Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[ManishH]

What is it in the translation that tells anyone what is in the mind of the person whose gifts are being accepted and whose praise is being sung?

The gift is the indicator. Why would the King give a gift if he's not getting what he wants out of the ceremony ? And why would the sage spend his creative resources on praising a king if he didn't patronize him. The sage would rather spend it exploring other intellectual pursuits.

Reaching a particular conclusion about the king's specific thought process sounds like reading the mind of a long dead king and ascribing a personality (of naivete) to that king.

What to you sounds naivete, is also called faith. Eg. why did the naive Egyptian kings believe that spending oodles of resources on building pyramids and being entombed in certain fashion would give them immortality ?

I don't know about you, but when my family requests a yajña to be performed eg. a house warming (mane-okkalu), it is with faith that the priests' prayers will bring our home and our family good tidings. Call it naivete, but this is what we do. And the priests do echo our wishes by selecting mantras apt to the occasion. So we know that there is a strong correlation between the priests' mantras and our own thoughts.

Someone hearing a recording of the ceremony (with only the priests voice) automatically knows the occasion. They don't ask for the yajamāna's confirmation.

Understand the sūkta from this context.

Google tells me that "Shravah Akshiti" means "survive imperishably". That is a blessing made by all mothers to all children in India. All elders bless others this way. Chiranjeevi and shathayus mean similar things. It is very very Indian. But kleos aphthiton means "fame unwilting" as per Googal. One is fame. The other is immortality. How is fame==immortality?

You can be assured of reaching ridiculous results if Google is the only translation tool you use. śravaḥ == fame == kleos. akṣiti = apthiton == immortal, comes from the same root as kṣaya (decay).

If you think 'śravaḥ akṣiti' means the same thing as chiranjeevi and shathayu, you'll have to quote a source. I think the last two mean "live long" and "live to a hundred".

http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?tinp ... choice=yes

5.There is no evidence that the Indian and Greek praise poetry moved in any particular direction.

There is no connection with directionality - this is all in context of sedentarism and exploring cross-culture symbiosis between bard and king.

[shiv]

I am still reeling at the ignorance of context of the English translator of the Rig Veda passage. God only knows how much more bullshit swirls around in "scholardom" with such nonsensical translations doing the rounds.

[shiv]

What to you sounds naivete, is also called faith. Eg. why did the naive Egyptian kings believe that spending oodles of resources on building pyramids and being entombed in certain fashion would give them immortality ?

I don't know about you, but when my family requests a yajña to be performed eg. a house warming (mane-okkalu), it is with faith that the priests' prayers will bring our home and our family good tidings. Call it naivete, but this is what we do. And the priests do echo our wishes by selecting mantras apt to the occasion. So we know that there is a strong correlation between the priests' mantras and our own thoughts.

Someone hearing a recording of the ceremony (with only the priests voice) automatically knows the occasion. They don't ask for the yajamāna's confirmation.

The explanation about Egyptian kings was given by similar scholars and I am not sure I believe it. You imagine that I believe it. Maybe you do. But I was never convinced and am even less convinced after reading this comical translation.

I suppose your family also yearn for immortality and fame because the words of the priest/bard are important to produce that immortality that your family so desire?

If not exactly what is the bullshit that was posted earlier

Poets occupied another respected social category. Spoken words,
whether poems or oaths, were thought to have tremendous power. The
poet's praise was a mortal's only hope for immortality.

These scholars are selling nonsense based on a misunderstanding of societal cues. Your family and that Raja Bhavuyava are doing exactly the same vedic thing. Getting an "expert"/priest to invoke the Gods for reasons that fulfil you desires. That is called a pooja or a yagna. They are not inviting a bard to sing a praise song because they believe that will give them immortality. And it is quite likely that the Greek context has been equally badly mauled by these "scholars" . But That is a suggestion I am making. I need to see what these chaps found in Greece,. If they can do this to a passage from the Rig Veda I wonder what else lurks in those scholarly tomes.

[ManishH]

I have no wish to change your opinion on scholars. But I'd like to see you quote a source that made you confidently assert:

"śravas akṣiti" == "chiranjeevi" == "shataayu"

Just indulge me, for my education

[shiv]

The gift is the indicator. Why would the King give a gift if he's not getting what he wants out of the ceremony ? And why would the sage spend his creative resources on praising a king if he didn't patronize him. The sage would rather spend it exploring other intellectual pursuits.

This is not the story of an inane exaggerating bard singing praises of the king. The priest is doing a Pooja. There is no indicator that the numbers/objects quoted are not symbolic as Vedic rituals are full of symbolism as your family will full well know unlike that comedian who did the English translation. That is a continuous tradition from those times.

You can be assured of reaching ridiculous results if Google is the only translation tool you use. śravaḥ == fame == kleos. akṣiti = apthiton == immortal, comes from the same root as kṣaya (decay).

If you think 'śravaḥ akṣiti' means the same thing as chiranjeevi and shathayu, you'll have to quote a source. I think the last two mean "live long" and "live to a hundred".

You see the dilemma I face here is to be polite and take your word for it, and reject Google. Unfortunately your words seem to correspond with the words of an absolutely inane and hilarious mistranslation and the connection with Greek seems to be based on that comedy.

So my best bet is to accept that Google may be wrong, but accepting your word for it without further reading on the issue is out as far as I am concerned. Some of your sources seem to be hilarious mistranslators of the Vedas. Sorry. No disrespect intended.

[shiv]

I have no wish to change your opinion on scholars. But I'd like to see you quote a source that made you confidently assert:

"śravas akṣiti" == "chiranjeevi" == "shataayu"

Just indulge me, for my education

The furthest I can get is "live long". I can't get better than that. But thanks for admitting that those scholars words can be disputed.

[member_22872]

The gift is the indicator. Why would the King give a gift if he's not getting what he wants out of the ceremony ? And why would the sage spend his creative resources on praising a king if he didn't patronize him. The sage would rather spend it exploring other intellectual pursuits.

