Did Sintashta-Andronovo have Vedic Aryan elements?

Indo-Europeanists like David W Anthony and E E Kuzmina argued that certain details found in Vedic and Avestan texts matches the material remains of Sintashta-Andronovo cultures. Let us look into these claims.

 Anthony associates the description of Ashvamedha ritual or Vedic horse sacrifice as described in Rig Veda 1.162 with the burials found in Sintashta-Andronovo culture which has yielded horse remains. To quote him:

“The horse sacrifice at a royal funeral is described in RV 1.162: “Keep the limbs undamaged and place them in the proper pattern. Cut them apart, calling out piece by piece.” The horse sacrifices in Sintashta, Potapovka, and Fitlatovka graves match this description, with the lower legs of horses carefully cut apart at the joints and placed in and over the grave. The preference for horses as sacrificial animals in Sintashta funeral rituals, a species choice setting Sintashta apart from earlier steppe cultures, was again paralleled in the RV. Another verse in the same hymn read: “Those who see that the racehorse is cooked, who say, ‘It smells good! Take it away!’ and who wait for the doling out of the flesh of the charger-let their approval encourage us.” These lines describe the public feasting that surrounded the funeral of an important person, exactly like the feasting implied by head-and-hoof deposits of horses, cattle, goats, and sheep in Sintashta graves that would have yielded hundreds or even thousands of kilos of meat.” (Anthony 2007):

But actually, the Ashvamedha ritual involves the horse being sacrificed and offered into the sacrificial fire as mentioned in Rig Veda 1.162.19, instead of being buried in the graves.

” There is one carver of Tvsṣṭar’s horse and two to hold him fast: such is the proper way. 

The (sacrificial portions) I make from your legs according to the proper order, just those lumps, one after the other, do I offer in the fire. “

Rig Veda 1.162.19 translated by Joel Brereton and Stephanie Jamison

The Ashvamedha ritual involves a fertility rite which is also focused on the prosperity and sovereignty of the kingdom. It has nothing to do with any graves or burials. Also, the steppe graves often contained multiple horses while only a single horse was utilized in Ashvamedha. We don’t have any mass remains of horses like we see in Steppe Kurgans during post Harappan phases either. This wouldn't have been the case if the Aryans came in during this time. So this identification of Sintashta-Andronovo as proto-Vedic based on Aśvamedha rite is absurd.

In similar lines, Anthony has also highlighted mass remains of dogs found in Srubnaya culture which was related to Sintashta-Andronovo culture and connects these remains with a group of Vedic people called Vratyas

“In the RV the oath brotherhood of warriors that performed sacrifices at midwinter were called the Vratyas, who also were called dog-priests. The ceremonies associated with them featured many contests, including poetry recitation and chariot races. At the Srubnaya settlement of Krasnosamarskoe (Krasno-sa-MAR-sko-yeh) in the Samara River valley, we found the remains of an LBA midwinter dog sacrifice, a remarkable parallel to the reconstructed midwinter New Year ritual, dated about 1750 BCE. The dogs were butchered only at midwinter, many of them near the winter solstice, whereas the cattle and sheep at this site were butchered throughout the year. Dogs accounted for 40% of all the animal bones from the site. At least eighteen dogs were butchered, probably more. Nerissa Russell’s studies showed that each dog head was burned and then carefully chopped into ten to twelve small, neat, almost identical segments with axe blows. The postcranial remains were not chopped into ritually standardized little pieces, and none of the cattle or sheep was butchered like this. The excavated structure at Krasnosamarskoe probably was the place where the dog remains from a midwinter sacrifice were discarded after the event. They were found in an archaeological context assigned to the early Srubnaya culture, but early Srubnaya was a direct outgrowth from Potapovka and Abashevo, the same circle as Sintashta, and nearly the same date. Krasnosamarskoe shows that midwinter dog sacrifices were practiced in the middle Volga Steppes, as in the dog-priest initiation rituals described in the RV. Although such direct evidence for midwinter dog rituals has not yet been recognized in Sintashta settlements, many individuals buried in Sintashta graves wore necklaces of dog canine teeth. Nineteen dog canine pendants were found in a single collective grave with eight youths-probably of initiation age-under a Sintashta kurgan at Kammenyi Ambar 5, kurgan 4, grave 2” (Anthony 2007)

