Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Until his retirement, Witzel was the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–100). He has researched a number of Indian sacred texts, particularly the Vedas.
Biography Michael Witzel was born on July 18, 1943, in Schwiebus, Germany (modern Świebodzin, Poland). He studied indology in West Germany from 1965 to 1971 under Paul Thieme, H.-P. Schmidt, K. Hoffmann, and J. Narten, as well as in Nepal (1972 to 1973) under Mīmāmsaka Jununath Pandit.Michael Witzel's curriculum vitae, accessed September 13, 2007. From 1972 to 1978, he led the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project and the Nepal Research Centre in Kathmandu.
Witzel has taught at Tübingen (1972), Leiden (1978–1986), and at Harvard (1986~2022), and has been the Wales Research professor since 2022. He has had visiting appointments at Kyoto (twice), Paris (twice), and Tokyo (twice). He has been teaching Sanskrit since 1972.
Witzel is editor-in-chief of the Electronic Journal of Vedic StudiesElectronic Journal of Vedic Studies homepage, accessed September 13, 2007. and the Harvard Oriental Series.About the Harvard Oriental Series, accessed September 13, 2007. Witzel has been president of the Association for the Study of Language in Prehistory since 1999,Personal web page, accessed July 30, 2015 as well as of the International Association for Comparative Mythology since 2006.
He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and was elected honorary member of the German Oriental Society in 2009. In 2013 he was appointed Cabot fellow of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, receiving recognition for his book on comparative mythology.
Philological research The main topics of scholarly research are the dialects of Vedic Sanskrit,Michael Witzel, On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and Schools (Materials on Vedic sakhas, 7), India and the Ancient World. History, Trade and Culture before A.D. 650. P.H.L. Eggermont Jubilee Volume, ed. by G. Pollet, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25, Leuven 1987, pp. 173-213, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. old Indian history,Michael Witzel, The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu (Materials on Vedic Sakhas, 8, in Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas, ed. M. Witzel, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, vol. 2, Cambridge 1997, pp. 257-345, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. the development of Vedic religion,Michael Witzel, How To Enter the Vedic Mind? Strategies in Translating a Brahmana Text, Translating, Translations, Translators From India to the West, Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora, vol. 1, Cambridge: Harvard Oriental Series, 1996, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007; Steve Farmer, John B. Henderson, and Michael Witzel, Neurobiology, Layered Texts, and Correlative Cosmologies: A Cross-Cultural Framework for Premodern History, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 72 (2000): 48-90, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. and the linguistic prehistory of the Indian subcontinent.
Early works and translations Witzel's early philological work deals with the oldest texts of India, the Vedas, their manuscripts and their traditional recitation; it included some editions and translations of unknown texts (1972).Michael Witzel's list of publications, accessed September 13, 2007. such as the Katha Aranyaka.Katha Âranyaka. Critical edition with a translation into German and an introduction. Cambridge: Harvard Oriental Series 65. 2004 [pp. lxxix, XXVI, 220, with color facsimiles of the Kashmir bhûrja MS] He has begun, together with T. Goto et al. a new translation of the Rigveda into German (Books I-II, 2007, Books III-V 2012), Books VI-VII (2022).Rig-Veda. Das Heilige Wissen. Erster und zweiter Liederkreis. Aus dem vedischen Sanskrit übersetzt und herausgegeben von Michael Witzel und Toshifumi Goto Unter Mitarbeit von Eijiro Doyama und Mislav Jezic. Frankfurt: Verlag der Weltreligionen 2007, pp. 1-889; first complete translation of the Rgveda into a western language since Geldner's of 1929/1951). amazon.de
Vedic texts, Indian history, and the emergence of the Kuru kingdom
After 1987, he has increasingly focused on the localization of Vedic texts (1987) and the evidence contained in them for early Indian history, notably that of the Rigveda and the following period, represented by the Black Yajurveda Samhitas and the Brahmanas. This work has been done in close collaboration with Harvard archaeologists such as R. Meadow, with whom he has also co-taught. Witzel aims at indicating the emergence of the Kuru Kingdom in the Delhi area (1989, 1995, 1997, 2003), its seminal culture and its political dominance, as well as studying the origin of late Vedic polities and the first Indian empire in eastern North India (1995, 1997, 2003, 2010).
He studied at length the various Vedic recensions (śākhā)Michael Witzel, Caraka, English summary of "Materialen zu den vedischen Schulen: I. Uber die Caraka-Schule," Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 7 (1981): 109-132, and 8/9 (1982): 171-240, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007; Michael Witzel, The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu (Materials on Vedic Sakhas, 8), in Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas, ed. M. Witzel, Harvard Oriental Studies, Opera Minora, vol. 2, Cambridge 1997, pp. 257-345, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. and their importance for the geographical spread of Vedic culture across North India and beyond.Michael Witzel, On the Localisation of Vedic Texts and Schools (Materials on Vedic Sakhas, 7), in India and the Ancient World. History, Trade and Culture before A.D. 650. P.H.L. Eggermont Jubilee Volume, ed. by G. Pollet, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 25, Leuven 1987, pp. 173-213, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. This resulted in book-length investigations of Vedic dialects (1989), the development of the Vedic canon (1997),Michael Witzel, The Development of the Vedic Canon and Its Schools: The Social and Political Milieu (Materials on Vedic Sakhas, 8), in Inside the Texts, Beyond the Texts. New Approaches to the Study of the Vedas, ed. M. Witzel, Harvard Oriental Studies, Opera Minora, vol. 2, Cambridge 1997, pp. 257-345, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. and of Old India as such (2003, reprint 2010).
