Aryan Invasion/migration Theories & Debates -2

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-26-2007, 08:46 PM by Husky.)

Not the Oryans/IEs again. Not interested anymore. But I've something to remark on this bit:
QUOTE(acharya @ May 25 2007, 06:05 AM)What is wrong with this

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEEg..,
"Navagathe" in Sanskrit is "Navigation" in English[right][snapback]69305[/snapback][/right]</div>Ummmm, though I'd never taken Latin myself, it doesn't take a genius to guess that Navigation came from French (and hence Latin) into English. And since guessing isn't worth anything, I looked it up in my 'The Concise Oxford Dictionary' (are they kidding by the way - what do they mean with 'concise'? It's so heavy and bulky that it could be used as a fatal weapon in evil but capable hands).
Anyway, this dictionary happens to be more useful in that it gives the etymology of words. And for Navigate it says:
QUOTE[f. L navigare (navis ship, agere drive) + -ATE]Expanding this, it says "from Latin navigare (navis ship, agere drive) + -ATE"
Hence navigate. (For Navigation it gives a similar, but with intermediate in French before the word made it into English, and refers back to the entry for Navigate.)

Who is that comedian who wrote that the word was English? Yes, 'navigate' and related 'navigation' can be found in use in English today. But no, it's not of English origin, because when the English language was formed in the 5th or 6th century, much of French (and hence Latin influence) entered into it. Here's a well-known useful rule of thumb that the comedian in question apparently doesn't know: by far most words ending on -tion came from French and in turn they all generally tend to come from Latin, because of course French is a Romance language and all Romance languages came from - as the name 'Romance' indicates - the Romans. So we're not talking about just any old Italic, but Latin in particular.
Most of the language of the people who were living in present-day France was long ago emptied of Gallic/Gaulish - Romans actively did that.

What next? Does the guy who compared Samskritam navgatih (sp?) with 'English' navigation also plan to spring this one on us: Cadeau/kado in Dutch matches 'magically' with cadeau in French? <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /> Why not? It's the same logic and degree of analysis, after all.

My question: what did the Anglo-Saxons call the action of 'navigation' before they got the word from Latin? No takers? Dommage. Well, the IEs are still waiting in that space between eternal fiction and a possible theory then... Someone sympathetic to their plight has to seriously consider helping them to finally be birthed or dismiss their foggy illusion once and for all. No need to leave the poor IEs hanging in eternal limbo in lalaland.

Sorry Acharya, I quit reading that writer's excerpt you posted after the navigation thing. I couldn't take him seriously after this blunder of blunders. Where did he/she/it get that 'info' from anyway? My guess: wackypedia.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 05-27-2007, 08:26 AM by Bodhi.)

QUOTE[f. L navigare (navis ship, agere drive) + -ATE]

Husky,
Latin navis in Sanskrit is nau (Hindi naav)
Another similar meaning and sounding word: Boat - pot in Sanskrit.
coincidence?

added later: (having asked above, I am not agreeing to the rest of what that person wrote. Just wondering about the similarity. 'Navy' in indic is Nau)

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-27-2007, 07:32 PM by Husky.)

I didn't make it absolutely clear in my earlier post what I was commenting on and what I was not commenting on.
QUOTE(Bodhi @ May 27 2007, 07:31 AM)Latin navis in Sanskrit is nau (Hindi naav)
Another similar meaning and sounding word: Boat - pot in Sanskrit.
coincidence?

added later: (having asked above, I am not agreeing to the rest of what that person wrote.Â Just wondering about the similarity.Â 'Navy' in indic is Nau)
[right][snapback]69381[/snapback][/right]Bodhi, I'm not saying that Latin and Greek on one hand and Avestan and Samskritam on the other don't have a number of basic words in common. They certainly do. Just a few examples: Latin Pater and Mater - S Pita and Mata, Greek Mega and S Maha. From the L or G is derived biped/quadruped and the like, compare this with Pada in S. Same with dental-related words, S dantam. These are some of the examples I can think of.

I'm not saying that the common sounding words are coincidence either (though a few odd ones may be, perhaps). However, we don't know factually what the relationship is or how it came to be. There are some theories - especially a popular one, IE - but that's all they can remain at present: theories.

My point in post 121 was that the presence of the word 'navigation' in English is not due to some ancient 'IE' link as someone claimed, but has come from the easily traceable introduction of the word into the language from Latin. (That is, it is known that the etymology of the English word navigation is wholly derived from Latin via French. There is no Anglo-Saxon/Germanic cognate mentioned - something that that dictionary always gives where it is known.)
That person whose statement (in #120) I remarked on in #121, used this as an 'example' of a supposed cognate between Samsritam and English - to serve as his 'proof' of the grand IE theory - when his example (navigation) is known to not even be authentically Anglo-Saxon/English to begin with, but borrowed from elsewhere! How then does this support IE in any way? All it 'proves' is that this word, like many another in English, is derived from Latin. And that was already known. It therefore comfirms nothing about any Germanic branch of the alleged IE family, in spite of that person's intentions in bringing the non-example up. And there is no IE family without including all the branches - not just Latin, Greek, Iranian and 'Indo-Aryan'.

The question of how L, G and S, A have so many basic words in common - in some form or another - remains, of course. People have been blind-sided by the IE theory, so they're not looking into simpler possibilities for this. It could merely be trade or other relations. Such relations certainly existed between Rome, Greece, Persia, India (RP, GP, RI, GI).
Another possibility could be that it's due to some population movements from regions that were geographically closer to each other in the past: Romans claimed to have come from Troy (located in Greece's Anatolia, in the region now called Turkey). That's quite close enough to Persia and the Afghan frontier.
IE is not the only explanation, but it's the only one the west wants to consider.

Long ago, under whatever circumstances, people of different language backgrounds but living in sufficient geographical proximity could well have started using basic words from other languages. Words for everyday things would be the first ones to be adopted. Likewise, technical or other field-specific words, for which one language does not yet have its own, would also be incorporated from another. Under certain economic or political systems, people might have found it expedient to use others' vocabulary: for reasons of bartering, buying, co-existing. Who knows.
See post 9 of IEL thread for convergence theory and trade example.

I have a very simple example from the present times that models part of such a situation as sketched above. Many Indians today, as Bharatvarsh and others discussed elsewhere, speak Hinglish, Tenglish, Tamglish or whatever. Look at the kind of English words they tend to use when supposedly speaking in their own language: they include common words and technical words. You can even hear people occasionally say mother, father, certainly aunt(y) and uncle. Room, foot, tooth, doctor, school, train, car, bus, medicine....
Is this because Hindi, Telugu and Tamil on one hand and English on the other are related by a common linguistic ancestor? Or is it because Indians met the English language in recent times and due to some economic-political reasons, Indians adopted English words into their languages?
But this is not only India. Even the Dutch have been doing the same: many French and even English words have made it into their vocabulary now, such as shampoo, bureau, champagne, computer (from French compter to English computer to Dutch computer). I can tell you these words entered Dutch much later than the time when Dutch was finally formed as its own language in the middle-ages (about the 11th century according to what I learnt at school). There is no need to trace these things to some mythical PIE or whatever, when it is known that these words were introduced recently. It's because of certain trade relations or the borrowing of technical words from another language - as is happening often with English words these days.

Likewise, we know when and how English words were introduced into Indian speech (= in the colonial era), because it is part of recorded history. But history from longer back has passed by mostly unrecorded. And even whatever historical information might remain may merely have captured the presence of certain words in some language(s) then in use, but from which records it is not possible to definitely ascertain the direction or means of transfer.