We don’t know the context of these dog remains and actually the Vratyas became prominent from the later Vedic period onwards. We don’t find any mention of ‘dog priests’ in Rig Veda at all. Vratyas are mentioned throughout in 15th book of Atharva Veda and in later texts. In fact Panchavimsa Brahmana 17.1-4 describes a ritual called Vratyastoma to convert Vratyas into orthodox Vedic fold. Perhaps they were a semi-mythological heterodox group different from mainstream Vedic groups and thus cannot in anyway represent the ancestral version of Vedic culture. Moreover, just like the horse remains, we don’t have any traces of mass dog burials in post-Harappan cultures, where we would expect the so-called ‘dog priests’ would have settled down after coming from the steppe zone and  still practiced their dog sacrifices in post Harappan phases. So just like linking horse burials with Ashvamedha, this dog burials and their association with Vratyas is just another absurdity.

On the other hand late Russian archaeologist EE Kuzmina also claims that horses and chariots were involved in funeral rite of Vedic Kshatriyas or the warrior caste:

 “After that, according to the Shatapatha Brahmana (12.8.1) they addressed the god Pusan, the protector of domestic cattle and roads, with these words: “Pusan carries you to the ancestors”; they then slaughtered the sacrificial animal. A black cow was given to the brahman (priest), a goat or ram to the vaiśya (commoner), and his horse and chariot to the ksatriya (warrior); these were to help the deceased to cross the river to the kingdom of the dead.”(Kuzmina 2007)

She cites from Shatapatha Brahmana for this practice but when I checked both Madhyandina and Kanva versions of Shatapatha  Brahmana, there is no such mention of funeral rites related to horses or chariots. So this is just a desperate but yet dishonest attempt to link Steppe practice to Vedic one by citing a non-existent source.

Kuzmina had also cited Rig Veda 10.56 as reference to horse sacrifice during funeral rites in connection with steppe rites.

“It is said in the Rigveda, in the burial hymn to a horse (10.56) that carries a man’s body to heaven: “By merging with a body, grow lovely, dear to the gods in the highest birthplace. Victorious racehorse, let your body, carrying a body, bring blessings to us and safety to you.” The horse is burnt with its master. This ritual was also known among the Greeks: in the Iliad (23.175) Achilles brings horses to the funeral pyre of his friend Patroclus (Vermeule 1979). And in a Rigveda hymn (10.135.3) the dead father of the boy goes to Yama’s kingdom on “a new chariot without wheels, which had only one shaft but can travel in all directions.” (Kuzmina 2007).

 But actually the hymn mentions vajin, a term which can refer to horses, but also can refer to anything which is swift, strong, vigorous, heroic etc or even a personal name. The hymn tells us nothing of any burial rite as Kuzmina thinks, but is mostly about pleasures attained in heaven. 

“Here is one (light) of yours, and far away is another one. Merge with the third light. 

At the merging of your body, be one cherished and dear to the gods at this highest means of begetting. 

Let your body, o prizewinner, leading the body, establish a thing of value for us and protection for you.

Unswerving, in order to uphold the great gods, you should exchange your own light as if for the light in heaven. “

 Rig Veda 10.56.1-2 translated by  Joel Brereton and Stephanie  Jamison

Similarly, Kuzmina also cites Rig Veda 10.135.3 as reference to funeral rites connected with chariot, again supposedly reflecting steppe chariot burials. But here the chariot is spoken as traveling in all directions without wheels and is made from mind, which could in all probability refer to some metaphysical or metaphorical chariot rather than any actual chariot. Also this hymn does not provide any information about burial rites either. 

