Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Rudradev · Post by **Rudradev** » 04 Jun 2012 23:07

ramana wrote:Is origin of cretin also from heart?

Clean bowled!

The trouble with essentializing semantic roots to draw conclusions about relatedness of language, is that it throws up "evidence" that is neither necessary nor sufficient. The idiom of the "heart" as an anatomical seat of wisdom, emotion, spirituality, intuition etc. is by no means a universal or perennial notion in itself, and its prominence today is a consequence of Western universalism. In much of the BCE world the liver was considered to be the organ responsible for these sorts of qualities.

tyroneshoes · Post by **tyroneshoes** » 04 Jun 2012 23:26

ramana wrote: About Tamil word for horse what is the origin of the mountain Khudremukh in Karnataka?

It is complex - when the Invading Aryans met the Dravidians of Karnataka -
they saw some hills. The locals said it is KhudreBayi (Horse + Mouth)

The Aryans quickly civilized them and corrected it to KudureMukha
(Horse + Face), but they failed to remove the Kudure out of it....
Those Dravidians were stubborn as a Kalidai!

Much later Indo-European Linguists came and realized what happened.
They shined their divination on the poor SDRE Dravidians and somewhat SDRE, but mostly TFTA PIEAryans.
Thus giving Indo-Europeans Linguists a livelihood for 100s of years.

tyroneshoes · Post by **tyroneshoes** » 05 Jun 2012 01:38

Who was Charles E. Grover - that guy caused considerable kujli to Robert Cladwell in 1871:
(I will explain later on the method to this madness of looking at older Western detractors of Aryan/Dravidian proposers who were ignored or sidelined)

Have fun -

The first principle is of vital importance in connection with a subject that has never been thoroughly examined the race to which the Dravidian nations belong Since the learned book by Dr Caldwell Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian languages was issued it has been taken for granted that the Tamils &c are a Turanian people The progress of philological enquiry and the new means of analysis furnished by the great German writers on language have shown the error of this classification Driven at ar very early period into the extreme south and cut off by vast oceans from intercourse with other peoples the Dravidian nations have preserved with singular purity the vocabulary they brought with them and it is probably not extravagant or untrue to say that there is not one true Dravidian root common to the three great branches Tamil Telugu and Canarese that cannot be clearly shown to be Aryan As an interesting example both of the true character of the language and the linguistic progress made since the publication of Dr Caldwell's book it may be noted that the learned doctor gives an appendix containing a considerable number of Dravidian words which he asserts to be Scythian and most efficient witnesses to prove the Turanian origin of the language It is now known that every word in this list is distinctly Aryan although some of them have representatives in the Finnish group of Turanian tongues the group which has been most constantly exposed to Aryan influences The greater portion of them are included in Fick's Indogermanischen Grundsprachc as Aryan roots although Fick does not appear to have seen Caldwell's work."

Second that the true meaning of the word Pey or Pennu is not devil but light But Dr Caldwell asserts that the word is Sanscrit nor related to Sanscrit This is a error Before Caldwell wrote it had been noted that the Dravidian Pe or Pey is identical the root of the Sanscrit pi sacha meaning a devil malevolent being The words are interchangeable There is no reason to suppose that the Tamil word derived from Sanscrit or vice versa yet the roots identical But Sanscrit authorities ascribe to a root pis to adorn and this as given by Benfey has the parallel form pimsa from the root pirns shine This exact coincidence in both and Sanscrit forms proves their identity beyond doubt The Sanscrit forms just quoted belong to the great cluster of important roots has its centre in Bhd to shine Thus the Tamil and the Khond Pennu find their exact in the Greek phao and phaino from the root pha The same derivative appears in the gods Phanos Phaetkon

Of course Grover in his book The folk-songs of southern India caused Cladwell ji so much kujli that Cladwell has to devote Appendix II of this book A comparative grammar of the Dravidian or South-Indian family of languages debunking Grover (who was since dead). Now Grover was merely writing on songs. In his introduction, he does disabuse the absurdity of the Aryan/Dravidian madness (of course within his own European Colonial framework). That he felt strongly enough about this to devote an out of topic issue to his work is interesting. I also find it interesting to see if he had lived longer would he have felt compelled to write more on this subject and counter the Cladwell's Clodding!

All this is of course great for beer and finger chaat at the local dhaba onlee.

ShyamSP · Post by **ShyamSP** » 05 Jun 2012 03:06

ManishH wrote:
tyroneshoes wrote: My simple point being - if Tamil has 'Kudurai' for horse and we know its roots and they are older and uninfluenced by Sanskrit, then horses existed in India prior to any so called PIEAryan invasion.
Dravidian words for horse [∗kut-ir-ay] descend from the verb root *kut-i ‘to jump’. Dravidian has another set of words is from Old Telugu gurramu, Modern Telugu gurram, Naiki kurmam, Konda 'guram' probably also related to Hindi 'ghoda'. Not sure what's the root here.

Even Native American tribes have their own words for horse eg. Cherokee 'so-qui-li', Sioux 'shiko-waka'. Just having an independent word for something doesn't mean that is a native animal.

Gurramu - if you remove Vibhakti, you get gurre. It sounds like kudire (ku <-> gu interchangeable in Tamil).

Konda Guram = Mountain/Hill horse = Mule I think.

shyamoo · Post by **shyamoo** » 05 Jun 2012 04:47

brihaspati wrote:Here goes a repeat of my early post on horse-in-the-cave:

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 [added : was there any archeological proof of horse paraphernalia as developed in the steppes onlee in the cave floor infront of the picture? if not then the picture is not reliable]
(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. [added : even if archeological proof of such use of hallucinogenics is unavailable, it is a reasonable hypothesis because it helps in the debunking]

Is there any other possibility of debunking the horse-in-cave claims? Let me know.

