petrovka culture (ca. 2200 BC–1600 BC). Other scholarslike Brentjes (1981), Klejn (1974), Francfort (1989), Lyonnet (1993), Hiebert (1998), Bosch-Gimpera (1973) and Sarianidi (1993) have argued that the Andronovo culture cannot be associated with the Indo-Aryans of India or with the Mitannis because the Andronovo culture took shape too late and because no actual traces of their culture (e.g. warrior burials or timber-frame materials of the Andronovo culture) have been found in India or Mesopotamia (see Edwin Bryant 2001). The archaeologist J. P. Mallory (1998) found it "extraordinarily difficult to make a case for expansions from this northern region to northern India" and remarked that the proposed migration routes "only gets the Indo-Iranian to Central Asia, but not as far as the seats of the Medes, Persians or Indo-Aryans" (Mallory 1998; Edwin Bryant 2001: 216). The evidence disputing this argument, is both linguistic and archaeological (for linguistic arguments, see e.g. Hans Hock in Bronkhorst & Deshpande 1999)

Asko Parpola (1988) has argued that the Dasas were the "carriers of the Bronze Age culture of Greater Iran" living in the BMAC and that the forts with circular walls destroyed by the Vedic Aryans of the Rigveda were actually located in the BMAC. Parpola's hypothesis has been criticized by K.D. Sethna (1992) and others. Moreover, cultural links between the BMAC and the Indus Valley can also be explained by reciprocal cultural influences uniting the two cultures.

Rajesh Kochhar (Kochhar2000:185-186) argues that there were three waves of Indo-Aryan immigration that occurred after the mature Harrapan phase : the Murghamu (BMAC) related people who entered Baluchistan at Pirak, Mehrgarh south cemetery etc and later merged with the post-urban Harappans during the late Harappans Jhukar phase; the Swat IV that co-founded the Harappan cemetery H phase in Punjab and the Rig Vedic Indo-Aryans of Swat V that later absorbed the cemetery H people and gave rise to the PGW culture. He dates the first two to 2000-1800 BCE and the third to 1400 BCE.

The Indo-Aryan migration is often compared and associated with the Indo-European migrations, the Indo-Iranian migrations and with other Eurasian nomads. Many scholars also believe that the Dravidian speakers migrated to India from the north-west. Other migrations that are connected with South Asia include the migrations of Ghandari/ Niya Prakrit, Parya and Dumaki speakers, the Indo-Scythians, the Indo-Greeks and the Islamic invasion of India.

History

When Sir William Jones first noted the similarity of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit in the late 18th century, he concluded that "no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."[Sir William Jones, The Third Anniversary Discourse, On the Hindus.] Sanskrit was, however, assumed to be the oldest of the known Indo-European languages. Its geographical location also fitted the then-dominant Biblical model of human migration, according to which Europeans were descended from the tribe of Japhet, which was supposed to have expanded from Mount Ararat after the Flood. Iran and northern India seemed to be likely early areas of settlement for the Japhetites.

As the field of historical linguistics progressed, and Bible-based models of history were abandoned, it became clear that this could not be the case: there had existed a still older language (Proto-Indo-European) from which all the Indo-European languages descended. In line with late 19th century ideas, an Aryan 'invasion' was made the vehicle of the language transfer. Then, in the later 20th century, ideas were refined, and so now migration and acculturation are seen as the methods whereby Indo-Aryan spread into northwest India around 1700 BCE. These changes are exactly in line with changes in thinking about language transfer in general, such as the migration of the Greeks into Greece (between 2100 and 1600 BCE), or the Indo-Europeanization of Western Europe (between 2200 and 1300 BCE). It should be noted that Indus Valley civilization, discovered in the 1920s, was unknown to 19th century scholars. The discovery of an urban civilization in decline roughly contemporaneous to the proposed migration movement was seen initially as an independent confirmation of these early suggestions (compare the causal relations between the decline of the Roman Empire and the Germanic Migration Period). But now the Indo-Aryan migration is placed subsequent to the decline of the Mature Harappan culture, the arrival of Indo-Aryans falling into the Late Harappan period.