“The new chariot without wheels that you made with your mind, lad, 

the one that has a single shaft but faces in all directions—without seeing it, you mount it.“

 Rig Veda 10.135.3 translated by  Joel Brereton and Stephanie  Jamison

 After horses and chariots , Kuzmina have also pointed out absence of pigs from Sintashta-Andronovo culture and highlights supposed avoidance of pigs by Indo-Iranians to connect them with Sintashta-Andronovo zones

“The next step in identifying an Indo-Iranian ethnos with a concrete archaeological culture is to uncover those ethnic indicators that clearly distinguish Indo-Iranian culture from that of other Indo-Europeans. These ethnic indicators include the fact that of all the Indo-European peoples virtually only the Indo-Iranians did not raise pigs nor sacrifice them and only the Indo-Iranians raised Bactrian camels and had a cult of this animal. As far as I know the only Bronze Age culture that did not practice pig raising was the Andronovo. As for the Timber-grave culture, pig is present in osteological materials although there is no cult of the animal. “ (Kuzmina 2007)

But on the other hand, we have usage of pigs in post Harappan iron age cultures like Painted Gray Ware. To quote veteran Indian archaeologist BB Lal:

“The other animals identified at Hastinapura were sheep (ovis vignei Blyth, race domesticus), buffalo (Bos (Bubalus) bubalis Linnaeus), pig (Sus cristatus Wagner var. domesticus Rolleston), and horse (Equus caballus Linnaeus).26 A large number of bones of cattle, sheep, buffalo and pig had incision marks made with a sharp instrument, and were charred, indicating that these animals were slaughtered for food.” (Dani & Mikhaĭlovich 1992)

Obviously by the time of Painted Gray Ware culture in 1st millennium BCE, many parts of northern India were Aryanized even according to the Aryan migration theory. So why did the supposed steppe proto-Vedic Indo-Aryan tribes who avoided pigs suddenly utilize pigs when they came into India? It doesn’t make any sense at all. 

Another argument about Indo-Iranian or proto-Vedic identification of Sintashta-Andronovo cultures comes from the burial of a human corpse which have its head replaced with that of a horse discovered from Potapovka culture which was related to Sintashta-Andronovo culture. Certain authors like Finnish Indologist Asko Parpola cite it as representing the Vedic myth of Sage Dadhichi whose head was replaced with that of a horse. This myth is already mentioned in certain verses of Rig Veda like Rig Veda 1.117.22, 1.119.9 etc.  

“The Dadhyanc legend also speaks of providing a human sage with a horse’s head. Such an operation may have been an integral part of the secret rite of reviving a dead hero. It is tempting to see this Asvin-related revival rite revealed in a human skeleton with the skull of a horse, which was excavated in a unique grave near Samara in the Mid-Volga region of Russia; it belongs to the Potapovka culture, dated to c. 2100-1700 bce, and was very probably the skeleton of a Proto-Indo-Aryan speaker (chapter 7) (Fig. 11.2). The secret knowledge of revival is, moreover, connected with honey, which the Vedas con-nect above all with the Asvins, the divine healers.” (Parpola 2015)

Supposed human skeleton with horse head (from Parpola 2015).

But in reality the myth has nothing to do with any grave or funeral. Also according to the myth, the horse head was again later replaced by the actual human head as cited in Shatapatha  Brahmana 14.1.1.24 .

 “He then received them (as his pupils); and when he had received them, they cut off his head, and put it aside elsewhere; and having fetched the head of a horse, they put it on him: therewith he taught them; and when he had taught them, Indra cut off that head of his; and having fetched his own head, they put it on him again..”

Shatapatha  Brahmana 14.1.1.24 .translated by Julius Eggeling

 So this identification of the Potapovka remains with the Vedic myth is quite funny. Further , Anthony himself states that this identification is no longer tenable.

“In Table 1, sample AA 47803, dated ca. 2900-2600 BCE, was from a human skeleton of the Poltavka period that was later cut through and decapitated by a much deeper Potapovka grave pit. A horse sacrifice above the Potapovka grave is dated by sample AA 47802 to about 1900-1800 BCE. Although they were almost a thousand years apart, they looked, on excavation, like they were deposited together, with the Potapovka horse skull lying above the shoulders of the decapitated Poltavka human. Before dates were obtained on both the horse and the skeleton this deposit was interpreted as a “centaur”—a decapitated human with his head replaced by the head of a horse, an important combination in Indo-Iranian mythology. But Nerissa Russell and Eileen Murphy found that both the horse and the human were female, and the dates show that they were buried a thousand years apart. Similarly sample AA-12569 was from an older Poltavka-period dog sacrifice found on the ancient ground surface at the edge of Potapovka grave 6 under kurgan 5 at the same cemetery. Older Poltavka sacrifices and graves were discovered under both kurgans 3 and 5 at Potapovka cemetery I. The Poltavka funeral deposits were so disturbed by the Potapovka grave diggers that they remained unrecognized until the radiocarbon dates made us take a second look. The “centaur” possibility was mentioned in Anthony and Vinogradov 1995, five or six years before the two pieces were dated. Of course, it now must be abandoned.” (Anthony 2007)

