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Michael Witzel

Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–80).

Michael Witzel
Born (1943-07-18) July 18, 1943 (age 80)
Schwiebus, Germany (modern Świebodzin, Poland)
NationalityAmerican, German
Occupation(s)Philologist, linguist, Indologist
Academic work
InstitutionsHarvard University
Websitemichaelwitzel.org

Witzel is an authority on Indian sacred texts, particularly the Vedas, and Indian history. A critic of the arguments made by Hindutva writers and sectarian historical revisionism, he opposed some attempts to influence USA school curricula in the California textbook controversy over Hindu history.

Biographical information

Michael Witzel was born July 18, 1943, at Schwiebus in Germany (modern Świebodzin, Poland). He studied Indology in Germany (from 1965 to 1971) under Paul Thieme, H.-P. Schmidt, K. Hoffmann and J. Narten, as well as in Nepal (1972–1973) under the Mīmāmsaka Jununath Pandit.[1] At Kathmandu (1972–1978), he led the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Centre.

He has taught at Tübingen (1972), Leiden (1978–1986), and at Harvard (since 1986), and has held visiting appointments at Kyoto (twice), Paris (twice), and Tokyo (twice). He has been teaching Sanskrit since 1972.

Witzel is editor-in-chief of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS)[2] and the Harvard Oriental Series.[3] Witzel has been president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP) since 1999,[4] as well as of the new International Association for Comparative Mythology (2006-).[5]

He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003, and was elected as an honorary member of the German Oriental Society (DMG)[6] in 2009. He became Cabot Fellow, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard U. (2013), recognizing his book on comparative mythology (OUP, 2012)[7]

Philological research

The main topics of scholarly research are the dialects of Vedic Sanskrit,[8] old Indian history,[9][10] the development of Vedic religion,[11] and the linguistic prehistory of the Indian subcontinent.[12]

Early works and translations

Witzel's early philological work deals with the oldest texts of India, the Vedas, their manuscripts and their traditional recitation; it included some editions and translations of unknown texts (1972).[13] such as the Katha Aranyaka.[14] He has begun, together with T. Goto et al. a new translation of the Rigveda into German (Books I-II, 2007, Books III-V 2012)[15]

Vedic texts, Indian history, and the emergence of the Kuru kingdom

After 1987, he has increasingly focused on the localization of Vedic texts (1987) and the evidence contained in them for early Indian history, notably that of the Rgveda and the following period, represented by the Black Yajurveda Samhitas and the Brahmanas. This work has been done in close collaboration with Harvard archaeologists such as R. Meadow, with whom he has also co-taught. Witzel aims at indicating the emergence of the Kuru tribe in the Delhi area (1989, 1995, 1997, 2003), its seminal culture and its political dominance, as well as studying the origin of late Vedic polities[16] and the first Indian empire in eastern North India (1995, 1997, 2003, 2010).

He studied at length the various Vedic recensions (śākhā)[17] and their importance for the geographical spread of Vedic culture across North India and beyond.[18] This resulted in book-length investigations of Vedic dialects (1989), the development of the Vedic canon (1997),[19] and of Old India as such (2003, reprint 2010).

Pre-Vedic substrate languages of Northern India

The linguistic aspect of earliest Indian history has been explored in a number of papers (1993,[20] 1999,[21] 2000, 2001, 2006,[22] 2009)[23] dealing with the pre-Vedic substrate languages of Northern India.[24] These result in a substantial amount of loan words from a prefixing language ("Para-Munda") similar to but not identical with Austroasiatic (Munda, Khasi, etc.) as well as from other unidentified languages. In addition, a considerable number of Vedic and Old Iranian words are traced back to a Central Asian substrate language (1999, 2003, 2004, 2006).[25] This research is constantly updated, in collaboration with F. Southworth and D. Stampe, by the SARVA project[26] including its South Asian substrate dictionary.[27]

Comparative mythology

In recent years, he has explored the links between old Indian, Eurasian and other mythologies (1990,[28] 2001–2010)[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] resulting in a new scheme of historical comparative mythology[37] that covers most of Eurasia and the Americas ("Laurasia", cf. the related Harvard, Kyoto, Beijing, Edinburgh, Ravenstein (Netherlands), Tokyo, Strasbourg, St.Petersburg, Tübingen, Yerevan conferences of IACM).[38] This approach has been pursued in a number of papers.[39][40][41][42][43][44][45] A book published in late 2012, The Origins of the World's Mythologies,[46] deals with the newly proposed method of historical comparative mythology at length;[47] (for scholarly criticism see[48] and for periodic updates see[49]) It has been called a magnum opus, which should be taken seriously by social anthropologists,[50] and was praised by professor of Sanskrit Frederick Smith, who wrote that

Witzel's thesis changes the outlook on all other diffusionist models [...] His interdisciplinary approach not only demonstrates that it has a promising future, but that it has arrived and that finally one can actually speak of a science of mythology.[48]

It also received criticism. Tok Thompson called it "racist" and dismissed it as "useless—and frustrating—for any serious scholar,"[51] while Bruce Lincoln concluded that Witzel in this publication theorizes "in terms of deep prehistory, waves of migration, patterns of diffusion, and contrasts between the styles of thought/narration he associates with two huge aggregates of the world's population [which] strikes me as ill-founded, ill-conceived, unconvincing, and deeply disturbing in its implications."[52]

