problems with episode 1
The scholar Francesco Brighenti wrote:
In this first episode of his documentary, Wood appears fair and
balanced in his treatment of the Aryan Migration Theory vs. "Vedic
Harappa"/Out-of-India Theory controversy; yet, his texts include a
lot of crap, howlers, and hard-to-die popular notions. A few
comments on the most egregious among them are, thus, in order on
this forum:
1) Wood states that a "broken yoni stone from around 14,000 years
ago" (!) would have been excavated at Allahabad;
2) Wood endorses the obsolete notion of an entirely "peaceful"
Harappan civilization as the ultimate source of Indian ahimsa;
3) Wood accepts as a truth the news that an axehead "inscribed with
Indus signs" was found in South India ;
4) Wood relies too much on archaeologist Victor Sarianidi's thesis
that a sacrificed foul found in a burial at Gonur Depe in
Turkmenistan (see earlier discussion on this List) may constitute
evidence of an earlier form of Vedic horse-sacrifice (asvamedha);
likewise, he strictly follows Sarianidi's interpretation of the BMAC
people's alleged "fire-temple" ritual as being ancestral to the
Vedic fire ritual, and of the BMAC people's alleged "sacred
libation" ritual as being ancestral to the Vedic Soma ritual;
5) Wood holds the term Arya to mean 'noble one' and relates it to
the Irish name Eire after an old, but now discredited linguistic
comparison;
6) Wood states that Kikkuli's treatise on horse-training is written
in "the Indo-European language used by the rulers of Mitanni"
(wasn't it, in case, written in Hittite?), and that the Hittite-
Mitanni treaty of c. 1380 BCE, in which the names of Vedic gods
(Indra, Mitra, Varuna, the Nasatyas) are mentioned, *also* includes
the Sanskrit-sounding names of certain rulers (weren't they, in
case, attested in texts *other* than this treaty?);
7) Wood describes the Mitanni rulers as an Indo-Aryan-speaking
warrior elite (yet this is most uncertain);
8) Of the Indo-Aryans, says Wood, "Some went east... but some stayed
at home in the west" -- this is nothing but Michael Witzel's
notorious old translation 'mistake' (not quite really, as we
know...), which has been repeatedly criticized by his Hindutva
opponents & Co. in the past, and which he has 'emended', or
clarified, later on; all unknown to Wood!
9) Wood characterizes the Indo-Aryans as warlike invaders
who "conquered" the Late Harappan tribes -- and they, according to
Wood, already possessed *iron* weapons!
10) Wood claims that excavations at Adichannalur (Tamil Nadu) would
have produced evidence for the worship of the Hindu god Murukan as
early as the Iron Age (the South Indian Megalithic period, from c.
1000 BCE) and even for cheeck-piercing (an ordeal rite practiced in
Tamil Nadu in connection with the worhip of Murukan).