Manish ji, thanks for the reference, I will look it up.
However, even in today's standards 60000 cows is a huge number to be given as a gift to one 'bard' even if he is exemplary. And we are talking about per historic India where resources are meager (hence gifting cows itself is considered a big deal) and then there is a 60000 of them. Manish ji, do you really think this is not hyperbole? And we have this kind of priestly interaction every time in almost every household even in our present day India. I understand if a western 'scholar' thinks differently and makes a vanilla verbatim translation to any vedic sloka. You too say that during household yagnas and poojas we are blessed with immeasurable wealth, prosperity and long life, why is this translation not looked in that way? than think that this indeed is a gift given to the 'bard'. Even using the word 'bard' seems to alien when we talk about Vedic scriptures. That way every priest even in the present day India is a bard, well I think I am going OT, but why should we know-tow western scholars viewpoint and then start comparing like Shiv ji said to an alien Greek literature, out of time and out of context? This seems like we forcibly giving a meaning to something which is not. Why so much trouble? kolaveri?

From what Bji posted, 108, 72, 60000, 40, 54 etc numbers (except for 40) are sexagesimal or 6 based and surely must be either symbolic or some reference other than a real measure of things of transaction.

[shiv]

You can be assured of reaching ridiculous results if Google is the only translation tool you use. śravaḥ == fame == kleos. akṣiti = apthiton == immortal, comes from the same root as kṣaya (decay).

It so happens that I have, at home, several humongous Sanskrit dictionaries due to reasons related to now deceased family members and some living students (not me).

"Shravas" is easy enough. Among multiple meanings perhaps the most appropriate would be fame or wealth

there is no word listed as aksiti ot akshiti

However the word "akshati" means "to increase or accumulate"

There is another word "akshya" which is immortality/non-decay. Akshyati would be the verb but I am uncertain of this. This may be rubbish - I have added the ~ti to akshya

Taking these two meanings we can get

shravas akshyati= fame/wealth + nondeath/nondecay/immortality

or

shravas akshati= fame/wealth + increase/accumulation

It is not at all obvious to me that kleos apthiton (fame-immortality according to you) is the same as the indicated meanings of shravas akhsati. It is more likely in my view that it is shravas akshati (increase in fame/wealth) rather than shravas akshyati (fame-wealth-nondecay/immortality)

Did you mean akshati or akshyati when you wrote aksiti?

Google says kleos apthiton is undying fame but I post that for others who may read this. The problem is whether it is akshyati or akshati as far as my interpretation goes.

Even so. Even if the Greek thing is the same, so what? The Vedic text is still not a praise poem. WTF is a praise poem anyway? I think that is a concept cooked up by jokers who could not understand the Vedic concept of faith (or even the Greek one for that matter, but I am guessing here) .

[brihaspati]

I am rather rather surprised about the assumptions on pyramid building. It remains even archeologically an open question. There are doubts even as to earlier proposed theory of them being burial chambers proper. Who has entirely decoded Egyptian afterlife belief/faith?!!!!

[tyroneshoes]

One good book, I just finished: A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology

It would be incorrect to characterize the issue as a West versus East debate.
John correctly points out the problem of picking up a text written down much later from its earlier oral tradition,
translating it word for word and them jumping to conclusions. While John's comments are about medival Indian
texts, it by no means is different for ancient texts, perhaps the situation gets even worse.

A bad analogy would be the 'talkies' movies we had before what we have today 3D in HD for describing reality....
There is much to be done (this has to come from Indians) before we see the texts in 3D/HD.
Especially, by not viewing these texts as frozen in time, but living breathing debates (see below)

When learning a Sanskrit philosopical text it is customary in India, even today, not just to pick it up and read it
but to study it with a teacher who will provide an oral commentary. In fact, most Indian philosophical texts are too
difficult to comprehend without some kind of assistance. The wording of the texts is often elliptical, the arguments
subtle, and a great deal of background knowledge -- of the meanings of specific technical terms, of the theories of
the other schools being attacked, etc. -- is assumed. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Westerners gaining a
picture of what Indian philosophy is about is that it is presupposed that its texts will be studied this way. (italics in the original)
It is, in any case, surely too much to expect a Western philosopher approaching this literature for the first time to
be able to understand it without any of the advantages that Indian students have traditionally had. Therefore, the
provision of a commentary along with the translation of an Indian Philosophical text seems essential.

Each word has not only the encoded meaning, but may suggest a school of thought, the meter, alliteration,
cadence may signify various shades and all these are lost in the "talkies" like translation efforts at hand today.
I for one have had difficulty finding a good commentary by a modern Indian author along the lines above.
Even my humble understanding of Sanskrit and different schools of thought did not give me access to even the
most simple suktas in the Rig Veda....
That said, I found most translations misleading, especially after I talked to teachers....
Some words should not be translated and others a commentary is required to give background.

Further, unlike Amartya Sens' 'Argumentative Indian' my personal view is we need to get the 'Debating Indian'
Indian Debates had a winner and a loser, unlike the modern toothless relativism that prevails today.
If only we could peer review articles in journals in this fashion


Those interested to learn more on Kumarila and other thinkers, it is a shame that we do not have folks
such as him today to debate. This forum has shown sparks of such capability, but we should avoid the us and
them as far as possible. If at all there is an us and them, it is those that believe that PIE has any value to
anyone and those that do not. It ought to be between those that believe that racist Aryans came invading or
migrating into the Indian subcontinent and those that do not and so on....

At the end of the day only Rta prevails

The mediation of power in the arena of debate is through reason, and it is the visibility of reason as arbiter that
distinguishes debate from all other forms of conflict. As a contest that is mediated by reason and present evidence
and logic as the criteria for victory or defeat, debate encourages and supports the growth of rational inquiry and
reflection. Although Indian philosophical debate sometimes degenerates in polemics, for the most part they were
conducted on a very high level. Participants were stimulated to achieve new insights and more compelling statements
of their views. The greatest discoveries of Indian philosophy were acheived in the context of heated, highly charged
debate. Debate may never reach resolution. In medieval India debates between the Buddhists and the Brahmins were
publicly staged, as a form of entertainment. The losers were compelled to renounce their religion -- which after all
had been proven false -- and convert to the other side.

