Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[peter]

[...] articulation (called palatalization with front vowels)[..]

What about Vedic words like Vac which becomes Vak?

[peter]

Why do you say Vedic proper names are not historical?

Nadi stuti sukta mentions river which is where they are found today too. The order is also correct.

peter ji,

that issue has already been addressed here in the past. Please invite KLP Dubey ji to another thread to discuss it there.

Thanks

Would you be kind enough to post a link please? I did a search of these key words :
Search found 2 matches
Search term used: dubey nadi stuti

The two posts are yours and mine.

[Arjun]

Don't forget to mention that in the case of past events, the only admissible means of falsification (of the 6 available "pramanas") is testimony (shabda).

Good observation. Even if one goes by the western definition of 'historical method' (see wiki for this) - primary sources and deduction are the key sources required to be considered for valid historiography.

Another excerpt from wiki page on 'Historical Method':

Core principles

The following core principles of source criticism were formulated by two Scandinavian historians, Olden-Jørgensen (1998) and Thurén (1997):[1]

- Human sources may be relics such as a fingerprint; or narratives such as a statement or a letter. Relics are more credible sources than narratives.
- Any given source may be forged or corrupted. Strong indications of the originality of the source increase its reliability.
- The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate historical description of what actually happened.
- A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source which is more reliable than a tertiary source, and so on.
- If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.
- The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
- If it can be demonstrated that the witness or source has no direct interest in creating bias then the credibility of the message is increased.

[RajeshA]

Would you be kind enough to post a link please?

There were several posts.

[ManishH]

SS Misra has definitely written about it, but I can't really find any online version of the book! Misra ji really should put this book online! I also don't know how to contact the gentleman!

Dr. Misra is no more. You'll have to look for it in a library.

[Nilesh Oak]

- The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.

Arjun ji,
Great list of points on Historical method in gauging quality of evidence. I struggled a bit with this one -above. When time permits.. would you illustrate with one or two examples, please.

[RajeshA]

From Wikipedia: A primer

Shiksha (Devanagari: शिक्षा IAST: śikṣā) is one of the six Vedangas, treating the traditional Hindu science of phonetics and phonology of Sanskrit.

Its aim is the teaching of the correct pronunciation of the Vedic hymns and mantras. The oldest phonetic textbooks are the Pratishakyas (prātiśākhya, a vrddhi abstract from Sanskrit prati-śākhā), describing pronunciation, intonation of Sanskrit, as well as the Sanskrit rules of sandhi (word combination), specific to individual schools or Shakhas of the Vedas.

[RajeshA]

Some archaeological perspective

OSTRICH-LIKE ATTITUDE IS PERPETUATING THE „ARYAN INVASION‟ MYTH
By B. B. LAL
Director General (Retd.)
Archaeological Survey of India

[shiv]

- Sanskrit kantaka is not the cognate of Greek kentron. The Skt cognate is kendra. It is known to be a late borrowing because RV doesn't even have 'kendra'.
- Greek has kleio, not klado.

My dictionary has several disagreements with yours, but I will pass on that for now and accept the above two. Both have juicy front vowels that mysteriously DID NOT get palatalized. You have made a feeble excuse for one. The excuse of palatalization is made when convenient. There is no general rule. Where is the anticipated k > s sound shift? You have to cook up a non existent language to explain why there is no sound shift just as PIE is cooked up to explain sound shift when the starting conditions are the same. You (and other linguists) are assuming the presence of a PIE and assuming approximately equal antiquity for Greek and Vedic Sanskrit with not even a whiff of proof. But your are quick in offering linguistics as "proof" after making up proof in the form of PIE. But more of that below

- kinnamon and daruchini are not even phonetic cognates.

They are cognates that you wish to ignore. And they are as much phonetically similar as "kleos" and "sravas", or "ashwa" and "equus"

Again you are putting a wrong claim into my mouth. I have said that PIE (not Greek) velars underwent palatalization in presence of front vowels. Not every Greek velar comes from a PIE velar.

<snip>

Greek ekklesia comes from Greek ek (out) + verb root kaleo which comes from PIE *kelh₁. It's totally unrelated to havyāmi - no explanation, nor regularity for how Sanskrit phoneme -vya- vanishes and greek 'le' comes in.

Greek 'kardio' comes from PIE *kṛd. There is no front vowel in the zero-grade PIE form so no palatalization occurred in Sanskrit hṛdaya. Whereas the PIE ablaut *kred-dheh₁ has the front vowel that led to palatalization in Sanskrit śraddhā.

Basically, you cannot take just Greek and Sanskrit evidence for arriving at the most likely sound in ancestor language. You have to take the cumulative evidence from all of PIE family.

Thank you Manishji. I was hoping you would illustrate the point I want to make and you have done that exactly as I hoped.

In order to explain sound change between Sanskrit and Greek (eg kleos and sravas) you have to invoke a non existent language. To make the connection 3+2=1, you have to make up a missing number to balance the equation and say that the number -4 used to exist and has now disappeared.

In PIE the missing number (missing sounds) are surmised from a slew of other languages. The fundamental assumption is that Greek, Sanskrit and a slew of other languages are all "equal" daughters of a mother language called PIE.

On what basis has the age of all these languages been fixed so that they can all contribute equally as having cognates to construct a PIE?

You and other linguists are making a huge assumption about ages of languages here. If by chance Old Greek is 5000 years old and Vedic Sanskrit is only 3000, and Old Church Slavonic is 1000 years old you are making a huge approximation in using cognates from languages of varying antiquity as equal contributors to an older PIE from 6000 years ago. After all language change is constant and continuous no?

It is only because linguists have already made convenient assumptions about the age and antiquity of various languages that allows you to consider their cognates that build an earlier PIE. And that PIE is being thrown at us as proof with not even a hint of insight, let alone guilt at the assumptions being made.

[peter]

Would you be kind enough to post a link please?

There were several posts.

Thanks! I read them all. And I am not sure I understand/agree with what has been discussed thus far.