It's not that there are no words in common between S, A and L, G. It's that we don't know how they came to be in common. Only IE is currently allowed to explain it at all. But I find IE to be highly speculative - often basing itself on very few facts and indications (see as an example the para just below) - when it's not an outright racist sham. And while people are still preoccupied/in love with IE, no one is looking into what other causes for the similarities in vocabulary there might be.
Naturally, we must allow for another possibility: that we may in fact never find out what happened. (But this is of course of no moment to IE Studies or indologicals. For them, the less known about the past the better, as more of it can then be left to their happy giddy speculation!)

Something I found.
Very little is actually known about the origins of many Germanic languages - see an example of how much is built on the assumption of IE:
http://www.livius.org/dutchhistory/language.html
QUOTEBefore the beginning of our era, the people between the rivers Somme (in northern France) and Weser (in northern Germany) spoke an archaic Indo-European language that modern linguists call 'Belgian' or the 'North-West Block language'. Hardly anything is known about it, but ancient toponyms and the names of a deity like Nehallenia allow us to catch a glimpse of its vocabulary. Because certain characteristic traits of the Celtic languages appear to have been absent from Belgian, it can be assumed that this ancient language branched off from a proto-language in the first half of the first millennium BCE, if not earlier.Maybe I am missing something here. But how can it be assumed these people spoke an "archaic IE language" when "hardly anything is known about it" but some "ancient toponyms" and the names of (one or more) deities? Supposedly just enough to allow people to "catch a glimpse of its vocabulary". Swell.
QUOTEToponym: 'toponym n. name of, or designating, a place; name derived from a place- name. toponymic, a. toponymics n. study of place-names. toponymy, n. region's place-names.'So practically all they have remaining of the Belgian/NW Block language is placenames and deity name(s). And yet they just know it was IE, because the Belgians are IE because the Belgian language is IE. Proof by Circular Reasoning - the only kind accepted in IE Studies. Now we know it's IE, the rest of the long-gone language can be reconstructed from PIE and then the similarities that result will finally prove that the 'NW Block language' was IE! <!--emo& Wink

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' />

**acharya** · 05-27-2007, 10:13 PM

Can somebody explain this

QUOTE
As we see the language is well documented to be of common source. So if the language where Common why cant the faith and God also have been common? If man knew how to talk then he also knew how to worship.

If Aryans had a similar sounding language then why not a similar sounding God? Was this God really a God or a man pointing to the self? To my understanding he should have been someone like the Buddha, enlightened man. The sentence I am that I am is only a pointer to the self that showing truth is in you or "though are that."

If a single language and a single people could become so disconnected and different over the years then their God also shared the same fate. In the end a simple thing as showing the self has taken a long turn to become something else.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 06-01-2007, 08:13 AM by Bodhi.)

First of all this question - of common root words - between L, G, A, and S is certainly one profound (and as of yet unresolved and unknown) link of history.

Can something take the importance away from philology?

We can probably make a case for/against the prevailing paradigm of philological fundaments; however, can we also argue about its importance and potential contribution to the knowledge about human history?

From anthropologic sense, Language is certainly a key to demystifying the secrets of the civilizational origins. Beyond word-root analysis too, one needs to analyse philosophies, practices, rituals, folk-lores, folt-arts, outlook, traditional sense of history. These can not be underestimated, although they are not science in the same sense as some other disciplines that will contribute to this subject : bio-genetics, archaeo-hydrology etc.

Coming back to the question of common root-words.

I agree, one needs to use careful discretion about the common words. Not all common (sounding and meaning) words mean really common words. Also I agree there can be various, very plausible, root cause for the commonness - viz. trade, human interaction/influence, knowledge-body-import. Each case of different common word would probably require analysing for different causes.

We can probably break down the common sounding+meaning words by domain, for this.

A) Skill and Trade related
Terminology related to a technology has got to be imported, along with the technology itself. It is very true today, when we have an explosion of technology. It could have been true always - I can not think of any plausible reason to opine otherwise.

So, the technical/knowledge/trade/skill words belong to where that knowledge was first created.

Let us first examine this before accepting.

A.1) Mathematics 
We do know now, that several of the mathematical concepts originated in India, thereby the Sanskrit terminology for this subject was imported by Europe.

A.1a) Numbers
Although names of the numbers must have predated the knowledge of mathematics, we don't have to document it here. Well-known fact that the terms of numbers (Ek, Dwi, Tri..Nava) are the roots of the numbers of L and G

A.1b) Geometry
S JyAmiti - G/L geo-metria
S jyA (earth) - G/L Geo
S miti - L metricus G metria (to measure) - metre, metric, meter
S koNa (angle) - L/G -gona (trikoNa - trigon ; ashtakoNa - octagon; saptakoNa - heptagon)
Long List really...

A.2) Philosophy
S Atm (indivisible existance) - L atomus, G atomos (Atom came from)
S jIv (individual lifeform) - L/G zo/zoa (zoo came from)
S daiv (Gods) - L dei/deus, G theo (Devine, theology came from)
S jan (birth) - L/G gen (genetic came from)
S mArt/mrityu (death) - mort (mortal came from)
S manas (mind) - L/G men (mental came from)
S vid (vision) - L/G visio, vidio (video, vidya and veda come from the same origin!)
Long list too...

A.3) Transportation
S nau (sea-related) - L navis
S pot (any float) - Boat from Anglo/Saxon bot
S pattan (port) - L portus
S vahan/vAhan (carrier/vehicle) - L vehiculum/vehere
S vihara (to wander) - L vehere
S ramaNa (to roam) - E Roam, middle Eng. romen
Long List...will come back later - so mny vast fields - Mechanics/Astronomy/Chemistry/Metallurgy

Now above can be somewhat explained that the technology exchange resulted in word exchange. Let us move on to other domains.

B) Human Anatomy
S dant (teeth) - L/G dent
S aksha (eye) - old English eage
S nAsA (nose) - L/G nas (nasal came from)
S pAda (feet) - L/G pede (centipede came from)
S nakha (nail) - L/G/old English nogh/noegl
S hArd/hrid (heart) - Old English heorte, L/G card (cardic came from)
S nAdi (nerve) - Fr nerf L nervus
S sved - sweat

C) Human Emotions
S trAs (trgic) - L tragicus, G tragos
S mod (happy) - L moedia, G midia (from which comedy and comedian came)
S hat (hurt) - Ger/Fr/Eng hurt (also physical injury)
can not think of more right now...maybe later

D) Human Relations
Ah this we know well...
S pitar - L/G peter (to father)
S mAtar - L/G mater (to mother)
S bhrAtar - L/G (what exactly)
vedic S swasAr (sister) - Norse systir - what is it in L/G
S mitr - Germ. mate

E) Inside the house
S dhAm (home) - L/G dome (domestic came from)
S dwAr (door) - unknown beginning in europe, but many have dor, duru, door
deshaj kamara (room) - L camara - G kamara (chamber came from)
S upari (upwards) - Upper
S attAlikA (roof/balcony/upper story) - L atticus (attic came from)

F) food
S Sarkar (sugar)
S pippali (pepper)
S vanaspat (vegetation) - ? L vegetus (vegetarian came from)
(above must be trade-related)

G) Creatures
S manav - man
S ulook (owl) - old English ole (imitative by sound of the creature, so can be a parallel development)
S swAn (dog) - L/G cyon
S sarp (snake) - Latin serpens (serpent came from)
S mUSa (mouse) - Old English moos (deshaj, it became 'moos' too! - as in the name of 'moosAhAr' tribe)

S maSaka (mosquito) - Latin musca, arrived in English through Spanish/Portugese derivative

H) Coulors
S pita (yellow) - pale
S pinkara - pink/red
S bhru ? - brown

I) Others
S mardan - Ger. murder
S dAn (giving away) - L donti donre (donation came from)
S laksha/locha/loka (see/look) - Old English locian (deshaj became 'lakha' as in 'Bharee Sarai Rahim Lakhi, Pathik Aap Phir Jae')
S vAcha/vAka - L vocalis - (voice, vocal and vocabulary are from the same mother as vachan, vAk-patu and vAchaspati)
S ant - end
S madhya - mid
S sthit - state/status

List is long, really long. Some of the words are so easily traceable and identifiable, and at the same time very hard to imagine to have been adopted inorganically.