Criticism of "Indigenous Aryans"

Witzel published [53] articles criticizing what he calls "spurious interpretations" of Vedic texts[54] and decipherments of Indus inscriptions such as that of N.S. Rajaram.[55][56][57][58]

Indus script

Witzel has questioned the linguistic nature of the so-called Indus script (Farmer, Sproat, Witzel 2004).[59] Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel presented a number of arguments in support of their thesis that the Indus script is non-linguistic, principal among them being the extreme brevity of the inscriptions, the existence of too many rare signs increasing over the 700-year period of the Mature Harappan civilization, and the lack of random-looking sign repetition typical for representations of actual spoken language (whether syllable-based or letter-based), as seen, for example, in Egyptian cartouches.

Earlier, he had suggested that a substrate related to, but not identical with, the Austro-Asiatic Munda languages, which he, therefore, calls para-Munda, might have been the language of (part of) the Indus population.[60][61]

Asko Parpola, reviewing the Farmer, Sproat, and Witzel thesis in 2005, states that their arguments "can be easily controverted".[62] He cites the presence of a large number of rare signs in Chinese and emphasizes that there is "little reason for sign repetition in short seal texts written in an early logo-syllabic script". Revisiting the question in a 2007 lecture,[63] Parpola takes on each of the 10 main arguments of Farmer et al., presenting counterarguments. He states that "even short noun phrases and incomplete sentences qualify as full writing if the script uses the rebus principle to phonetize some of its signs". All these points are rejected in a lengthy paper by Richard Sproat, "Corpora and Statistical Analysis of Non-Linguistic Symbol Systems" (2012).[64]

Shorter papers

Shorter papers provide analyses of important religious (2004) and literary concepts of the period,[65] and its Central Asian antecedents[66] as well as such as the oldest frame story (1986, 1987), prosimetric texts (1997), the Mahabharata (2005), the concept of rebirth (1984), the 'line of progeny' (2000), splitting one's head in discussion (1987), the holy cow (1991),[67] the Milky Way (1984),[68] the asterism of the Seven Rsis (1995,[69] 1999), the sage Yajnavalkya (2003), supposed female Rishis in the Veda (2009,)[70] the persistence of some Vedic beliefs,[71][72] in modern Hinduism (1989[73] 2002, with cultural historian Steve Farmer and John B. Henderson), as well as some modern Indocentric tendencies (2001-).[74][75]

Other work (1976-) deals with the traditions of medieval and modern India and Nepal, [76][16][77][78] including its linguistic history,[20] Brahmins,[79][80] rituals, and kingship (1987) and present day culture,[81] as well as with Old Iran and the Avesta (1972-), including its homeland in Eastern Iran and Afghanistan (2000).[82]

Conferences

Witzel has organized a number of international conferences at Harvard such as the first of the intermittent International Vedic Workshops (1989,1999,2004; 2011 at Bucharest, 2014 at Kozhikode, Kerala), the first of several annual International Conferences on Dowry and Bride-Burning in India (1995 sqq.), the yearly Round Tables on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia (1999 sqq)[83][84] and, since 2005, conferences on comparative mythology (Kyoto, Beijing, Edinburgh, Ravenstein (Netherlands), Tokyo, Harvard, Tokyo).[85][86][87][88][89][90] as well as at Strasbourg, St.Petersburg, Tübingen and Yerevan.

At the Beijing conference he founded the International Association for Comparative Mythology.[5]

California textbook controversy over Hindu history

In 2005, Witzel joined other academics and activist groups to oppose changes to California state school history textbooks proposed by US-based Hindu groups, mainly The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation (HEF),[91] arguing that the changes were not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature.[92][93][note 1] He was appointed to an expert panel set up to review the changes[94] and helped draft the compromise edits that were later adopted.[92]

Witzel's efforts received the support of academics and some community groups,[91][92][95][96] but attracted severe criticism from those supporting the original changes, who questioned his expertise on the subject[93] and his appointment to the expert panel.[92]

Witzel was issued a subpoena by the California Parents for Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM), a group founded specifically for the schoolbook case, in November 2006 to support their law case against the California authorities' decisions in the textbook case.[97] He was sued by CAPEEM to compel with the subpoena in Massachusetts courts, which was however dismissed twice. He had already submitted documents to CAPEEM and undergone a deposition.

Witzel was also accused of being biased against Hinduism, an allegation he denies.[98][99][100] In an interview with rediff India abroad Senior editor Suman Guha Mazumder, Witzel acknowledged that the intentions of the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation to correct misrepresentations of Hinduism were good, but the way they went about it was sectarian, narrow, and historically wrong.[94]

Rejecting criticism that he was a "Hindu hater", Witzel said, " I always get misrepresented that I'm a hindu hater but I'm not. I hate people who misrepresent history."[81][58][94]

The HEF campaign was dismissed by critics as "one driven by the sectarian agenda of the Sangh Parivar, a term commonly used to describe the Hindu nationalist triumvirate of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad."[92] In a letter to the Board of Education, Vinay Lal, a history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, wrote:

As far as I am aware, the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation and their supporters do not number among their ranks any academic specialists in Indian history or religion other than Professor Bajpai himself. It is a remarkable fact that, in a state which has perhaps the leading public research university system in the United States, these two foundations could not find a single professor of Indian history or religion within the UC system (with its ten campuses) to support their views. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that they would be hard pressed to find a single scholar at any research university in the United States who would support their views.[92]

Works

Books

  • The Origins of the World's Mythologies. Oxford University Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-19-971015-7.

