Let us take a walk through these points. I believe that there is a consistency which will stand forth.
My main point was the genetic evidence which throws up all of this large scale movement into India as being suspect.(something you agree with)
Oh, absolutely. Or rather, it is the other way around, in a manner of looking.
We can either find consistency between the genetic evidence and a proposition that there was movement of allied tribes in the period 2000 BC to 1000 BC (keeping the period as large as possible to include both the earliest and the latest possible dates) by saying that the tribes were small in total numbers, and did not make any genetic impact on a moderate-sized, or even small-sized autochthonous population, or the opposite, by saying that even fair-sized tribes made no impact on what was already a very significant sized population. We have discussed the first possibility; what about the second?
Consider that there were Neolithic settlements right through south Asia. Consider that the level of technology was surprisingly high; taking one example, look at the record for Wootz steel, the original model for both the Japanese samurai and the 'damascened' swords of Spain (from the western mistake that damascened referred to Damascus from where sword-making technology moved to al'Andalus, rather than associating it with 'damas', water); consider that the Tamizh were well-advanced in water-management, good enough to support large populations even in ancient times; consider that Tamizh 'classical' literature from its literary high noon periods dated back to the 3rd century BC. Consider that the people of the east appear in their organised form very, very quickly in history, in fact with the Mahajanapadas coming in rapidly into the political arena, as early as the first five hundred years of the last millennium BC.
All we have to consider, in fact, is an immigrant population so small that it had no apparent impact on the genetic map of the entire sub-continent, and so large that it kept up relations with their old neighbours, the Indo-Iranian tribes, for some considerable period.
This is not imaginatively difficult to visualise.
The points you make about the Parama Kamboja fit the earlier opinions of the AIT than they do your newer idea of them having been absorbed. The evidence here would suggest that the tribes have maintained contact for atleast a 1000 years which would then bring to question their absorption into existing populations.
Why do you say so? The Parama Kamboja were a tribe listed in the Mahabharata as having taken part in the great war. This dates them as having been intact long enough to be recorded in a bardic work sometime between the 5th century and the 8th century BC. Where did I say that they were absorbed?
I think I understand what the problem is.
When I was speaking about the absorption of other steppe people into the original Indo-Iranians, that did not mean the extinction of tribes. These absorptions, more to the point, were focused by tribes, individually. It was vertical absorptions, and not horizontal ones, which would have completely absorbed all the tribes at all times . They continued to be ruled by their kings, speak their language, and do everything that a tribe should do. Even till late, as Herodotus and other contemporary authors noted, they led a remote, steppe-like existence.
[Added at 6:45 am]
I am taking into account your 11:14 comment.
There is some complicated syntax. In your original comment, it appears that there is some mention both of the Parama Kamboja and of the Indian tribes. In neither case is it necessary to visualise a tribe, whether the diverging Parama Kamboja or the hypothetical Indian tribe, losing its coherence as a tribe
merely because it was absorbing members of the conquered population at large.
It is surely not necessary for this to be so. A tribe might absorb very large numbers of non-tribal members, mostly as slaves, a few as freeman artisans, without giving up its identity.
Coming to your specific argument in §525, that there is inconsistency between the contact required for a mention in the Mahabharata and in the concept of the Aryans being absorbed into the general population and thus losing touch with the tribes left behind in the north-west.
It is not necessary for this to happen. Neither Aryan tribe nor Iranian tribe had to lose its identity merely because larger numbers of non-tribals joined it. The Aryans absorbed conquered Dasas, Dasyus and the Panis as Shudras; the Iranians absorbed conquered people too, as well as those who joined voluntarily. We see that happening in other tribes: the Alans, for instance, or the Pecheneg, in much later phases of history.
Further with caste having established itself firmly by the time of the Mahabharata, it is probably unlikely that the intermingling happened at a later date.
Later, please, as Morpheus beckons.I will answer these questions as soon as I can.
[7:20 am] Yes, I agree that it is unlikely that the intermingling happened at a later date, but because a later intermingling would distance the period of contacts in the north-east and the recitation and formalising of the epics by too much.
Even mentions of the Buddha's reference to the Aryan "Sakhya" clan seem to suggest an holding on to the ancient tribal identity.
Indeed it
might, although the Sakya are not mentioned earlier.
Two points: Arya, to the Aryans, new and old, meant 'noble one', and did not signify race. Of course, in India, during the period of expansion, as the numbers of captive people grew, Arya increasingly came to refer to some of the social leadership who might have held themselves out of the commons. One has a well-documented example of this happening in Roman tribes: a top layer, the Patricians, holding itself superior to the others, the Plebeans.
So when did all this mixing take place & why don't the supposedly numerically larger local population find mention?
The mixing must have taken place right from the inception of contact through conquest or conference. Only it might have had accelerated throughout. The larger local population found mention right through the Vedas, as Dasas, Dasyus and Panis.
This is where I have a problem with your theory.
More.
Either the Aryans tribes were numerically large in number at the time of the Mahabharata(a good 1000 years from the earlier date of their arrival) in which case why is it that it does not show up in the genetic studies or they were completely absorbed in the local population to the point of completely losing their genetic identity as you suggest which brings us to a different problem of how they maintained contacts with ancient Iranian tribes which should by then have little in common with them.
My question about the Saraswathi is more simple & straightforward. Why are the Iranians less aware of the Saraswathi which at the time of the Rig Veda would have been the most important river for those on the Indian side( at a time when the two populations would have just started to separate) and more aware of the Indus which would attain its status only after the demise of the Saraswathi & the change in course of the Sutlej?
I will fill this later, as duty calls.