[ramana]

Thanks to Dhu:

Yavanas are not Greeks:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13298002/Yava ... Not-Greeks

By Ishwa.

[RajeshA]

List of Resources on AIT, AMT, OIT

Seems to be a group, which tries to demean Indians for not having scholarly credentials. Don't buy the books over the links, as part of the money goes to such a group.

[ManishH]

shiv: the mantra has akṣiti, not akṣati. So this is the closest you have come up with:

shravas akshyati= fame/wealth + nondeath/nondecay/immortality

Except that it is not wealth; it's 'fame'. It derives from dhātu 'śru' (hear). I'm not asking you to believe me, so I put up the scanned image of a pandit's translation. Since you may not be comfortable reading hindi, I'll just post the relevant translation with underline ...

1st mantra:
rājā śravaichamānaḥ

राजा ने कीर्ति-प्राप्ति की इच्छा से

2nd mantra:
divi śravo 'jaramā tatāna

स्वर्ग-लोक में राजा नित्य कीर्ति विस्तार करेंगे.

In hindi, कीर्ति = fame, same as kannada ಕೀರ್ತಿ (don't believe me, check with a native speakers).

The Pandit (not me) has chosen to translate it as 'fame' in both instances. If you had done due diligence to read those humongous dictionaries, you would not have wasted a page worth of posts with wrong assumptions.

Even so. Even if the Greek thing is the same, so what?.

I'm trying to establish the deep linguistic relation between the two languages and cultures, which some posters have termed as due to "human tendency for coming up with similar words". I'm not going to draw any conclusions about which was older or directionality etc...

The significance is that the Greek word 'kleos' also means fame, and it too derives from the root word κλύ (to hear). Just like the Sanskrit term.

So we have a manifold correlation:
1. Semantic similarity : both language systems derive the word for 'fame' from the root 'to hear'. Do other language families do it ? Eg. Dravidian Kannada world for famous is 'hesaruvasi' derives from the root for 'name'.
2. Phonetic similarity : rhotacism in Indo-Iranian. The Sanskrit 'r' sound appears like 'l' sound in Greek
3. Palatalization with front vowels: a front vowel like 'e' can influence a velar like 'k' to be articulated near the palate to make it 'ś'
4. Poetic devices repeat : oral traditions do not forget themes like that. With a robust oral tradition, these survive a long time and multiple phonetic changes in the language. This device is found in Slavic/OldEnglish/German epic poetry too.

The Vedic text is still not a praise poem. WTF is a praise poem anyway? I think that is a concept cooked up by jokers who could not understand the Vedic concept of faith (or even the Greek one for that matter, but I am guessing here)

There is no faith in RV sūkta 1.162. It's only addressed to the king, not Gods. 'stomān' means praises - dhātu is 'stu' (to praise). It appears, the undusted dictionaries have something to do with your being upset a bit.

If you don't mind, I can suggest a couple of good vedic study institutes in Bangalore ...
"Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute". I personally know the director Mr. Kashyap who is a very learned patient man.
"Poornaprajna Sanskrit Vidyapeeta". One Shri Adiga - again very approachable

[ManishH]

And we are talking about per historic India where resources are meager (hence gifting cows itself is considered a big deal) and then there is a 60000 of them. Manish ji, do you really think this is not hyperbole?

venug garu: I myself have said it is hyperbole right when I quoted the sukta ...
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 3#p1286543

To me, what's interesting is the things they choose to exaggerate - cattle, fame. There is a degree of reciprocity when fame is exaggerated as immortal and gifts of animals exaggerated as huge numbers. A reciprocity that results in patronage for the bard.

From what Bji posted, 108, 72, 60000, 40, 54 etc numbers (except for 40) are sexagesimal or 6 based and surely must be either symbolic or some reference other than a real measure of things of transaction.

I'm mostly ignorant about significance of these numbers. I'm open to explore symbolic importance of these numbers. Was curious for long time about 33 Gods (or was it 34) ?

[RajeshA]

I'm mostly ignorant about significance of these numbers. I'm open to explore symbolic importance of these numbers. Was curious for long time about 33 Gods (or was it 34) ?

33 Gods.

One sees this number of 33 Gods among the pre-Islamic Qureish. I believe there were 33 deities displayed at Mecca before it was taken over by Muhammad. So I read somewhere. I am not sure.

Also the Druids had 33 Gods.

[Agnimitra]

I'm open to explore symbolic importance of these numbers. Was curious for long time about 33 Gods (or was it 34) ?

The human vertebral column has 33 vertebrae - 24 articulating vertebrae, 5 fused to form the sacral, and 4 fused to form the coccygeal tail. The skull above could itself be counted as the 34th.

In Zoroastrianism also there are the 33 gods. In Judaism also 33 has significance. The divine name Elohim appears 33 times in the story of creation in the opening chapters of Genesis.

[member_20317]

I knew it Shivji you have fallen into a trap.

If ever I ask you whether you know a reasonable way out of deemed dividend taxation troubles would you be hitting the books?

What is being given does not allow you to reverse calculate what you dont know then why would it allow you to calculate the result.

[brihaspati]

ManishH ji,

Even in Sanskit, "kirti" is derived from "karma", - "keerti" is achievement/posterity, that which is "done". Fame in Sanskrit is perhaps more correctly connected to "yasa". in Hindi, the correct transliteration for fame would be yasa. Keerti can be loosely used, but should not be used if it is fame that is in mind. Keerti is neutral : it could be good or bad. Good keerti might lead to yasa. But yasa could come without keerti.