The debate over such an invasion, and the proposed influx of elements of Vedic religion from Central Asia is still politically charged and hotly debated in India. Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) organizations, especially, remain opposed to the concept, for political and religious reasons, while many Indian Marxists and a fraction of the Dalit Movement support the theory in opposition to the Hindu nationalists/However, the Marxist historian Romila Thapar is not an advocate of an Aryan "invasion", see Thapar (1966), though she supports the idea of a gradual migration of Aryan-speaking peoples from the Indo-Iranian borderlands into north-western India in line with the mainstream view.. In western scholarship, the question does not have such political connotations and is discussed in the larger framework of Indo-Iranian and Indo-European expansion.

Linguistics

Most of the languages of North India belong to a single language family, the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European family of languages. The languages of South India belong to a different language family, the Dravidian languages, which has not been proven to be linked with any other language family. While Dravidian languages are primarily confined to the South of India, there is a striking exception: the Brahui (which is spoken in parts of Baluchistan), the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages. The Elamite language, an extinct language of Southwestern Iran, has also often been linked to Dravidian (in a proposed Elamo-Dravidian or Zagrosian family); if this turns out to be true, it would even more strongly imply a more northerly former distribution of the Dravidian languages.

Linguists have several rules of thumb they use to gauge the place of origin of a family. One is that the area of highest linguistic diversity of a language family is usually fairly close to the area of its origin; thus, for example, while the modern nation with the highest number of speakers of Germanic languages is the United States, the highest diversity of longstanding Germanic languages is found in northern Europe. By this criterion, India seems to be an exceedingly unlikely candidate for the origin of the Indo-European languages — it has only one Indo-European subfamily, Indo-Aryan, not counting recent introductions of European languages — and eastern Europe appears much more promising; conversely, the highest diversity in Dravidian is found among its Northern branches. However, extinctions of unrecorded languages may affect this measure.

Most linguists believe Indo-European to have originated somewhere around the Black Sea: a favorite candidate is the Kurgan hypothesis. Its main contender is the Anatolian hypothesis, and there are many lesser accepted suggestions such as the Paleolithic Continuity Theory.

The presence of retroflex consonants (including L) in Vedic Sanskrit is generally taken by linguists to indicate the influence of a non-Indo-European speaking substratum population, since these sounds are found throughout Dravidian and Munda and are reconstructed for proto-Dravidian and proto-Munda, but are not reconstructible for proto-Indo-European — nor even proto-Indo-Iranian — and are extremely rare among other Indo-European languages (they phonetically emerged in Swedish and Norwegian only in recent centuries, as a result of combinations with r.) This argument is strengthened by the presence of words with Dravidian and Munda etymologies in Sanskrit, argued to be evidence of Dravidian and/or Munda substrata. Some of these etymologies have been challenged, though most have not.

Critics note that many of the oldest forms with retroflexes arose in combination with a liquid semi-vowel (i.e. paT from palt, bhāN from bhaln, etc) as in the Nordic languages. They also argue that the "substratum" influences from Dravidian and Munda could equally well be adstratum influences through mutual contact without conquest, or superstratum given the advanced nature of the precedent Mature Harappan culture. There are, however, technical linguistic grounds for assigning substrate, adstrate, or superstrate relationships between languages.

While, to many, all of this may clearly suggest an Indo-European migration into India, critics of the Aryan invasion theory note that this does not automatically imply a migration around 1500 BC from the Northwest. Any migration could have occurred much earlier. Glottochronology can be used to give approximations to the date of the Indian-Iranian split.

Indo-Europeanists note that the names of the flora and fauna reconstructible for Proto-Indo-European, all come from temperate climates. These words include: hornbeam, ash, poplar, oak, pine, elm, alder, maple, etc. Words for fruits include cherry & apple -- not native to South Asia. The word 'eider'(duck) can be reconstructed in PIE. The eider-duck spends the summer on the Siberian coast & winters much further inland. It is not found in South Asia. Also, words for weather (snow, ice, hail), as reconstructed for PIE, indicate a temperate climate.

Anti-migrationist critics note that the meaning of some words for temperate-climate flora and fauna, e.g., salmon and beech tree, varies from branch to branch. These critics consider the exact referent of the terms to be as yet unestablished.