Articles

  • Witzel, Michael (1987). "On the localisation of Vedic texts and schools: materials on Vedic Sakhas, 7". Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta. 25: 173–213. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000104.
  • Witzel, Michael (1995). "Early Sanskritization. Origins and Development of the Kuru State". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. 1 (4): 1–26. doi:10.11588/ejvs.1995.4.823. ISSN 1084-7561.
  • Witzel, Michael (1996). "How to enter the Vedic mind? Strategies in Translating a Brahmana text". Harvard Oriental Series. 1. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000109.
  • Witzel, Michael (1997). "The development of the Vedic canon and its schools: the social and political milieu". Harvard Oriental Series. 2: 257–345. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000110.
  • Witzel, Michael (1999). "Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages". Mother Tongue: 1–70. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000113.
  • Witzel, Michael (2000). "The Home of the Aryans". Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft: 283–338. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000114.
  • Witzel, Michael (2001). "Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian texts". Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies. doi:10.11588/xarep.00000118.

Notes

  1. ^ Meenakshi Ganjoo: "[Witzel] requested the Board of Education to reject the "Hindutva recommended" changes. Witzel wrote to the CBE President, "The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise." About 50 international scholars specializing in Indian history and culture, including Indian historian Romila Thapar and D N Jha, endorsed the letter."[91]

References

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  2. ^ Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies homepage, accessed September 13, 2007.
  3. ^ About the Harvard Oriental Series, accessed September 13, 2007.
  4. ^ Personal web page, accessed July 30, 2015
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  8. ^ Michael Witzel, On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and Schools (Materials on Vedic sakhas, 7), India and the Ancient World. History, Trade and Culture before A.D. 650. P.H.L. Eggermont Jubilee Volume, ed. by G. Pollet, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25, Leuven 1987, pp. 173-213, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007.
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  11. ^ Michael Witzel, How To Enter the Vedic Mind? Strategies in Translating a Brahmana Text, Translating, Translations, Translators From India to the West, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, vol. 1, Cambridge: Harvard Oriental Series, 1996, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007; Steve Farmer, John B. Henderson, and Michael Witzel, Neurobiology, Layered Texts, and Correlative Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Premodern History, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 (2000): 48-90, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007.
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  22. ^ South Asian agricultural vocabulary. In: T. Osada (ed.). Proceedings of the Pre-Symposium of RHIN and 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Round Table. Published by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RHIN), Kyoto, Japan 2006: 96-120
  23. ^ The linguistic history of some Indian domestic plants Journal of Biosciences Dec. 2009, 829-833 ias.ac.in uas.ac.in
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  31. ^ Out of Africa: the Journey of the Oldest Tales of Humankind. In: Generalized Science of Humanity Series, Vol. I. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2006: 21-65 [4]
  32. ^ Slaying the dragon across Eurasia. In: Bengtson, John D. (ed.) In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory. Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin's Publishing Company 2008: 263-286
  33. ^ Chuo Ajia Shinwa to Nihon Shinwa [Central Asian Mythology and Japanese Mythology; in Japanese], Annual Report of the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University. Heisei 21, (Sept. 2009), 85-96
  34. ^ Releasing the Sun at Midwinter and Slaying the Dragon at Midsummer: A Laurasian Myth Complex. In: Cosmos. The Journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society, 23, 2007 [2009], 203-244
  35. ^ 3. Pan-Gaean Flood Myths: Gondwana myths – and beyond. In: New Perspectives on Myth. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, Ravenstein (The Netherlands) August 19–21, 2008, ed. W. J.M. van Binsbergen and Eric Venbrux. PIP-TraCS No. 5, Haarlem 2010: 225-242
  36. ^ . Shamanism in Northern and Southern Asia: Their distinctive methods of change of consciousness. Social Sciences Information/Information sur les sciences sociales 50 (1) March 2011 (Paris): 2011: 39-61, cf.: [5]
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  66. ^ The Rgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents In: A. Griffiths & J.E.M. Houben (eds.). The Vedas: Texts, Language and Ritual. Groningen: Forsten 2004: 581-636 forsten.nl
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External links

  • Personal homepage
  • . An interview with Michael Witzel. Archived from the original.