[brihaspati]

I am not sure that discussing significance of numbers and speculation on them would be OnT. 54 and 72 are related to estimated average precession. But since these values change very slowly and in a complicated non-linear way, the values quoted can be sought to be matched against known models to see when these approximations were fixed by Indians. Most of the other numbers I quoted can be matched rather strongly to astronomical/orbital features of earth relative to the sun and solar systemic features in general.

[tyroneshoes]

There is no faith in RV sūkta 1.162. It's only addressed to the king, not Gods. 'stomān' means praises - dhātu is 'stu' (to praise). It appears, the undusted dictionaries have something to do with your being upset a bit.

Not that I want to speak when 'elephants' wrangle...

There is no 'faith' anywhere in any Dharmic text. Faith is entirely different system and framework.

Another question - do you consider Kannada an Aryan (racist terminology used by some) language?
If not what kind of a language is it? Is it Dravidian (racist terminology used by some)

How about Marathi or Oriya?

If you call these languages Dravidian - can you provide which Indian text use this term and where?
Thanks in advance.

[member_22872]

This scenario will require evidence for horse domestication, chariot technology in India before 5,500 BC. None of which is found in archaeological records. After all, OIT claims Mitanni equestrian terms as evidence for them having migrated out of India and carried knowledge of horse domestication/training and chariotry out of India.

Manish ji and other gurus:
pardon me for digressing a bit, going back to horse domestication again, , while searching BR archive found a link to horse domestication in India 40000 years ago as a cave painting, guess one can see in the image proof of horse domestication. This is from 2002:

This is said to be a 40,000-year-old cave painting seen on a white silica sandstone rock shelter depicting existence of human civilization is seen in Banda district 800 kilometers(500 miles) southeast of New Delhi, India, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2002. The painting shows organized hunting by men in Neolithic Age . These caves were discovered recently by Indian and British Archelogits.

Please don't tell me that that's not a horse.

[shiv]

shiv: the mantra has akṣiti, not akṣati. So this is the closest you have come up with:

Could you be a little more helpful and post a link to the text in Devnagri. Because I am unable to find anything called "aksiti" in my undusted dictionaries and would like to confirm the sanskrit word myself.

The meaning of shravas which you are pains to explain to me was never in doubt after I consulted those dictionaries. It is the aksiti word that is a problem as I indicated in my post. The Hindi translation says "kirti-prapti" and "kirti-vistar" which mean acquiring kirti or increasing kirti. It does not mean undying or immortal Kirti. So how do you insist that it is "undying"? The meaning in Hindi is more in keeping with "akshati" as in acquiring and not "akshyati (undying)

That being the case how do you explain the following two posts made by you, which got me into this discussion. I think both the statements below cannot be justified by the meanings that you have yourself insisted on above and the the word "aksiti" that you insist is "undying" is still in doubt looking at the Hindi translation.

Shiv: Roving bards and their patronization by kings is a
cross-IE phenomenon. The concept of 'śravas akṣiti' (fame immortal) echoes in
multiple similar phrases in IE world "kleos apthiton". Basically, kings believed
that words of Bards (Oral Tradition) could make them immortal or be damned
forever.

Really? That mantra indicates this belief on the part of the king to you? How? There is no such thing in that mantra which in its Hindi translation sounds like any standard Hindu ritual. Nothing about immortality there.

And how does this man come up with this?

From D. Anthony "Horse, Wheel and Language".

Poets occupied another respected social category. Spoken words,
whether poems or oaths, were thought to have tremendous power. The
poet's praise was a mortal's only hope for immortality.

http://i47.tinypic.com/21o0wme.png

If you choose to interpret aksiti as immortal then of course there is a connection with the Greek. But the Hindi translation does not say that.

The other quibble I have is with the interpretation of the ritual as a sort of "praise poem" where the bard's words increase chances of a king or someone getting something. That is an out of context interpretation of a Hindu ritual, where the role of the priest, in his scholarship creates the conditions that fulfil the spiritual needs of the king or person who invites the priest/scholar to conduct the ceremony. The quibble is over the words "poet/bard" as opposed to a scholar who is personally of impeccable moral character and has great scholarship. A lecher or a thief with poetic abilities would hardly fulfil the role. In Hindu tradition is has always been a man of high scholarship, spirituality and moral character.

In this context the passage sounds like the record of a very Hindu ceremony conducted for someone in the past to fulfil his spiritual need for increased fame/wealth. I use the word wealth because wealth remains one of the meanings of kirti apart from fame. Note that a king can get fame and wealth by plunder. In this case the man is giving to the priest with expectation of more kirti by that act. So the idea that it is a one way singing of praise by a bard leading to a naive king getting immortality is an egregious western misinterpretation of the spirit of the ceremony. The spirit of the event is in the king actually giving away to make a sacrifice and that sacrifice being recorded/announced for people to hear by a scholarly person of unimpeachable integrity. This is not about a bard singing exaggerated praise to make the man feel immortal. How did that idea creep in?


You said:

I'm trying to establish the deep linguistic relation between the two languages and cultures, which some posters have termed as due to "human tendency for coming up with similar words". I'm not going to draw any conclusions about which was older or directionality etc...

I am sure this is a noble intention and your scholarship is evident. But it appears that you are highly reliant on humongous dusted and well thumbed (by you) tomes of questionable western misinterpretations and quotations.

[brihaspati]

venug garu,
is there any linguistic proof in the picture that it is really a horse? If not then we have to consider the possibility that
(1) there is wide variability in radio-carbon and other dating methods, so 40 kya could actually be much less, and in the period after Aryans invaded in 1500 BCE.
(2) it could be a now extinct animal that vaguely resembles a horse but is not a horse
(3) the human could be killing a horse as hunted game and not sitting on it - since we cannot clearly distinguish the humans legs in the foreground, or signs of saddle, and other horse paraphernalia
(4) the humans or the shamans could have smoked opium or other prehistoric hallucinogenics and were imagining an animal that resembles a horse but is still not a horse.