The early formation of political states also affects the distribution of languages. The Punjab was in historical times settled by Iranians, Greeks, Kushans (replacing Greeks and their language), and Hephthalites, yet Indo-Aryan languages dominate, probably due to the dominance of later Indian empires and states. Hence in regions where Persian and Indian empires dominated many languages died out. This process can be seen in the elimination of Saka and Tocharian languages through the influence of Persians, Buddhism (spreading Prakit language), and Turks.

A non-Indo-Aryan substratum in the river-names and place-names of the Rig Vedic homeland would support an external origin of the Indo-Aryans. However most place-names in the Rig-Veda and the vast majority of the river-names in the north-west of India are Indo-Aryan (Bryant 2001).

Philology

Rig Veda

The mobile nature of the Vedic religion is illustrated by the laying out of the ritual precinct as part of the ritual, rather than the existence of fixed temples. This holds for the invitation of Indra to the Soma ritual as well as for the Agnicayana, the piling-up of the fire altar. Cities or fortresses (púr) are mentioned in the Rigveda mainly as the abode of hostile peoples, while the Aryan tribes live in víśa, a term translated as "settlement, homestead, house, dwelling", but also "community, tribe, troops".

Indra in particular is described as destroyer of fortresses, e.g. RV 4.30.20ab:

śatám aśmanmáyīnaam / purâm índro ví āsiyat

"Indra overthrew a hundred fortresses of stone."

However, according to S.P. Gupta (1996), "ancient civilizations had both the components, the village and the city, and numerically villages were many times more than the cities. (...) if the Vedic literature reflects primarily the village life and not the urban life, it does not at all surprise us.". According to Gregory Possehl (1977), the "extraordinary empty spaces between the Harappan settlement clusters" indicates that pastoralists may have "formed the bulk of the population during Harappan times" (Bryant 2001: 195). Agriculturalists, pastoralists as well as the city and village life may have coexisted in the same region. Such a view would imply that the only testimony surviving of Harappan times is not from the urban centers, but preserves the rituals of rural pastoralists living between the cities.

The geography of the Rig Veda seems to be centered around the land of the seven rivers. While the geography of the Rigvedic rivers is unclear in the early mandalas, the Nadistuti hymn is an important source for the geography of late Rigvedic society.

While the Avesta does mention an external homeland of the Zoroastrians, the Rig Veda does not explicitly refer to an external homeland or to a migration. Later texts than the Rig Veda (such as the Puranas) seem to be more centered in the Ganges region. This shift from the Punjab to the Gangetic plain continues the Rigvedic tendency of eastward expansion, but does of course not imply an origin beyond the Indus watershed. According to the Yajur Veda, Yajnavalkya (one of the Vedic Seers) lived in the eastern region of Mithila (Bryant 2001: 64).

Sarasvati River

Samudra

Vedic and Puranic King lists

Puranas

The Puranas do refer to a migration of Indo-Aryan speakers. They record that the Druhyus were driven out of the land of the seven rivers by Mandhatr and that their next king Ghandara settled in a north-western region which became known as Ghandara. The sons of the later Druhyu king Pracetas finally migrate to the region north of Afghanistan. This migration is recorded in the following Puranas: Bhagavata 9.23.15-16; Visnu 4.17.5; Vayu 99.11-12; Brahmanda 3.74.11-12 and Marsya 48.9. (see e.g. Pargiter [1922] 1979; Talageri 1993, 2000).

Avesta and Airyanem Vaejah

Therefore the date of the Avesta could also indicate the date of the Rig Veda. However, the date of the Gathas is uncertain. The ancient Greeks dated Zarathustra (and thus the Gathas) to 6000 BCE or to the 6th century BCE. Some scholars claim that the Gathas date to before 1100 BCE and could also be much older (see Bryant 2001).