5) Similar paintings were found in steppes. When Aryans conquered ancient India, they were nostalgic for their homelands and hence they drew/painted from their recollection of the same of what they saw in the steppes.
6) The Aryans brought the rocks with the paintings on them ( they used their chariots.. )

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 05 Jun 2012 06:02

Hindi "ghora" is from Sanskrit Ghotaka. Gurramu fits in micely with my own internal conjectures as to how PIE developed from Indian languages.

I think one important online collaboration that can be facilitated on the forum - is for members to put up regional/subregional dialect/language versions of a common concept/word/object and we can then compare phonetics/origins/implications/deparsing from both native speakers as well as knowledge. Here linguists proper will not be able to impose their own theoretical interpretations so easily.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 06:14

The oldest evidence of horse domestication available today is in some European steppes, not India. Therefore we can all accept without argument that the horse was first domesticated there.

The oldest recorded Indo-European language is Sanskrit, and its predates other known Indo-European languages by some centuries or millennia. But unlike the horse we simply CANNOT accept Sanskrit as an ancient mother language. We have to look for a language older than Sanskrit and it needs to be cooked up since evidence does not exist. Where links seem to occur with a documented older Dravidian language, it must be dismissed.

This is not racism. This is science. It was like this 100 years ago. Why should it not be that way now?

shyamoo · Post by **shyamoo** » 05 Jun 2012 06:25

In P-PIE ( Pre Proto Indo-European Language )

tIq --> Heart
'ervum --> Horse

PS: Please use Google chacha to find the origin of these words

Added later:
( In Klingon

)

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 07:01

ManishH wrote: IE: Sanskrit akṣi, Goth 'augo', Old Prussian 'ackis' Slavonic 'oko', Tocharian 'ak', Greek 'omma' (labial) - all from PIE *h₃okʷ. But dravidian 'kaṇṇu'

The case of "eye" again is interesting. The entire set of "Indo-European" links with Sanskrit is based around the word "akshi" which sounds suspiciously like oculus (ocular etc). That is a very convenient link. However Sanskrit has many other words for eye, including nayan, lochan, netra. and chakshu

To my untrained and possibly un-primed mind nayan and lochan actually rhyme with Dravidian "kan.." if nothing else.
The connection between akshi and oculus is less evident. Sanskrit may have had several root words. The existence of multiple synonyms is to my mind an indicator of high development of a language into literature and poetry which then has nuances in meaning.

For example "Lochan" which is used as a synonym for "eye" also means "brightness" or "visible". I guess this is where Latin and later English got their lux, Lucifer and lucid. Also Illuminate.

Can the sound "cha" (tcha) in one language not become "sa" in another and "ka" in a third language? You take Dravidian "kan". It becomes "lo-kan. Then lo-chan. Lochan becomes lu-cis. Lucid derives from that.

Lucifer, meaning bright incidentally is the name for Venus. Venus in Sanskrit is shukra, meaning bright.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 05 Jun 2012 07:04

In the game of intellectual dishonesty , arguments, pleading, rationals are of no value. The name of the game is Nothing great, original can come out of India so it must be played by few to to fit in the "known" circle.
Bradshaw foudnation human migration map claims that in last ice age only North India was warm enough for human habitat. Humanity branches out of NI and migrated all over the Bhoomi. If their was/is a MAI PIE then it has to be Desi, which is Sanskrit. We claim that we are the ancient Aryans people, have our own Sanskrit, Ghora is there in the Cave painting , We have the pre language Bird Songs recital etc.
All pointing toward us being the Pita Shri of all.

ShyamSP · Post by **ShyamSP** » 05 Jun 2012 07:27

brihaspati wrote:Hindi "ghora" is from Sanskrit Ghotaka. Gurramu fits in micely with my own internal conjectures as to how PIE developed from Indian languages.

I think one important online collaboration that can be facilitated on the forum - is for members to put up regional/subregional dialect/language versions of a common concept/word/object and we can then compare phonetics/origins/implications/deparsing from both native speakers as well as knowledge. Here linguists proper will not be able to impose their own theoretical interpretations so easily.

So Ghotaka => Ghoda/Ghora/Gurram => (Kurra) => Kudre

(Gu=> Ku is like Mukham in Telugu => Mugham in Tamil)

Or is the flow like:

Kudre => Gurram => Ghotaka

Ghora log => Horse people => Europeans?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 07:51

The word for "eye" is such a fundamental thing in human consciousness that it is absurd to try and create a sub-family of words in "Indo European" and claim kinship. If you look back at the history of why an Indo-European "family" was conjured up, it was clearly a case of massive cognitive dissonance where the "superior races" got massive jhatka from "discovering" ancient and advanced sanskrit literature. One must not forget this absurd history behind creating the "Indo-European" family because it could well be the reason for fundamental linguistic GIGO. Garbage In. Garbage Out.

The Arab word for eye is "ain" or "alhan". Persian is cheshm, Tamil/Kannada- "kan" and we have akshi, lochan, nayan in Sanskrit, akn in Armenian, aankh in Hindi, enech in Celtic, Swahili -jicho (eye), macho (eyes) - "cho" may be the root word, oko in Slavic, oculus in Latin

You see "a", "o", "ka", "cha" and "na" are common sounds that repeatedly occur in the word for eye in all these languages. To me it is not at all clear why a separate "high caste" system is being created for Indo-European alone. I think much of it is on very very shaky grounds.