Here is the Rg Veda 10:75:5:
इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या ।
असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ॥५॥

How is it that Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutlej etc are mentioned in the exact order that they exist even today? Who ever created/heard this hymn knew his/her geography rather well.

[peter]

- Sanskrit kantaka is not the cognate of Greek kentron. The Skt cognate is kendra. It is known to be a late borrowing because RV doesn't even have 'kendra'.
- Greek has kleio, not klado.

My dictionary has several disagreements with yours, but I will pass on that for now and accept the above two. Both have juicy front vowels that mysteriously DID NOT get palatalized. You have made a feeble excuse for one. The excuse of palatalization is made when convenient. There is no general rule. Where is the anticipated k > s sound shift? You have to cook up a non existent language to explain why there is no sound shift just as PIE is cooked up to explain sound shift when the starting conditions are the same. You (and other linguists) are assuming the presence of a PIE and assuming approximately equal antiquity for Greek and Vedic Sanskrit with not even a whiff of proof. But your are quick in offering linguistics as "proof" after making up proof in the form of PIE. But more of that below

But he is a PIE believer so he is well within his rights to use PIE. For the PIE corner it was living language!

Question is how does Manish explain the rules of Vedic Sanskrit?

In Sanskrit a word cannot end on a Palatal. So a word ending in "च" needs to be written with a "क". Hence Vac is written as Vak. Similarly other rules exist for palatans and there are many exceptions.
The key observation is that these rules were created by a mind.

[RajeshA]

How does one actually show a consistent sound change?

a) One can gather a few words from two languages which have similar semantics, and propose a sound change. If it doesn't work directly one can use deus ex machina arrangement of a parent language plus some undefinable laryngeals. Out of all this one can squeeze out a pattern.

b) Then there would be a lot of words with similar meanings which do not fit this long circuitous path of sound changes even. These one can declare as non-cognates and having different sources!

c) Problem solved!

Between any two sounds in the the human voice tract there is always a position (of the tongue) where the sound would sound unsharp and indiscernible. From these indiscernible sound positions one can basically take the sound anywhere one wants. However usually it is from a state of more muscular exertion to one of less muscular exertion. So one may need to put in a few more sound changes to get it correct. If it doesn't work out throw in a few laryngeals and a few grunts and it may work out!

[RajeshA]

peter ji,

I appreciate your interest in the subject, however it was found out that the subject can become divisive and it is too much of an issue of faith or conviction for the community to be made an issue of divisiveness. As such the subject was deferred to other threads, other forums, other times!

[shiv]

The Internet has allowed people to read both sides of the issue and analyze the statements against primary evidence. It has empowered the people.

That is why Witzel gets khujli in his *ekhwass.

[shiv]

Here is the Rg Veda 10:75:5:
इमं मे गङ्गे यमुने सरस्वति शुतुद्रि स्तोमं सचता परुष्ण्या ।
असिक्न्या मरुद्वृधे वितस्तयार्जीकीये शृणुह्या सुषोमया ॥५॥

How is it that Ganga, Yamuna, Sarasvati, Sutlej etc are mentioned in the exact order that they exist even today? Who ever created/heard this hymn knew his/her geography rather well.

They are listed in East to West order. This happened when the Aryans were walking back to Syria for a celebration after pushing away the pesky Dravs and imposing their IE on India n 500 BC.

[member_23686]

http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewto ... 7#p1299507

Against the AIT/AMT there are actually two narratives that are pitted - Autochthonous Origin (Indigenist) of Indo-Aryans and the Out-of-India Theory (OIT).

In OIT, one needs to look for a narrative which shows that the archaeological, linguistic and mythological reality is better explainable by the OIT than by the AIT.

One very good OIT proposal is from Shrikant Talageri. He speaks of some tribes of the Lunar Dynasty and proposes:

PUrus were the Vedic Aryans and they stayed in India.
Anus were the Iranians and they shifted to the West, from South of the Caspian Sea.
Druhyus were the ones who migrated to Europe from North of the Caspian Sea.

Anu Tribes were

PRthus or PArthavas (VII.83.1): Parthians.
ParSus or ParSavas (VII.83.1): Persians.
Pakthas (VII.18.7): Pakhtoons.
BhalAnas (VII.18.7): Baluchis.
Sivas (VII.18.7): Khivas.
ViSANins (VII.18.7): Pishachas (Dards).
Madras: (not named in the Rigveda,): Medes.
Simyus (VII.18.5): Sarmatians (Avesta = Sairimas) > Albanians.
Alinas (VII.18.7): Alans. > Greeks
BhRgus (VII.18.6): Phrygians > Armenians.


So this got me thinking. If one has to prove Talageri's Out-of-India Migration Theory, then one may have to show something which goes against AIT, something like the Southern Route taken by the migrants on their way to Europe.

If Talageri is correct, and in the Anu confederacy, along with ParSus, also Alinas took part in the Battle of the Ten Kings, this means the Hellenes (Alinas) and ParSus (Persians) were once together and then separated.

So the Alinas went their way to Greece. They could be the Mycenaeans. I don't know. And they took the Southern Route, South of Caspian Sea.

Also we know that Greeks and Persians have had a long and bitter rivalry. That means at some point in time the Hellenes (Alinas) and the ParSus, etc. had a fallout with each other. This fallout should have been recorded somewhere, and may be there are records of this fallout. These are the premises.

From my superficial knowledge of Greek mythology, I have come up with a speculative theory. Recorded but coded history DOES have this testimony. It is in the cosmogony of the Greeks.

There must have been some reason why the Alinas on the one hand and the other dominant Anu tribes on the other had a fallout. The reason could be political or it could also be some religious difference. This difference must have cropped up sometime later on after the Battle of the Ten Kings.

If it was religious, then it must have been due to some revolutionary change that someone wanted to introduce and either the Alinas or the other dominant Anus were not happy with it. And indeed one of the most prominent revolutions among the Anus (Anava) was Zarathustra and his new religion - Zoroastrianism. Not everybody would have been happy, leaving the old ways and taking on the new, giving rise to serious theological differences.