The Avesta however, unlike the Rig Veda, does speak of an Airyanem Vaejah, an external homeland of the Avestan Aryas and of Zarathustra, generally considered to be somewhere between the Caucuses and South Asia and it does not have a memory of South Asia. The term Vaejah can be derived from the Vedic "vij" and would thus suggest the region of a fast-flowing river (see Bryant 2001: 327). The location of Airyanem Vaejah is disputed. Some of the places that have been suggested are the Hindukush and Afghanistan. The Avesta does also not seem to know the region north of the Sir Darya (Jaxartes) or the western Iranian region (see Bryant 2001). The lower Oxus region, south of the Aral Sea, seems to be an outlying region for the Avestan people (Bryant 2001: 327).

Archaeology

Archaeological cultures associated with Indo-Iranian migrations (after EIEC). The Andronovo, BMAC and Yaz cultures have often been associated with Indo-Iranian migrations. The GGC, Cemetery H, Copper Hoard and PGW cultures are candidates for cultures associated with Indo-Aryan movements.

Arkaim in Russia is a Sintashta-Petrovka settlement of ca. 1700 BC, probably post-dating the breakup of Proto-Indo-Iranian.

The Indo-Aryans were nomadic or at least peripatetic, following their herds of cows around from pasture to pasture. Consequently they had no permanent settlements; the RgVeda only mentions temporary huts. These leave no archaeological record. So it is only to be expected that the migrations left no archaeological traces. The Huns are a comparable instance. No one doubts that the Huns actually invaded parts of western Europe on more than one occasion. Yet -- because the Huns were nomads -- they left no archaeological remains behind. The records come from other sources.

There is no clear evidence in the archaeological record for an intrusion of Indo-Aryan people into India. Many archaeologists argue that the available data reflects indigenous cultural developments (see e.g. Shaffer 1984b, Bryant 2001). J.M. Kenoyer (1991a) and many other archaeologists have pointed out that "current evidence does not support a pre- or proto-historic Indo-Aryan invasion of southern Asia.... Instead, there was an overlap between Late Harappan and post-Harappan communities...with no biological evidence for major new populations.". Furthermore, scholars like D.K. Chakrabarti (1977) have also pointed out that northwestern India always had cultural exchanges and trade contacts with Afghanistan and other western regions (Bryant 2001: 233). According to Erdosy (1995), cultural traits that have been associated with Vedic culture "originate in different places at different times and circulate widely" and it is therefore "impossible ... to regard the widespread distribution of certain beliefs and rituals ... as evidence of population movements." (Bryant 2001: 214-215).

Proto-Indo-Iranians are usually identified with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture of Russia and Kazakhstan. It is there that the earliest chariots are found. The follow-up Andronovo culture and BMAC correspond to the earliest phase of the rapid expansion that would reach into the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau, Afganistan, and the Indian Subcontinent. Indo-Aryans also intruded into Mesopotamia and Syria, and introduced the chariot and horse-culture to this part of the world. They left linguistic remains in a Hittite discourse on horse-training written by one "Kikkuli the Mitanni". Other evidence is found in references to the names of Mitanni rulers and the gods they swore by in treaties; these remains are found in the archives of the Mitanni's neighbors. The time period for this spans the 15th and 14th centuries.

Based on linguistic data, many scholars argue that the Indo-Aryan languages were introduced to India in the 2nd millennium BCE. The standard model for the entry of the Indo-European languages into India is that this first wave went over the Hindukush, forming the Gandhara grave culture or Swat culture , either into the headwaters of the Indus or the Ganges (and probably, both). The language of the Rigveda, earliest stratum of Vedic Sanskrit is assigned to about 1500-1200 BC.

Indus Valley Civilization

Elements supposedly introduced to India in the course of the migration include the Soma cult, as well as the horse and chariot.

Only five percent of the known Indus Valley sites have been excavated, so one can expect a constant stream of archaeological evidence to be unearthed in the future. Unlike hermeneutic evidence, there are very few issues with archaeological evidence, primarily due to the relative reliability of Carbon-14 and Thermo-luminescence dating.

According to some archaeologists and sources, #redirect , the invasion took place before 3100 BC. However, most advocate a much later date. Max Muller, a famous philologist and orientalist, estimated the migration took place at around 1500–1200 BC, and his date of 1500 BC is supported by many other sources. Some estimate it took place around 1000 BC, but a large percentage of historians insist it tok place around 2000 BC.

