Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[RajeshA]

There is another passage allegedly in the Shatapatha Brahmana that speaks of Sati ( a Hindu ritual where a bride is buried with her husband) and proof has been found in Central Asia where a male and female skeleton have been found buried together.

shiv saar,

it seems now even heer-ranjha and their undying love are getting entangled in this AIT business!

[shiv]

Sure it won't make sense to you - since you can't grasp the need to specify "error probability" in all your fantasy interpretations. I'll again do your homework for you ...

Rate of precession = one degree on the ecliptic per 72 years. So a difference of 8 days would mean 8 * 72 = 576 years. The variation in the rate of precession only makes the error probability different, it never vanishes.

Therefore, without the knowledge of the exact number of days used in the intercalary 13th month, it is futile trying to arrive at an exact date.

And to specific 8 x 72 = 576 nonsense, I would stop. I don't want to get personal and validate Naseem's quote, AGAIN.

Well I am the non expert here and I did not see the original discussion that led to this respectful linguistic exchange.

I thought that precession meant that a distant reference point would return to the exact same spot with reference to the ecliptic after a period of 26,000 years or so. The precession is 1/100th of a degree per year and should, unless I am mistaken, cause a 26,000 year long sine-wave like wobble of the distant reference point on the ecliptic. In 576 years, the point should have moved about 5.8 degrees. How does this translate to 8 days? If you add or subtract 8 days the point will merely appear to have moved a further fraction of a degree no?

[Arjun]

if I may request, let's not call fellow BRFites and discussion partners as 'Sepoys' or anything! We are all here to learn and explore onlee!

If I get a sense from his response that he's here to explore and not preach dogma, will be happy to modify my post.

[RajeshA]

PNAS January 24, 2006 vol. 103 no. 4 843-848

A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios

Sanghamitra Sahoo¹, Anamika Singh¹, G. Himabindu¹, Jheelam Banerjee¹, T. Sitalaximi¹, Sonali Gaikwad¹, R. Trivedi¹, Phillip Endicott², Toomas Kivisild³, Mait Metspalu³, Richard Villems³, and V. K. Kashyap⁴

¹ National DNA Analysis Centre, Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Kolkata 700014, India;
² Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, United Kingdom;
³ Estonian Biocentre, 51010 Tartu, Estonia; and
⁴ National Institute of Biologicals, Noida 201307, India

Abstract:

Understanding the genetic origins and demographic history of Indian populations is important both for questions concerning the early settlement of Eurasia and more recent events, including the appearance of Indo-Aryan languages and settled agriculture in the subcontinent. Although there is general agreement that Indian caste and tribal populations share a common late Pleistocene maternal ancestry in India, some studies of the Y-chromosome markers have suggested a recent, substantial incursion from Central or West Eurasia. To investigate the origin of paternal lineages of Indian populations, 936 Y chromosomes, representing 32 tribal and 45 caste groups from all four major linguistic groups of India, were analyzed for 38 single-nucleotide polymorphic markers. Phylogeography of the major Y-chromosomal haplogroups in India, genetic distance, and admixture analyses all indicate that the recent external contribution to Dravidian- and Hindi-speaking caste groups has been low. The sharing of some Y-chromosomal haplogroups between Indian and Central Asian populations is most parsimoniously explained by a deep, common ancestry between the two regions, with diffusion of some Indian-specific lineages northward. The Y-chromosomal data consistently suggest a largely South Asian origin for Indian caste communities and therefore argue against any major influx, from regions north and west of India, of people associated either with the development of agriculture or the spread of the Indo-Aryan language family. The dyadic Y-chromosome composition of Tibeto-Burman speakers of India, however, can be attributed to a recent demographic process, which appears to have absorbed and overlain populations who previously spoke Austro-Asiatic languages.

[RajeshA]

if I may request, let's not call fellow BRFites and discussion partners as 'Sepoys' or anything! We are all here to learn and explore onlee!

If I get a sense from his response that he's here to explore and not preach dogma, will be happy to modify my post.

I wasn't making a commentary on whether your judgment was right or wrong, but rather the request was based on the need to avoid calling people names so that the discussion is not derailed and it does not affect the mood of the discussion negatively.

