How was the age of the Rigveda (and by extension, the oldest attested form of Sanskrit) determined?

[dɮ the phoneme]

As I understand it, the oldest attested form of Sanskrit is that found in the Rigveda, which I generally see dated to around the middle of the second millennium BC (~1500BC). Actual Sanskrit texts aren't attested until much later; the Rigveda itself was evidently passed down orally for the first thousand-ish years. IIRC, the oldest mention of the Rigveda in a written work is dated to around ~600BC. So, does anyone know how that estimate of 1500BC was determined? I haven't been able to find a source that goes into detail on the dating process.

[zompist]

The dates I found (researching the ICK) were a little later: -1300 to -1000. Wendy Doniger's The Hindus probably has info on this. Indian historians prefer a date as early as possible.

A lot of it is attempting to fit it into what we know of Indian prehistory. The Harappans lasted until the -1700s, so it's later than that... probably a good deal later, since there isn't even a rumor of a large settled urban civilization in the book. The Mitanni, who worshipped some of the same gods, erupted into the Middle East around -1400. Place names in the Rigveda are IIRC limited to the Punjab, while it's believed that the Arya had reached the Delhi region by the -10th century when the Mahabharata is set.

In terms of language, note that the Buddha (c. -500) didn't speak in Sanskrit, but in Magadhi. So classical Sanskrit was already old then... and Vedic Sanskrit is quite a bit more archaic than classical Sanskrit.

[sasasha]

Not an expert, but in addition to history-/archaeology-based guesstimation, isn't it related to certain parts of the text having older-looking features than others - so estimates of age of the older parts can be inferred partly by establishing a rough chronology of the level of difference between the various parts?

A relevant consideration being that certain parts could have been passed down more faithfully than others, as well as or instead of just being older.

I think I may be remembering this more from reading about Avestan than Sanskrit, but I wouldn't be surprised if a similar process was at work in arriving at those sorts of dates. It's certainly not an exact science at any rate.

[Zaarin]

The Mitanni, who worshipped some of the same gods, erupted into the Middle East around -1400.

And evidence points to the Indo-Iranian superstrate of the Mitanni being Indo-Aryan rather than Iranian, fascinatingly. (The Hurrian mainstay of the Mitanni had already been in the region for quite some time, of course. Some linguists suggest that the Kassites who plagued the Sumerians may have been cousins of the Hurro-Urartians, but attestations of Kassite are so limited that I imagine that would be hard to prove.)

[Vijay]

Yep. I've always wondered how Indo-Aryans ended up there.

[missals]

Don't press me on a source for this, but one theory I've heard (maybe on the old ZBB?) is that Iranian and Indo-Aryan was originally a north (Iranian) - south (Indo-Aryan) split, with the southern group coming into close contact with the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex, thus giving the Indo-Aryans much of their distinctive culture. As they migrated south, some Indo-Aryans went southwest, and eventually far west, becoming the Mitanni superstrate, while the rest went southeast into India.

Meanwhile, the un-BMACized Iranians spread out in Central Asia and across the Ponto-Caspian steppes, with some eventually migrating southwest into the void left by the Indo-Aryans, becoming the Persians, Medians, proto-Kurds, etc.

[Vijay]

I'm more inclined to think they migrated from India.

I mean heck, we've had both immigrants from there and emigrants to there for a very long time, plus an ancient history of trade. There have been Balochis in Oman for centuries, and similarly there are Parsis, Jews, Christians, and Muslims that are descended from Middle Easterners (from all over the Middle East, it seems, and later also from Europe in the case of Jews).

[mèþru]

There isn't a direct route to Mitanni from India and there would need to be some signs of an intermediate area they stayed in. I'm inclined to missals' version

[Salmoneus]

I don't think we know enough to say, yet.

However, given that Indo-Aryan is attested in Syria a thousand years before it's attested in India, and given that IA-associated cultures are present in Syria and Turkey centuries before the first cultures commonly associated with IA in India appeared, I think the parsimonious assumption at this stage is that the Mitanni migration was directly from the IA homeland, rather than a secondary migration from India (which would presumably, tendentiously, require the later stages of Harappa to have been IE-speaking). Particularly because the timeline would otherwise have to be very compressed indeed: you'd have to get your Mitanni from Sintashta all the way down into northern India, and then out of India and across the whole of Iran and Mesopotamia, all in at most 600 years and probably much less.

I think the idea of IA as the 'southern' branch, perhaps the BMAC-dominating branch, and Iranian as the northern steppe branch, seems to make more sense.

[I'd also point out that we shouldn't forget Nuristani. Sure, they could be a weird primary migration that happened to aim for a remote patch of mountains. But it's more plausible to think that modern Nuristani is a geographically-protected relict of a much larger family occupying what later became either Iranian or Aryan territory. It may even be that, for instance, Nuristani conquered BMAC and formed the first migration into India, with the Aryans as a later wave.]