I think, we can not write off philology as a source of anthopological historical analysis, but rather utilize it to turn the tables on AIT. I agree, AIT can not be the only theory to explain this, but also 'mutual-neighborly-influence' or trade-relations, alone is not plausible.

Anyways, I wish we can document a comprehensive listing of Sanskrit origin words which are in common use in English of today, irrespective of how it reached there i.e. through Fr/ger/L/G/ etc. Does some one know such a list? Also some of the above may be wrong too. Please do point. I intend to update above list as and when something else comes to mind, or pointed.

05-28-2007, 04:24 AM

http://www.svabhinava.org/AITvsOIT/index.php

Some historians say that IE people came from Sinthashta culture from caspian sea,betwin 2200-1400 bc.At that time Europe had a population of 5-7 milion and India 10 milion,while central asia had 2 milion people.So at best this Sinthashta culture had (generous asumption) 0,5 milion people.So this 0.5 milion impose their language over an least 17 milion people.Can you belive this???

A linguist(his name Sorin Oltean) say to me that what matter is from which language family are the words which are use most frecvently in common speech ,the so call core words.
For exemple in hungarian,only 21% of vocabulary is finnic but this words are use whit 90% frecvency in daily speech.So hungarian is a finnic language.

And the similarites of grammatical laws betwin IE languages are so big that cant be a coincidence.While words can travel whit some ease ,the grammar change much harder.
A family language develop on a relatively small area(1000km at best),and usualy the hunther gatherers have a huge number of family languages(amerindians from USA have over 21,compare whit only 6 in europe,and same is the case in Papua-Guineea).
We have the an exemple of austronesian ,also spread on huge distances ,but this is easy to explaind,because it was a simple replace of hunthers whit farmers from southeast asia.And farmers are 10 times more numerous then animal raisers and 100 times more then hunther-gatherers!!!!!

Diferent case is whit IE where 2 regions(India and Europe) are already inhabited by numerous farming population(population of India in 1500BC is estimated at 10 milions and Europe at 5-7milion) and recent genetic show clearly that it wasnt any replace of human population in theese areas from any direction to another.

So no matter from which direction came the original IE people ,they was a minority among the natives and somehow impose their language over a (probably20 times) biger population then them selfs.A so call case of elite domination.More lands was propose as original homeland-Anatolia,Kashmir(India),central asia etc.In any model ,genetic dont suport any large replace of human population.
Some propose the multi wave theory-meaning that some wariors concore a land and convert let say 5 times more numeros natives to their languages.These natives aquiring war like atributes of their concorers and start them selfs to concore new lands.Like romans concore numerous etruscans and impose their language over them,while they adopted etruscan culture for them selfs.

In Europe can be trace a couple of invasions from Ukraine steppe (in 3500 bc,3000bc,2600bc,1800bc),which destroy the advance neolithic culture ,leading these land in small periods of dark ages.But no such distructions are found in India.Even the war betwin dasa and arya was interpreted as aryan defeating the dasa then moving to India.The arheologic Bactria -Margiana complex show sings of distruction but no signs of destruction are found in India.also this can be intrepreted that aryans are original from India and defeat the iranian(?) dasa.

Usualy IE people in Europe can be trace as having a eastern origin.Greek tradition say that they came from the north(the elite came from north or eastern steppe),celts trace them selfs as coming from cimerians(Ukraine),germans spoke of some getae origin(Jats?),Romans trace them selfs to TroY(Turkey).

dhu · 05-28-2007, 10:20 PM

QUOTE(acharya @ May 27 2007, 10:13 PM)Can somebody explain this

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE
As we see the language is well documented to be of common source. So if the language where Common why cant the faith and God also have been common? If man knew how to talk then he also knew how to worship.

If Aryans had a similar sounding language then why not a similar sounding God? Was this God really a God or a man pointing to the self? To my understanding he should have been someone like the Buddha, enlightened man. The sentence I am that I am is only a pointer to the self that showing truth is in you or "though are that."

If a single language and a single people could become so disconnected and different over the years then their God also shared the same fate. In the end a simple thing as showing the self has taken a long turn to become something else.
[right][snapback]69404[/snapback][/right]
</div>

It is a project of modernism wherein the Sovereign Lord has been replaced by a mutitude of secular Human sovereigns. Buddhism with its empahsis on self is a key ingredient that needs to be appropraited at all costs. Underlying everything is the biblical need to justify diversity whereas diversity is the default mode of the universe.

dhu · (This post was last modified: 05-29-2007, 09:14 AM by dhu.)

thanks to farmboy for the link

QUOTEClimate Spurred Later Indus Change
by Andrew Lawler (Science)

Climate change is not just for us moderns. Four millennia ago, a pronounced dry spell settled over much of western Asia, stressing the young Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations. But archaeologists have puzzled over the fact that the Indus River civilization, centered in what is now India and Pakistan, was at its height during
this time.

Now a team made up of a climate modeler, a geologist, and an archaeologist say they have solid evidence about how climate affectedIndus society. They suggest that the Indus people were able to adapt to the immediate climate change, but that resultant shifts in vegetation and landscape eventually set the culture on a slow course of decline. âHow people coped varied region to region,â says Yale University archaeologist Harvey Weiss, who is not part of the effort. Weiss argues that the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia collapsed as a result of the dramatic drought that affected societies from Ireland to China.

Previous researchers depended primarily on cores from off the coast of Pakistan and other regional data to understand climate change in the Indus region. But the team also drew on data collected between 1996 and 2001 at the ancient mound of Harappa, one of the principal cities of the Indus, and its immediate neighboring areas. By 2600 B.C.E., Harappa was a thriving urban center. But starting at about 1900 B.C.E.â2 or 3 centuries after the drying period to the westâthe city and nearby settlements began to lose population. By 1600 B.C.E., people appear to have abandoned their towns and moved north.

The researchers fed information from the soil samples, plus data from other sources such as Arabian Sea cores, into a climate model developed by Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The resulting curve for rainfall shows that for a millennium leading up to the Indusâs peak, rainfall patternsâwinter rains and the summer monsoonâremained remarkably stable. That changed dramatically in the same period that drought afflicted Mesopotamia. âThey went out of kilter,â says Joseph Schuldenrein, who runs Geoarchaeology Research Associates, a Riverdale, New Yorkâbased consulting firm. Winter rains increased, but the monsoon became undependableâa pattern that continued for some 6 centuries. The result shows that the climate event did indeed affect the Indus region, says Weiss, although he has
not yet seen the detailed data.

But the rainfall change did not spark a sudden collapse in Indus settlements, notes New York University archaeologist Rita Wright, who is part of the team. âAs these changes occurred, it is clear that the Harappans were experimenting with new cropping patternsâ to cope, for example by planting summer crops such as millet twice a season.