[shiv]

venug garu,
is there any linguistic proof in the picture that it is really a horse? If not then we have to consider the possibility that
(1) there is wide variability in radio-carbon and other dating methods, so 40 kya could actually be much less, and in the period after Aryans invaded in 1500 BCE.
(2) it could be a now extinct animal that vaguely resembles a horse but is not a horse
(3) the human could be killing a horse as hunted game and not sitting on it - since we cannot clearly distinguish the humans legs in the foreground, or signs of saddle, and other horse paraphernalia
(4) the humans or the shamans could have smoked opium or other prehistoric hallucinogenics and were imagining an animal that resembles a horse but is still not a horse.

[brihaspati]

samasa of aksiti should be unique.

[shiv]

Vaman Shivram Apte's dictionary lists the word "aksh" on its own used in the words akshati, akshnoti, aanaksh, akshishyati-akshyati, aakshaat, aakshatam-ashtam etc and gives the following meanings:
1. To reach
2. To pass throught, pervade penetrate (Mostly Ved. in these senses)
3. To accumulate, to increase (to cause to pervade)

The word "Kshah" (letter ksha + two dots ":") is listed as meaning destruction, loss etc

The word "Akshata" means whole, undivided, unhurt

In the sense of shravan aksiti - the Hindi translator of the passage has said kirti prapti which fits in with the meaning on top, but could also be understood as kirti without loss or kirti undivided.

But not immortality.

The Greek word aphthiton is said to mean undying and imperishable. I have no issue with that translation. But how is aphthiton=aksiti=immortal?

There is merely a vague, tenuous similarity whose "proof" lies in arcane linguistic callisthenics rather than more obvious and likely meanings from standard authorities. But that tenuous similarity is being used to

1. Make a link between Greek and Sanskrit (which I thought was well known even without this)
2. come up with a less than credible explanation of a vedic passage making the following far fetched claim:

Poets occupied another respected social category. Spoken words,
whether poems or oaths, were thought to have tremendous power. The
poet's praise was a mortal's only hope for immortality.

It is the latter that I have a problem with. A big bluff is being built upon a small sleight of hand that says shravas aksiti=kleon aphthiton.

One of the reasons for this desperate thrashing about by Western scholars to link Greek wirth Sanskrit was based on a historic racist inability to accept Sanskrit scholarship as something that did not come from Europe. The descendants of Ham could not have this wisdom. Only the white Christian descendants of Japheth could have it and hence links must be found with Greek no matter how tenuous or unlikely.

This is what I mean by linguistic callisthenics to desperately thrash about and make a link

2. Phonetic similarity : rhotacism in Indo-Iranian. The Sanskrit 'r' sound appears like 'l' sound in Greek
3. Palatalization with front vowels: a front vowel like 'e' can influence a velar like 'k' to be articulated near the palate to make it 'ś'
4. Poetic devices repeat : oral traditions do not forget themes like that. With a robust oral tradition, these survive a long time and multiple phonetic changes in the language. This device is found in Slavic/OldEnglish/German epic poetry too.

r sounds like l , k becomes s and therefore Sanskrit is Greek. And because Sanskrit is Greek you know where the dark skinned Hamites got their wisdom from.

[shiv]

Let me post a hypothesis:

From D. Anthony "Horse, Wheel and Language".

Poets occupied another respected social category. Spoken words,
whether poems or oaths, were thought to have tremendous power. The
poet's praise was a mortal's only hope for immortality.

I have argued that this is an insulting and egregious sentence if it is used to explain the record of a vedic ritual in the Rig veda and it indicates a complete lack of understanding of context.

What I have NOT done is to ask if the passage was an accurate analysis of what the Greeks did? Perhaps the interpretation about Greece itself is flawed. Perhaps the Greek ritual was, in its original form like a vedic ritual but these scholars have interpreted it as an inane praise poem minus the context.

If I argue that the vedic ritual had much more meaning that could be explained by the context, it is possible that the Greeks too would not have been as stupid as portrayed in the passage by Shri D. Anthony suggests?

Just speculation of course.

You see the old Greek culture is now dead and can be interpreted in any which way because it is modern Christian Europe that everyone is proud of and no one cares if they misinterpret the ancient Greeks and imagine they were stupids unlike modern Europeans.

But when you port that attitude to India - where that ancient culture remains alive, the above passage sounds like garbage.

[member_20317]

Most of us Indics are not too terribly concerned with things Christian. But apparently there is a lot of debate on Bible itself. On what it means, what it could have meant, a comma here, a bindi there. Even page foldings. If you begin to read this debate, in about half an hour you will get a strong feeling of disorientation. Because you will find yourself asking what is ‘real’, why is ‘real’ real, what threshold distinguishes the ‘real’ from the ‘unreal’. Typical Indic questions, of the kind that take a lot of time and develop a man. These debaters on the other hand ended up getting their energy from and so for reasons of self-preservation, feeding into the differences. More like pouring water into a crack in the wood, in cold arctic nights. The debate has only an itsy-bitsy, miniscule amount to do with the Pratyaksh life. But in the context of second guessing the Bible it is sought by both sides of the debate to illustrate how much a matter-e-gairat, the words in Bible and their origins are. Now I have not read Bible in any meaningful manner. But even if certain things are not right in it that still does not mean the whole of it is wrong. Such debating has already worked to widen a chasm within the Christian world. And somehow both parts of these Christian world ended up against each other in varying times and contexts, at times with nukes. IOW, words and debates thereon can easily mislead people by obfuscating the ‘whole’.

Now debating over the words may appear innocuous. Word kha thode hi jayega mujhe. But this does has implication for the ‘whole’. And all Indics should know what the whole means and how a large number of anything is not going to give you the whole.