I believe the Alinas were one of the tribes who did not like what Zarathustra was proposing, and they decided to keep their old ways. One can only speculate what was something that the Alinas were simply not prepared to accept.

a) And if I may speculate, I believe it was the funeral ceremony. Among the Vedic Aryans (PUrus) and the other tribes, the standard was cremation. The corpse was burned and the spirit was freed by Agni. But Zarathustra in his eagerness to go a different way and to make big changes in the ritual, required that dead bodies be eaten by eagles and vultures. He built Dakhma Towers, called Cheel Ghars in Hindi, where bodies were placed and were allowed to be eaten by eagles and vultures and other birds and after a few months or years the bones were collected and thrown in an ossuary, a pit.

Now turning to Greek mythology we learn that Prometheus rebelled against Zeus and brought fire to the humans after Zeus had hidden it from man, so as punishment Prometheus was chained to a rock in Caucasus* for an eternity and everyday an eagle would come and eat his liver, which would regenerate during the night.

So some points
- man already possessed fire
- Zeus hid fire from man
- Prometheus brought it back to man

Now what is the meaning of this tale? Can someone really hide or ban fire when man already knows how to use it? So obviously the talk is of some fire ritual. Now the Iranians were considered as the ones who most identified themselves with fire - with the deity Agni. They had introduced the fire yasna (yagna) under the Bhrgus and it received acceptance from other tribes as well. The PUrus too had adopted it, perhaps from a time, when the tribes had not yet differentiated. The other fire ritual was the cremation (antim sanskar).

This is the fire ritual we speak. When Zarathustra (here associated with Zeus) banned the fire ritual, some Prometheus (Param Deva) rebelled and allowed the Alinas to continue with their cremation ceremonies, much in the same way the tribes did earlier.

In addition to giving humankind fire, Prometheus claims to have taught the humans the arts of civilization, such as writing, mathematics, agriculture, medicine, and science.

So obviously the Alinas considered cremation as an inseparable part of their civilization, they could no forego.

We see the Hellenes, the Greeks later on continuing with the cremation ceremony. In popular culture, in the movie "Troy" we see how cremations were conducted on Hector and the other fallen heroes.

So the Alinas decided to continue with the tradition of the Vedic Aryans, the PUrus, and thus separating themselves theologically from the other Anavas, who decided to adopt Zoroastrianism, and the Dakhmas.

2) Talageri mentions that that Alinas were an Anu tribe which were found in the northwestern periphery of Iran.

Also the "Daiva Inscription" of Xerxes I of Persia found near Persepolis (484 BC) tells about a revolt by "daiva worshippers" in West Iran, which he quelled. These were people who were still following the old religion.

So one can say that to the West of Xerxes Persian Empire, there were still many daiva worshippers, who still followed the old way, similar to the rituals of Vedic Aryans.

Who were these "daiva worshippers"?

They could well be the Alinas, or some other Anu tribe.

3) The Mycenaeans talk of a "Dorian invasion" from the North. Considering that the Hellenes (Alinas) were from the Anu tribe in our model, and migrated to Greece from South of Caspian Sea, they would still have the memory of the third tribe of the Lunar Dynasty - the Druhyus.

So could the Alinas have come across the Druhyus a long way from their initial common home (North and Northwest India) in Greece.

There is some similarity in sound between Druhyus and Dorians.

4) Then there is the older myth of how Ouranos (Varuna) was overthrown by his son Chronos (Kaal), which too was overthrown by Zeus.

Varuna was an Asura (Ahura) and besides in Rigveda by the Vedic Aryans also worshiped by the Anus. So the myth among the Hellenes about an overthrow of Varuna by Zeus in due time (Chronos) is recorded.

This can indeed mean an overthrow of the old guard, where the ParSus (dominant Anu sub-tribe) used to decide the for the Alinas (another Anu sub-tribe).

Here Zeus takes over ultimately, with time (Chronos, Kaal) degrading the power of Ouranos (Varuna). Zeus is here endowed with the power of lightening and thunder. That is Zeus here embodies both "Dyaus Pitr" as well as "Indra".

In fact Greek Cosmogony talks of the castration of Ouranos by Chronos, perhaps fully taking away his power. This could again refer to Alinas (Hellenes) freeing themselves from the dominance of the ParSus (Persians).

---------------

What all this shows is that the Hellenes (Greeks) and the Persians were earlier connected and even used to see themselves as one tribe, and after political and theological differences, the Hellenes finally detached themselves from the other Anus and settled in Greece using the Southern route, South of the Caspian Sea as the route of migration.

It also shows that whereas Iranians under Zarathustra changed directions and turned against the earlier theology they used to share with the Vedic Aryans, the PUrus, the Alinas (Hellenes) continued to uphold the rituals of Veda, especially the cremation of the dead.

Modern Greeks are thus today a mixture of Alinas (Hellenes) and Druhyus (Dorians).

---------------

Disclaimer: As I said, just some speculation. Take it for what it is. I don't have any evidence beyond what I have said here.

Just some food for thought. How much evidence can we pile up in favour of RajeshA ji's speculation?

[Arjun]

- The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.

Arjun ji,
Great list of points on Historical method in gauging quality of evidence. I struggled a bit with this one -above. When time permits.. would you illustrate with one or two examples, please.

Nilesh ji, This is not my list - its on the wiki for 'Historical Method'.

Having said that, it seems very clearly to pertain to sources that can be proven to have a bias of some kind (AIT Nazis are obvious candidates). But rather than eliminating this source, the idea of supplementing with one of opposite motivation is somewhat puzzling.

Anyway, here's an article I came cross on bias as it relates to social science research: Bias in Social Research

[RajeshA]

dharmaraj ji,

nice of you to go through the "old" posts. That really was a lot of speculation on my part. . In fact that time may be lying so far back that one may really have a hard time coming up with any real evidence.

But then the pre-historic past is really made up of speculation based on very few hints from here and there.