michael, witzel, this, article, require, cleanup, meet, wikipedia, quality, standards, specific, problem, comply, with, layout, mosbio, relevant, discussion, found, talk, page, please, help, improve, this, article, 2019, learn, when, remove, this, template, me. This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia s quality standards The specific problem is To comply with MOS LAYOUT and WP MOSBIO Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page Please help improve this article if you can May 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message Michael Witzel born July 18 1943 is a German American philologist comparative mythologist and Indologist Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series volumes 50 80 Michael WitzelBorn 1943 07 18 July 18 1943 age 80 Schwiebus Germany modern Swiebodzin Poland NationalityAmerican GermanOccupation s Philologist linguist IndologistAcademic workInstitutionsHarvard UniversityWebsitemichaelwitzel wbr orgWitzel is an authority on Indian sacred texts particularly the Vedas and Indian history A critic of the arguments made by Hindutva writers and sectarian historical revisionism he opposed some attempts to influence USA school curricula in the California textbook controversy over Hindu history Contents 1 Biographical information 2 Philological research 2 1 Early works and translations 2 2 Vedic texts Indian history and the emergence of the Kuru kingdom 2 3 Pre Vedic substrate languages of Northern India 2 4 Comparative mythology 2 5 Criticism of Indigenous Aryans 2 6 Indus script 2 7 Shorter papers 3 Conferences 4 California textbook controversy over Hindu history 5 Works 5 1 Books 5 2 Articles 6 Notes 7 References 8 External linksBiographical information EditMichael Witzel was born July 18 1943 at Schwiebus in Germany modern Swiebodzin Poland He studied Indology in Germany from 1965 to 1971 under Paul Thieme H P Schmidt K Hoffmann and J Narten as well as in Nepal 1972 1973 under the Mimamsaka Jununath Pandit 1 At Kathmandu 1972 1978 he led the Nepal German Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Centre He has taught at Tubingen 1972 Leiden 1978 1986 and at Harvard since 1986 and has held visiting appointments at Kyoto twice Paris twice and Tokyo twice He has been teaching Sanskrit since 1972 Witzel is editor in chief of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies EJVS 2 and the Harvard Oriental Series 3 Witzel has been president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory ASLIP since 1999 4 as well as of the new International Association for Comparative Mythology 2006 5 He was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and was elected as an honorary member of the German Oriental Society DMG 6 in 2009 He became Cabot Fellow Faculty of Arts and Sciences Harvard U 2013 recognizing his book on comparative mythology OUP 2012 7 Philological research EditThe main topics of scholarly research are the dialects of Vedic Sanskrit 8 old Indian history 9 10 the development of Vedic religion 11 and the linguistic prehistory of the Indian subcontinent 12 Early works and translations Edit Witzel s early philological work deals with the oldest texts of India the Vedas their manuscripts and their traditional recitation it included some editions and translations of unknown texts 1972 13 such as the Katha Aranyaka 14 He has begun together with T Goto et al a new translation of the Rigveda into German Books I II 2007 Books III V 2012 15 Vedic texts Indian history and the emergence of the Kuru kingdom Edit See also Kuru Kingdom After 1987 he has increasingly focused on the localization of Vedic texts 1987 and the evidence contained in them for early Indian history notably that of the Rgveda and the following period represented by the Black Yajurveda Samhitas and the Brahmanas This work has been done in close collaboration with Harvard archaeologists such as R Meadow with whom he has also co taught Witzel aims at indicating the emergence of the Kuru tribe in the Delhi area 1989 1995 1997 2003 its seminal culture and its political dominance as well as studying the origin of late Vedic polities 16 and the first Indian empire in eastern North India 1995 1997 2003 2010 He studied at length the various Vedic recensions sakha 17 and their importance for the geographical spread of Vedic culture across North India and beyond 18 This resulted in book length investigations of Vedic dialects 1989 the development of the Vedic canon 1997 19 and of Old India as such 2003 reprint 2010 Pre Vedic substrate languages of Northern India Edit The linguistic aspect of earliest Indian history has been explored in a number of papers 1993 20 1999 21 2000 2001 2006 22 2009 23 dealing with the pre Vedic substrate languages of Northern India 24 These result in a substantial amount of loan words from a prefixing language Para Munda similar to but not identical with Austroasiatic Munda Khasi etc as well as from other unidentified languages In addition a considerable number of Vedic and Old Iranian words are traced back to a Central Asian substrate language 1999 2003 2004 2006 25 This research is constantly updated in collaboration with F Southworth and D Stampe by the SARVA project 26 including its South Asian substrate dictionary 27 Comparative mythology Edit In recent years he has explored the links between old Indian Eurasian and other mythologies 1990 28 2001 2010 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 resulting in a new scheme of historical comparative mythology 37 that covers most of Eurasia and the Americas Laurasia cf the related Harvard Kyoto Beijing Edinburgh Ravenstein Netherlands Tokyo Strasbourg St Petersburg Tubingen Yerevan conferences of IACM 38 This approach has been pursued in a number of papers 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 A book published in late 2012 The Origins of the World s Mythologies 46 deals with the newly proposed method of historical comparative mythology at length 47 for scholarly criticism see 48 and for periodic updates see 49 It has been called a magnum opus which should be taken seriously by social