B. K. Thapar

Bal Krishen Thapar (18 October 1921 – 6 September 1995) was an Indian archaeologist who served as the Director-general of the Archaeological Survey of India from 1978 to 1981. He was the founder of INTACH.

Quotes

• The archaeological and the anthropological evidences, represented by the various culture- groups of the second millennium B.C., are inconsistent with the philological evidence. Even the archaeological and anthropological evidences have been found to vary from region to region—Anatolia, northern Iraq, northern Iran, Soviet Central Russia, Swat valley and Gandhara region or Pakistan and Ganga-Yamuna doab. . . . It is obvious, therefore, that there was no single culture associated with the Aryans in all these regions. . . . Are we to assume that the Aryans were migrants with no defined culture but with adherence to a linguistic equipment?
  • B. K. Thapar (1970), 160, in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• As far as Thapar and Rahman (1996) are concerned, there is nothing "to show that the Indo-Aryan peoples possessed a specific material culture, special pottery, or particular figurines that would enable us to establish some kind of identification marks for their migration" (1996, 277).
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10
  • Thapar, B. K., and Abdul Rahman. 1996. "The Post-Indus Cultures." In History of Humanity (I-.266-219). Ed. A. H. Dani and J. P. Mohen. Paris: Routledge