The problem with Linguistics is in this light. Linguists claim to provide the whole through its various parts. Kind of like creating the elephant by engineering together its various organs. In the case of ‘IE languages’, nobody has given any proof of its existence. We don’t even know what were the languages of people that the linguists claim to have come later. This is more in the nature of advocacy and not life. Life cannot lie, while in advocacy at least one must, mostly both do lie. There is just no way to reconcile the two. You want to understand Linguistics better, Sanskrit Dictonaries or any dictionary may not be the best guide. A reasonable understanding of Correlation & regression, Law of Evidence, some attendance in the Trial courts and magic shows may serve the purpose better. A careful studying of a Linguists usage of words like can/could, shall/should, may/might, authoritative and eminent will help. Mind you advocacy has nothing to do with Life/Whole/Truth/Justice, it deals only with Law, which BTW is an ass. Most disciplines have rigorous internal checks and balances and they still end up with partial understandings. That should be bench mark for us all in understanding how much of truth is deliverable at your doorsteps by well meaning people .

[member_22872]

Bji , in fact I will be surprised one of the points you pointed out is not raised to counter this horse.

[shiv]

Let me ask a question folks. I am no expert, but I am curious, always questioning held beliefs and my own beliefs and I have a loud mouth.

Like I said, I am neither a geneticist nor a linguist. But I can claim to have some training in science. Please feel free to point out what you feel may be errors. But I will argue if I disagree.

Now how do geneticists conclude that the human genome came "Out of Africa?" As far as my understanding goes, the oldest genes have the greatest number of variations because they have had the longest time to develop mutations.

Imagine (hypothetically) that the first human genome developed 100 years ago. It split into 3 different variations 90 years ago. Of those three one went to India and central Asia. There it developed some new variants. In the meantime the original 3 in Africa had developed some more new variants - one of which went to Europe. So the oldest genome has the greatest number of genetic variation. So in genetics, scientists are happy to say that the oldest genome still exists. the are not saying - there must be a "proto-genome" that is the mother of all genetic streams which we don;t know about. They say "Hey - the protogenome is in Africa. It still exists with wonderful variation. It's daughters can be found all over the world"

Now let us come to languages. Languages too mutate over time

Let us imagine that you have a mother language. People who speak the mother language move to three different areas. That become three languages. But surely, even in the area where the mother language developed, people moving to nearby but remote locations will also develop variations. This is exactly akin to genetic variation. But the original mother language has not gone away. it still exists in modified form in the area that it originated. It could still have the greatest number of "proto-words" that lead to "descendants" in daughter languages in many other parts of the world.

What I am trying to suggest here is that if you have 10,000 similar languages, it does not necessarily mean that you have to look for a now vanished "proto-mother language" The Proto mother language may still exist, like African genes, carrying the largest number of variations, and being the source of the largest number of daughter words found in other languages.

If this conclusion is correct, it would be an error to look for a proto-language in search of the original tongue. It might pay to look at which existing modern day language has given rise to words that appear in languages over the entire world.

For example, in this day and age it might be concluded that English, with its roots in Latin is perhaps the best example of a language that has influenced language all over the world. But go back 3000 years and look at what we had then.

Is it Sanskrit that influenced most of the languages that existed then? Is it Hebrew? is it Greek? Is it Latin.
Greek, Latin and Sanskrit are similar, so people speak of a now vanished proto Indo-European language? Why on earth are they doing that? That proto language may just be still alive among Sanskrit, Greek and Latin and perhaps Persian or Russian just like the original oldest genetic code still exists in Africa?

Which of these 2500 year languages has the greatest number of words that occur in many other languages? Which one has the greatest number of daughter languages? Which one has the oldest known history? Which is the oldest language that still survives with a large number of derivative "daughter languages"?

Why is it that the rules applied to genetics are not applied to linguistics? The model of spread and change are after all the same. What is the exact reason for searching for a PIE? Is it possible that the attiudes of linguistic scholars today are akin to the attitudes of scientists when they first heard Darwin's theory that we evolved out of apes. They didn't like apes so they didn't like the idea. Perhaps people are afraid that a "Proto Indo European" still exists in the form of Sanskrit, for example and do not like the idea that the language of son of ape is the mother language?

[brihaspati]

I have never really been comfortable with the way linguists attribute meaning to ancient words. They do allow but most of the time they dont the gradual evolution and even the delicate pathways of overlaying of figurative meanings on the same word or root over time.

I can understand why the "aksiti" came up in this discussion - its is a pet theme of so-called correspondence claims in the PIE linguists.

Let me do my own speculation on "aksiti" - phonetically, without diacrits, its better written as shivji is doing - "akshiti". my speculation goes as follows:

(1) originally "s" was connected with speed/acceleration/moving forward
(2) originally the "k" [gutteral] was used in the sense of stopping/obstruction/opposite/unknown-fraught-with danger.
(3) and obstruction before starting to speed/move would then be represented as joint "ks".
(4) thus this would more imply stopped from moving, stationary, stable.
(5) from this two different further figurative overlays may be contextualized: one group takes the stopping of motion -> slowing down, slowing down of growth, reducing, decreasing. The further negation of "a" added to this would then imply not slowing down, not reducing, not slowing down of growth - and in this sense "aksiti" is possible to interpret as why it would be used in the context of growth of wealth etc. [ksiti would be the state of being reduced".

The other pathway is stress the "stability" meaning, that which is firm and founded on strength, that which does not move, etc. It is in this sense that equally - "ksiti" is associated with earth/land/soil. "aksa" literally is "axis/axle" - that portion/point of the wheel which appears relatively to be stable/motionless compared to the outer radius or perimeter but which is still turning around everything on the wheel - it is not allowing the wheel to stop.

If you take the imperishable/indestructible == "a"+ksiti, then ksiti ==earth/soil/land== destruction/perishable/or in a constant state of destruction. Earth as constantly being destroyed would be a concept more common in early holocene, or deep ice age - which would automatically push up the age of formation of the language way beyond the time frame allowed to Sanskrit.

So the common ground and perhaps the sense it was originally used was not in terms of "growth of wealth" etc, but stability/firm foundation/slow and steady etc.