The discovery of the Harappa and Mohenjo-daro sites changed the theory from an invasion of implicitly advanced Aryan people on an aboriginal population to an invasion of nomadic barbarians on an advanced urban civilization, an argument associated with the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler.

Among the archaeological signs claimed by Wheeler to support the theory of an invasion are the many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro. They were interpreted by Wheeler as victims of a conquest of the city, but Wheeler's interpretation is no longer accepted by many scholars (e.g. Bryant 2001). Wheeler himself expressed no certainty, but wrote, in a famous phrase, that "Indra stands accused".

Similar weight has been placed on differences in the types of metals used in either civilization; the importance of the bull to the Indus Valley civilization as evidenced by imagery in seals and pottery, in contrast to the Vedic cow-worship; the importance of the tiger in the Indus Valley civilization and its absence in the Vedic texts; the absence of the six spoked Aryan wheel and the heavy consumption of fish by the Indus Valley dwellers in contrast to the virtual absence of fish in the Vedas. Proponents of a continuous civilisation point out that the bull is mentioned numerous times in the Vedas (next only to the horse), for example verses comparing Soma to the bull [Rig Veda 1:32, 9:92] and Exploits of Indra [Rig Veda 1:33, 7:24, 10:86]. The sacred place of the cow is not Vedic; it originated in later Hinduism during the time of Krishna the cowherd. There are no verses in the Vedas that speak about the need to refrain from cow-slaughter. Verses mentioning fish do exist in the Rig Veda (7:18, 10:68) and the tiger is mentioned in the Yajur Veda (4:4, 5:3, 6:2, 7:7). Terra-cotta figurines excavated are claimed to show chariots with spokes painted (at KaliBangan) or shown in relief (at Banawali).

Recently, the excavation of Dholavira in the Gujarat province of India is claimed by Ravindra Singh Bist to show a city that is consistent with Vedic principles of city planning: arameshthina, madhyamesthina and avameshtina or upper, middle and lower cities [link].

Proponents of continuity focus on stressing that the Rig-Vedic culture is native to the subcontinent, urban in nature, makes constant references to bodies of water (Central Asian nomads would not have been exposed to seas) and a chronological peer of the Harappan culture, and that perhaps they are the same culture. Their arguments may focus on linguistics, use of metals, domestication of horses or differences in described geography, but their basic focus is to identify the Rig-Vedic culture with at least a part of the Indus Valley civilization.

A regional cultural discontinuity occurred during the second millennium BC and many Indus Valley cities were abandoned during this period, while many new settlements began to appear in Gujarat and East Punjab and other settlements such as in the western Bahawalpur region increased in size. Shaffer and Liechtenstein (1995) stated that: "This shift by Harappan and, perhaps, other Indus Valley cultural mosaic groups, is the only archaeologically documented west-to-east movement of human populations in South Asia before the first half of the first millennium B.C.." (Shaffer and Liechtenstein 1995: 139). This could have been caused by ecological factors, such as the drying up of the Ghaggar-Hakra River and increased aridity in Rajasthan and other places. The Indus River also began to flow east and floodings occurred (Kenoyer 1995: 224). Jim Shaffer (1986: 230) and other scholars argue that these "internal cultural adjustments" reflect "altered ecological, social and economic conditions affecting northwestern and north-central South Asia" and do not necessarily imply migrations.

Ayas

Fire altars

Dhavalikar(Dhavalikar 1995) has pointed out that these fire altars are similar in shape, size and plan with those excavated in Imangaon in the Deccan, and cooking pits used today in Maharashtrian villages, and they could be cooking pits instead. Bathing is not always for the purpose of ritual purification.

Cattle

See also Sacred Cow

The Horse and the Chariot

Vasishta head

Pottery

West Asia

The Mitanni were a Hurrian people, and even its elite was Hurrianized by the 14th century. Many scholars argue that there was an Indo-Aryan elite that established itself over the Hurrian Mitanni at some point during the 17th or 16th century, but there is, according to Brentjes (1981), no evidence in the archaeological record for a Central Asian origin of tthis elite (see Bryant 2001: 137). In contrast to this, Brentjes (1981) points out that the Mitanni culture used the peacock motif, which suggests that the Mitanni were familiar with India. Some of these peacock motifs are dated to before 1600 BCE and probably to before 2100 BCE (see Bryant 2001).

