Introduction

Abstract

The first versions of the contributions collected in this volume were presented and discussed on the occasion of the Workshop “Diversity in the Vedic Lexicon and its role in reconstructing the most ancient Indo-Aryan language layers” within the framework of the 33rd South Asian Languages Analysis Roundtable (SALA 33) hosted by the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (15-17 May 2017). The topic proposed here is in line with a trend of research that has characterized the last three decades and focuses on the multiplicity of cultural matrices at the basis of the complex repertoire of Vedic texts. The alleged homogeneity of Vedic culture and language has been explicitly questioned by a number of scholars, to quote only some recent milestones: Witzel (1987; 1997), Bronkhorst (1993; 1998; 2007), Pinault (2006), Parpola (2015). Albeit from different perspectives, they all identified at least two different cultural matrices in the ancient Indo-Aryan sources. The reconstruction of different waves of Indo-Aryan immigrants (Hoernle 1880; Grierson 1903; 1927; Parpola 1983; 2012; 2015) offers a plausible explanation of such perceived plurality, but it is far from being the only possible scenario. Reflections on the role of substrate/adstrate (e.g. by Lubotsky 2001; Thapar 2013) or on the diachronic and diatopic dynamics of linguistic and cultural changes (e.g. by Witzel 1989; 2011; Hock 2012), or, again, on the role played by prestige in a diglottic/polyglottic context (Houben 2012; 2018) also offer pertinent interpretative patterns. Moreover, the relevant studies have been clearly disentangled from a purely IndoEuropean approach: the recent contributions to the history of the ancient Indian Sprachbund (Hock 1986) and the current research on the so-called South Asian linguistic area (e.g. Masica 2005 [1976]; Scharfe 2006) are no longer exclusively aimed at decoding the several steps in the assumed process of systematic divergence from a common ancestor, but also aim to recognize a process complementary to this, namely the tendency for languages gradually to converge with other languages in the area. Within this succinctly sketched framework, the present project is specifically focused on the lexical analysis of Vedic sources. Such a methodological approach is somewhat marginal in the present scientific debate,1 not only because it lies in an area of intersection between linguistics and philology, but also due to vestiges of a prejudice that sees lexical data as inherently unreliable in a strictly genealogical perspective. Still, if it is true that