This paper discusses the post enlightenment development of philology in Europe during the 19th 20th centuries,particularly in the German speaking areas.After several centuries of sustained interest in the Graeco Roman Classics, all types of medieval,older European and Asian literatures became the focus of new textual approaches.Prominent was an historical and critical approach bolstered by the newly developed MSS stemmatics and the new evidence from comparative historical linguistics.
The present volume, the outcome of an International Vedic Workshop held at Harvard University in June 1989, is now published with kalpa -like delay –due to many reasons, mostly not of my own choice and not necessarily of my own making. Yet, I am sure, it still is worthwhile to publish the presentations of some of the leading specialists in the field not just as a record of the workshop, but because most of its results are still new and fresh.
The search for an Indo-European homeland has taken us some two hundred years by now. The discussion can easily be summarized, if somewhat facetiously, by: the homeland is at,or close to the homeland of the author of the book in question… The same applies,mutatis mutandis,to the homeland of the Indo-Iranians, or Arya/Ārya,as they call themselves.For this,we will have to look a little bit further afield,first of all,to the Urals.
The languages spoken in the northern part ofthe Indian subcontinent in prehistoric times have been discussed throughout most ofthis century. This concerns the periods ofthe Rgveda and ofthe Indus or Harappan Civilization (nowadays also called Indus-Sarasvat ̄civilization in
some quarters).
To describe and interpret the linguistic situation in Northern India in the second and the early first millennium B.C. is a difficult undertaking.We cannot yet read and interpret the Indus script with any degree of certainty, and we do not even know the language(s) underlying these inscriptions.
