User:Fowler&fowler/Sources on Rg Veda and Hinduism

I've added more sources to the sentence being disputed in this edit. I have not changed the wording, which in my judgment is the best one, balancing both scholarship and readability. The sentence is: "By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest, unfolding as the language of the Rigveda, and recording the dawning of Hinduism in India."

The Scholars
The cited authors are among the best around today. They are: The citations with generous quotes added are:
 * John J. Lowe, is the Associate Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford, and the author of Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit, OUP, 2015
 * Michael Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard and the author of many works on archaic Sanskrit
 * Wendy Doniger is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago.  A translator of many Sanskirt selections, including the Rg Veda, she was the past president of the Association of Asian Studies.
 * Gavin Flood is the Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at Oxford University and the author and editor of many books on Hinduism
 * Stephanie W. Jamison is a Distinguished Professor of Asian Religions and Indo-Iranian Literature at UCLA; she is the translator the the Rg Veda, Oxford University Press, 2020
 * Joel Brereton, is a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin; he is the co-translater of the Rg Veda along with Stephanie Jamison.
 * Axel Michaels is a Professor of Classical Indology and Religious Studies at Heidelberg University;
 * Patrick Olivelle is a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, and the translated of many works in Sanskrit, including the Oxford World Classics, Upanishads
 * Tim Dyson is a historical demographer of South Asia, an Emeritus Professor of Population Studies at the London School of Economics, and the author of A Population History of India, Oxford University Press, 2018
 * Peter Robb is the Emeritus Professor of South Asian history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, former chair of the department, and author of History of India, Macmillan, 2011
 * David Ludden is a Professor of History at New York University, and the author of India and South Asia Oxford: One World 2013, and An Agrarian History of South Asia, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  00:05, 7 April 2021 (UTC)
 * the late Frits Staal was the department founder and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South/Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lowe
(a)

Jamison
(this is a guide, published in 2020; the actual translation was a behemoth three-volume set of 1,726 pages published in 2014 by OUP);

Dyson
Quote: "Although the collapse of the Indus valley civilization is no longer believed to have been due to an ‘Aryan invasion’ it is widely thought that, at roughly the same time, or perhaps a few centuries later, new Indo-Aryan-speaking people and influences began to enter the subcontinent from the north-west. Detailed evidence is lacking. Nevertheless, a predecessor of the language that would eventually be called Sanskrit was probably introduced into the north-west sometime between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago. This language was related to one then spoken in eastern Iran; and both of these languages belonged to the Indo-European language family. ... It seems likely that various small-scale migrations were involved in the gradual introduction of the predecessor language and associated cultural characteristics. However, there may not have been a tight relationship between movements of people on the one hand, and changes in language and culture on the other. Moreover, the process whereby a dynamic new force gradually arose—a people with a distinct ideology who eventually seem to have referred to themselves as ‘Arya’—was certainly two-way. That is, it involved a blending of new features which came from outside with other features—probably including some surviving Harappan influences—that were already present. Anyhow, it would be quite a few centuries before Sanskrit was written down. And the hymns and stories of the Arya people—especially the Vedas and the later Mahabharata and Ramayana epics—are poor guides as to historical events. Of course, the emerging Arya were to have a huge impact on the history of the subcontinent. Nevertheless, little is known about their early presence.";

Staal
.