anthropologists 50 and was praised by professor of Sanskrit Frederick Smith who wrote that Witzel s thesis changes the outlook on all other diffusionist models His interdisciplinary approach not only demonstrates that it has a promising future but that it has arrived and that finally one can actually speak of a science of mythology 48 It also received criticism Tok Thompson called it racist and dismissed it as useless and frustrating for any serious scholar 51 while Bruce Lincoln concluded that Witzel in this publication theorizes in terms of deep prehistory waves of migration patterns of diffusion and contrasts between the styles of thought narration he associates with two huge aggregates of the world s population which strikes me as ill founded ill conceived unconvincing and deeply disturbing in its implications 52 Criticism of Indigenous Aryans Edit See also Indigenous Aryans Witzel published 53 articles criticizing what he calls spurious interpretations of Vedic texts 54 and decipherments of Indus inscriptions such as that of N S Rajaram 55 56 57 58 Indus script Edit Witzel has questioned the linguistic nature of the so called Indus script Farmer Sproat Witzel 2004 59 Farmer Sproat and Witzel presented a number of arguments in support of their thesis that the Indus script is non linguistic principal among them being the extreme brevity of the inscriptions the existence of too many rare signs increasing over the 700 year period of the Mature Harappan civilization and the lack of random looking sign repetition typical for representations of actual spoken language whether syllable based or letter based as seen for example in Egyptian cartouches Earlier he had suggested that a substrate related to but not identical with the Austro Asiatic Munda languages which he therefore calls para Munda might have been the language of part of the Indus population 60 61 Asko Parpola reviewing the Farmer Sproat and Witzel thesis in 2005 states that their arguments can be easily controverted 62 He cites the presence of a large number of rare signs in Chinese and emphasizes that there is little reason for sign repetition in short seal texts written in an early logo syllabic script Revisiting the question in a 2007 lecture 63 Parpola takes on each of the 10 main arguments of Farmer et al presenting counterarguments He states that even short noun phrases and incomplete sentences qualify as full writing if the script uses the rebus principle to phonetize some of its signs All these points are rejected in a lengthy paper by Richard Sproat Corpora and Statistical Analysis of Non Linguistic Symbol Systems 2012 64 Shorter papers Edit Shorter papers provide analyses of important religious 2004 and literary concepts of the period 65 and its Central Asian antecedents 66 as well as such as the oldest frame story 1986 1987 prosimetric texts 1997 the Mahabharata 2005 the concept of rebirth 1984 the line of progeny 2000 splitting one s head in discussion 1987 the holy cow 1991 67 the Milky Way 1984 68 the asterism of the Seven Rsis 1995 69 1999 the sage Yajnavalkya 2003 supposed female Rishis in the Veda 2009 70 the persistence of some Vedic beliefs 71 72 in modern Hinduism 1989 73 2002 with cultural historian Steve Farmer and John B Henderson as well as some modern Indocentric tendencies 2001 74 75 Other work 1976 deals with the traditions of medieval and modern India and Nepal 76 16 77 78 including its linguistic history 20 Brahmins 79 80 rituals and kingship 1987 and present day culture 81 as well as with Old Iran and the Avesta 1972 including its homeland in Eastern Iran and Afghanistan 2000 82 Conferences EditWitzel has organized a number of international conferences at Harvard such as the first of the intermittent International Vedic Workshops 1989 1999 2004 2011 at Bucharest 2014 at Kozhikode Kerala the first of several annual International Conferences on Dowry and Bride Burning in India 1995 sqq the yearly Round Tables on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia 1999 sqq 83 84 and since 2005 conferences on comparative mythology Kyoto Beijing Edinburgh Ravenstein Netherlands Tokyo Harvard Tokyo 85 86 87 88 89 90 as well as at Strasbourg St Petersburg Tubingen and Yerevan At the Beijing conference he founded the International Association for Comparative Mythology 5 California textbook controversy over Hindu history EditMain article California textbook controversy over Hindu history In 2005 Witzel joined other academics and activist groups to oppose changes to California state school history textbooks proposed by US based Hindu groups mainly The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation HEF 91 arguing that the changes were not of a scholarly but of a religious political nature 92 93 note 1 He was appointed to an expert panel set up to review the changes 94 and helped draft the compromise edits that were later adopted 92 Witzel s efforts received the support of academics and some community groups 91 92 95 96 but attracted severe criticism from those supporting the original changes who questioned his expertise on the subject 93 and his appointment to the expert panel 92 Witzel was issued a subpoena by the California Parents for Equalization of Educational Materials CAPEEM a group founded specifically for the schoolbook case in November 2006 to support their law case against the California authorities decisions in the textbook case 97 He was sued by CAPEEM to compel with the subpoena in Massachusetts courts which was however dismissed twice He had already submitted documents to CAPEEM and undergone a deposition Witzel was also accused of being biased against Hinduism an allegation he denies 98 99 100 In an interview with rediff India abroad Senior editor Suman Guha Mazumder Witzel acknowledged that the intentions of the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation to correct misrepresentations of Hinduism were good but the way they went about it was sectarian narrow and historically wrong 94 Rejecting criticism that he was a Hindu hater Witzel said I always get misrepresented that I m a hindu hater but I m not I hate