[shiv]

The comparative linguistics arguments only tell us that Sanskrit/Greek/Latin etc, none of these can be original languages. These are all derived from a common parent.

ManishH ji, do you believe that Sanskrit is a language that just happened to develop randomly? I think what I am learning of the grammar and some of the fundamental phonetic derivation of meanings in Sanskrit (as per my meagre current knowledge) suggests a language that was deliberately developed by a set of scholars. In other words it is a language that is manufactured and derived from some earlier language.

There is no information on exactly what that earlier language might have been other than the presence of cognates in a whole lot of other languages. The idea that this development and refinement took place on horseback in 200 years en route from Central Asia sounds like a derivation of Shri Grimm's other, better known skill, in writing fairy tales.

You said:

The comparative linguistics arguments only tell us that Sanskrit/Greek/Latin etc, none of these can be original languages. These are all derived from a common parent.

It is clear that Sanskrit is not an original language, as it is too refined and full of rigid rules to be the original which is likely to have had a more random development. But it also means that this refined, derived language cannot have a common parent with Latin and Greek. Sanskrit has been modified into a finished product which merely retains some historic commonality with Greek and Latin, but the statement that they all have a common parent is an assumption. Sanskrit is likely to have had a parent (from which it was derived) and that parent had some earlier relationship with some proto-Latin and proto-Greek. And that relationship was restricted only to the IE parentage of Latin and Greek. Greek (and probably Latin too) have a huge percentage of Non IE parentage, so "common parent" is a stretch. It is guesswork and fudging of the type that the linguistic community has displayed uncommon excellence.

You also said:

1. empirical data that showed humans are capable of very wide rates of language change.
2. the specification of what is "core vocabulary" for a language is highly subjective.

In the case of Sanskrit, bot these statements are not true. The rate of change statement is clearly inapplicable to Sanskrit. The core vocabulary part is a little bit out of my expertise but what i have learned about the way words and meanings are derived in Sanskrit suggests that the "core vocabulary" of Sanskrit is itself bound by rules based on earlier philosophical judgements about the relationship of sound to life. I do not think any of this applies to Latin or Greek.

[ramana]

Arjun and ManishH,

I dont like the condesending tone of both your posts. Please do not repeat.
Take it as a request or a warning.

... And yet I see you and fellow sepoys....

....For a self-styled "archaeo-astronomer",....

Lets be civil on the Forum atleast.

Thanks, ramana

[shiv]

Here is what some random guy on some random forum says. I cross post what i think I agree with
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/showthread.php?27103

Surely, if the ancestry of the ancient Greeks and Romans is over 50% non-Indo-European, as now transpires from the insight provided by population genetics, a very sizeable part of their language must also be of non-IE origin.

I also believe that the way linguists have reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language is faulty because they assumed that languages fit only in one family. So much is obvious when so many linguists stubbornly refuse to classify English as both Germanic and Romance, and insist it is only Germanic when 70% of its vocabulary is Romance (including Greek loanwords in Latin and French) and its grammar is now closer to Romance than Germanic languages.

[ramana]

Shiv, Is the search for Proto Indo European driven by the Tower of Babel construct in the Bible? Is it another Nazi project to de-Judafiy Europe?

[shiv]

Shiv, Is the search for Proto Indo European driven by the Tower of Babel construct in the Bible? Is it another Nazi project to de-Judafiy Europe?

Interesting Freudian substrate hypothesis. Pisko at its best.

[shiv]

More from random unknown people who have as much of a right to cook up as the university linguist. Funny that the random guys can get more credible. *sutyum *ever *djayatay

Latin & Greek words of non-Indo-European origin

and

List of old Germanic words of non-Indo-European origin

Population genetic studies have provided incontrovertible evidence that ancient Germanic culture and ethnicity arose from the fusion of the Mesolithic inhabitants of Scandinavia (linked to Y-DNA haplogroup I1) and Indo-European people (associated with haplogroups R1a and R1b). Although the bulk of Germanic words have an Indo-European origin, a substantial number of fundamental vocabulary appears to be non-Indo-European, most probably inherited from the indigenous pre-Bronze-Age inhabitants of Scandinavia and/or North Germany.

[RamaY]

Thanks Nileshji

[RamaY]

ManishH are you aware of any translation of the Shatapatha Brahmana other than the out of copyright one by Eggeling?

