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Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943 at Schwiebus, Germany) is Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University. He has been teaching Sanskrit since 1972. He studied Indology in Germany under P. Thieme, H. P. Schmidt, K. Hoffmann and J. Narten as well as in Nepal under the Mīmāmsaka Jununath Pandit. 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, Paris (twice), and Tokyo. He is noted for his studies of the dialects of Vedic Sanskrit , old Indian history , , the development of Vedic religion , , and the linguistic prehistory of South Asia . He is editor-in-chief of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies (EJVS) , and the Harvard Oriental Series . He has been president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory (ASLIP) since 1999, and has been elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003.

Work

Witzel’s early philological work (details at: ) 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-). He studied at length the various Vedic recensions (śākhā) , and their importance for the geographical spread of Vedic culture across North India and beyond. This resulted in book-length investigations of Vedic dialects (1989), the development of the Vedic canon (1997), and of Old India as such (2003). Shorter papers provide analyses of important religious (2004) and literary concepts of the period, such as the oldest frame story (1986, 1987), prosimetric texts (1997), the Mahabarata (2005), the concept of rebirth (1984), the 'line of progeny' (2000), splitting one's head in discussion (1987), the holy cow (1991, the Milky Way (1984) , the asterism of the Seven Rsis (1995 , 1999), the sage Yajnavalkya (2003), the persistence of some Vedic beliefs , in modern Hinduism (1989 , 2002, with S. Farmer and J.B. Henderson), as well as some modern Indocentric tendencies (2001-) , ,, , .

Other work (1976-) deals with the traditions of medieval and modern Nepal ,, including its linguistic history , Brahmins , rituals, and kingship (1987), as well as with Old Iran and the Avesta (1972-), including its homeland (2000) .

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 archeologists. 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 and the first Indian empire in eastern North India (1995, 1997, 2003).

The linguistic aspect of earliest Indian history has been explored in a number of papers (1993, 1999 , 2000, 2001) dealing with the pre-Vedic substrate languages of Northern India . These result in a substantial amount of loan words from a prefixing language similar to Austro-Asiatic (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).

In recent years, he has explored the links between old Indian, Eurasian and other mythologies (1990 , 2001, 2004-6), resulting in a new scheme of historical comparative mythology that covers most of Eurasia and the Americas ("Laurasia", cf. the related Harvard, Kyoto and Beijing conferences, 1999-2006). .

Recently, he has also published (2001-) some articles attacking what he calls "spurious interpretations" of Vedic texts and decipherments of Indus inscriptions such as that of N.S. Rajaram , pdf . He has co-authored a paper that questions the linguistic nature of the so-called Indus Script (Farmer, Sproat, Witzel 2004) (PDF), .

He has organized a number of international conferences at Harvard such as the first of the intermittent International Vedic Workshops (1989,1999,2004), 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) , and the International Conference on Comparative Mythology (Beijing 2006) .

Criticism

Some authors concerned with Indian affairs, including David Frawley and Michel Danino., have criticized Witzel's approach to Vedic texts and history. Many of them reject the so-called Aryan invasion theory and subscribe to a view of Indian history that stresses a purely Indian and indigenous origin for the Vedas and Vedic civilization.

Another author, Shrikant Talageri asserts that Witzel's analyses are biased and defective. He also harshly criticizes Witzel for consistently misspelling his (Talageri's) name and mis-citing the title of his 1993 book. Witzel mentioned Talageri twice, as a reference: "...the ulterior, political motive of this "scientific" piece is obvious. Cf. Chowdhury 1993; Telagiri 1993 etc." (Witzel 1995:111 n. 67), and " ...propagated by Choudhury (1993)...; and Telagiri (1993) (Witzel 1995:116 n. 80).

Witzel's most extensive criticism of Talageri can be found in the April 2001 issue of the Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, at . Witzel describes Talageri's effort as "a long and confused ‘analysis' " which ignores what he views as foundational works on the topic, such as the analysis of the Rgveda by Hermann Oldenberg (Prolegomena, 1888, now available in English, Delhi: Motilal 2005). He also criticized Talageri for lack of knowledge of Vedic Sanskrit and Western Vedic scholarship.