And if you look at usages - many language "groups" use "eyes" to mean "dear one". It's not just an "Indo-European" thing

You have "apple of my eye" on the one hand. Hindi "Aankhon ke taare" (stars of my eyes) and Tamil/Kannada "kanna" meaning dear one. I just wonder if "Kaanha" (Krishna) could be a derivative of this? Isn't Kaanha a synonym for "dear one"?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 08:04

ShyamSP wrote:
(Gu=> Ku is like Mukham in Telugu => Mugham in Tamil)

Kannada has both "mukha" (face) and "moothi" (slang for mouth/face)

In Sanskrit mukha is mouth. This word too occurs in the Rig Veda as far as I know. It's mooh in Hindi.

But folks, for the convenience of the people who are intent on creating a separate Indo-European caste, the Sanskrit word for mouth is taken as "aas" which conveniently sounds like Greek "os" (hole, mouth, opening)

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 08:18

Most Indians will be familiar with South Indian names like Subramaniam, Subramanya, Kartigeyan, Kartikeya, Shanmugham and Murugan.

Subramanya and Shanmuga are worshipped predominantly in the South.

Subramanya(/yan/yam) is an avatar of Shiva.

Shiva's son Kartik is Kartikeyan or Shanmugham. "Shanmugham"(Also Sanmugkan/Sanmukhan) means 6 faces. Shan is 6 derived from Sanskrit. "Mugham" is face in Tamil.

ShyamSP · Post by **ShyamSP** » 05 Jun 2012 08:21

shiv wrote:
ShyamSP wrote:
(Gu=> Ku is like Mukham in Telugu => Mugham in Tamil)
Kannada has both "mukha" (face) and "moothi" (slang for mouth/face)

In Sanskrit mukha is mouth. This word too occurs in the Rig Veda as far as I know. It's mooh in Hindi.

But folks, for the convenience of the people who are intent on creating a separate Indo-European caste, the Sanskrit word for mouth is taken as "aas" which conveniently sounds like Greek "os" (hole, mouth, opening)

Mukha primary meaning is face. (Aarmuk(g)ham - 6 faces = Shanmuk(g)ham = Sat+Mukham == Kumara/Subramanya)

Moothi is Mouth in Telugu too. (Actually refers to Surrounding area of Mouth - e.g. Swollen part of Hanuman is moothi)

Paithyam: Moothi => Mooth => Mouth
PIEism: Mouth => Moothi

Pranav · Post by **Pranav** » 05 Jun 2012 09:02

Russian geneticists disprove “Out of Africa” claim - http://cofcc.org/2012/06/russian-geneti ... ica-claim/

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 05 Jun 2012 09:28

ShyamSP wrote:[Kannada has both "mukha" (face) and "moothi" (slang for mouth/face)
Moothi is Mouth in Telugu too. (Actually refers to Surrounding area of Mouth - e.g. Swollen part of Hanuman is moothi)Paithyam: Moothi => Mooth => Mouth
PIEism: Mouth => Moothi

Moothi-Boothi in Punjabi
Kar-de=Kard=Small Knife

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 10:23

When you make up a theory that culture X overran/overcame and defeated/displaced culture Y you are making ta statement that culture X was superior to Y in some way - at least in killing power. Then when you start looking for evidence to support the theory the linguistic connection, of how the victors language was spoken by the defeated people becomes living proof of your theory.

Starting to search for "common words" is the obvious thing to do, but it is a psychological pitfall. It is a case of cognitive bias. In this case it is academic cognitive blindness.

What you need to look for to be intellectually honest is common words that DO NOT match your cosy theory. Shitting is so basic a function that you can well imagine that every culture has developed a word for it.

Let me start with Sanskrit. The following link has a whole lot of words for feces in Sanskrit.
http://spokensanskrit.de/index.php?scri ... rection=AU

Some of the Sanskrit words like "vish" and "visha" correlate roughly with Latin "feces". Almost nothing correlates with Greek copros and sterco. But "mala" (Sanskrit) could be the progenitor of "mal" words like Malaria, Malware etc. Mala is feces in Kannada. It's malam in Tamil. Funnily enough, the slang is "Kaka" (Caca) in Kannada. Kakoos is used in Tamil. Ca ca is slang for feces in French and Spanish.

What does "Indo European" mean under the circumstances?

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 05 Jun 2012 11:56

venug wrote: Manish ji, do you mean there is no archaeological proof of domestication in India itself before 1500 years?

I think there is. But we must correlate it to OIT. See below on Surkotada equid remains.

First, Sandor Bokonyi's identification of Surkotada bones as horse's is contested by other archaeozoologists like Meadeow and Patel. I'm given two conflicting reports from specialists; and since I do not understand the technicalities of identifying bones, let me just err on the side of the indigenist one and go with these bones being genuinely a horse ...

1. J.P. Joshi and Bokonyi's report gives dates of 2100BC-1700BC for these bones. Let's see if it fits the requirements of OIT. Given OIT uses astronomical calculations to date Mahābhārata to 3000 BC and Talageri's book 'conservatively' theorizes that RgVeda took 2000 years to compose.

Thus, by a conservative estimate, the total period
of composition of the Rigveda must have covered
a period of at least two millenniums.

This gives us a date of 5000 BC for horse to have been in India; and the term for horse to have been taken out of India by the earliest migrants (Greek hippos, Latin equus). So even with Surkotada finds, OIT is still about 3000 years short of evidence.

Compare with AIT which dates the ingress into India of a branch of indo-european people at early 2nd millenium BC - still within the ballpark of Surkotada finding 2100BC-1700BC

2. Does the horse finding of Surkotada match the RgVedic context where the horse is used by warriors ? This is what Bokonyi says ...

Through a thorough study of the equid remains of the protohistoric
settlement of Surkotada, Kutch, excavated under the direction of Dr. J. P.
Joshi, I can state the following: The occurrence of true horse (Equus
Caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower
cheek and teeth and by the size and form of the incisors and phalanges
(toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene
times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horse is undoubtful. This is
also supported by an inter-maxilla fragment whose incisor tooth shows
clear signs of crib-biting, a bad habit only existing among domestic
horses which are not extensively used for war.