In the long run, however, their adaptation apparently failed, perhaps due to a lag time in the impact of the climate change, the researchers say. Vegetation and the landscape around the areaâs rivers slowly transformed, as plants vanished and rivers shifted course, according to geomorphological data the team gathered in the Harappa area. Those changes, rather than the change in rainfall per se, likely played a critical role in the move north, says Schuldenrein. The Indus experience may hold a lesson for today. âVery large climatic changes can happen within a century,â points out Bryson. And the success with which societies cope may depend on local impactsâand how adaptable the locals prove to be.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 05-30-2007, 01:50 AM by Bodhi.)

in 125, updated with following:

S laksha/locha/loka (see/look) - Old English locian (deshaj became 'lakha' as in 'Bharee Sarai Rahim Lakhi Pathik Aap Phir Jae')
S mUSaka (mouse) - Old English moos (deshaj, it became 'moos' too! - as in the name of 'moosAhAr' tribe)
S maSaka (mosquito) - Latin musca, arrived in English through Spanish/Portugese derivative
S pattan (port) - L portus
S vahan/vAhan (carrier/vehicle) - L vehiculum/vehere
S vihara (to wander) - L vehere

dhu · 05-30-2007, 07:09 AM

QUOTE(Bodhi @ May 27 2007, 10:51 PM)I think, we can not write off philology as a source of anthopological historical analysis, but rather utilize it to turn the tables on AIT. I agree, AIT can not be the only theory to explain this, but also 'mutual-neighborly-influence' or trade-relations, alone is not plausible.
[right][snapback]69406[/snapback][/right]


I would not underestimate importance of trade. British Empire was nothing but a trade Empire. As Kalavai venkat has Shown, there are plenty of Indian Artifacts in the ME and neighboring environs, but near zero ME artifacts in India; this situation is indictiove of an extended and disproportionate Indic presence and influence in the ME. We also have late era specifically Indic spillover into ME and Pontic steppes regions; in contrast there is no Russian or german to be found in India or ME. See recent posts by one Vedaprakash on HC to realize full extent of Indic influnece in the "west". As pointed out beofre, the IEzation of Eurpe was an unintended consequence of Indic interaction with the ME.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 06-01-2007, 08:31 AM by Bodhi.)

dhu,
Completely agree. Trade is one very important factor. However we shall have to analyze howmuch of trade relation can influence the soceity in so much as to influence the very basic words. Let us consider today's North India, which has continuously been under the Persian/Arabic influence for at least 900 years. But still, beyond urbanized Hindi, the language of people is very much indigenous - beyond some minor obvious influence. In villages, you would still hear the words bhuin (bhumi) and not Zamin - loka/jaga and not duniya, parasiddha and not mashahoor. So if we are assuming that there was no organic relationship of Sanskrit with G and L, then there must be MASSIVE trade - to the proportions of colonialization and more - to have influenced those languages so much.

Meanwhile, added the following in 125:
S ramaNa (to roam) - E Roam, middle Eng. romen
S vAcha/vAka - L vocalis - (voice, vocal and vocabulary are from the same mother as vachan, vAk-patu and vAchaspati)
S ant - end
S madhya - mid
S sthit - state/status

Husky · (This post was last modified: 06-02-2007, 09:16 AM by Husky.)

In response to #125:

About Philology - I agree Bodhi that it could potentially be useful. I say 'could potentially' because of this:
Philology in general appears to identify similarities in languages and use some common sense in tracing out the shortest and most sensible route in which language transformations happened. Which is all good and well, but the problem is that in history things don't always happen either in the shortest or most sensible manner. So we don't know that the languages categorised as IE today evolved to reach their present forms in the manner that indological philologers have supposed (that is, that they underwent linguistic transformations in the order they propose nor even covered all intermediate transformations they suggest. As an analogy, imagine a documentary showing an ancient mammal morphing into another living in the present: not all intermediary forms need necessarily have existed nor even have been viable. A few could have, whereas others might have been unnecessary to the process of evolution. But even this analogy does not apply, because at least we have evidence of some mammalian ancestors, whereas there is none of PIE). More often than not, history is rather surprising, and there could have been roundabout events that we have no idea of - either because it was from a time before the written record or no records of such events have survived or been found - which resulted in the linguistic similarities that we see today. History, like the people who make it, bespeaks of many inexplicable events and motivations that we can't begin to guess at if we don't have any tangible communications preserved from those times to go by.

Where there are significant historical records remaining, we can use common sense and deduction to fill in the missing gaps - and so too, when we have a starting point, some middle points and an end point. Linguists can then approximate what linguistic transformations occurred and how they effected the changes we see. In such cases, there'd be the possibility that the theories and interpolations may be correct.
But with IE, the apparent gap representing the unknown makes up nearly the whole of the problem: we have neither the origins nor the progression - we only have the final result. That is, (1) we do not know what the initial situation(s) were that led to today's similarities between certain languages grouped as IE, (2) nor do we factually know what transformations from that point onwards actually took place and how they were applied to produce those similarities. Linguists have explained both with theoretical models - in fact, they've only come up with one major widely-accepted theoretical model which, most curiously of all, has the least external evidence to show in support of it. They are not willing to contemplate other ones, because PIE and IE have become 'gawd's-own truth'.

Such as it is, their theory explains only the linguistic observations (and there are even exceptions in the extent of the coverage thereof) and nothing else. Next to that, they keep changing their linguistic rules to fit with the trends in IE thought/fantasy of the times:
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=ajhwbk..._620hs8zfc
QUOTEI challenge anyone, any IEL expert or believer in PIEL to read aloud and create audio versions of the sample IEL text (many versions) of Schleicher's fable. It is about a goat, yes, goat referred to on an indology research list in excited terms. So much for IEL as evidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleicher%27s_fable
And here's what's at that wackypedia link mentioned above. Note how the original PIE reconstruction is quite close to Samskritam and how PIE has progressively changed to become rather like the non-existent, unrealistic intermediary-entities in a morphing simulation.
QUOTESchleicher's fable is a reconstructed text in Proto-Indo-European (PIE), published by August Schleicher in 1868. Schleicher was the first scholar to compose a text in PIE. The fable is entitled Avis akvasas ka ("The Sheep and the Horses"). Schleicher's reconstruction assumed that the o/e vocalism was secondary, and his PIE is much more closely based on Sanskrit than modern reconstructions.