[shiv]

(1) originally "s" was connected with speed/acceleration/moving forward
(2) originally the "k" [gutteral] was used in the sense of stopping/obstruction/opposite/unknown-fraught-with danger.
(3) and obstruction before starting to speed/move would then be represented as joint "ks".
(4) thus this would more imply stopped from moving, stationary, stable.
(5) from this two different further figurative overlays may be contextualized: one group takes the stopping of motion -> slowing down, slowing down of growth, reducing, decreasing. The further negation of "a" added to this would then imply not slowing down, not reducing, not slowing down of growth - and in this sense "aksiti" is possible to interpret as why it would be used in the context of growth of wealth etc. [ksiti would be the state of being reduced".

Credible and fascinating.

Sometimes one hears of weird linguistic connections that are credible. Others sound incredible and a third set seem to have few or no scholarly references that I can find.

I have spent years as a complete amateur noticing similarities in languages he way thousands of others have done and questions keep coming to mind. Today I read a link that speaks of "cognates"

Sanskrit "vidya" (knowledge) is listed as being connected with English "wise" via Latin "videre" - to see. And as is well "kn-own", jnana correlates with a whole lot of words starting from gnoscere in Latin including the word "know" in English.

http://www.friesian.com/cognates.htm

But let me say what bothers me about that list in the link above. In every language except Sanskrit, "Vid" relates to "to see" and "gn" relates to "know"

Only in Sanskrit do "vid" and "gna" mean the same thing.

If that is the case why is sanskrit "vid" included in that list at all? I was able to find no connection with Sanskrit "vid" and "to see" except in the word "vidyut" which means lightning ot bright or some such thing. I mean yes one can be clever and say "Oh after all to see is to know". But if to see is to know why do all languages have different words? Like I said , I am no expert, but is there a great enthusiasm for finding connections even when connections do not exist? Given the fact that this study is necessarily inexact and and dubious or false conclusions that are reached have an effect in modifying conclusions made further down the line.

It occurs to me that the quest for a mother "proto-Indo European" is based on a shaky premise that such a tongue existed and is gone now. That premise seems to be based on theories of small groups of nomads populating the world and inventing a language that now connects Europe. Central Asia and India. But heck the number of languages in the world is so huge that a groups of similar languages in a geographic areas where people have migrated and interacted is no big deal. Why is there a quest for something "older" - a "mother language" when it comes to "Indo-European"

There is more doubt in my mind when I look at the so called "Dravidian" languages. it is said that the Dravidian languages are different but have borrowed words from "Indo-Aryan". So no one is searching for a mummy language. Why it it that the first scholars who noticed the similarities between Sanskrit and Latin not simply conclude that Latin was the mother language and that Sanskrit was the daughter? That would have been simple and elegant no?

The real problem was that Sanskrit was much older and better developed so Latin could not be the mother language of Indi European. But then, why not call Sanskrit the mother language? If it has the oldest surviving text and a large number of daughter languages and is the most developed, surely Sanskrit is a good candidate to be mother language of Indo-European no?

There lies the crunch. In the late 1700s one chap called Jones discovered the connection between Sanskrit and classical European languages. there is no way White Europeans from a fundamentally racist culture of the day could accept Sanskrit of the black people as a mother language. What Jones did was to help cook up the Aryan race Dravidian race theory saying that the fair Aryans brought their language from the north and west driving the moronic Dravidians down.

But even this theory would mean acceptance of well developed Sanskrit of India as a "mother", proto language. This was completely unacceptable. but Latin could not be mummy either. So it seems that the quest for a mythical "proto-Indo European" has been cooked up with people scouring the sands of central Asia looking for that. It may just be a wild goose chase. it may well be that sanskrit of the frigging kaalu polytheist heathen Indians with some inputs from the idiotic inferior "double black" Dravidians really does represent the original "mother language' of the Indo European line.

I know this is a radical departure from what the experts say. But balls. So what? The same experts were known to be biased racists in the past and it is often their texts and theories that are still quoted.

[shiv]

Folks the word yogurt came from Turkey, apparently. It's called "dahi" in Hindi. It is "Thayir" in Tamil. But it's "mosaru" in Kannada. Kannada is Dravdian language as per the experts. But yogurt is also called "mezzoradu" in Sicily. Also Matsun in Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan.

Why? Coincidence? Sonia Gandhi influence? Or should we be looking for a proto Kannada-European language?

[member_20317]

Bhai log, please excuse my articulation in bringing to your kind attention my own ideas. So here it goes.


Following is how Brhaspatiji elsewhere has explained the idea of awareness.

B ji - Jnana is awareness, but more complicated than how it is ordinarily understood as. One example :
I "see" a tree in front of me. [Plain vision through eye indryia]
I "see" that I "see" a tree in front of me.
I "see" that I "see" that I "see" a tree in front of me.
...and so on.
This is a simple example and will cease to be additionally meaningful after a certain number of iterations. More complex examples will lead to possible infinite loops. At that stage we have to become aware of the iteration itself as the process of jnana.

Now why this is important is because human awareness in all probability arose at the time of development of vision (or other faculty) itself. In fact it could have been a simultaneously affair. Primodial awareness perhaps but awareness nonetheless and definitely better then so called ‘AI’ as propagated as of now.

Why bring in awareness, because it is closely related to experimentation. Being able to observe a perspective which is strictly not your own is an important part of experimentation.

Why bring in experimentation, because it throws off gear any kind of speculation as to some sound being root or whatever of some other sound with some parent sound thrown in if felt like. Kindly notice the ancient cave paintings. Those guys were not just painting like morons. They had themes and usage of ideas like hierarchy, kinship, motion and space for sure. I suspect they may have understood time as well. Not in the tick tock fashion that we do but as an analog part of their life. And mind you understanding of the visible world should take much more effort then that of the audible world. Now to somehow assume that this kind of sophisticated brain could not manipulate sound in complex ways that would throw off course any search for root sounds or whatever, is just fantastic. There really should be no root sound as such. Root sounds may be present only as part of the growth of the individual brain. So a baby says viz. ‘ma’ before he says ‘pa’ or some such other idea. But certainly among adults the search for a root sound may just be a mirage. I agree, the understanding of root may not be with respect to time as such and instead with the capability of anotomical structures but then in that case trying to find roots and ascribing them to invasions/migrations/influences, will become an even more stupid effort.

