What Can the Ŗgveda Tell Us on Agriculture?

Wojtilla, Gyula (2003) What Can the Ŗgveda Tell Us on Agriculture? Acta Orientalia, 56 (1). pp. 35-48. ISSN 0001-6446

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Abstract

The study fills the gaps in the lingustical database bearing on agriculture in the age of the Ŗgveda. Several corrections of existing standpoints have been made concerning purely philological issues as well as the semantical field of certain agricultural terms. The unbiassed reassessment of etymology of some terms reveals that beside the terms of Indo-European origin there are terms from extinct languages while the number of items of Dravidian origin is meagre and the Austro-Asiatic influence can be excluded. Language contacts with the Bactria-Margiana Complex (BMAC) must be taken into consideration. The all-around analysis of lingustic data and archaeological evidence together with the observations of historical ethnography allows us to form a more balanced view of economic conditions: although pastoralism played a dominant part in the life of Indo-Aryan speakers in the Panjab in the second half of the second millennium B.C., agriculture including wheat production gained also an established position in the region. Both the negligence and the overestimation of agriculture in this system are erroneous viewpoints.

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