Original text:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEAvis, jasmin varnÄ na Ä ast, dadarka akvams, tam, vÄgham garum vaghantam, tam, bhÄram magham, tam manum Äku bharantam. Avis akvabhjams Ä vavakat; kard aghnutai mai vidanti manum akvams agantam. AkvÄsas Ä vavakant: krudhi avai, kard aghnutai vividvant-svas: manus patis varnÄm avisÄms karnauti svabhjam gharmam vastram avibhjams ka varnÄ na asti. Tat kukruvants avis agram Ä bhugat.
A second version of the same tale was composed by Hermann Hirt in 1939.QUOTEOwis ekâwÅses-kÊ·e owis, jesmin wÑlÉnÄ ne Äst, dedorkâe ekâwons, tom, woghom gÊ·Ñrum weghontmÌ¥, tom, bhorom megam, tom, ghâÑmonmÌ¥ Åkâu bherontmÌ¥. owis ekâwomos ewÑwekÊ·et: kâÄrd aghnutai moi widontei ghâÑmonmÌ¥. ekâwons agâontmo . ekâwÅses ewÑwekÊ·ont: klâudhi, owei!, kâÄrd aghnutai vidontmos: ghâÑmo, potis, wÑlÉnÄm owjÃ´m kÊ·rÌ¥neuti sebhoi ghÊ·ermom westrom; owimos-kÊ·e wÑlÉnÄ ne esti. Tod kâekâruwos owis agârom ebhuget.
A third version was published by Winfred Lehmann and Ladislav Zgusta in 1979[1]:QUOTE[Gwrei] owis, kwesyo wlhna ne est, ekwons espeket, oinom ghe gwrum woghom weghontm, oinomkwe megam bhorom, oinomkwe ghmenm oku bherontm. Owis nu ekwobh(y)os ewewkwet: Ker aghnutoi moi ekwons agontm nerm widntei. Ekwos tu ewewkwont: Kludhi, owei, ker aghnutoi nsmei widntbh(y)os: ner, potis, owiom r wlhnam sebhi gwhermom westrom kwrneuti. Neghi owiom wlhna esti. Tod kekluwos owis agrom ebhuget.
A fourth version appears in the EIEC (1997:501).

English translation:

QUOTE[On a hill,] a sheep that had no wool saw horses, one of them pulling a heavy wagon, one carrying a big load, and one carrying a man quickly. The sheep said to the horses: "My heart pains me, seeing a man driving horses". The horses said: "Listen, sheep, our hearts pain us when we see this: a man, the master, makes the wool of the sheep into a warm garment for himself. And the sheep has no wool". Having heard this, the sheep fled into the plain.
Note that in the modernized version of "The Sheep and the Horses", a spelling convention is used which is different from the one introduced in the Proto-Indo-European language article: h and w are not superscripted to indicate aspiration and labialization. Also most laryngeals are omitted, and where given, the different laryngeals are not distinguished. The original version of "The Sheep and the Horses" uses Schleicher's spelling, which is influenced by Sanskrit, but uses j for y.
</div>Note how PIE - the language which IE studies and indologicals swear by - has changed radically. And it can keep changing forever: no one will ever find a fragment of parchment or a stone slab written in PIE, so they are free to change it as they wish without anyone being the wiser for it.

The last versions are like a ridiculous weighted average that makes no sense - and IMO another proof of why PIE is a figment of their evolving imagination and is unlikely to have ever existed (imagine taking a straightforward weighted average of all mammals to derive the appearance of the earliest mammalian ancestor - and in doing so, ignoring complex evolutionary events like possible bottlenecks and interspecies-competition along the way merely because we haven't yet discovered they happened).
The first one is manageable, at least. But can you imagine how any allegedly sensible (or even looney) people could have invented, let alone spoken, such languages as the subsequent reconstructions/guesses are? Such reconstructed PIEs are as likely to have existed as the original IE supermen who are imagined to have spoken them. Oh wait, the IE supermen population does exist today: the indologists. They ought to learn to converse in this language they have constructed, instead of inflicting the nonsense on others.
But based on the PIE reconstructions above, I suspect that IE linguists are just joking around and trying to see how gullible people are: how much nonsense people would be willing to put up with when it's called 'science'.

Linguistics could potentially be useful in filling in missing pieces of a historical record we largely know the main flow of. But it shouldn't be used as it is at present: creating a towering story based on a flimsy foundation. That is, for inventing an entire history using silent/non-indicative bits of data that can actually be construed in a myriad of ways (though it will necessarily only have one real explanation - which we may never discover). See the excerpts Rajesh_g posted in #125 of the Unmasking AIT thread and this excerpt from Lincoln (post 87):
QUOTEAll of these exercises in scholarship (=myth+footnotes) suffer from the same problem. They attempt to reach far back into prehistory that no textual sources are available to control the inquiry, but where archaeology offers a plethora of data. IN practice, all the remains found throughout Eurasia for a period of several millennia can be constituted as evidence from which to craft the final narrative, but it is often the researchers' desires that determine their principles of selection. When neither the data nor the criticism of one's colleagues inhibits desire-driven invention, the situation is ripe for scholarship as myth.And that is exactly what philology is today - in IE Studies certainly, but possibly in other areas of linguistics too.
I think the field of linguistics is itself a political tool that certain people will (and do) find useful to rewrite history with. But we don't want politics, we want facts.
Not even sure that linguistics can ever be used for unmotivated scholarship, I think it is such a loose methodology - when there's no large body of historic data to keep speculations bounded - that one can use it to find/create support for many points of view. That's not what we're looking for: not just any means to an end.
Until we get more information, people should be willing to say that they simply don't know either what happened or how things happened. And also admit we may never know (which is more difficult and certainly more annoying). IE linguists and indologicals won't admit these things of course, because it concerns the very field they're in.

**acharya** · 06-01-2007, 07:31 PM

Please emphasise this boldly

QUOTEI think the field of linguistics is itself a political tool that certain people will (and do) find useful to rewrite history with. But we don't want politics, we want facts.

Not even sure that linguistics can ever be used for unmotivated scholarship, I think it is such a loose methodology - when there's no large body of historic data to keep speculations bounded - that one can use it to find/create support for many points of view. That's not what we're looking for: not just any means to an end.

Until we get more information, people should be willing to say that they simply don't know either what happened or how things happened. And also admit we may never know (which is more difficult and certainly more annoying). IE linguists and indologicals won't admit these things of course, because it concerns the very field they're in.

**acharya** · 06-01-2007, 09:28 PM

QUOTE(dhu @ May 28 2007, 04:50 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(acharya @ May 27 2007, 10:13 PM)Can somebody explain this

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE
As we see the language is well documented to be of common source. So if the language where Common why cant the faith and God also have been common? If man knew how to talk then he also knew how to worship.

If Aryans had a similar sounding language then why not a similar sounding God? Was this God really a God or a man pointing to the self? To my understanding he should have been someone like the Buddha, enlightened man. The sentence I am that I am is only a pointer to the self that showing truth is in you or "though are that."

If a single language and a single people could become so disconnected and different over the years then their God also shared the same fate. In the end a simple thing as showing the self has taken a long turn to become something else.
[right][snapback]69404[/snapback][/right]
</div>

It is a project of modernism wherein the Sovereign Lord has been replaced by a mutitude of secular Human sovereigns. Buddhism with its empahsis on self is a key ingredient that needs to be appropraited at all costs. Underlying everything is the biblical need to justify diversity whereas diversity is the default mode of the universe.
[right][snapback]69461[/snapback][/right]
</div>

The note is a clever way to diffuse the information so that common things between two people are brought in show a common ancestry. Indians have been fooled and have blindly accepted this common ancestry without looking at the motivation and long term plan of the Europeans in this so called research.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 06-02-2007, 11:31 AM by Bodhi.)

132 (Husky):
QUOTEHistory, like the people who make it, bespeaks of many inexplicable events and motivations that we can't begin to guess at if we don't have any tangible communications preserved from those times to go by.

<!--emo& Smile

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' />

This reminds me of my long time favourite short story from Malgudi Days of R K Narayan. I forgot the title, but it was my favourite for a long time in the school days (until I was exposed to Yogendra Choudhury's Hindi translation of Satyajit Ray's Bangla short stories). I am sure you must have read this, but here is the gist - some details may be far from original, as memory serves.