This looks more like this horse was a draught animal, not used for war. Even Bokonyi asserts that the horse is not a native of India and likely brought in from it's native Eurasian steppe.

ukumar · Post by **ukumar** » 05 Jun 2012 12:38

VikramS wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/huge-ancient-civi ... 49804.html

Yahoo has the story about the collapse of the Harappan civilization based around Saraswati dating it well in the past....

There was similar paper last year indicating that Yamuma and Shatlej stopped flowing in to the Saraswati before 10KA.

http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/earl ... 1.abstract

"The channels were active until after 4.5 ka and were covered by dunes before 1.4 ka, although loss of the Yamuna from the Indus likely occurred as early as 49 ka and no later than 10 ka. Capture of the Yamuna to the east and the Sutlej to the north rerouted water away from the area of the Harappan centers, but this change significantly predated their final collapse"

Picture is emerging that Saraswati was glacier fed long before Harappan time and was flowing from mountain to ocean. During Harappan time it was fed by monsoon rain. Eventually it stopped flowing due to weakening monsoon.

What is interesting in new paper is that it establishes that river was perennial and flowing through the desert up to 4.5ka. See the figure 2A and 2B in the paper @
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/1596465/28 ... et_al1.pdf
What I think it means is that Saraswati was flowing to ocean through Nara in present day Pakistan. Though paper is not explicit about it. They somehow put emphasis on fact that river was not glacier fed. I am not sure why. As far as I understand, Rigveda talked about river flowing from mountain to sea. It doesn't mention glacier.

The second important point about his paper is that it is first academic paper asserting the continuation of Harrapan civilization to east and south after 1900BC.

ukumar · Post by **ukumar** » 05 Jun 2012 12:53

ManishH wrote:
venug wrote: Manish ji, do you mean there is no archaeological proof of domestication in India itself before 1500 years?
I think there is. But we must correlate it to OIT. See below on Surkotada equid remains.

First, Sandor Bokonyi's identification of Surkotada bones as horse's is contested by other archaeozoologists like Meadeow and Patel. I'm given two conflicting reports from specialists; and since I do not understand the technicalities of identifying bones, let me just err on the side of the indigenist one and go with these bones being genuinely a horse ...

1. J.P. Joshi and Bokonyi's report gives dates of 2100BC-1700BC for these bones. Let's see if it fits the requirements of OIT. Given OIT uses astronomical calculations to date Mahābhārata to 3000 BC and Talageri's book 'conservatively' theorizes that RgVeda took 2000 years to compose.

Thus, by a conservative estimate, the total period
of composition of the Rigveda must have covered
a period of at least two millenniums.
This gives us a date of 5000 BC for horse to have been in India; and the term for horse to have been taken out of India by the earliest migrants (Greek hippos, Latin equus). So even with Surkotada finds, OIT is still about 3000 years short of evidence.

Compare with AIT which dates the ingress into India of a branch of indo-european people at early 2nd millenium BC - still within the ballpark of Surkotada finding 2100BC-1700BC

2. Does the horse finding of Surkotada match the RgVedic context where the horse is used by warriors ? This is what Bokonyi says ...

Through a thorough study of the equid remains of the protohistoric
settlement of Surkotada, Kutch, excavated under the direction of Dr. J. P.
Joshi, I can state the following: The occurrence of true horse (Equus
Caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower
cheek and teeth and by the size and form of the incisors and phalanges
(toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene
times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horse is undoubtful. This is
also supported by an inter-maxilla fragment whose incisor tooth shows
clear signs of crib-biting, a bad habit only existing among domestic
horses which are not extensively used for war.
This looks more like this horse was a draught animal, not used for war. Even Bokonyi asserts that the horse is not a native of India and likely brought in from it's native Eurasian steppe.

Manishji, There are two problem in your logic.

First it assumes that horse/Chariot description in the Veda is from its earliest time period.

Second that Horse were exported by Indian.

Both are not necessary. You could have Arya from India and horse still domesticated in steppe and imported during later rigvedic period.

IMO, the hypothesis of "Arya migration == horses" is not firmly established. To assert that for OIT scenario is wrong.

member_20317 · Post by **member_20317** » 05 Jun 2012 13:25

Bokonyi says ... Quote: Through a thorough study of the equid remains of the protohistoric settlement of Surkotada, Kutch, excavated under the direction of Dr. J. P. Joshi, I can state the following: The occurrence of true horse (Equus Caballus L.) was evidenced by the enamel pattern of the upper and lower cheek and teeth and by the size and form of the incisors and phalanges (toe bones). Since no wild horses lived in India in post-Pleistocene times, the domestic nature of the Surkotada horse is undoubtful. This is also supported by an inter-maxilla fragment whose incisor tooth shows clear signs of crib-biting, a bad habit only existing among domestic horses which are not extensively used for war.

ManishH ji - " not extensively used for war"

???

Is there some difference in these two underlined portions.

If half the context is ok then I guess the following would be ok too:

extensively used for war

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 05 Jun 2012 13:31

shiv wrote: The case of "eye" again is interesting. The entire set of "Indo-European" links with Sanskrit is based around the word "akshi" which sounds suspiciously like oculus (ocular etc). That is a very convenient link. However Sanskrit has many other words for eye, including nayan, lochan, netra. and chakshu

These misconceptions develop when one looks at Sanskrit as a static language. One should be aware that before Pāṇini formulated what is called as 'classical sanskrit', there were two more phases that precede it - called 'Epic' and 'Vedic'.

One needs to read the oldest literature when making etymological observations. None of these words occur in RgVeda: nayan, locan, netra; you can search for it. These three words are clearly a later development. The word cakṣu is in RgVeda, but is an inflection of akṣi.