However, regarding the Mitanni, we can't really rule out much. We're not talking a mass migration, we're just talking a quickly-assimilated ruling class, which could easily have been established by a small military raiding group - so the fact it would have required rapid movement over long distances with no intermediary presence does not entirely rule anything out.

[mèþru]

The Indo-Aryan migration in Mitanni is associated with the spread of a material culture thought to be Proto-Armenian to Mitanni.

[Zaarin]

The Indo-Aryan migration in Mitanni is associated with the spread of a material culture thought to be Proto-Armenian to Mitanni.

I thought the ancestors of the Armenians were believed to still be living in Anatolia at the time the Mitanni were in their heyday.

[Richard W]

In terms of language, note that the Buddha (c. -500) didn't speak in Sanskrit, but in Magadhi. So classical Sanskrit was already old then... and Vedic Sanskrit is quite a bit more archaic than classical Sanskrit.

Isn't the point that he chose to teach in Magadhi (or some pre-Prakrit), rather than in Sanskrit. And I'm not sure that *classical* Sanskrit is older than the Buddha; I thought it was supposed to contain some originally Buddhist words.

[zompist]

In terms of language, note that the Buddha (c. -500) didn't speak in Sanskrit, but in Magadhi. So classical Sanskrit was already old then... and Vedic Sanskrit is quite a bit more archaic than classical Sanskrit.

Isn't the point that he chose to teach in Magadhi (or some pre-Prakrit), rather than in Sanskrit. And I'm not sure that *classical* Sanskrit is older than the Buddha; I thought it was supposed to contain some originally Buddhist words.

He chose to speak in the vernacular, which mean that the vernacular had diverged from the standard language. If the people spoke Sanskrit, he'd have spoken Sanskrit.

They're closely related, so it wasn't any problem to translate Buddhist terms, which we often have in Sanskrit/Pali pairs, e.g. anātman/anattā, dharma/dhamma, sūtra/sutta, nirvāṇa/nibbāna.

[Salmoneus]

The Indo-Aryan migration in Mitanni is associated with the spread of a material culture thought to be Proto-Armenian to Mitanni.

I thought the ancestors of the Armenians were believed to still be living in Anatolia at the time the Mitanni were in their heyday.

Nobody really knows anything about the Armenians. Armenian isn't even attested until the 5th century AD. We know of the existence of an "Armenia" a thousand years before that, but we have no information on the language spoken by the locals - I don't think we even have any early Armenian names (the Armenian kings appear to have been Iranians, or at least to have had Iranian names). So when exactly the Armenians arrived in what's now Armenian is pretty much unknowable (archeologically, aiui, armenia developed from the clearly non-armenian hurrian and urartian kingdoms. At some point in this process there was a partial population replacement).

[Zaarin]

The Indo-Aryan migration in Mitanni is associated with the spread of a material culture thought to be Proto-Armenian to Mitanni.

I thought the ancestors of the Armenians were believed to still be living in Anatolia at the time the Mitanni were in their heyday.

Nobody really knows anything about the Armenians. Armenian isn't even attested until the 5th century AD. We know of the existence of an "Armenia" a thousand years before that, but we have no information on the language spoken by the locals - I don't think we even have any early Armenian names (the Armenian kings appear to have been Iranians, or at least to have had Iranian names). So when exactly the Armenians arrived in what's now Armenian is pretty much unknowable (archeologically, aiui, armenia developed from the clearly non-armenian hurrian and urartian kingdoms. At some point in this process there was a partial population replacement).

I knew that. I just seemed to recall reading that IE Armenian was generally believed to have migrated from Anatolia to the Caucasus sometime in the first millennium BC.

[mèþru]

I'm referring to the Kura-Araxes culture. Nevermind what I said about the culture being Armenian; the area of origin is more important to this discussion than the language/ethnicity of its originators.

[Salmoneus]

I'm referring to the Kura-Araxes culture. Nevermind what I said about the culture being Armenian; the area of origin is more important to this discussion than the language/ethnicity of its originators.

Then your comment becomes more complexing. The introduction of the Aryan substrate in Mitanni does not accompany the introduction of the Kura-Araxes culture. Kura-Araxes arose thousands of years earlier and had been extinct for centuries before Mitanni arose.

It is, however, worth pointing out that much of "Armenia" was Hurrian or Urartian speaking from around 2500 to 500BC. Although it's not impossible that there were some Armenians somewhere.

[mèþru]

Archaeologists have attested a striking parallel in the spread to Syria of a distinct pottery type associated with what they call the Kura-Araxes culture.

I don't even know what I'm saying. I would trust you on this more than the source. since I can't access the cited source.