Another important argument made by Kuzmina is that certain hearths discovered from Andronovo zones resemble Vedic ritualistic fire altars (Kuzmina 2007)

” Andronovo houses were heated and illuminated by hearths of various types. Type 1 had an open round or oval fire-place, 0.7-3m in diameter, sometimes floored with stone. Such fires, that met both domestic and industrial needs, are found both inside and outside of houses. This type of hearth (gulkhan alou) is known in Central Asia, first of all among the Iranian Tadzhiks and Pamiri, and is to be found in communal houses for men where it originated from early Iranian houses of fire (Pisarchik 1982: 72). Type 2 hearths comprise a shallow round or oval pit, 0.5-0.8m in diameter, sometimes more, 0.15-0.4m deep, and often covered with flat stone slabs on the bottom (Fig. 10). This is the most widespread type of hearth and served for cooking, heating and lighting; it is similar to the Central Asian type of hearth known as the chakhlak or chagdon (Pisarchik 1982: 78, 79, 109 ).

This hearth is described in ancient Indian texts as the domestic fire garhapatya- ‘fire of the master of the house’ (Mandel’shtam 1968: 126). Such hearths were used for ritual purposes: a bride would go around it, a widow would perform a funeral dance, people jumped over it during a feast. The gulkhan (hearth) from gul- ‘heat’ is preserved in the Iranian and Indian languages (Pisarchik 1982: 74-77, 105, 106).

The third type of hearth has a rectangular form, from 0.7 x 1m to 1.5 x 2m, and was made of closely adjusted rectangular stone slabs inserted into the ground on their narrow ends. Such hearths were found in the center of a house, kept clean, and it is likely that they had a ritual function (Atasu, Buguly, Shandasha, Ushkatta II, Spasskiy Most, Kent, Tagibay-Bulak, Dongal).

This type of hearth corresponded to the early Indian special cult hearth ahavanīya (Mandel’shtam 1968: 126). Rectangular and round hearths have parallels in ancient Rome where the round hearth used for cooking was dedicated to the goddess of the domestic hearth Vesta; the square hearth was dedicated to male gods and the ancestors (Dumézil 1954).“

As we can see, it is written that the hearths also contained stone slabs. While Vedic altars are usually made of bricks and have no relation with any stones or slabs. So there is no resemblance between Andronovo hearths and Vedic altars.

While mentioning Vedic fire altars, it is also good to mention about the cremation of corpses which was prevalent in later phases of Sintashta-Andronovo culture called Fedorovo culture. Since Vedic people also practiced cremation, authors who argue in favor of Vedic Aryan homeland in the Steppes identify Andronovo as representing the ancestral version of Vedic culture. But in reality, cremation was already widespread well before its attestation in Sintashta-Andronovo. The late Harappan Cemetery H culture perhaps practiced cremation and it certainly predates the later Fedorovo phase of Sintashta-Andronovo culture. Also, even  Anthony now admits that the cremation custom was picked up by the Andronovans from the pre-Andronovo culture of Central Asia.

“The pre-Andronovo mortuary custom of cremation documented at Tasbas and Hegash continued into the Andronovo period as a distinctive trait of Fedorovo mortuary rituals in the Tien Shan region but with the addition of a kurgan, stone knees, and other Andronovo traits absent from the Begash  and Tasbas level I mortuary customs. At both sites. the earlier pre-Andronovo phase was followed in 1800 to 1500 BC by Andronovo styles of material culture. As the evidence now stands, it seems that the local pre-Andronovo cultures of the northern Tien Shan were absorbed into the Andronovo cultural interaction.” (Anthony 2016)

Also certain earlier Harappan sites like Tarkhanwala Dera also have evidence of cremation (Possehl 2002). It also worth mentioning that Vedic people practiced both cremation and burial as mentioned in Rig Veda 10.16, 10.18 and also in 10.15.14.

