‘Yājñavalkya, a Vedic sage, taught his wife Maitreyī’ : Brhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (BĀU) 2.4.12, 4.5.15 as translated by Olivelle, Patrick. 1996, 1998. Upaniṣads. Translated from the Original Sanskrit. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 30, 71. I shall make frequent use of this excellent book and refer to it simply as ‘Olivelle.’—I have added ‘of specifics’ for clarity (shown by the context).—‘Yājñavalkya was a native of Kosala’ and ‘the eastern fringe of the Vedic area’: Witzel 1997: 313–15.—Witzel, Michael. 2003. ‘Yājñavalkya as ritualist and philosopher, and his personal language,’ in Adhami, S. (ed.), Paitimāna. Essays in Iranian, Indo-European, and Indian Studies in Honor of Hanns-Peter Schmidt. Vols I–II. Casta Mesa CA: Mazda Publishers, 2003, pp. 103–143, goes much deeper into the different personalities of Yājñavalkya, his ideas, style and personal language. #91.
Figures 1 and 2: Witzel 1989, Maps 100, 114. Figure 3: Schwartzberg 1978: Plate II.3(c).—‘Schwartzberg devotes two sentences to them’: Schwartzberg, p. 158.
‘What these symbols are and what they are not’ : Farmer and Witzel 2000: 4; Farmer, Sproat and Witzel 2004.
‘Romila Thapar summarizes: “They could have been”’ : Thapar 2002: 84.
‘Mitanni Vedic’ : Rad und Wagen. Kikkuli: Raulwing and Meyer 2004 provides the most recent and extensive information.
‘Much more careful recent investigations’ : Carvalho-Silva c.s. 2006; Sengupta c.s. 2006.
‘In due course, Vasiṣṭha became the domestic priest who was the victor in the War of the Ten Kings’ : Dandekar 1997: 45, Witzel 1997: 263.
‘Light horse chariots with spoked wheels replaced traditional carts … pulled by oxen’ : Rad und Wagen 2004, especially Kenoyer, Jonathan Mark. 2006. ‘Cultures and Societies of the Indus Tradition’ in India: Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan. Delhi: National Book Trust, pp. 41–97; Levine etc. 2003. Anthony 1995, 1998 is not only earlier but more general and speculative.—‘It happened in most of these places … in China slightly later’: Lubotsky 1998 and Mair 2003, both extremely informative.—‘What about actual numbers of people?’: Thapar 2002: 53.
‘Their relatedness was discovered by Sir William Jones’ : quoted or referred to in many histories of India and other general sources. The original address was delivered in 1786 to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. Contrary views, now less common, are discussed with respect to a telling case: Hock 1999. More independent and original views on Jones’ views on history, politics, poetics, aesthetics, and other topics: Mukherjee, S.N. 2002. Citizen Historian: Explorations in Historiography. Kolkata: Subarnarekha.
‘The BMAC or “Bactrian-Margiana Archaeological Complex”’ : Hiebert, F.T. and C.C. Lamberg-Karlovski. 1992. ‘Central Asia and the Indo-Iranian Borderlands,’ Iran: 1–15; Sergent 1997: 151–79 (informative but to be read with some caution); Mair 1998 (especially Hiebert), Lubotsky 2001, Staal 1999: 120–1 with further references, 2000; Witzel 1999a with summary on p. 390; 1999b: 16–8, 2000. Speculative but by the original excavator: Sarianidi, Victor. 1998. Margiana and Protozoroastrism. Athens: Kapon Editions. BMAC in a wider context: Jarrige 1985.
‘About 300 words that occur in the Rigveda … come from elsewhere’ : Kuiper 1991 and quotes in previous note.—‘Many come from Munda … or Proto-Munda. It accounts for words starting with ka-, ku-, ki-’: Witzel 1999b: 10.—
‘Madhav Deshpande has shown how such contacts’ : Deshpande 1999.
‘The Tarim Mummies’ : Mair 1998 I-II.
‘There are many arguments to show that Tocharian’ : section on linguistics in Mair I, 1998: 307–534, especially Hemp; Lubotsky 1998, 2001; Parpola 1998; Pinnault 1998, 2002.
‘Samarkand … a city with which Xuanzang or Hiuan-Tsang … fell in love’ : most recently Sen 2005, Chapter 8 which refers to the main sources.
‘Along the southern branch, a series of finds … leads to Khotan’ : Stein, M. Aurel. 1907, 1975. Ancient Khotan. Detailed Report on Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan. Oxford: Clarendon and New York: Hacker Art Books. ‘The conclusion at which we are arriving … about the Soma, a rare hallucinogenic plant’: Wasson: 1968: 23 etc., including pp. 93–147 by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, ‘The Post-Vedic History of the Soma Plant.’—‘The best Soma comes from Mount Mujavat’: Witzel 1999a: 344–5, 363 and several other publications from 1980 (‘Early Eastern Iran and the Atharvaveda,’ Persica, 16–7, 104).
‘It implies that speakers of Indo-Aryan … passed through the Pamirs’ : Curzon, George N. 1896. The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus. London: The Royal Geographical Society. By the later Viceroy who walked there in his younger years; still very useful. ‘The effects of ingesting those plants were slight’: Flattery and Schwartz 1989: 35.
‘This explains that horses … crossed the Bolan Pass and reached Pirak and Kachi’ : Jarrige 1985, 1979.