Aryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale.

• Author: Klein, Jared S.
• Position: Book review

Aryas, Aryens et Iraniens en Asie Centrale. GERARD FUSSMAN, JEAN KELLENS, HENRI-PAUL FRANCFORT, AND XAVIER TREMBLAY.College de France, Publications de ITnstitut de Civilisation Indienne, fascicule 72. Paris: de Boccard, 2005. Pp. 346, plates, map.

Perhaps the most pernicious catachresis of the twentieth century was the misappropriation by the Nazis and their sympathizers of the term "Aryan" to describe the superior race presumably embodied by Germans and "Indo-European" (i.e., non "Semitic" and, ironically, non-Romany) Europeans. This willful mythologization was to a large degree based on the erroneous notion, propagated by some nineteenth-century scholars, that "Aryan" was the ethnic designation that the Proto-Indo-Europeans applied to themselves. Keenly aware of this travesty, Gerard Fussman and Jean Kellens organized a month-long set of Thursday seminars at the College de France in January 2001 in order to investigate numerous issues surrounding the term arya-iairiia-: its actual usage in ancient India and Iran, the ethnic groups to which it applied, the prehistoric migrations that brought them into their modern day geographical niches, the external linguistic and cultural contacts that may have influenced the way of life and the languages of these groups, the use of DNA evidence in order to attempt to retrace human population movements, and, finally, the very notions of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Indo-Europeans to which this term has been applied. Of the seven individuals or research teams presenting papers on these topics, four have had their contributions collected in this volume:1 Xavier Tremblay, "Grammaire comparee et grammaire historique: quelle realite est reconstruite par la grammaire comparee?" (pp. 21-196); Gerard Fussman, "Entre fantasmes, science et politique:1'entree des Aryas en Inde" (pp. 197-232); Jean Kellens, "Les Airiia- ne sont plus des Aryas: ce sont deja des Iraniens7' (pp. 233-52); and Henri-Paul Francfort, "La civilisation de l'Oxus et les Indo-Iraniens et Indo-Aryens" (pp. 253-328). These are preceded by an "Introduction" by Fussman (pp. 7-20) and followed by English summaries (pp. 329-32), and a brief general index (pp. 333-34), an index of words cited by Tremblay (pp. 335-46), and twenty-eight plates relating to Francfort's discussion (unnumbered). A map of archaeological sites extending from Eastern Anatolia to Harappa composed by G. Lecuyot, J. J. Houal. and J. Suire completes the volume.

Let us take up the three shorter articles first. Fussman provides a balanced assessment of the prospects of finding any clear-cut markers that would point specifically to Indo-Iranians, Iranians, or Indo-Aryans within the area of the Andronovo culture east of the Caspian Sea down through Bactria, Margiana, and the Indus Valley, the likely...