In the meantime I am not so sure, one should associate Alinas with Hellenes. The Mycenaeans could be from other tribes. Kota Venkatachelam speculates that it was Bharatiya Yavanas/Yonas who settled in Greece and called themselves Ionians.

[shiv]

Hmm - I just dicovered that the word "satrap" is derived from Greek "satrapes" itself derived Old Persian "kshatrapavan" which is a cognate of Sanskrit kshatrapavan.

Now tell me this. How did Greek satrapes become kshatrapavan in Persia? Or did it happen the other way round? PIE went from Pontic steppe to Syria to Iran to India. What was the PIE word that split to become "satrapes" and "kshatrapavan"? This word, a K>S change in Greek will be called a "late borrowing with dropping of sibilant" as opposed to the "palatalization" of kleos to sravas 1000 years earlier. The time is also known.

[shiv]

Check out this glossary of old greek military terms. Much comes from Old Persian because of deep links between Greece and Persia.
http://s_van_dorst.tripod.com/Ancient_Warfare/Greece/greek_glossary.html

Many Persian words are reminiscent of Sanskrit or Indian languages. The word "patish" apparently a cognate of Skt. "pati" means commander/leader. But what interested me was:

1. Asapatish (PE): cavalry commander.
2. Asthippos (GR): ‘city cavalryman’; title borne by some Macedonian mounted troops.

"Hippos" and "asa" together? Where our friend equus?

Also see
Hippakontistès (GR): mounted javelinman.
Hipparchia (GR): cavalry regiment.
Hippeus (GR): ‘horseman’ or ‘knight’: (1) cavalryman; (2) elite infantryman; title of picked Spartan hoplite.
Hippikè (GR): cavalry.
Hippikon (GR): cavalry.
Hippos (GR): horse.
Hippotoxotès (GR): horse archer.

Note that all this dates from around 400 BC - hust 500-600 years after Rig Veda was composed in these very areas and the Aryans learned the word "ashwa" from palatalization of "equus" and took it to India. And by the time it went there the Greeks changed to "hippos". The slimy two timers grrrr

[Prem]

. And by the time it went there the Greeks changed to "hippos". The slimy two timers grrrr

AIT= Anti Indian Thuggery

[RajeshA]

shiv saar

2. Asthippos (GR): ‘city cavalryman’; title borne by some Macedonian mounted troops.

Asthippos is very interesting. I think the 't' came in between to join 'asa' and 'pos'!

However 'as' did not change, for otherwise it may have become 'hippothippos'! But somebody may argue that it is *ekhwas which changes to 'hippos' and not 'asa' to 'hippos'.

However even linguists have it somewhat difficult in making a case that hippos is a cognate of *ekhwas or asva.

It seems to me that the Greeks received the word for horse from somewhere else. Maybe they changed Arabic 'hAsan' to Greek 'hippos'.

The only thing certain is that the horse was not used and its name was not known to the "Aryans" before they started migrating from their Urheimat to other places, and that the word for horse entered their vocabulary much later from different sources, and thus they ended up saying the word for horse differently.

[A_Gupta]

So there is no reply to Thieme?

From the test point of the one PIE linguist here, we get further indication that any evidence that goes against the historical linguistics is simply discarded, just like the Surkotada horse.

[KLP Dubey]

Question is how does Manish explain the rules of Vedic Sanskrit?

In Sanskrit a word cannot end on a Palatal. So a word ending in "च" needs to be written with a "क". Hence Vac is written as Vak. Similarly other rules exist for palatans and there are many exceptions.
The key observation is that these rules were created by a mind.

Peter,

Regarding RV 10.75, a favorite of "RV geographers", I have introduced it in a previous post but not yet posted a more detailed analysis. I will do so.

The grammatical rules of Sanskrit are humanly created, as mentioned before. They are deduced from analysis of the Rgvedic sounds over a long period of time. Again, the rules are fitted to the sounds, and hence have some inconsistencies here and there. But whereas the deduction of grammatical and metrical rules achieved a good degree of consistency, the word-meanings are a different level of complexity and have not achieved consistency. A more advanced effort is required for that.

KL

[Prem Kumar]

ManishH: you mentioned universal sound-change laws & non-universal ones. Can you point out some examples of universal ones? I believe "palatization in the presence of front vowels" is one, based on your comment. I see that there are many sound change laws like Metathesis, Dissimilation, Rhotacism, Debuccalization etc.

Is there a summary that states which ones amongst these are universal? By universal, I mean that they have been observed in several language pairs and no violations have been observed (i.e. they are not language-state-dependent)

To make sure I understand how the PIE tree was built, let me state in my own words. Plz comment:

1) 2 languages (say X and Y) are compared to see similarities in sounds for words. The obvious word borrowings (like Mulligatawny) are eliminated and the verb root similarities are analyzed to see if they might be deeply related

2) If they are deemed to be deeply connected, their verb roots are analyzed to see if one could be a parent of another. This is purely based on universal sound laws (not the non-universal ones). Question: what if for some verb root, X can be the parent & for another Y can be the parent?

3) If neither can be the parent (due to violation of universal sound laws), then a proto-parent verb root is constructed. The verb root of the parent is setup such that its morphing into either X's or Y's verb root doesnt violate the universal laws. Question: what if only some verb roots require a proto-parent & for others, either X or Y could have been the parent?

4) A hierarchy is built between X, Y (& if needed a new proto-language), based on the above

5) Repeat above steps for other languages to build the whole tree

One more question: say X is deemed to be a parent of Y. But there are verb roots in X and Y that are not related. And say the % of unrelated verb roots is 90% of the total # of verb roots in Y. Is X still considered a parent of Y based on a 10% verb root match? Or could Y not simply have borrowed X's verb roots and some rules (instead of borrowing whole words)

[shiv]

However even linguists have it somewhat difficult in making a case that hippos is a cognate of *ekhwas or asva.

It is not that difficult to create a parent word if you belong in the correct circle of IE linguists. You need to create a word that has elements of all sounds, "hippos", ashwa and equus. If some sounds are missing, you can cite some sound change or if some extra sounds are there you can say they were lost.