people who misrepresent history 81 58 94 The HEF campaign was dismissed by critics as one driven by the sectarian agenda of the Sangh Parivar a term commonly used to describe the Hindu nationalist triumvirate of India s Bharatiya Janata Party the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad 92 In a letter to the Board of Education Vinay Lal a history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles wrote As far as I am aware the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation and their supporters do not number among their ranks any academic specialists in Indian history or religion other than Professor Bajpai himself It is a remarkable fact that in a state which has perhaps the leading public research university system in the United States these two foundations could not find a single professor of Indian history or religion within the UC system with its ten campuses to support their views Indeed it would be no exaggeration to say that they would be hard pressed to find a single scholar at any research university in the United States who would support their views 92 Works EditBooks Edit The Origins of the World s Mythologies Oxford University Press 2012 ISBN 978 0 19 971015 7 Articles Edit Witzel Michael 1987 On the localisation of Vedic texts and schools materials on Vedic Sakhas 7 Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25 173 213 doi 10 11588 xarep 00000104 Witzel Michael 1995 Early Sanskritization Origins and Development of the Kuru State Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 1 4 1 26 doi 10 11588 ejvs 1995 4 823 ISSN 1084 7561 Witzel Michael 1996 How to enter the Vedic mind Strategies in Translating a Brahmana text Harvard Oriental Series 1 doi 10 11588 xarep 00000109 Witzel Michael 1997 The development of the Vedic canon and its schools the social and political milieu Harvard Oriental Series 2 257 345 doi 10 11588 xarep 00000110 Witzel Michael 1999 Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages Mother Tongue 1 70 doi 10 11588 xarep 00000113 Witzel Michael 2000 The Home of the Aryans Munchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 283 338 doi 10 11588 xarep 00000114 Witzel Michael 2001 Autochthonous Aryans The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian texts Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies doi 10 11588 xarep 00000118 Notes Edit Meenakshi Ganjoo Witzel requested the Board of Education to reject the Hindutva recommended changes Witzel wrote to the CBE President The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious political nature and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise About 50 international scholars specializing in Indian history and culture including Indian historian Romila Thapar and D N Jha endorsed the letter 91 References Edit Michael Witzel s curriculum vitae accessed September 13 2007 Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies homepage accessed September 13 2007 About the Harvard Oriental Series accessed September 13 2007 Personal web page accessed July 30 2015 a b compmyth org compmyth org Retrieved May 16 2012 dmg web de dmg web de Retrieved May 16 2012 Professor Michael Witzel named 2013 Cabot Fellow the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute October 23 2013 Michael Witzel On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and Schools Materials on Vedic sakhas 7 India and the Ancient World History Trade and Culture before A D 650 P H L Eggermont Jubilee Volume ed by G Pollet Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25 Leuven 1987 pp 173 213 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Witzel Michael 1995 Early Sanskritization Origins and Development of the Kuru State PDF Archived from the original PDF on May 10 2006 Michael Witzel The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools The Social and Political Milieu Materials on Vedic Sakhas 8 in Inside the Texts Beyond the Texts New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas ed M Witzel Harvard Oriental Series Opera Minora vol 2 Cambridge 1997 pp 257 345 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel How To Enter the Vedic Mind Strategies in Translating a Brahmana Text Translating Translations Translators From India to the West Harvard Oriental Series Opera Minora vol 1 Cambridge Harvard Oriental Series 1996 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Steve Farmer John B Henderson and Michael Witzel Neurobiology Layered Texts and Correlative Cosmologies A Cross Cultural Framework for Premodern History Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 2000 48 90 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Witzel Michael October 1999 Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages Mother Tongue Special Issue PDF 1 70 people fas harvard edu Retrieved September 13 2007 a href Template Cite journal html title Template Cite journal cite journal a Cite journal requires journal help Michael Witzel s list of publications accessed September 13 2007 Katha Aranyaka Critical edition with a translation into German and an introduction Cambridge Harvard Oriental Series 65 2004 pp lxxix XXVI 220 with color facsimiles of the Kashmir bhurja MS Rig Veda Das Heilige Wissen Erster und zweiter Liederkreis Aus dem vedischen Sanskrit ubersetzt und herausgegeben von Michael Witzel und Toshifumi Goto Unter Mitarbeit von Eijiro Doyama und Mislav Jezic Frankfurt Verlag der Weltreligionen 2007 pp 1 889 first complete translation of the Rgveda into a western language since Geldner s of 1929 1951 amazon de a b Moving Targets Texts language archaeology and history in the Late Vedic and early Buddhist periods Indo Iranian Journal 52 2009 287 310 Michael Witzel Caraka English summary of Materialen zu den vedischen Schulen I Uber die Caraka Schule Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 7 1981 109 132 and 8 9 1982 171 240 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools The Social and Political Milieu Materials on Vedic Sakhas 8 in Inside the Texts Beyond the Texts New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas ed M