The Two Waves

Based on the work done by Cavalli-Sforza and others, [Cavalli-Sforza et al, 1994 : The History and Geography of Human Genes] Gadgil concludes that there were most probably two major phases of migration of ‘Indo-Europeans’ into the Indian subcontinent from Central Asia, across the northwestern frontier : the first around 8,000 BCE and the second around 2,000 BCE; the first wave being driven by the ‘technology’ of the cultivation of wheat and barley and domestication of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs; the second driven by the art of domestication of horse. [Gadgil et al, 1998 : Peopling Of India, in Balasubramanian & Rao, The Indian Human Heritage, 115]

Could the earlier wave of ‘Indo-Europeans’ be the kshatriya, and the subsequent wave the brāmhaṇa ? We may not be able to answer that question with certainty; but there is sufficient ground to accept that hypothesis. Gadgil allows for that possibility; his term ‘Indo-Europeans’ includes both. At one place he clearly states : “the people who used horses may have been one group, though perhaps not the only group of Indo-Europeans to enter the subcontinent’; and at another place : ‘there may have been many waves of Indo-European speakers into India that may have brought into the country many languages of that family’.