When one peels older layers, one sees the older words.

The connection between akshi and oculus is less evident. Sanskrit may have had several root words.

I'd say it developed newer words - words which weren't in RgVeda lexicon, but come about in later works. The reasons could be several - contact with new languages, newer metaphors.

The existence of multiple synonyms is to my mind an indicator of high development of a language into literature and poetry which then has nuances in meaning.

I agree - the oral tradition requires very precise rhyme and metre - so more synonyms, the easier it is to compose.

For example "Lochan" which is used as a synonym for "eye" also means "brightness" or "visible". I guess this is where Latin and later English got their lux, Lucifer and lucid. Also Illuminate.

Classical Sanskrit's 'locan' comes from Vedic verb root रुच् 'rocate' (shines). Classical Sanskrit de-rhotacised some but not all of Vedic roots (r->l). Vedic itself had rhotacised almost all of PIE l>r. So the original PIE root is *leuk (shines).

Can the sound "cha" (tcha) in one language not become "sa" in another and "ka" in a third language? You take Dravidian "kan". It becomes "lo-kan. Then lo-chan. Lochan becomes lu-cis. Lucid derives from that.

Dravidian kaṇṇu comes from verb root ∗kaHn- ‘to see’; it is unrelated to the IE words. Prefix like 'lo' don't just get added without a regular pattern. Moreover, the word 'lo' has no semantic meaning. This is like splitting the 'lo' out of 'loco'.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 05 Jun 2012 13:36

ukumar wrote: IMO, the hypothesis of "Arya migration == horses" is not firmly established. To assert that for OIT scenario is wrong.

Out-of-India, or Into-India, it is well established that IE language family shares a phonetically regular word for the horse. Now it is up to OIT to explain the 3000 year gap between these two:

1. Surkotada bones claimed as horse's at 2100BC-1700BC
2. ~5000 BC date of RgVeda (conservative by OIT standards). Actually I've seen people asserting Holocene and one gent actually said 80Kbp!

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 05 Jun 2012 16:23

brihaspati wrote:If one applies the "shraddham"=="put faith == heart" in the Rg Vedic quote - look at the sense that results : "putting faith == heart" binds "heart" with "faith". Heart binds heart with heart.

There would be no reason to expect binding between one object with self. You bind only two different things - whose distinction you are aware of and feel the need to externally enforce bringing them together.

B-ji: the direct semantic connection between the two has already been lost at the time of RgVeda; because even with vedic grammar rules, one cannot extract the root out of śraddhā. So when the mantra mentions them, it's not to the point of redundancy.

In case anyone still has doubt about śraddhā (faith) being connected to hṛdaya (heart), this concept is even mentioned in Indian philosophical works, eg. Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad in the conversation between Yājñavalkya and Śākalya:

kasmin nu śraddhā pratiṣṭhiteti |
hṛdaya iti hovāca |
hṛdayena hi śraddhām |
hṛdaye hy eva śraddhā pratiṣṭhitā bhavatīti |
evam evaitad yājñavalkya || BrhUp_3,9.21 ||

"Now, in what is faith established ?
It is in the heart
Faith is by the heart only.
Only in the heart is faith founded"
<translation mine>

So there is a 3-fold corroboration of the relation between faith and heart:

A. Regular sound change - from Linguistics
B. Analysis of cross-IE poetic and epigraphic evidence
C. Indian philosophy

When I first mentioned the relation, I was aware of only A., and I fully understand the impluse to dismiss it, because not many people are aware of the sheer quantity of cognates that come under category of palatalization. But it's hard to deny it with B. and C.

ManishH · Post by **ManishH** » 05 Jun 2012 17:44

shiv wrote: Shiva's son Kartik is Kartikeyan or Shanmugham. "Shanmugham"(Also Sanmugkan/Sanmukhan) means 6 faces. Shan is 6 derived from Sanskrit. "Mugham" is face in Tamil.

ṣaṣ (six) is not Dravidian in origin, but muka (mouth) appears to be. Eg. Old Tamil inscriptions instead have muviru-mukan (six-faced) and nāl-mukan (four-faced).

I'm mostly ignorant of how euphony (punarci) exactly works in Tamil, or whether it even affects consonants, but the sandhi rule ṣaṣ + mukha = ṣaṇmukha AFAIK, looks unique to Sanskrit.

See:
- Indian linguistics, Volume 38
- "The Dravidian Languages", B. Krishnamurthi

Even in RgVeda, if you see mandala 1, the word mukha appears just in one sūkta, whereas ās appears in 9. In later works, the preponderance of mukha indicates this word was a loan word in the earliest stratum of Sanskrit.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 05 Jun 2012 18:16

ManishH ji
Palatilization as a means of compromise with unfamiliar phonetics - is a peculiarly and conveniently used tool by linguists to suit their chosen assumptions of directions. So there is no concrete and irrefutable logical chain showing why palatalization would proceed in only one definite direction as required by the linguist in his/her given context.

As for rhotacization - again you are assuming that Vedic "did it" from PIE, whereas I would question this very assumption and suggest testing the other direction too - that the so-called PIE derived group which has been reconstructed based on reconstruction of these very same later so-called PIE derived groups - actually l-ified the r they saw in their loan words from an Indic PIE.

Regarding philosophical connections - this is sophistry at its worst. There can be functional abstractions attributed to different objects and entities and concepts at a typically human level - it does not necessarily imply linguistic common origins.

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 05 Jun 2012 18:33

shiv wrote:Most Indians will be familiar with South Indian names like Subramaniam, Subramanya, Kartigeyan, Kartikeya, Shanmugham and Murugan.

Subramanya and Shanmuga are worshipped predominantly in the South.