Witzel Harvard Oriental Studies Opera Minora vol 2 Cambridge 1997 pp 257 345 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and Schools Materials on Vedic Sakhas 7 in India and the Ancient World History Trade and Culture before A D 650 P H L Eggermont Jubilee Volume ed by G Pollet Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25 Leuven 1987 pp 173 213 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools The Social and Political Milieu Materials on Vedic Sakhas 8 in Inside the Texts Beyond the Texts New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas ed M Witzel Harvard Oriental Studies Opera Minora vol 2 Cambridge 1997 pp 257 345 pdf accessed September 13 2007 a b Michael Witzel Nepalese Hydronomy Towards a History of Settlement in the Himalayas in Proceedings of the Franco German Conference at Arc et Senans June 1990 Paris 1993 pp 217 266 pdf accessed September 21 2007 Michael Witzel Aryan and Non Aryan Names in Vedic India Data for the Linguistic Situation c 1900 500 B C in J Bronkhorst and M Deshpande eds Aryans and Non Non Aryans Evidence Interpretation and Ideology Cambridge Harvard Oriental Series Opera Minora 3 1999 pp 337 404 pdf accessed September 21 2007 Michael Witzel Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages Mother Tongue special issue October 1999 1 70 pdf accessed September 13 2007 South Asian agricultural vocabulary In T Osada ed Proceedings of the Pre Symposium of RHIN and 7th ESCA Harvard Kyoto Round Table Published by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature RHIN Kyoto Japan 2006 96 120 The linguistic history of some Indian domestic plants Journal of Biosciences Dec 2009 829 833 ias ac in uas ac in ejvs laurasianacademy com ejvs laurasianacademy com Retrieved May 16 2012 Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia Philadelphia Sino Platonic Papers 129 Dec 2003 aa tufs ac jp aa tufs ac jp January 13 2009 Retrieved May 16 2012 aa tufs ac jp aa tufs ac jp November 29 2004 Retrieved May 16 2012 Michael Witzel Kumano kara Woruga made From Kumano to the Volga Zinbun 36 Kyoto 1990 pp 4 5 in Japanese accessed September 21 2007 Comparison and Reconstruction Language and Mythology Mother Tongue VI 2001 45 62 1 Vala and Iwato The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India Japan and beyond EJVS 12 1 March 1 2005 1 69 2 3 Out of Africa the Journey of the Oldest Tales of Humankind In Generalized Science of Humanity Series Vol I Tokyo Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2006 21 65 4 Slaying the dragon across Eurasia In Bengtson John D ed In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory Essays in the four fields of anthropology In honor of Harold Crane Fleming Amsterdam Philadelphia John Benjamin s Publishing Company 2008 263 286 Chuo Ajia Shinwa to Nihon Shinwa Central Asian Mythology and Japanese Mythology in Japanese Annual Report of the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics Kokugakuin University Heisei 21 Sept 2009 85 96 Releasing the Sun at Midwinter and Slaying the Dragon at Midsummer A Laurasian Myth Complex In Cosmos The Journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society 23 2007 2009 203 244 3 Pan Gaean Flood Myths Gondwana myths and beyond In New Perspectives on Myth Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology Ravenstein The Netherlands August 19 21 2008 ed W J M van Binsbergen and Eric Venbrux PIP TraCS No 5 Haarlem 2010 225 242 Shamanism in Northern and Southern Asia Their distinctive methods of change of consciousness Social Sciences Information Information sur les sciences sociales 50 1 March 2011 Paris 2011 39 61 cf 5 fas harvard edu PDF Retrieved May 16 2012 Harvard Round Tables on the Ethnogenesis of South and Central Asia People fas harvard edu Retrieved May 16 2012 Vala and Iwato The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India Japan and beyond EJVS 12 1 March 1 2005 1 69 Creation myths In T Osada ed Proceedings of the Pre Symposium of RHIN and 7th ESCA Harvard Kyoto Round Table Published by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature RHIN Kyoto Japan 2006 284 318 Out of Africa the Journey of the Oldest Tales of Humankind In Generalized Science of Humanity Series Vol I Tokyo Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2006 21 65 Myths and Consequences Review of Stefan Arvidsson Indo European Mythology as Ideology and Science Chicago University Press 2006 Science vol 317 September 28 2007 1868 1869 Manuscript Number 1141619 sciencemag org Michael Witzel September 28 2007 sciencemag org Science 317 1868 1869 doi 10 1126 science 1141619 S2CID 161307465 iacm bravehost com iacm bravehost com Archived from the original on February 13 2012 Retrieved May 16 2012 people fas harvard edu people fas harvard edu Retrieved May 16 2012 The Origins of the World s Mythologies Oxford University Press oup com oup com Archived from the original on April 16 2012 Retrieved May 16 2012 a b Smith Frederick M 2013 The Paleolithic Turn Michael Witzel s Theory of Laurasian Mythology Religious Studies Review 39 3 133 142 doi 10 1111 rsr 12047 The Laurasian Academy Retrieved January 31 2021 Allen N J 2014 Comparing mythologies on a global scale review article of E J Michael Witzel The origins of the world s mythologies PDF Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 6 1 99 103 Thompson Tok Review of The Origins of the World s Mythologies Journal of Folklore Research Archived from the original on August 6 2018 Bruce Lincoln review of The Origins of the World s Mythologies Michael Witzel publications list Harvard University website people fas harvard edu Autochthonous Aryans flonnet com Archived December 19 2005 at the Wayback Machine pdf flonnet com Archived January 4 2006 at the Wayback Machine Rama s Realm Indocentric Rewritings of Early South Asian Archaeology and History In Archaeological Fantasies How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public ed by G G Fagan London New York Routledge 2006 203 232 Discussion by Colin Renfrew Indocentrism Autochthonous visions of ancient India In The Indo Aryan controversy evidence and inference