It was about certain junior history-reasearch scholar from Madras University, who came to Malgudi in some connection. Once while taking bath in a pond, he hits upon a stone statue of a soldier. The statue seemed to be of antiquity, and very interesting by its appearance - one foot broken, an eye blackened, sword drawn etc. He does a lot of research, publishes several scholarly papers, submits a highly celebrated thesis, gets invited to foreign universities to deliver lectures, and within a couple of years, becomes famous for discovering the ancient Roman connections with Malgudi.

Having become a celebrity history scholar, he comes back to Malgudi a few years later, just to spend a vacation there. He goes back to the pond where he had found the statue. A drunkard meets him there and by some stroke of chance a strage conversation begins. Some remarks lead the preofessor to put it point-blank to the drukard, 'I am the one who discovered the Roman soldier of Malgudi'. One thing led to the other, and the drunkard starts asking him some trivial questions about the soldier. Did you find the soldier at 'this' spot, asks the drunk, showing the exact spot where he had actually found the statue. Bewildered, professor asks how he knew. Drunkard then leads him to a nearby small and out-of-repair temple, and narrates his own story.

The temple used to be a flourishing one, decades back, and the drunk used to be its priest. The then young priest somehow got into the drinking trait, and used to even come to the temple drunk. On the door, there were two stone dwaar-paalas on the either side of the entrance. In his guilt, he used to feel that one of them used to stare at him, point his sword at him and threaten him for drinking. One day, being angered, he took out a hammer and damaged the statue. Then, panicked that the villagers will catch him, he dragged the statue to the pond and buried it underneath - the dwarpaal was lost forever - of course after decades, the roman soldier was discovered. (To the professor's ultimate misery, he shows him the remaining intact dwaar-paala). I don't remember how Narayan closes the story, but the soldier continued to be the Roman connection of Malgudi, and the dwaarpaala was lost forever. <!--emo& Smile

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' />

I am not sure if Narayan was telling something about History-writing or it was just another great stroke of his fertile imagination. But really, that is many times the case. Unfortunately, we dont 'know' about history with 100% accuracy - and probably never shall - unless we can learn to travel back in time.

************
Philology is not a science in the strictest sense of the definition. Like any other humanity, therefore, this discipline will also remain susceptible to political motivations. Aren't literature, or economics, or philosophy, or law, or political science, or any other social sciences - full of political bias? Can they ever be freed from biases? Probably not. Indian (and western) universities, in each of these fields today, are loaded and dominated by lefties and sickoolars by and large. Don't we see the output from these fields, attest to this bias? Potentially they can never be freed or purged of bias - one way or the other.

But because they can not be freed from the political biases ever - does not belittle those disciplines from being important areas of "truth"exploration, and we can not abandon those. These discipline themselves would continue to be crucial - we like it or we don't.

We shall not be able to get away from the discipline itself, by showing the existing unjust or unfair or inaccurate methodologies. If we have to counter these, we have to enter these fields, and develop better methodologies, and take the existing ones head-on.

*************
Language is a crucial link. We got to have convincing answers to show how languages spread without any AIT, and how AIT is NOT the right explanation of the language relationships. To over-simplify, S L G A have ancient connections - and very deep connections. Trade, neighbourly influnce are important, but in my opinion not enough to explain the depth of the 'influence'.

Tell me, can a trade relationship ever influence the pronouns of a language? I am saying pronouns, since nouns and verbs can, given the influence be replaced by a foreign prevailing language. But pronouns? Very hard. Look at our own languages today. We have borrowed foreign nouns and verbs, but have our languages borrowed pronouns? Take Hindi for example, which has continuousely been influenced by so many foreign languages and continues to be, or draviD languages. They have continued to use indigenous root words for pronouns.

But consider these:

S saa - E she
S tat - E that
S id - E it
S may - E me
S vaya - E we
S mam - E mine
S te - E they
S taan - E them
S twa - E thou

Trade-based influence is not a convincing answer. Above can only come from organic relationships of languages (imo).

*************
My un-scholarly but considered opinion is this. Bhasha-Vigyan is one field related to Indology, where we are still far behind the western Indologists. I think we have caught with westerns in other disciplines enough, and surpassed them in some, but catching up needs to be done in this one field. Morever, even at home, connections of different Indic languages themselves, still need a lot of research. Not just AIT, but development of Indic internally itself - Bhasha-Vigyan will play a crucial hand.

My opinion is that we should not neglecting this gold-mine field that has potential to turn tables on AIT. We should learn those languages, and our own, very well, and develop altogether new methods, completely fair and just, rewrite altogether new frameworks of philology.

It would still not be science, will still not claim to "answer for the history", but it will still be able to unfold several missing pieces and mightily supplement other disciplines of AIT-busting (or truth finding).

Husky · (This post was last modified: 06-02-2007, 07:03 PM by Husky.)

The Malgudi story makes for a nice example.

QUOTEPhilology is not a science in the strictest sense of the definition.This is what I meant. Yet they present it as if it were an exact science - one whose conclusions should be universally accepted without question. But it's not an exact science (as the constantly changing PIE shows for instance) and it doesn't behave as one either (non-falsifiable).
The Koerner paper revealed that despite the facade of infallibility, it is a field that is prone to political and other ideological abuse. And it's what Lincoln and Arvidsson discussed in their books - Lincoln especially. He realised that a lot of what he'd for a long time blindly accepted as an absolute, turned out to have been dictated/determined by the subjectivity of highly-regarded people.

QUOTETrade-based influence is not a convincing answer. Above can only come from organic relationships of languages (imo).Don't know the extent of linguistic influence that can be wielded by trade, but did not mean to stress it as the only means of language transfer. So I repeat a para from my earlier post 123 wherein I did briefly allude to other means, even if I did not define any (it's hard to give one-word example scenarios):
QUOTEIt could merely be trade or other relations.
[...]
Another possibility could be that it's due to some population movements from regions that were geographically closer to each other in the past [...].See, they first propose PIE and then say that by supposed implication all IE branches derived from it - what's more, derived directly from it: that it radiated out into all the major IE branches. That is, that S, A, G, Italic, Slavonic, Celtic, Germanic all were direct children of PIE. How impossibly convenient! And of course they state that it implies that there's a one-to-one correspondence between the language groups and the peoples who spoke them. Nice. As if it wasn't hard to believe already. Yet it is well-known how very possible it is for populations to discard their own languages and to adopt others - one need but think of how many of the SW Europeans might have still spoken a Basque dialect or W Europeans spoken Gaulish were it not for Rome; or take even the case of the largely Basque ancestry of the UK. The language a population speaks today is not always connected with their 'genes', therefore. Certainly not in a considerable number of European cases (though curiously, they only ever seem to recall a potential linguistic-genetic disparity when arguing about the Indian situation).

QUOTEBhasha-Vigyan is one field related to Indology, where we are still far behind the western Indologists.
My opinion is that we should not neglecting this gold-mine field that has potential to turn tables on AIT. We should learn those languages, and our own, very well, and develop altogether new methods, completely fair and just, rewrite altogether new frameworks of philology. "We should learn those languages, and our own, very well" - This certainly, without limitations.