Suppose you create a Proto word (PIE) out of Sanskrit, Latin, old English and Celtic cognates. You are incorporating into that proto-word sound elements that may have taken place in Celtic but not in Sanskrit. You simply say that it was lost in Sanskrit. In some other proto word you use Greek, Sanskrit, Old Germanic and Anatolian cognates because you happen to have found what you believe are cognates in those particular langauges. You again create a word that incorporates sounds from all 4 languages, but you are still unable to get a particular sound that is present in say Old German. To explain that you make up the nearest convenient excuse by stating that the extinct Anatolian word may have had an initial missing "e" in front of the "D" and this sound got palatalized in Old Germanic to produce "j" that later degenerated to "ch". You claim that this has occurred in many languages and therefore it must be true along with everything else you just made up.

Apart from the wild guessing that goes on, what if Anatolian is 4000 years old and Old Germanic only 1500 years old. How do they become sister languages whose cognates get equal chance of influencing a proto-word? In the 2500 year gap between Anatolian and Old Germanic the parent languages of the latter may have split up, got influenced by many other languages, undergone many changes and some changes may have disappeared.

So the proto word that existed from which hippos, equus an ashwa/aspa/asa could be *eh1epos in which the initial e- is retained in equus but becomes a- in ashwa. It is lost in hippos. The "h1" is a laryngeal that is "h" in hippos. but it becomes guttural "q" (k) in equus. The eq-of equus later undegoes palatalization to become -s- in ashwa.

These are unfalsifiable arguments. They are eternal truths like saying God exists. All that you need to say is that God said them. And you will be cursed as an unbeliever if you disagree. And the falsified history you were taught tells you that this happened only to Galileo and does not happen in modern times.

[Nilesh Oak]

It is not that difficult to create a parent word if you belong in the correct circle of IE linguists. You need to create a word that has elements of all sounds, "hippos", ashwa and equus. If some sounds are missing, you can cite some sound change or if some extra sounds are there you can say they were lost.

These are unfalsifiable arguments. They are eternal truths like saying God exists. All that you need to say is that God said them. And you will be cursed as an unbeliever if you disagree. And the falsified history you were taught tells you that this happened only to Galileo and does not happen in modern times.

Ptolemy's epicycles is a good analogue. Possibly he began with 5, one each for visible planets (naked eye). Every time new observation for the position(s) of planet(s) showed up, European astronomy/astrology community went back to the 'board' and added another epicycle or modified diameter/position of epicycle/equant.
By the time Copernicus came on board, there were 70+ epiccycles to explain/predict positions of 5 planets. (Not unlike every expanding rules and regulations and exceptions in the field of linguistics)
And even with copernicus -heliocentric model- the epicycles did not vanish.. but came down to 34. (Using Occum razor.. this was at least directionally right).
Epicycles were not completely gone until Kepler came up with elleptical orbits for planets.

No wonder Linguists hate archeo-astronomy. Religious crowd made Kepler's life hellish and story of Galilleo is well known. Copernicus was so worried that he allowed publication of his book only when he was certain that he would die before book came out/read by many/became popular or scandalous.

[shiv]

Let me pose a thought experiment:

The Greek word for serpent is "herpes". the Sanskrit word is "sarpa"
The Greek word for seven is "hept-" and the Sanskrit word is "sapta"

You look at the similarities and know "instinctively" that the two languages are related. How do you go about figuring out the relationship? You know they are similar but not the same. You ask, "Did Greek become Sanskrit?" or "Did Sanskrit become Greek?". Or was there some other earlier common language that split up into Greek and Sanskrit?

Whether you like it or not all three questions demand a timeline of something that came earlier and something that came later. If you know for a fact that Greek came 2000 years earlier, you can rule out any possibility that Sanskrit became Greek. But you are still left with the possibility that either Greek gave rise to Sanskrit as a direct descendant or Greek had a protolanguage (common ancestor) that gave rise to Greek initially and a branch language became Sanskrit after a gap of 500 or 1000 or 2000 years.

A similar argument holds true if you now for a fact that Sanskrit is 2000 years older than Greek You are still left with two possibilities of which one needs to be ruled out.

However if you find out that both Greek and Sanskrit are approximately the same age give or take a century or two, you know for certain that one could not have become the other. You are then left with only one possibility - and that is to say that both had a common ancestor.

The people who claim PIE as a mother language use the last argument. They have already decided that the languages that are used to construct PIE are roughly contemporary Once you decide on the timeline (making Greek sanskrit and other languages rough contemporaries) you are left only with one possibility - looking for one single mother language.

So the key issue is how were the various languages dated? What proof exists that a given language has existed from any particular period of time? Linguistic evidence can never give you a timeline whether you palatize your evidence or buccalize it.

[KLP Dubey]

Shiv,

I understand your sarcasm, and agree with everything you said above, except this:

These are unfalsifiable arguments. They are eternal truths like saying God exists.

That's not true. They are "unfalsifiable" arguments only if one's epistemological position is so weak that it does not include testimony as the primary means of knowledge. That is indeed the position of the PIE linguist.

The mentally sane epistemological position - in matters of analyzing past events - must admit testimony as the primary means of knowledge, which can then be evaluated using all the other epistemic categories. This is the required practice in jurisprudence, and indeed in *any investigation of non-reproducible events*.

The relevant testimony is: "The Rgveda pratishakhya, dealing with Sanskrit, is the oldest phonetic record of mankind". All sound changes (whether in India or outside) can be explained consistently as defects/deviations from pratishakhya phonetics. This is the status quoposition. Hence, there is no rational basis for postulation of any "older" language (whether it is Hittite or Greek or PIE) if there is no testimony predating the pratishakhya about how it was spoken.

It is of course theoretically possible that there was some phonetic record of PIE which is now lost, but the same can then be assumed of Sanskrit. One can make any speculation one wants to, but one cannot displace the status quo position without testimony.

That is all there is to it.

KL

[Nilesh Oak]

So the key issue is how were the various languages dated? What proof exists that a given language has existed from any particular period of time? Linguistic evidence can never give you a timeline whether you palatize your evidence or buccalize it.