in Indian history edited by Edwin F Bryant and Laurie L Patton London amp New York Routledge 2005 341 404 a b Hindutva View of History Rewriting Textsbook in India and the United States with K Visvesvaran Nandini Majrekar Dipta Bhog and Uma Chakravarti Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 10th Anniversary edition Winter Spring 2009 101 112 safarmer com PDF sciencemag org page 9 of the pdf ccat sas upenn edu Autochthonous Aryans The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts EJVS May 2001 Parpola 2005 p 37 Asko Parpola 2008 Is the Indus script indeed not a writing system Archived March 27 2009 at the Wayback Machine In Airavati pp 111 131 Chennai Varalaaru com http www linguisticsociety org files archived documents Sproat Lg 90 2 pdf bare URL PDF S W Jamison and M Witzel Vedic Hinduism written in 1992 95 pdf accessed September 13 2007 according to his list of publications a shorter version appeared in The Study of Hinduism ed A Sharma University of South Carolina Press 2003 pp 65 113 The Rgvedic Religious System and its Central Asian and Hindukush Antecedents In A Griffiths amp J E M Houben eds The Vedas Texts Language and Ritual Groningen Forsten 2004 581 636 forsten nl Jha Dwijendra Narayan 2004 The Myth of the Holy Cow ISBN 9781859844243 Michael Witzel Sur le chemin du ciel Bulletin des Etudes indiennes 2 1984 213 279 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel Looking for the Heavenly Casket Archived August 13 2007 at the Wayback Machine Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 1 2 1999 accessed September 13 2007 Female Rishis and Philosophers in the Veda Journal of South Asia Women Studies Vol 11 no 1 2009 asiatica org Michael Witzel On Magical Thought in the Veda inaugural lecture Leiden Universitaire Pers 1979 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Steve Farmer John B Henderson and Michael Witzel Neurobiology Layered Texts and Correlative Cosmologies A Cross Cultural Framework for Premodern History Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 2000 48 90 pdf accessed September 13 2007 web clas ufl edu Archived March 5 2005 at the Wayback Machine page not available as of September 13 2007 Michael Witzel Autochthonous Aryans The Evidence from Old Indian and Iranian Texts Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7 3 2001 1 115 pdf accessed September 13 2007 Michael Witzel Westward Ho The Incredible Wanderlust of the Rigvedic Tribes Exposed by S Talageri A Review of Shrikant G Talageri The Rgveda A historical analysis Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies 7 2 2001 in three parts part 1 Archived July 23 2007 at the Wayback Machine part 2 Archived July 23 2007 at the Wayback Machine and part 3 Archived July 23 2007 at the Wayback Machine all accessed September 13 2007 Aryomke not English accessed September 13 2007 Das Alte Indien History of Old India Munchen C H Beck C H Beck Wissen in der Beck schen Reihe 2003 revised reprint 2010 Brahmanical Reactions to Foreign Influences and to Social and Religious Change In Olivelle P ed Between the Empires Society in India between 300 BCE and 400 CE Oxford Oxford University Press 2006 457 499 Michael Witzel On the History and the Present State of Vedic Tradition in Nepal Vasudha vol XV no 12 Kathmandu 1976 pp 17 24 35 39 pdf accessed September 21 2007 Witzel Michael April 1 1996 asiatica org asiatica org Retrieved May 16 2012 Kashmri Brahmins In The Valley of Kashmir The making and unmaking of a composite culture Edited by Aparna Rao with a foreword and introductory essay by T N Madan New Delhi Manohar 2008 37 93 a b people fas harvard edu people fas harvard edu Retrieved May 16 2012 Michael Witzel The Home of the Aryans Anusantatyi Festschrift fuer Johanna Narten zum 70 Geburtstag ed A Hinze and E Tichy Munchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft Beihefte NF 19 Dettelbach J H Roell 2000 283 338 pdf accessed September 21 2007 people fas harvard edu people fas harvard edu Retrieved May 16 2012 people fas harvard edu people fas harvard edu Retrieved May 16 2012 International Conference on Comparative Mythology Beijing 2006 PDF Retrieved May 16 2012 people fas harvard edu PDF Retrieved May 16 2012 iacm bravehost com Archived February 13 2012 at the Wayback Machine Index page Second Annual Conference International Association for Comparative Mythology Ravenstein Netherlands August 19 21 2008 kokugakuin ac jp kokugakuin ac jp Retrieved May 16 2012 Radcliffe Exploratory Seminar on Comparative Mythology fas harvard edu Archived from the original on August 6 2011 Fourth Annual International Conference on Comparative Mythology fas harvard edu International Association for Comparative Mythology Archived from the original on August 6 2011 a b c Meenakshi Ganjoo January 17 2006 Re written history raises intellectual temper in California Outlook a b c d e f Swapan Ashfaque March 3 2006 Compromise Reached on California Textbook Controversy About Hinduism Pacific News Service Archived from the original on April 4 2006 a b Nalina Taneja A saffron assault abroad Archived February 20 2012 at the Wayback Machine Frontline magazine Volume 23 Issue 01 January 14 27 2006 a b c rediff com interview Suman Guha Mozumder March 19 2006 Hindu groups sue California Board of Education Rediff News Indian history books raise storm in California The Times of India January 17 2006 Archived from the original on October 17 2012 capeem org capeem org Archived from the original on February 11 2012 Retrieved May 16 2012 Ranganathan Deepa Education Hindu history ignites brawl over textbooks sacbee com Archived from the original on June 25 2008 Battling the Past Metroactive com Retrieved May 16 2012 Multiculturalism and American Religion The Case of Hindu Indian Americans Social Forces Volume 85 Issue 2External links EditPersonal homepage I am not a Hindu hater An interview with Michael Witzel Archived from the original Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Michael Witzel amp oldid 1160623310, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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