Subramanya(/yan/yam) is an avatar of Shiva.

Shiva's son Kartik is Kartikeyan or Shanmugham. "Shanmugham"(Also Sanmugkan/Sanmukhan) means 6 faces. Shan is 6 derived from Sanskrit. "Mugham" is face in Tamil.

Not just in Tamilnadu sir. In Andhra and north india also workshiping of Karthikeya was there. Example - Emp Shanda Gupta of Gupta Empire. Kumara is also one of the names we find in north also. We have to understand that there is no serious bar or restriction of worship in our faith and in the later period in north Lord Rama - became prominant during bhathi movement just like Lord Krishna. Tulsidas created a mass movement of Bhakthi in Lord Ram and the existing workship simply taken to another level. Nothing new of course but increased in number etc. Other gods worship may have taken back seat.

Our DMK brothers tried to have new gods like Dravidian Ravana and stopped when it was told to them that he is a Bramin. AP people now a days have Shirdhi Sai Baba which is a great fasion. In time there is some new one.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 05 Jun 2012 18:42

1. J.P. Joshi and Bokonyi's report gives dates of 2100BC-1700BC for these bones. Let's see if it fits the requirements of OIT. Given OIT uses astronomical calculations to date Mahābhārata to 3000 BC and Talageri's book 'conservatively' theorizes that RgVeda took 2000 years to compose.

Manish ji,
I am quoting from an article, so this quote is not mine:

Meadow and Patel concluded in their paper with this to say “… in the end that [Bökönyi’s identification of horse remains at Surkotada] may be a matter of emphasis and opinion.” 14. While Even more ironically, when invasionists attempt to trace the introduction of the horse into Europe, they turn to the same Bökönyi 17

So seems like Patel and Meadow have their own 'interpretations about the horse issue, and seem to discard truth when not convenient to them. In any case, the remains of horses prove the presence of Horse in Indus around the time Aryan invasion took place and that the horse was atleast domesticated. It is AIT theorists claim that 1. no horse in India around 1500 BC 2. That Aryans came to India either invaded or otherwise and brought horse with them, if invaded they used horse as a war machine, if domesticated horse is found in Indus around 1500-2100 BC, in fact proves what Shiv ji said, that Indus people were well settled and led a sedentary life.

This gives us a date of 5000 BC for horse to have been in India; and the term for horse to have been taken out of India by the earliest migrants (Greek hippos, Latin equus). So even with Surkotada finds, OIT is still about 3000 years short of evidence.

The dates of horse remains found are for that particular evidence that is found. Doesn't mean no remains have ever been found/will be found which point to earlier dates. There are those cave paintings which need to be dated properly and also there are horse remains found else where in India.

Does the horse finding of Surkotada match the RgVedic context where the horse is used by warriors ? This is what Bokonyi says ...This looks more like this horse was a draught animal, not used for war. Even Bokonyi asserts that the horse is not a native of India and likely brought in from it's native Eurasian steppe.

First they said no horse in India, and since Rig Veda mentions horse, er go, warrior Aryans brought horse with them, (so this warrior thing to me seems like AIT invention and now we have to prove why Indus people didn't use horse in wars?, seems circular argument and burden of what is not said by non-AIT/AMT people is being imposed on them to prove what is not claimed by them?) now it is proved that there is horse around 1500-2100 BC even by your estimates, so now the horse, the same horse used by aryans when they invaded India suddenly is only used for domestication? when you can assume an non existent PIE and link every language to PIE and can find PIE to be European in origin, can't you by the same logic and imagination think that the same species of horse used by aryans could be used by Indus valley Indians for domestication as well as and also for war? what stops you from doing that?

14 Ibid., p. 314.
17 J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-European: Language, Archaeology and Myth
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), p. 273, note 8; Bernard Sergent, Les Indo-Européens:
Histoire, langues, mythes (Payot, 1995), p. 397.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 20:01

ManishH wrote:
Dravidian kaṇṇu comes from verb root ∗kaHn- ‘to see’; it is unrelated to the IE words. Prefix like 'lo' don't just get added without a regular pattern. Moreover, the word 'lo' has no semantic meaning. This is like splitting the 'lo' out of 'loco'.

Let me put it this way. I accept that it is rigorous science to ask if something has a rule. If it follows the rule then it will be accepted. To that extent the links between the Indo-European languages are valid. They do have the rules regarding pattern. The same rule must apply to word X as well as for many other words.

But when you look at the Proto Indo European language that has actually been arrived at/cooked up using this genre of "rigorous science" where sounds are not added or subtracted unless there is a demonstrable pattern, what you get is a less than complete language. A random mixture of words that do not amount to a complete language.

The reasons why such a cooked up language is incomplete could be one of the following:
1. Random, single changes in words and sounds that have no pattern or regular parallel are left out for the same reason that you cannot take lo from loco in locomotive. But why was loco added to motion to create locomotion? Are there any other parallels or rules that use locus as loco? Words that use the "ablative" form of locus to create a pattern? if no such pattern exists it is a one-off. Clearly such one-off words are being ignored.

2. The total population of words that are interconnected in "Indo European" is only a small subset of the total vocabulary of the language. If this latter assertion is true we are up against the uncomfortable fact that Proto-Indo European is being "pushed" as a possible proto language when it does not cover even 10% of the total vocabulary of any single language. What about the other 90%.?

How can my father have only 10% of the genes I have?

It's not that there is something missing. There is a lot missing.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 05 Jun 2012 20:35

Here is an image of an ancient Indian chariot

Image caption: How did the chariots in ancient India look like?

The bronze model of a contemporaneous wooden chariot was found in 1974 from a site in Daimabad, Ahmednagar district in India. This artifact has its early strata dating to the late Harappan phase (c. 2000-1750 BC).

