Contents: Introduction. 1. Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rgveda. 2. Vedic religio-philosophical thought. 3. Diffusion of Indo-European Theonyms: what they show us. 4. Rigvedic Pur. 5. Samudra in the Rgveda. 6. Anatolian bull and Vedic horse in the Indo-European diffusion. 7. Vedic and Mesopotamian cross influences. 8. Vedic and Egyptian affinities. 9. Indo European linguistics and Indo-Aryan indigenism. 10. The "Mainstream Model". Bibliography. Index. 

"This book contains studies by a well known Greek Indologist who repeatedly considers the thorny problem of Indo-Aryan origins and finds its solution in indigenism. The studies examine various aspects of the Indo-European common heritage and of the Vedic tradition. One study analyses the position of the early Hittite Culture in relation to the other IE Branches and especially Vedic. Another traces the common names of deities in the different IE Cultures. Two studies compare Vedic and Mesopotamian and Vedic and Egyptian interconnections respectively. Others examine purely Vedic issues like the religio-philosophical thought in the Vedas and the real meaning of the words pur 'defensive structure' and samudra 'confluence of waters, ocean'. In all these studies the Vedic inheritance emerges as the oldest of all IE traditions, older than even the Near eastern cultures; the bulk of the Rgveda hymns appear to have been composed in the Fourth Millennium; and the Indo-Aryans are shown to have been residing in North-West India (and Pakistan) since about 5000 BCE. The writer arrives at these conclusions by examining and comparing evidences from the linguistic, literary, anthropological and archaeological fields (and from Genetics)." (jacket)