Concerning the rest of your statement (quoted), I agree with what you propose, but there is a great hurdle out there. AIT is a crucial piece of IE. There's no IE without Samskritam, and no Samskritam-IE link without AIT (or AMT, or whatnot). Shake the AIT and you shake the IE tree at its very foundations. They will never give up on IE - it is their claim to fame. They're not the descendents of the Romans, of the Greeks, let alone the Parthians or Persians and the like. (Don't know if you know, there's a number even claiming the original PIE Oryans created Mesopotamian civilisation before they settled in NW Europa - very funny.) IE gives them greatness by association. They are vying with the long-dead in whose shadow they'd forever remain were it not for IE. So this is a question of their identity: it's become nigh synonymous with the identity of 'white' people (minus the Basques, Finno-Ugrics and a few other unfortunates who are excluded).
Philology is not just any science to them. It has become their life's blood, if you will. As much as they like to accuse Indians of being obsessed with fighting the AIT (in order to put us on the defensive), the IE dream is in fact their greatest obsession. It underlies who they consider themselves to be: they've written a spectacular history for themselves, however filled with illusions and delusions it may be. Take it away at this point and their self-confidence will crumble (not that they need to feel that way at all, but they've invested a good deal in it).

Do you suppose they will allow anyone to create - let alone listen to - new linguistic theories that propose some other linkage structure than PIE? That they would allow PIE and 'IE population groups' not to be tied together crucially (that is, anything that disputes the 'IE languages are a family and so are the population groups that speak them')? That they would let you break the lately-forged link that posthumously ties Romans and Greeks with the rest of Europe (not in terms of mere Greco-Roman influence, but on an equal footing with them, by means of an alleged common ancestry)?
Any attempt to do so will be seen as emasculation. Alternative propositions will not even be considered. It is not about truth for them, it has long ceased to be. It is an emotional, highly subjective issue and they respond accordingly. More than two centuries of carefully crafting this new history and teaching this to its population will go out the window, and with it all the inculcated self-assurance. They started this in early colonial times when they educated their next generations to become leaders, rulers, masters of the world. You need a mindset to go with such ambitions, you need a belief in invincibility, in superiority. You need to train children in this. They can't drop this, it's become too much a part of who they see themselves as. (Besides, though colonial attitudes are gone, the winning mindset cannot be dispensed with.)

Mess with IE, you're messing with them. To call it a touchy issue for them, is to understate the case.

Indians are allowed to become linguists, may play the big game and join in - but only as long as you agree with their fixed propositions, fixed as soundly as if it were a mountain rooted in the soil: (1) PIE exists; (2) It includes all those languages designated as IE at the present time; (3) The languages are intimately tied with the peoples who spoke them ('they gave rise to them') and what's more, most of the people who speak them today - in Europe at least - are descendants of the original speakers; (4) It's already indicated in number 3, but not only do they have a common ancestral language, they are related by blood: they have common ancestry in the Oryans.

Any Indians who go against this - propose any alternative - will find him-/herself ignored, ridiculed, accused of Hindoootvaaa, Hindoo nationalism, Hindoo fundamentalism whatever. They'll make sure you're never heard, never given respectable publication or citation. You can infer some of this even from Talageri's case. What he wrote was insightful; his work was original, well-researched and contained well-reasoned arguments. (Whether all of it was equally plausible or not, I don't know.) Witzel offered to take him up, but on condition that Talageri not become all 'Hindoo nationalist' on him. Talageri refused, would be a Hindu nationalist to the end. And of course his work is ignored by all except 'those Hindoo nationalist fundamentalists'.

You can certainly play, as long as you do so by their rules and make your moves in accordance to their instructions. Romila Thapar may play. She'll be published, she can co-author with Witzel and others. She'll get some Chair, be invited for talks, may be referenced. She's a good native: no questions, full support, wants to be part of the clique (give her some white gloves). She's a model Indian and they'll say 'look, even an educated Indian agrees that the AIT took place - because of course IE is an undeniability'.

But it's not just Indians that are side-lined when they go against the established mode, though. Even western archaeologists (Lichtenstein and Schaffer) have realised there is a brick wall they never anticipated. They thought they were working in some scientific field. Tough luck for them that they picked 'South Asian' archaeology as their thing, and that their discoveries didn't line up with linguistic 'conclusions' (predictions/expectations).

You can question everything except the fundamental 'truths' of the IE theory. See how aggressive the esteemed indologicals get otherwise (Indologicals lose it, as the IER Group excerpts pasted on IF show). You may also not call into doubt the motivations that fueled the bricklaying of the revered IE foundations. Because then, you are effectively casting doubt on IE theory itself by questioning the reliability of its origins and of the influential personages in its composition.
Doesn't matter how great your credentials in IE studies are, make such a misstep and you're out (Arvidsson on Lincoln, post 113 - Unmasking AIT thread):
QUOTEThe debate around Dumezil, Pearson, Haudry, Indo-European scholarship, and Fascism made Lincoln add his support to those who felt that the Indo-European scene had to be cleaned up. In several articles, Lincoln argued that it could actually be proved that Dumezil's sympathies for French and Italian Fascism had influenced his scientific research of the 1930s. As a consequence of this, Lincoln became more or less persona non grata among the Indo-Europeanists of the United States, and references to his work declined.
Philology is not a science. Who knows what it might have been. But it's too late to be free of ideological taints. Philology + IE is their white elephant - even if it were a pink unicorn for all they care.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 06-03-2007, 07:58 AM by Bodhi.)

Husky,

I agree to most of what you said about the prevailing situation. I have no doubt of that.

All I am saying is:

1) the linkage of S->A->G->L (and their children) exists,
2) the relationships are so deep, and so basic, that these naturally point to some HEAVY migration/colonialization/? etc.
3) The "hints" (not evidences) of the direction of population flow can be potentially had by study of the relativities of these languages.
4) However, the above will only be hints, and not evidences. And therefore it can only supplement the other disciplines, and not override.
5) Present foumulae of the language progressions are faulty, arbitrary, and largely baseless (to say the least).

I think our only disagreement is that I feel we need not write off philology itself, rather challenge its present foundations. If PIE has 'proved' AIT, the same can support OIT too. But I am in agreement to what you said about the hurdles and practical difficulties, and we can conclude that there.

********************
There is no literary proof of AIT, whereas there is ample desription of the west-ward movement of Indic population from the ancient times. Some samples from Mahabharata:

In Adi Parva, Rajasuya Arambha adhyay, Maharaj Yudhishtira seeks advise from Sri Krishna about performing a Rajasuya. In this context the subject of the quality of Kshatriyas in Bharat of those days comes up.

Sri Krishna says:
QUOTEYou know everything, O Bharata, I shall however, still tell you something. Those persons in the world that now go by the name of Kshatriyas are inferior in everything to those Kshatriyas that Rama, the son of Jamadagnya, exterminated.

The numerous royal lines and other ordinary Kshatriyas all represent themselves to be the descendants of Aila and Ikshwaku. The descendants of Aila, O king, as, indeed, the kings of Ikshwaku's race, are, as you know O Bharata, each divided into a hundred separate dynasties. The descendants of Yayati and the Bhojas are great, both in extent (number) and accomplishments. O king, these last are to-day scattered all over the earth.

QUOTEO exalted one, the eighteen tribes of the Bhojas, from fear of Jarasandha, have all fled towards the west; so also have the Surasenas, the Bhadrakas, the Vodhas, the Salwas, the Patachchavas, the Susthalas, the Mukuttas, and the Kulindas, along with the Kuntis. And the king of the Salwayana tribe with their brethren and followers; and the southern Panchalas and the eastern Kosalas have all fled to the country of the Kuntis.


A different context:
QUOTEReflecting upon everything, all decided to flee towards the west.Â There is a delightful town towards the west called Kusasthali, adorned by the mountains of Raivata. In that city, we took up our abode, built forts and fortifications.


Yet another context. Rajasuya has been done. Yudhishthira had sent each of his brothers in 4 different directions for conquests. Nakula was the one sent to conquer the west. There is good description of his exploits in Mbt. Starting with the Kartikeya's grand-city of Rohitaka (Rohatak) moving westwards to Mlechchha countries.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 06-03-2007, 08:28 PM by Husky.)