To continue this thought experiment further....
Mahabharata Text has astronomy observations that lead to a time period of before 4500 BC (Arundhati) or before 3500-4000 BC (Bhishma Nirvana). This raises following possibilities...

(1) Vyasa used 'astronomy software' to backtrack events... when? 2000+ years ago! yeah. I am all for that
(2) or he wrote what he saw and he wrote in Sanskrit

But what if he was translating an epic written in some other language -mother/grandmother of Sanskrit

(1) possible, still the instances are from India.. So mother/grandma of Sanskrit existed in India

What if Vyasa took a story from Pontic Steppe, Antolia or any such Non-Indian soil, but modified it in 'Hamlet to Omkara' fashion.

This is of course possible, then question is what happend to Hamlet (original story based on which Mahabharata was written)

Lot of thought experiments and many more questions....While Linguists sleep on the bank of Haravati in Afganistan, after having soma (ephedra) along with 'Assa' T bone steak, knowing well that if some traitor shows up, they can always defend themselves with PIE. Worse case scenario is that they may have to sleep, deprived of their favorite PIE aka 'dulce leche de b*qwas' for one night. They can re-invent the wheel, next morning.

Now, where is my Occum's razor?

[shiv]

The relevant testimony is: "The Rgveda pratishakhya, dealing with Sanskrit, is the oldest phonetic record of mankind". All sound changes (whether in India or outside) can be explained consistently as defects/deviations from pratishakhya phonetics. This is the status quoposition. Hence, there is no rational basis for postulation of any "older" language (whether it is Hittite or Greek or PIE) if there is no testimony predating the pratishakhya about how it was spoken.

It is of course theoretically possible that there was some phonetic record of PIE which is now lost, but the same can then be assumed of Sanskrit. One can make any speculation one wants to, but one cannot displace the status quo position without testimony.

That is all there is to it.

KL

I agree with this but would like to explain the current state of affairs using an analogy that I have used several times in the past on BRF.

A student going for an exam prepared himself to write an essay on the coconut tree. Unfortunately the exam question asked for an essay on the cow. The innovative student stated that the cow is tied to a coconut tree and then proceeded to write his coconut tree essay. He tied the two together and proceeded to do say what he wanted to do

What philologists have done is to agree that the Rig veda represents the oldest phonetic record in Sanskrit. They then proceed to say that we also have old phonetic records from existing languages and phonetic records that we have created from dead languages that have no phonetic records. We now tie up all these phonetic records to each other and to Sanskrit to create a phonetic master plan which pre dates and explains all previous phonetic records including Sanskrit.

In real terms this claim is like my insisting that I am a direct descendant of Emperor Ashoka. It is a claim. You cannot stop me from claiming it. You cannot disprove it and I am not going to prove it. At best it is a digression from a quest for truth. As long as other quests are not barred or disallowed, it would be fine. But when other explanations and quests are ruled out we are dealing with fundamental academic dishonesty. But that dishonesty comes from people in powerful positions, akin to the Vatican in days of yore. And we have generations of people looking up to those institutions that are using blatant dishonesty and academic intimidation to ensure the survival of The One viewpoint.

This actually calls for war. Not hot war, but a slow, cold, academic one fought on a ground where we are strong

[KLP Dubey]

Nilesh Oak and Shiv,

Your thought experiment has a major flaw.

Human language is first and foremost, speech. If you are wanting to analyze what speech is "older", you need to have a phonetic record. Not just epigraphic evidence or an old manuscript. Even if you have in your possession a Mahabharata manuscript radiologically dated to 3000 BCE, it is not enough unless the author of the manuscript also explicitly tells you how to pronounce the symbolic sounds in the script.

In the case of the pratishakhya, the authors are dealing directly with the RV whose sounds are known. The "recording" of the sounds is in the RV recitation, which - despite the vagaries of time - is practically intact.

Again, focus on the pratishakhya. It is the only admissible record.

KL

[shiv]

Lot of thought experiments and many more questions....While Linguists sleep on the bank of Haravati in Afganistan, after having soma (ephedra) along with 'Assa' T bone steak, knowing well that if some traitor shows up, they can always defend themselves with PIE. Worse case scenario is that they may have to sleep, deprived of their favorite PIE aka 'dulce leche de b*qwas' for one night. They can re-invent the wheel, next morning.

Now, where is my Occum's razor?

The irony is that even the assumption that soma was ephedra may be wrong. Ephedrine actually gives an adrenaline/amphetamine type reaction that can kill older people (and some younger people too). It causes the heart to beat faster and harder, tremors and blurring of vision. Milligram for milligram ganja is a far better bet than ephedrine.

[shiv]

Nilesh Oak and Shiv,

Your thought experiment has a major flaw.

Human language is first and foremost, speech. If you are wanting to analyze what speech is "older", you need to have a phonetic record.

The main objection I have here is attributing my thought experiment, provided as an illustration of the logic that might be used as something that I have done or want to do. I did not originate the idea of dating languages. I ask that anyone who chooses to date a language be honest and look at all the pitfalls in dating.

[KLP Dubey]

This actually calls for war. Not hot war, but a slow, cold, academic one fought on a ground where we are strong

The best bet is to collect money and hire a really good lawyer. These guys will do the job better than any academic argument on its own. The academic arguments will be called in as "expert witnesses".

KL

[shiv]

The best bet is to collect money and hire a really good lawyer. These guys will do the job better than any academic argument on its own. The academic arguments will be called in as "expert witnesses".

KL

Actually I think this is a good idea and I will try and work out the language that can be used to show that the interpretations of the Rig veda used by linguists to try and peddle their theories are offensive to the sentiments of people who hold that work as a sacred touchstone of their culture.

For that I think I need to collect the many offensive and fake translations and interpretations of the Rig veda. That should not be difficult actually..