Anthony cites Rig Veda 10.18.4 which mentions about burying death beneath the mountain as evidence of erecting Kurgan.

“Similarities between the rituals excavated at Sintashta and Arkaim and those described later in the RV have solved, for many, the problem of Indo-Iranian origins.4° The parallels include a reference in RV 10.18 to a kurgan (let them … bury death in this hill”), a roofed burial chamber supported with posts (“let the Fathers hold up this pillar for you”), and with shored walls (1 shore up the earth all around you; let me not injure you as I lay down this clod of earth”). This is a precise description of Sintashta and Potapovka-Filatovka grave pits, which had wooden plank roofs supported by timber posts and plank shoring walls.” (Anthony 2007)

But the whole context of the hymn makes it clear that the verse refers to getting rid of or burying death itself, and not the corpse, by living for many autumns in a poetic sense as mentioned in Rig Veda 10.18.1-2. It’s part of the Rig Vedic poetry. 

“Depart, Death, along the further path, which is your own, different from the one leading to the gods. 

To you who possess eyes and who listen do I speak: do not harm our offspring nor our heroes.

Effacing the footprint of death when you have gone, establishing for yourselves a longer, more extended lifetime, 

swelling up with offspring and wealth, become cleansed and purified, o you who are worthy of the sacrifice “

Rig Veda 10.18.1-2 translated by Joel Brereton and Stephanie  Jamison

So it does not talk about erecting any Kurgan over the burial of corpse. None of the Vedic texts mentions about erecting large Kurgan mounds which were filled with weapons, horses, chariots and other remains which was a common practice in bronze age steppe cultures.

Also Rig Veda 10.18.11 of the same hymn asks the earth not to press down the corpse downward heavily and to to cover the corpse gently like a mother would cover her child. 

“Arch up, Earth; do not press down. Become easy to approach for him, easy to curl up in. Like a mother her son with her hem, cover him, Earth“

Rig Veda 10.18.11 translated by Joel Brereton and Stephanie  Jamison

This would indicate that no huge Kurgan mounds were erected, but rather it was a humble burial. Further, we read from Shatapatha Brahmana 13.8.1.5 that Vedic people built four cornered burials instead of round ones which was practiced by ‘easterners and others’ of ‘Asura nature’, perhaps referring to non-Vedic tribes located further east from Vedic region in northern India. 

“Wherefore the people who are godly make their burial-places four-cornered, whilst those who are of the Asura nature, the Easterns and others , (make them) round, for they (the gods) drove them out from the regions.” 

Shatapatha Brahmana 13.8.1.5 translated by Julius Eggeling.

This clearly indicates that the round burials, including the Kurgans, were non Vedic. Moreover we have no trace of any Kurgan mounds in post-Harappan cultures, but there are few isolated findings of mounds discovered at the Harappan site of Dholavira, which is dated to the mature Harappan phase (Bisht 2015). These mounds have bases with plan of spoked wheel design which is not found in the steppe Kurgans, and reminds us of later plans of Buddhist stupas. Further, even if there are such isolated  occurrences of tumulus within India itself, there’s nothing to consider it as of being from steppe influence. As per Kuzmina herself (Kuzmina 2007), the southernmost occurrence of Andronovo pottery is from the Harappan site of Shotrugai in northern Afghanistan. There are no traces of steppe elements in core Vedic regions of India. To quote her:

“The farthest south that Andronovan pottery of the Fedorovo type has been found is the second tepe of the settlement of Shortughai in Afghanistan. It was discovered in a complex with pottery of the Bishkent culture. On the neighboring hill in the upper Harappan stratum a single fragment has been found. Obviously, a single sherd is not enough to solve the problem of the contacts between the inhabitants of the Harappan cities and the Andronovan stock-breeding settlers!"