Website: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Indi ... sage/11467

The technology was already there. the knowhow was there.

Look at the wheels folks. Circles that appear about a 60 cm in size compared with the height of the man. How many of you have worked with wood or done any carpentry? How many of you can make such wheels out of wood if I showed you a tree or a forest. Can you even imagine how to cut wood into rim segments that join to create a perfect circle?

A chariot is not the work of a pastoralist in some steppe. Chariots imply a sedentary life for many related specialists. You need to cut the tree, transport it to a suitable spot and then cut the wood, chisel/sand it down to a near perfect circle, repeat that again for the second wheel. Seriously. I wonder how blind some experts have to be to attribute an itinerant pastoralist lifestyle with industrial goods.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 05 Jun 2012 21:47

Maybe they were itinerant traders/merchants trading in the industrial products to SDRE pastoralists? And not invaders as postulated.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 06 Jun 2012 00:45

Venug, You asked if the AIT is dead with the new study on Saraswati River. Looks like the author answered your question.....
Article in Pioneer, 6 June 2012

Saraswati Civilization

The Saraswati Civilisation
Author: Rajesh Singh

A fresh study by a group of international scientists confirms the dominant role of Saraswati river in sustaining the so-called Indus Valley Civilisation.

A new study titled, ‘Fluvial landscapes of the Harappan civilisation’, has concluded that the Indus Valley Civilisation died out because the monsoons which fed the rivers that supported the civilisation, migrated to the east. With the rivers drying out as a result, the civilisation collapsed some 4000 years ago. The study was conducted by a team of scientists from the US, the UK, India, Pakistan and Romania between 2003 and 2008. While the new finding puts to rest, at least for the moment, other theories of the civilisation’s demise, such as the shifting course of rivers due to tectonic changes or a fatal foreign invasion, it serves to strengthen the premise that the civilisation that we refer to as the Indus Valley Civilisation was largely located on the banks of and in the proximity of the Saraswati river.

More than 70 per cent of the sites that have been discovered to contain archaeological material dating to this civilisation’s period are located on the banks of the mythological — and now dried out — river. As experts have been repeatedly pointing out, nearly 2,000 of the 3,000 sites excavated so far are located outside the Indus belt that gives the civilisation its name.

In other words, the Indus Valley Civilisation was largely and in reality the Saraswati River Civilisation. Yet, in our collective consciousness, numbed by what we have been taught — and what we teach — we continue to relate this ancient civilisation exclusively with the Indus Valley. For decades since Independence, our Governments influenced by Leftist propaganda, brazenly refused to accept even the existence of the Saraswati river, let alone acknowledge the river’s role in shaping one of the world’s most ancient civilisations. In recent years, senior CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury had slammed the Archaeological Survey of India for “wasting” time and money to study the lost river. A Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture which he headed in 2006, said, “The ASI has deviated in its working and has failed in spearheading a scientific discipline of archaeology. A scientific institution like the ASI did not proceed correctly in this matter.”

Yet, on occasion after occasion, scientific studies have proved that the Saraswati did exist as a mighty river. According to experts who have studied the map of all relevant underground channels that are intact to date and connected once upon a time with the river, the Saraswati was probably 1500 km long and 3-15 km wide.

The latest study, whose findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, too is clear on the river’s existence and its role in sustaining the ancient civilisation. The report said that the Saraswati was “not Himalayan-fed by a perennial monsoon-supported water course.” It added that the rivers in the region (including Saraswati) were “indeed sizeable and highly active.”

Will the new findings lead to a fresh thinking on the part of the Government and an acknowledgement that the time has come to officially rename the Indus Valley Civilisation as the Saraswati-Indus Civilisation? But the UPA regime had been in denial mode for years, much like the Left has been for decades. As the then Union Minister for Culture, Jaipal Reddy told Parliament that excavations conducted so far had not revealed any trace of the lost river. Clearly, for him and his then Government, it meant that the river was the creation of fertile minds fed by mythological books with an even more fertile imagination. The UPA Government then went ahead and slashed the budget for the Saraswati River Heritage Project — which had been launched by the NDA regime. The project report had been prepared in September 2003, envisaging a cost of roughly Rs 32 crore on the scheme. The amount was ruthlessly pruned to less than five crore rupees. In effect, the project was shelved.

However, despite its best efforts to do so, the UPA could not completely ignore the facts that kept emerging about the reality of the river and the central role which it had played in the flourishing of the so-called Indus Valley Civilisation. In a significant shift from its earlier stand that probes conducted so far showed no evidence of the now invisible Saraswati river, the Government admitted half-way through its first tenure in office that scientists had discovered water channels indicating (to use the scientists’ quote) “beyond doubt” the existence of the “Vedic Saraswati river”. The Government’s submission came in response to an unstarred question in the Rajya Sabha on whether satellite images had “established the underground track of Saraswati, and if so, why should the precious water resources not be exploited to meet growing demands?”

The Union Water Resources Ministry had then quoted in writing the conclusion of a study jointly conducted by scientists of Indian Space Research Organisation, Jodhpur, and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water Department, published in the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing. Besides other things, the authors had said that “clear signals of palaeo-channels on the satellite imagery in the form of a strong and powerful continuous drainage system in the North West region and occurrence of archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan age, beyond doubt indicate the existence of a mighty palaeo-drainage system of Vedic Saraswati river in this region… The description and magnanimity of these channels also matches with the river Saraswati described in the Vedic literature.”

Interestingly, the Archaeological Survey of India’s National Museum has been as forthright on the issue. This is what a text put up in the Harappan Gallery of the National Museum says: “Slowly and gradually these people evolved a civilisation called variously as the ‘Harappan civilisation’, the ‘Indus civilisation’, the ‘Indus Valley civilisation’ and the ‘Indus-Saraswati civilisation’.” The text further elaborates on the importance of the river: “It is now clear that the Harappan civilisation was the gift of two rivers — the Indus and the Saraswati — and not the Indus alone.”