The Sumerian legend of "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" (late 3rd millennium BCE) and other Sumerian legends might also possibly refer to an Indo-Aryan culture or to modern East-Iran/Afghanistan/India (see Elst 1999).

Genetics and Archaeogenetics

Physical Anthropology

A later study(Hemphill, Lukacs and Kennedy 1991, see also Kenneth Kennedy 1995) finds no evidence of discontinuities in the skeletal record during and immediately after the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization. The two discontinuities that Kennedy finds in the prehistoric skeletal record do not correspond to the second millennium BCE. The first of these discontinuities occurred between 6000-4500 BCE (a separation of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic inhabitants of Mehrgarh), and the second occurred after 800 BCE (between 800-200 BCE). He concludes that "there is no evidence of demographic disruptions in the north-western sector of the subcontinent during and immediately after the decline of the Harappan culture. If Vedic Aryans were a biological entity represented by the skeletons from Timargarha, then their biological features of cranial and dental anatomy were not distinct to a marked degree from what we encountered in the ancient Harappans.” (1995: 54). Comparing the Harappan and Gandhara cultures, Kennedy remarks that: “Our multivariate approach does not define the biological identity of an ancient Aryan population, but it does indicate that the Indus Valley and Gandhara peoples shared a number of craniometric, odontometric and discrete traits that point to a high degree of biological affinity.” (1995: 49). The craniometric variables of prehistoric and living South Asians also showed an "obvious separation" from the prehistoric people of the Iranian plateau and western Asia (1995: 49).

Brian E. Hemphill and Alexander F. Christensen's study (1994) of the migration of genetic traits does not support a movement of Aryan speakers into the Indus Valley around 1500 BC. According to Hemphill's study, "Gene flow from Bactria occurs much later, and does not impact Indus Valley gene pools until the dawn of the Christian era." In a more recent study, Hemphill concludes that "the data provide no support for any model of massive migration and gene flow between the oases of Bactria and the Indus Valley. Rather, patterns of phenetic affinity best conform to a pattern of long-standing, but low-level bidirectional mutual exchange."Hemphill 1998 "Biological Affinities and Adaptions of Bronze Age Bactrians: III. An initial craniometric assessment", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 106, 329-348.; Hemphill 1999 "Biological Affinities and Adaptions of Bronze Age Bactrians: III. A Craniometric Investigation of Bactrian Origins", American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 108, 173-192

Notes

Bibliography and References

See also

• Indo-Aryans, Aryan, Arya, Aryavarta, Indo-Aryan languages
• Rigveda
• Indo-Iranians, Indo-Iranian languages
• BMAC, Andronovo culture
• Mitanni
• Kurgan
• Tocharians

External links

• [DMOZ listing]
• [Elst, Koenraad: Update on the Aryan Invasion Theory - K. Elst's Online book], [Articles], [Book reviews]
• [Thapar, Romila: The Aryan question revisited (1999)]
• [Witzel, Michael: The Home of the Aryans]
• [Kazanas, Nicholas homepage] Articles by Nicholas Kazanas
• [Web Index to AIT versus OIT debate]
• [Agarwal, Vishal: Is There Vedic Evidence for the Indo-Aryan Immigration to India?] (pdf)

• [Cache of Seal Impressions Discovered in Western India]
• [Central Asia 2000-1000BC (Metmuseum.org)]
• [Lal, B.B.: The Homeland of Indo-European Languages and Culture: Some Thoughts] By Archaeologist B.B. Lal
• [Danino, Michel: The Indus-Sarasvati Civilization and its Bearing on the Aryan Question] Article by Michel Danino
• [Agrawal, D.P.: The Indus Civilization = Aryans equation: Is it really a Problem?] By D.P. Agrawal (pdf)

• [Genetic Evidence on the origins of Indian Caste Population]
• [A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios, PNAS paper, 2006]
• [Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists, AJHG paper, 2006]

• [A Tribute to Hindusim - compilation]
• [Frawley, David: The Myth of the Aryan Invasion]

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