Pre-Vedic substrate languages of Northern India The linguistic aspect of earliest Indian history has been explored in a number of papers (1993, 1999,Michael Witzel, Aryan and Non-Aryan Names in Vedic India. Data for the Linguistic Situation, c. 1900-500 B.C., in J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande, eds., Aryans and Non-Non-Aryans, Evidence, Interpretation, and Ideology, Cambridge (Harvard Oriental Series, Opera Minora 3), 1999, pp. 337-404, pdf, accessed September 21, 2007Michael Witzel, Early Sources for South Asian Substrate Languages, Mother Tongue, special issue (October 1999): 1-70, pdf, accessed September 13, 2007. 2000, 2001, 2006,South Asian agricultural vocabulary. In: T. Osada (ed.). Proceedings of the Pre-Symposium of RHIN and 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Round Table. Published by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RHIN), Kyoto, Japan 2006: 96-120 2009)The linguistic history of some Indian domestic plants Journal of Biosciences Dec. 2009, 829-833 ias.ac.in uas.ac.in dealing with the pre-Vedic substrate languages of Northern India. These result in a substantial amount of loan words from a prefixing language ("Para-Munda") similar to but not identical with Austroasiatic (Munda, Khasi, etc.) as well as from other unidentified languages. In addition, a considerable number of Vedic and Old Iranian words are traced back to a Central Asian substrate language (1999, 2003, 2004, 2006).Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia. Philadelphia: Sino-Platonic Papers 129, Dec. 2003 This research is constantly updated, in collaboration with F. Southworth and D. Stampe, by the SARVA project including its South Asian substrate dictionary.
Comparative mythology In recent years, he has explored the links between old Indian, Eurasian and other mythologies (1990,Michael Witzel, Kumano.kara Woruga.made ("From Kumano to the Volga"), Zinbun 36, Kyoto 1990, pp. 4-5, in Japanese, accessed September 21, 2007. 2001–2010)Comparison and Reconstruction : Language and Mythology. Mother Tongue VI 2001, 45-62 Vala and Iwato. The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan and beyond. EJVS 12-1, (March 1, 2005), 1-69 Out of Africa: the Journey of the Oldest Tales of Humankind. In: Generalized Science of Humanity Series, Vol. I. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2006: 21-65 Slaying the dragon across Eurasia. In: Bengtson, John D. (ed.) In Hot Pursuit of Language in Prehistory. Essays in the four fields of anthropology. In honor of Harold Crane Fleming. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin's Publishing Company 2008: 263-286Chuo Ajia Shinwa to Nihon Shinwa [Central Asian Mythology and Japanese Mythology; in Japanese], Annual Report of the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University. Heisei 21, (Sept. 2009), 85-96Releasing the Sun at Midwinter and Slaying the Dragon at Midsummer: A Laurasian Myth Complex. In: Cosmos. The Journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society, 23, 2007 , 203-2443. Pan-Gaean Flood Myths: Gondwana myths – and beyond. In: New Perspectives on Myth. Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference of the International Association for Comparative Mythology, Ravenstein (The Netherlands) August 19–21, 2008, ed. W. J.M. van Binsbergen and Eric Venbrux. PIP-TraCS No. 5, Haarlem 2010: 225-242. Shamanism in Northern and Southern Asia: Their distinctive methods of change of consciousness. Social Sciences Information/Information sur les sciences sociales 50 (1) March 2011 (Paris): 2011: 39-61, cf.: resulting in a new scheme of historical comparative mythology that covers most of Eurasia and the Americas ("Laurasia", cf. the related Harvard, Kyoto, Beijing, Edinburgh, Ravenstein (Netherlands), Tokyo, Strasbourg, St.Petersburg, Tübingen, Yerevan conferences of IACM). This approach has been pursued in a number of papers.Vala and Iwato. The Myth of the Hidden Sun in India, Japan and beyond EJVS 12-1, (March 1, 2005), 1-69Creation myths. In: T. Osada (ed.), Proceedings of the Pre-Symposium of RHIN and 7th ESCA Harvard-Kyoto Round Table. Published by the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RHIN), Kyoto, Japan 2006: 284-318Out of Africa: the Journey of the Oldest Tales of Humankind. In: Generalized Science of Humanity Series, Vol. I. Tokyo: Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 2006: 21-65Myths and Consequences. Review of Stefan Arvidsson, Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. (Chicago University Press 2006). Science, vol. 317, September 28, 2007, 1868-1869 (Manuscript Number: 1141619). sciencemag.org A book published in late 2012, The Origins of the World's Mythologies,The Origins of the World's Mythologies. Oxford University Press deals with the newly proposed method of historical comparative mythology at length; (for scholarly criticism see and for periodic updates see) It has been called a magnum opus, which should be taken seriously by social anthropologists, and was praised by professor of Sanskrit Frederick Smith, who wrote that
Bruce Lincoln concluded that Witzel in this publication theorizes "in terms of deep prehistory, waves of migration, patterns of diffusion, and contrasts between the styles of thought/narration he associates with two huge aggregates of the world's population [which] strikes me as ill-founded, ill-conceived, unconvincing, and deeply disturbing in its implications."
Criticism of "Indigenous Aryans"