In response to Bodhi's post 137:
(1) Usefulness of studying linguistics:
QUOTEI think our only disagreement is that I feel we need not write off philology itself, rather challenge its present foundations. If PIE has 'proved' AIT, the same can support OIT too. But I am in agreement to what you said about the hurdles and practical difficulties, and we can conclude that there.Then I agree - as long as people know what they're getting into, that is, if they know the obstacles they could face. It would certainly be very helpful to derive alternative theories and (if necessary) perhaps even alternative Laws to those currently followed in linguistics.
But it's not something I could ever ask anyone else to study, because I would never take up the study of linguistics myself.
Though I'd say, anyone thinking of taking on the field without the intention of blindly accepting PIE ought to do it as a second major and/or not quit their day-job.

QUOTEIf PIE has 'proved' AIT, the same can support OIT too.For any philological pursuit to help in reinstating the field as a true science, best not to start off with an assumption as the IE side has done.
A hypothesis there may be in statistical enquiries. And perhaps there's room for hypotheses in linguistics, if the people doing the research were really unbiased and wanted to test these against hard facts.
But perhaps it would be best not to repeat the mistake of the opposition by working from one perspective. (Though it would not be amiss to be mindful of one, in order to be open to subtle clues that imply OIT for instance; this is certainly an advantage we've never had.) Being free of any preconceived notions and assumptions would allow the data to guide the understanding and any interpretations, instead of us imitating the PIE crowd who arrange/force-fit the data to tell their pre-determined story.

(2) Westward movements in Mahabharata:
I don't know that all the examples provided instantly imply an out-of-Bharat movement. In some cases, this could be due to my being unfamiliar with the placenames (toponomy) of that time.
QUOTEO exalted one, the eighteen tribes of the Bhojas, from fear of Jarasandha, have all fled towards the west;West of Bharat (including Afghanistan), or still inside Bharat but west of Indraprastha and Hastinapura or even Punjab, say?
QUOTEand the southern Panchalas and the eastern Kosalas have all fled to the country of the Kuntis.'Country of the Kuntis' appears to be another kingdom that's known but not ruled by the Kauravas or Pandavas. But is this known to have been outside India? There were always many kingdoms in Bharat, and those of them that were not part of a larger kingdom made up their own 'countries' in that looser sense in our literature. (But it follows that kingdoms located in Bharat all consider themselves part of the same country when faced with some culturally-alien human population.)

QUOTEmoving westwards to Mlechchha countries.This is more indicative: culturally dissimilar or dissonant countries in the west.
Rg Vedam has references to people leaving for the distant west too. And in some of its cases, they're never to be heard of again. The Rg Veda's time period for a westward movement may be more appropriate for an OIT proposition.
You've probably read this already, but just in case: see Shrikant Talageri's 'Rig Veda, a Historical analysis':
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/rig/ch6.htm - Chapter 6
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/rig/ch7.htm - Chapter 7

Husky · (This post was last modified: 06-03-2007, 08:39 PM by Husky.)

Don't know if this goes here. It does have something to do with IE, because it has to do with the languages Greek and Latin as well as with the Religions of Greece and Rome.

http://books.google.com/books?id=NEulLJm9d...7nZE38#PPA61,M1
From The Dominance of English As a Language of Science. The Effects on Other Languages and Language Communities, edited by Ulrich Ammon, various authors who've contributed articles. Page 61:
QUOTENor did the Romans concern themselves with the languages of the countries they conquered. There was one exception: the language of the Greeks, in which they recognised a superior culture. To be a man of culture in Rome a knowledge of Greek was a prerequisite. But they found a simple solution to the possible conflict of languages and cultures. Just as they assimilated the Greek gods into their own panteon by giving them Roman names, they accepted Greek culture, assuming that there was one single culture expressed in two languages.Not certain to what extent the above is historically accurate with respect to 'assimilation of Greek Gods'. I mean, the Trojans worshipped the solar God Apollo - their main national God. If the Romans did have Trojan ancestry as some in Rome often claimed, then they had shared one God with the Greeks before the instantiation of Rome.

And some questions based on the above excerpt: how much could/would Greek have influenced Latin then? Any significant - even what we might now perceive as almost formative - influences possible (major words, and terms for concepts)? Also, what's the time period being referred to above? Are there surviving works in Latin (or any Italic, for that matter) from a period before this contact with the Greeks? Any significant differences in the language from before Greek-contact to after contact?

In short, what I'm asking is: 'navigation' is English because it got there from the Latin. In a comparable manner, are there words assumed to have originated in Latin that might well have been introduced from Greek itself? (I don't know the prehistory of Latin, hence my questions.)

**acharya** · 06-04-2007, 05:10 AM

QUOTEhttp://www.hindu.com/2007/06/04/stories/...670100.htm

Telugu words found in Hebrew literature

W. Chandrakanth

A 1794 BC stone tablet established that the Sumerian-Assyrian culture had its roots in Andhra Pradesh

Samyuktha Koonaiah

CHENNAI: In a path-breaking revelation, a young research scholar of Potti Sriramulu Telugu University has come out with recorded evidence linking Telugus and Israelis on the basis of Telugu words found in Hebrew literature.

The disclosure was made by Samyuktha Koonaiah in her presentation at a seminar on `Telugu History and Culture' on the concluding day of the three-day All India Telugu Conference here on Sunday. She quoted epigraphic evidence traced from Bahrain in support of her argument.

Ms. Samyuktha, who is doing her research on `Andhra Pradesh - The missing link - Tilmun language and Telugu', said a 1794 BC stone tablet established that the Sumerian-Assyrian culture had its roots in Andhra Pradesh.

Interesting revelations

In fact, an article titled `The Seafaring Merchants of Ur' published in the American Oriental Society in1954 by A. L. Oppenheim contains several Telugu words to prove that Abraham migrated from the `land of darkness', the `Andhaka Desa' as the Andhra region was known in the past, she said.

Research findings suggest that `Barbar' or `Barbaras', a native tribe living in the south of the Vindhyas was a common name in Assyrian culture. An earliest instance of calling children `Bullutu' was similar to that of the Telugu usage Bulli, Bullodu etc, she said. Another `provincial spelling' in Telmun literature and references to Sumero-Akkadian vocabularies contain this sentence `ni imta ha-is' similar to that of `nee intiki vachchi' (come to my home).

Letter on tablet

A stone tablet also contained a letter from a seafarer to a local trader demanding to know why he did not sell a particular commodity at a price agreed upon and why it was not weighed properly too.

Old Babylonian legal documents which were unearthed by archaeologists contain evidence of this letter belonging to one member of the Guild of Dilmun, Ea-Nasir. One of its lines when pronounced in Telugu becomes "ayya adhi annakimmani, tusi (tuchi) immani, maaki antundhi" (something to the effect `I have asked you to give it to my brother after weighing'. It was a deal about copper ingots.

Telling proof

Quoting several such examples Ms. Samyuktha said there was sufficient proof to link those Sumerian cultures with the Telugus. Hebrew, Sumerian and Assyrian records abound in such descriptions and suggest that the present Israelis belonged to Andhra Pradesh.

Ms. Samyuktha argues that Kamakur village in Balayapalli mandal of Nellore district still has 21 Jewish families. Only they are not even aware that they are Jews. She is one among them and her first name Kooniah could be found in Hebrew as Koni, she says.

Login




Remember me Lost Password?