There is another interesting aspect to the new study by the group of international scientists that deserves mention. The report has discounted the possibility of ‘foreign invasion’ as one of the causes of the ancient civilisation’s decline. But, long before this report was published, NS Rajaram, who wrote the book, Saraswati River and the Vedic Civilisation, had noted that the discovery of the Saraswati river had “dealt a severe blow” to the theory that the Aryans had invaded India, which then had the Harappan Civilisation. The theory supposes that the Harappans were non-Vedic since the Vedic age began with the coming of the Aryans.

But, since the Saraswati flowed during the Vedic period, the Vedic era ought to have coincided with the Harappan age. Rajaram says in his book that the Harappan civilisation “was none other than the great river (Saraswati) described in the Rig Veda. This means that the Harappans were Vedic.”

Not just that, experts have pointed out for long that there is no evidence of an invasion, much less from the Aryans who ‘came from outside’. Rajaram, like many others had concluded that the drying up of the Saraswati river and not some ‘invasion’ was the principal cause for the civilisation’s decline.

However, the latest study by the international group leaves a question mark on the origins of the river. The report claims that Saraswati was not a Himalayan river. But, several experts believe that the river originated from the Har-ki-Dun glacier in Gharwal. Let’s wait for the final word.

(The accompanying visual is a reconstruction of the gateway and drain at Harappa by Chris Sloan. Courtesy: Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, University of Wisconsin-Madison and www.sewerhistory.org)

Paper quoted above:

Fluvial Landscapes of Harappa Civilization

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 06 Jun 2012 00:47

ramana wrote:Venug, You asked if the AIT is dead with the new study on Saraswati River. Looks like the author answered your question.....
Article in Pioneer, 6 June 2012

AIT is dead only when it is removed from the school text books.

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 06 Jun 2012 01:07

shiv, in egypt and mesopotamia - the use of chariots emerged much ahead of actual cavalry riding, as it did in India too (as per some books i've read). riding horses directly seems to be much more an invention of the people of the grasslands - where trees to make wooden objects is scarce, and the need to move frequently precludes the development of too much technology

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 06 Jun 2012 01:16

AIT is dead. Funeral is remaining.

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 06 Jun 2012 04:15

Ramana garu, thank you for the paper and the article. The paper has nice chronological drifting of settlements, very neat. There is another paper (2012) to which I don't have access to but is discussed in the below blog which too corroborates the conclusion reached in the above paper:

The Yamuna stopped flowing into the Ghaggar / Sarasvati and shifted course eastwards into the Ganga as early as around fifty thousand years ago. The Beas and the Sutlej stopped flowing into the Ghaggar / Sarasvati and joined the Indus before ten thousand years ago, several thousand years before the beginnings of the Harappan civilization.
That is the conclusion reached in a paper in Geology (behind paywall) by Peter Clift and colleagues using U-Pb (Uranium - Lead) dating of zircon crystals from ancient channels and alluvium of the Ghaggar / Hakra river.

Detailed mapping of the region between the Indus and the Yamuna where the present day Ghaggar / Hakra flows has revealed the presence of many dried up channels suggesting that a much larger Ghaggar river existed in the past. The Harappan urban civilization declined and was abandoned by around 2000 B.C to 1800 B.C. One of the main reasons given is a prolonged drying of the region which made agriculture unsustainable.

Blog:
http://www.suvratk.blogspot.in/2012/02/ ... o.html?m=1
Paper with abstract only:
U-Pb zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati River and capture of the Yamuna River.
http://m.geology.gsapubs.org/content/ea ... 1.abstract

member_22872 · Post by **member_22872** » 06 Jun 2012 04:39

If one thinks about the extinction of IVC, it would have been very logical looking at the proximity to today's Thar desert to conclude how IVC might have met its end, than to think some aryans on chariots and horses or through large scale migration were responsible for its demise. AIT/AMT need lot of imagination and logical jumps to even think about it to be possible or you need no intelligence at all but like Shiv ji said one only needs international pakiness.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 06 Jun 2012 06:04

Lalmohan wrote:shiv, in egypt and mesopotamia - the use of chariots emerged much ahead of actual cavalry riding, as it did in India too (as per some books i've read). riding horses directly seems to be much more an invention of the people of the grasslands - where trees to make wooden objects is scarce, and the need to move frequently precludes the development of too much technology

Grasslands maybe. I am not questioning that. But not "pastoralists" who move from place to place. You need to have settlements to have high level carpentry to make chariots.

In fact I just wonder if "pastoralist" itself conjures up wonky definition of here today gone tomorrow. That is the viewpoint of a person with a fixed dwelling place.

But if a "pastoralist" has 500 head of cattle he can't really move very far from 2 or 3 areas where food is available. The only question is whether there was agriculture and a settled dwelling place. Carpentry demands that there is a specialist who does that and someone has to feed him. That implies a settled rather than an itinerant lifestyle. It does not necessarily imply agriculture, but agriculture and a settled life are linked. Rig Veda seems to have plenty of references to chariots.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 06 Jun 2012 06:59

Here is an interesting primer to the Rig Veda written by scholars who do not speak or understand any Indian Sanskrit based language and have no intuitive understanding of a culture descended directly from Vedic rots. the text is interesting and describes the difficulties in interpreting the Rig Veda. It has names like Wendy Doniger. No Indian names whatsoever.

http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ ... l-0-X.html

Have Indians been ignorant in translations? Or just negligent? Or their works ignored?

With the Rig Veda anything goes. It's every man for himself.