[Kaushal]

Pierre Duhem, 9 June[2] 1861 – 14 September 1916) was a French physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science, best known for his writings on the indeterminacy of experimental criteria and on scientific development in the Middle Ages. His views on Mathematical Models mirror those of Indic savants Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Chaturveda Prthudakaswami

The South Asia File , Original Publishers, Delhi, 2009

[Prem Kumar]

ManishH: more questions as a follow-up to my earlier post. This is regarding the nature of the sound law changes. Questions below refer to only the universal laws

1) Consistency: are the set of universal laws internally consistent? For example: are there laws which could potentially contradict each other - like one law stating that a sound change must proceed in direction A and another law stating that it can proceed in the opposite or a different direction?

2) Falsifiability: are the universal laws falsifiable? If a certain phenomenon is forbidden but is observed in reality, the law should permit itself to be proven wrong

3) Universality: are these laws universal? Have they been observed across multiple language pairs & at least one of the pairs must have attestations, so that the direction of sound change can be confirmed via something other than linguistics? Universality would also mean that these laws dont have riders that allow one-off exceptions. Any one-off rider or a one-off law can hardly be called universal. Moreover, one-off riders can be indefinitely added to an existing law to get around the falsifiability criterion

These are general principles that any scientific theory must uphold.

[Kaushal]

Nilesh ji, are you by any chance related to the great Purushottam Nagesh Oak. If so please let me tell u how pleased I am that you are participating in these debates.it is not that I would devalue your contributions if you were not related to sri pn oak, but having the presence of somebody who is familiar with pn oak’s work, lends some reassurance that we are not barking up the wrong tree. I am assuming that you are imbued with the same sense of urgency, that drove pn oak, sathe, and Tilak to commit a great portion of their lives to correct the history that has been foisted on the indics by a conniving colonial overlord whose sole concern was to prolong his rule over india. In fact I would be surprised that so many indians have fallen for the notion that an Englishman who has no obligation to be accountable for his actions to an indian should be relied on more than an indian, because in his heart of hearts he has the sneaking suspicion that the indian does not measure up .

Regardless of whether you are related to sri p n oak
I am sufficiently humbled by the breadth of knowledge that you exhibit to ask you if you could review my book for me. I cannot pay you large sums of money, but I also realize that it would be unfair to ask you to devote large amounts of time without any recompense. I can afford to pay you Rs 10,000 which amounts to less than 15 Rs a page . my funds are dwindling rapidly and I simply cannot afford to pay you anymore . THE BOOK IS TITLED the origins of astronomy, the calendar and time a critique of the conventional western narrative

The other reason I wanted to communicate with you is the remark that you made in the OIT thread in bharat rakshak .
found at least a couple of errors , one of which stated that one cannot depend on the historical record because of the errors in the length of the adhikamāsa. You caught the error in a similar statement which you corrected in post dated 12 Sep 2012 01:19 pm in page 124. i would like to say that indian chronology was the most accurate chronology in the ancient world not because the indians had a high NIH factor, whicjh is extremely common in western countries where the tendency is very strong to reject a thesis simply begauce the author is not western by ethnicity or by parampara . the reason indian chronology was superior was that they used the ahargana system to calculate the exact number of days from a well recognized epoch like the start of kali yuga. Again because most European calendars were wrong because they used the Julian calendar named
After Julius ceaser, on the While the thread has brought out many useful facts and I commend rajesh A for his courage in undertaking this
forensic endeavor , the problem with this approach is that there are errors in the record, which go unnoticed and the error causes one to make erroneous inferences; I
advice of the Egyptian astronomer Sosigenes who came up with the idea of a leap year. In fact therein hangs a tale which illustrates the fragility of the egos of the roman emperors and this has to do with the reason for February getting shortchanged to only 28 days. Shortly after july was named after Julius Ceaser it was decided that it should have 31 days, because a month that was associated with the name of Julius Ceaser, should not languish in the obscurity of having only 30 day. Prior to the correction, the roman calendar was a shambles with only ten months, with each alternating month having a duration of 31 days to make up the 5 extra day they had to add to 360 (12 *30). They would manually add the two extra months to make it a year of 360 days. Then when Julius. caeser decided that he needed a month named after him, not just any month but one that had 31 days . if all this sounds crazy I invite the reader to watch the movie Julius caeser , where ,Mark Antony is played superbly by marlon brando, and I believe rex Harrison plays Julius caeser. I like this version because the dialog sticks to Shakespeare and he does a good job of capturing the mood of the day and the ego of Julius caeser // and then comes octavian augustus caeser who despite the fact that he was,a nephew of Julius caeser and you would have thought that out of respect for his uncle that he would not aspire to the same level of hubris does exactly that and names the next month after September (which was the seventh month in the original 10 month calendar)so October is named after octavian caeser and since he now felt that he surpassed julius in his greatness it would be fitting if October had 31 days . but somebody had to pay the piper for these days, and so it was that the hapless month of February was left with 28 days.
ptolemy writes in the almagest (there is another story behind this ) that the year was shy of 365.25 by 1/300 years. Remember that ptolemy had no knowledge of the indian number system and translating fractions into something recognizable today was not a simple task. In fact the vast majority of the people were completely illiterate. And could not read and write any script until the printing presses came along and the university of cambridge opened its doors circa 1280 when the first of its constituent colleges Peterhouse opened for business
365.25 ( shy by 1/300) = 365.25 - .0033 =365.24667. this is not the right value for the number of days in a year and only succeeds in getting closer to the true value of the tropical year which is 365.24221. so the problem of the true value of the tropical year was never solved in europe until 1560 clavius who was tasked to come up with a

calendar in which easter woud always occur on the Monday following the vernal equinox, came up with the bright idea of studying the calendars of the indians, whose fame as the foremost among astronomers was already acknowedged by people like said al andalusi the learned judge in Toledo, spain. Among these Jesuits were very well known individuals like matteo ricci ,who writes in his diary that he is looking for at least one honest moor or 1 learned bramana tpo gtach him the intricacies of navigaion

