Witzel's approach to the Indus script has been criticized by the archaeologist Gregory Possehl . Possehl disagrees with Witzel's view that Harrapan signs are just symbols (somewhat like modern highway signs) and not characters in a written language. The paper has also been opposed by those who argue that the Indus symbols are in fact a script, such as academics J. Mark Kenoyer, an archeologist of the University of Wisconsin, and Asko Parpola, an Indologist of the University of Helsinki. .

In 1995, some of the graduate students in Witzel's department criticized him for the decline in standards in the Department of Sanskrit in Harvard University, as well as the mistreatment of students and faculty members. They said that Witzel should lose his tenure. Witzel denied allegations of declining standards as "misrepresentations".

Politics

In 2005, several Indian-American groups (the Vedic Foundation, Hindu American Foundation and the Hindu Education Foundation) asked the State of California to modify the content of California textbooks dealing with ancient Indian history and also with Hinduism. Witzel wrote a letter to the Board of Education protesting some of these changes. He was supported by many academics and by Indian-American groups who disagreed with the original critics, including several groups spearheaded by Dalit Christians. A final decision on the textbook issue was reached by vote of the Board of Education on March 8, 2006 and they rejected most of the modifications proposed by Witzel and other critics of California's approach to teaching Indian history. These critics have sued the state of California and the suit is on-going.The suit has been resolved in favor of the Hindu American Foundation, concluding the the Witzel, Wolpert and Heinenmann committee was illegal. However, the contentious edits remain doe to the court's unwillingness to disrupt the distribution of the textbooks.

References

2. Unpublished essay by Danino
3. "The Indus Script--Write or Wrong?". Science. 306. American Association for the Advancement of Science: 2026–2029. December 2004.
4. "The Indus Script--Write or Wrong?". Science. 306. American Association for the Advancement of Science: 2026–2029. December 2004.
5. Sanskrit Dept. in Disarray, Students, Officials Say,thecrimson.harvard.edu

Publications

• Michael Witzel, "On the localisation of Vedic texts and schools." In: India and the Ancient world. History, Trade and Culture before A.D. 650. P.H.L. Eggermont Jubilee Volume, ed. by G. Pollet. Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek 1987 173-213 , maps at: ,
• Michael Witzel, Tracing the Vedic dialects in Dialectes dans les litteratures Indo-Aryennes ed. Caillat, Paris, 1989, 97-265.
• Michael Witzel, Early Indian History: Linguistic and Textual Parameters, in: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. G. Erdosy, Berlin/New York (de Gruyter) 1995, 85-125.
• Michael Witzel, Rgvedic history: poets, chieftains and politics, in: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. G. Erdosy, Berlin/New York (de Gruyter) 1995, 307-352.
• Michael Witzel, "Early Sanskritization. Origins and development of the Kuru State". B. Kölver (ed.), Recht, Staat und Verwaltung im klassischen Indien. The state, the Law, and Administration in Classical India. München : R. Oldenbourg 1997, 27-52
• Michael Witzel."The Development of the Vedic Canon and its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu." In: Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas. Harvard Oriental Series. Opera Minora, vol. 2. Cambridge 1997, 257-345
• Michael Witzel, Das Alte Indien . München: C.H. Beck 2003
• Michael Witzel, "Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Rgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic), EJVS Vol. 5,1, Aug. 1999, 1-67
• Michael Witzel, Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia. Philadelphia: Sino-Platonic Papers 129, 2003. (Extract on Indo-Iranians and immigrations at )
• Michael Witzel, "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

• Michael Witzel, "Comparison and Reconstruction : Language and Mythology." Mother Tongue VI, 2001, 45- 62
• Michael Witzel, "Vala and Iwato. The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan and beyond." EJVS 12-1, 2005, 1-69
• Michael Witzel, "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: 101-135

• M. Witzel and S. Farmer, "Horseplay in Harappa" Fontline, Oct. 10, 2000.
• Steve Farmer, Richard Sproat, and Michael Witzel, "The Collapse of the Indus-Script Thesis: The Myth of a Literate Harappan Civilization", EVJS, vol. 11 (2004), issue 2 (Dec)

• 1943 births
• Living people
• Indologists