More recently, Russian authors Andrey Epimakhov and Alexander Lubotsky in their chapter on Indo-European Puzzle Revisited (2023) notes about how Sintashta culture had furnaces and wells are attached to each other. They suggest this may be of ritual use, hinting at the Indo-Iranian mythology revolving around the deity Apam Napat, i.e. Agni as Child of Water. They compare it with Vedic rite of Aponaptrīya. In conclusion they write:

“In our case, the study of the hymns of the Rigveda and Avesta has shown that the “furnace-well” system of the Sintashta culture was used for the ritual (consisting of an oblation of ghee into the domestic fire) to help the sun through the night: burning ghee from the furnace reached the well and thus reenacted the rising sun. On a more profane level, the persistence of this system may be explained by the Indo-Iranian belief that the domestic fire provides pure, clean water.”

Sintashta ‘well-furnace’ (image as given by Lubotsky and Epimakhov in Kristiansen et al 2023)

This sounds very interesting to me, but what occurred to me while reading through this note on Sintashta ‘well-furnace’ is that the fire-altars discovered from the site of Kalibangan also had well and bathing platform nearby. This is noted by BB Lal as well as British Archaeologist Raymond Allchin:

” If the evidence of the earlier excavations is not very helpful with regard to the layout or Machos of actual templet, the more recent excavations of the Archaeological Survey of India at Kalibangan are far more informative. At this site, as we saw above, there was in the southern square of the citadel mound a series of brick platforms, raised to a considerable height and crowned with ‘fire altars’, a well and bathing places, and brick-lined pits containing ashes or animal bones, This complex must represent a civic ritual centre where animal sacrifice, ritual ablution and some sort of fire ritual featured. The excavators have noted that in the houses of the lower town, apart from the normal domestic hearths and ovens, one room was set aside for a similar fire altar, a feature which is strikingly suggestive of the ‘fire room’ (agni-sala) of late Vedic and later Indian tradition. This, therefore, one may interpret as representing a domestic lire ritual or worship”

So, if Sintashta ‘well-furnace’ indeed represent Indo-Iranian ‘Fire-Water’ theme and rituals, then I think the Kalibangan ones also suggest of similar ritualistic affiliation as the archaeologists had noted. If one can identify the ‘Well-Furnace’ as representing the Indo-Iranian ‘Fire-Water’ theme, then I see no problem to identify Kalibangan altars representing the same. Another important think to note is that the Vedic people used proper altars like in Kalibangan, and not furnaces as Lubotsky and Epimakhov imagine.

All this being said, there is nothing Vedic or proto Vedic in the Sintashta-Andronovo cultures. Most of the supposed parallels between Sintashta-Andornovo and Vedic practices like Ashvamedha, avoidance of pigs, association of Vratyas with mass dog remains, burial of a man whose head replaced with that of a horse, well-furnace etc are untenable because they either doesn’t match the Vedic descriptions or doesn’t have parallels in post Harappan cultures, which would have not been the case if steppe people penetrated into India during this period with these cultural traits. Kuzmina also cites a lot of other supposed parallels between Vedic and Sintashta-Andronovo culture from the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, but they too hold little weight as the epics were composed much later after early Vedic literature and would only represent later or post Vedic situation.

Bibliography

The Rigveda: The Earliest Religious Poetry of India (2014) by Joel P. Brereton, Stephanie W Jamison

Fire and Water: The Bronze Age of the Southern Urals and the Rigveda by  Andrey Epimakhov and Alexander Lubotsky in The Indo-European Puzzle Revisited : Integrating Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics (2023) edited by Kristian Kristiansen, Guus Kroonen and Eske Willerslev

The Shatapatha Brahmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina school (1882-1900) by Julius Eggeling

Excavations at Dholavira 1989-2005 (2015) by RS Bisht

A Bronze Age Landscape in the Russian Steppes: The Samara Valley Project (2016) by David W Anthony

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language : How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World  (2007) by David W Anthony

The origin of the Indo-Iranians (2007) by E E Kuzmina, edited by J P Mallory

The Roots of Hinduism : The Early Aryans and The Indus Civilization (2015) by Asko Parpola

The Painted Grey Ware Culture of the Iron age by B B Lal in History of Civilizations of Central Asia, Volume 1 (1992) by  A H Dani and V M Masson