Who Were the People Who Produced the Rigveda?

Part 3. Shared Origins: the Proto-Indo-Europeans

In our previous posts, we looked briefly at the economic, social and political aspects of Rigvedic society, and the beliefs, rites and rituals of the Rigvedic people. Most of these insights into their lives and times are derived from a study of the Rigveda itself.

We shall now consider the question: Were the Rigvedic people indigenous to India? If not, where did they come from, and when?

Answering this question entails assembling diverse pieces of information and putting them together to build a complete picture, a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle. It does not help that given the antiquity of the period we are dealing with, some pieces of this puzzle are missing and will likely remain missing forever. The picture that emerges is reasonably cohesive, but has gaps in it.

In this and following posts, we will collect pieces of the puzzle and then put them together to see what emerges. Given the scope of this newsletter, we will focus primarily on the linguistic and literary evidence.