The Legacy of the Ancient Hindu
Kosla Vepa

In the end , the Indics lost the battle for supremacy in the Sciences to the Europeans in the Seventeenth century of the common era but at the same time the Indic can take comfort in the fact that the ancient Indic has left behind a huge cornucopia of treasures and a legacy of thinking rationally about problems and habits of thought that will endure long after the Pyramids decay into dust. He has taught us how to count, how to convert an angular measure into a linear one, how to use analysis in the service of mankind, how to systematically solve a problem so that each step could be executed precisely as he would have wanted it implemented even after the lapse of a thousand years, the forerunner of a computer code that is readily interpreted. He taught us that Etymology should be part and parcel of an dictionary. He taught us the science of semantics and that the frequencies of the sounds that we make with our voice are of significance as we learn to communicate in evermore sophisticated ways. And he reduced the study of language to a set of grammatical rules, so that we need not place the words in any particular order, making it particularly suitable for parsing a sentence by a computer. Most importantly he cautioned us not to get too cocky with our mathematical models and assume they were divinely inspired in contradistinction to the Greeks and their successors , and by implication that we should be ready to discard our models once their usefulness had worn of .

In this connection, it is relevant to recall the remarks that the preeminent French historian of science Pierre Duhem makes with respect mathematical models. Duhem classifies models into 2 categories one in which the models can be regarded as convenient fictions devised by mathematicians to aid in making calculations, and the second which aims to describe the fundamental nature of the physical laws needed to describe the motions of celestial bodies. To get into the distinction between these two categories is an interesting and significant exercise, but the point I wished to make is that the Indic did not negate the possibility of there being ontological principles that need to be enunciated simply because he had a mathematical model that works. In that respect he was already showing sufficient sophistication in recognizing the distinction between a solution satisfying one or more necessary conditions to one which has to satisfy both necessary and sufficient conditions.

It is a matter of great pride for the Indians, they never resorted to the underhanded approach of the west whether it was in dealing with matters of real estate, war or the purloining of intellectual property, nor did they indulge in the officially sanctioned savagery and butchery of the West which was replete with egregious acts such as the Inquisition, the genocide of the natives of Meso America; in particular the savage and uncouth manner with which the populations of the Aztecs and the Incas were decimated, the pogroms of eastern Europe, and the massive pogroms of civilians instituted by the colonial authority in the Gangetic Valley after the 1857 Anglo Indian war and finally it needs to be noted that the wars initiated by the European and mostly fought between themselves were the most bloody wars in human history. If the Occidental had applied the same criteria in 1857 as in the Nuremburg trials of the leaders of the defeated 3rd Reich after World War II , the conduct of the British officers in 1857 would have been found to be beyond the pale of civilized conduct and these sorry specimens of humanity , such as the infamous Colonel Neill, who was subsequently promoted for this very same conduct to Brigadier Neill, would have been summarily found guilty and hanged from the nearest tree a treatment that he meted out indiscriminately to countless Indian civilians whose only crime was that they had a dark skin and were not of the same Nationality as the occupying power. It is also a stark reality that after the European claimed to be reborn at the end of the Renaissance and after he claimed that he was enlightened, he rationalized the actions of butchers like Colonel Neill , that the victims, were children of a lesser God and then promoted him to the rank of a Brigadier. It is sad but true that even though the Colonial power behaved in such an execrable manner, that no British Monarch or British Prime Minister as of this writing has thought it fit to express remorse to the Indic Nation for the savagery of their absolute rule in India, the utter callousness with which the Colonial overlord, did essentially nothing to alleviate the misery caused by his actions in the 1770 famine ( a story repeated in the 30 succeeding famines) and the premeditated plan to reduce the Indic civilization to a lesser category by the numerous means that they employed.
Finally, it is a legacy of the eclectic character of ancient Hindu thought that valued all life forms and that no Indian savant was beheaded or even threatened to be beheaded on the pretext that his scientific findings violated prevailing traditions and beliefs.

It is understood (but not condoned) that History is usually falsified by the victor. But I ask you my dear fellow Indics what is preventing you from correcting our current history books , that peddle so many falsehoods even 60 years after independence. The verdict of history will almost certainly be that we lacked the courage to do so, and provide one more reason for the cynicism which has become endemic in Indian society.

We are confident that the reader who approaches this topic with an
open mind will be convinced that the Origins provides a true account of the computational sciences in Ancient India and its pioneering spirit in the ancient era.

[shiv]

In Europe T's and D's are soft and from childhood people are taught to pronounce T and D with the tip of the tongue just behind the teeth. We Indians are "retroflexers" and we pronounce a hard T or D by putting ot tongues further back in the mouth when we say it.

We need to be more categorical in order to avoid a long series of pointless argumentation.


(2) For example in the case of T and D, the pratishakhya clearly distinguishes between the cerebrals (hard T and D), and the dentals (soft t and d) which are to be produced at the root of the teeth. This definition is carried through all the way to classical Sanskrit.

(3) The ONLY conclusion supported by reason and logic is that the European pronunciation of "T and D" is a speech defect with respect to the pratishakhya. It is neither truly cerebral or dental, but is some half-hearted effort to produce a cerebral.

Well said. What linguists have done is to explain away rather than explain. Of all the possibilities in the pronunciation of T and D (hard and soft) it is assumed automatically that the "soft" European one is the "natural one" that will naturally lead to palatalization in the presence of a front vowel. The cerebral hard D is explained away as a borrowing from Dravidian languages as it represents a retroflexion. By dismissing a valid Sanskrit phoneme as a borrowing from non IE Dravdian, it is rejected as a valid IE phoneme. It's not just your faith and skin color, its your sounds as well that will be taken selectively on an ad-hoc basis.

If I look for examples of palatalization of consonants like hard (cerebral) T and D associated with front vowels I have not been able to find any. The explanation is easy from an audiological viewpoint. Soft dental Ts and Ds are the same as the hiss in an S sound preceded by a brief occlusion of airflow. The change to S is understandable and natural

In the case of hard (cerebral) T and D there is virtually no hiss. There is no natural transition to "S". I will try and illustrate this with some sound files and phonograms using sound recording software. Allows me to do what I love doing anyway