Almost an analog of such situation arose in the context of animal growth and animal evolution. It was postulated that all the stages of evolution of an animal get reflected in the growth of a zygote. I forget the name of this theory which I have also read in my school days. And last I checked in a liberal chaap website, this theory stood disputed with some cogent ideas.

[brihaspati]

shiv ji,
Kazanas is already of the position that Sanskrit is the closest extant/surviving representation of what the "PIE" was. Within that cautious mode, Sanskrit is being proposed as the mother language.

He tries to show that there was a PIE, but he also strongly advocates for Sanskrit to be that PIE - essentially. Further he places Sanskrit as Indian-subcontinent locationally in origin and not brought from outside.

[brihaspati]

Added : vid and gn is indeed slightly differentiated within Sanskrit narrative. Vid refers more to that "which is seen" through 5-senses, or knowledge that is acquired through the 5-senses. More information. Vedics realized that human mind is capable of a further higher level of "seeing" - that which ravi-g is pointing to, and ascribed it -gn. gn- is the peculiarly human "inner vision". they are aware of the overt similarities and hence often use them alternatively through that "seeing" connection. But they also separate out -gn as the dual "higher level seeing".


In contrast to so-called European separation - the Vedic sanskrit, by often contextually placing vid seemingly equivalent to -gn, is stressing that it is actually the result of/connected by the human process of abstraction by which same operator is overloaded.

Going through Sanskrit, I often have this nagging feeling that they were formulating this as a full fledged coding system, and they had the basics of computer science figured out - including modern object oriented thinking.

[shiv]

Going through Sanskrit, I often have this nagging feeling that they were formulating this as a full fledged coding system, and they had the basics of computer science figured out - including modern object oriented thinking.

You see brihaspati, if I look at it in dispassionate terms like one might look at gene evolution without worrying about my dong being longer it is easy for me to accept that the oldest genes that had the most time to develop evolve and diversify are in Africa.

It may well be that Sanskrit similarly is the root language that has had the greatest time to evolve and develop and was developed so well that it was simply adopted by others. The problem about the human mind is that there is a need to "compromise" and satisfy everyone. Latin and Greek clearly did not fit the bill as parent languages. But Sanskrit that was found in "backward, heathen, non white, conquered" India could not be accepted as a mother language.

So people started desperately thrashing about to look for a mythical "proto-Indo-European" language. I am not strong enough to hold on to my girlfriend, but I can't bring myself to accept that you are already sleeping with her, so I start blaming her behaviour on some mythical "Central Asian steppe" party who is casting a spell on her.

There may be no proto-shoto-Indo European. It may well be found to be Sanskrit.

[shiv]

Those guys were not just painting like morons. They had themes and usage of ideas like hierarchy, kinship, motion and space for sure.

Absolutely. And this is why it always irritates me to find interpretations of old artefacts that attribute absurd beliefs and thoughts to ancient people like "They were doing fertility rites" or "They felt that the words of a bard would give them immortality"

These archaeologists/scholars are looking at 5000 or 10,000 year old things and entering the minds of the people who created those things and informing us what those ancient people were thinking. And what they were thinking is so absurd that we have to think "Hey they were quaint morons then. We are so much cleverer now"

Nothing could be further from the truth. 3000 year old texts show that humans had the same rationality, motivations, thoughts, jealousies and desires 3000 years ago as they do today. Why would it have been any different 3000 years before that? The only reason a "scholar" would attribute absurdity like "fertility rite" on an ancient society is because he already feels he, of the modern day is superior in cognition and understanding compared to the ancient society whose remains he is studying.

It pays not to forget that western scholarship was openly racist till a mere 50 years ago. But not merely racist, it was also the product of a society that said "Humans are at the top. Animals are inferior" with no evidence other than the evidence I have right now to say that mine is longer than yours. And I still hear echoes of this attitude in 2012. I switched off a program on Discovery Science 2 weeks ago when the young sounding voice said "We know that humans have language and animals don't"

I mean I can use this logic to say that the Chinese have no language. If you cannot understand and recognize animal language it is so easy to say "They have no language". I can't recognize or understand Chinese. So the Chinese have no language. QED. The "fertility rite" logic is alive and healthy in human scholarstan. We only think we are damn clever.

[brihaspati]

shiv ji,
the Indian scholars who go for Sanskrit as the mother language and evolving in India - are derided as "saffronists". But Kazanas cannot be labeled so. I am sure you would find his arguments about internal consistency and other features he cites to claim the same as "saffronists", quite interesting [the papers are available to an extent from the site we mentioned].

[shiv]

shiv ji,
the Indian scholars who go for Sanskrit as the mother language and evolving in India - are derided as "saffronists". But Kazanas cannot be labeled so.

The "saffronist" observation is spot on. The focus of beating the pride out of Indians has been on all that is Hindu in origin. And any thing Indian that you bring up is blamed on bigoted Hindu resurgence.

You know this is a uniquely Indian problem that was one of the reasons why I started that "Sense of inferiority" thread. The educated Indian feels that other Indians are biased and motivated while real scholarship lies in the west. The feeling that Indians are lazy, scheming, untrustworthy. incompetent on their own is related to the way the modern education system has developed and the way pride has been beaten out of Indians as part of the education so that it is embarrassing for the educated Indian to even look for support among other Indians. If its Indian it can't be good or original or right. We need someone else to come and tell us after which we glow with pride. "Humri na maano sipahiya se poocho"

This is why we owe a debt of gratitude to people such as Kazanas. But I digress.