In fact I am asking you for help here but the help will be used to tear down one more pillar of the Aryan Migration theory so you need not help if you don't want to.

Frankly I have not been able to find a Hindi or Kannada translation. In fact I have not even been able to find the Shatapatha Brahmana in Devnagari, although the Roman alphabet versions are no good. I have resorted to trying to dig thorugh the Yajur Veda -but no luck yet. However I don't give up easy when I sense blood. I will do a translation myself if need be but before I head out to the local Motilal Banarsidas or Bharatiya Vidya bhavan I am trying to use the lazy internet route.

I believe Eggeling has fuked up the translation in many places, but I can confirm that only by finding the relevant text. I think it will be a laugh and another blow to the conclave of linguists and archaeologists who cook things up. In their defence I can say that the cooking is done based on faulty translation by well meaning and hardworking ignoramuses who have no cultural insight.

Shiv-ji,

Check if this could be of some help... http://archive.org/details/ShatapathBrahmanaVol.1

[Nilesh Oak]

RamaY Garu,

sent to your email.

Nilesh

[shiv]

ManishH are you aware of any translation of the Shatapatha Brahmana other than the out of copyright one by Eggeling?

In fact I am asking you for help here but the help will be used to tear down one more pillar of the Aryan Migration theory so you need not help if you don't want to.

Frankly I have not been able to find a Hindi or Kannada translation. In fact I have not even been able to find the Shatapatha Brahmana in Devnagari, although the Roman alphabet versions are no good. I have resorted to trying to dig thorugh the Yajur Veda -but no luck yet. However I don't give up easy when I sense blood. I will do a translation myself if need be but before I head out to the local Motilal Banarsidas or Bharatiya Vidya bhavan I am trying to use the lazy internet route.

I believe Eggeling has fuked up the translation in many places, but I can confirm that only by finding the relevant text. I think it will be a laugh and another blow to the conclave of linguists and archaeologists who cook things up. In their defence I can say that the cooking is done based on faulty translation by well meaning and hardworking ignoramuses who have no cultural insight.

Shiv-ji,

Check if this could be of some help... http://archive.org/details/ShatapathBrahmanaVol.1

Thanks - but the pdf is only volume 1 and I am looking for volume 2. I think I will have to lift my backside off the seat and go to a bookstore and find a hard copy with a Hindi or Kannada translation. There are several psychological errors made by western observers of India because of fixed notions in their minds such as "food=meat" and "funeral=burial" and "sacrifice=wajibulcuttle" and "ancient=savage=illiterate"

[Murugan]

Astronomy of Shatpatha Brahmana - Subhash C Kak

http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdatauplo ... b5c_15.pdf


***

Date of Shatpatha Brahmana - Narhari Achar

http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/rawdatauplo ... 5a63_1.pdf

[Murugan]

Doctor Gaaru

Shatpatha Brahmana - II (In Sanskrit)

http://ia600307.us.archive.org/11/items ... 311mbp.pdf

[Arjun]

A good overview of Indian mathematics' contribution to modern science- Mathematics in Ancient India

It is on the foundation formed by the blending of the two great mathematical cultures - the geometric and axiomatic tradition of the Greeks and the algebraic and computational tradition of the Indians - that the mathematical renaissance took place in Europe.

Considering that mathematics is the bedrock of modern science, would be more appropriate to refer to the latter as 'Indo-Grecian' or 'Indo-Hellenic' in its origin.

[Murugan]

Google Search for

The Satapatha-Brahmana (3 Vol. Set) (Hardcover, Hindi)by Jeet Ram Bhatt

throws 3-4 names of online/offline sources

amazon.com seems to have some copies left prize ranging from USD 100+ to USD 300+

[ManishH]

ManishH ji, do you believe that Sanskrit is a language that just happened to develop randomly?

When you say Sanskrit, do you mean the post-Pāṇini classical Sanskrit or the one before it - Vedic Sanskrit.

There is at least one documented systematic codification effort - Pāṇini's aṣṭadhyāyi. There are good indicators that even Vedic dialect was 'systematically refined' at some time in the past - the evidence of guṇa and vṛddhi.

suggests a language that was deliberately developed by a set of scholars. In other words it is a language that is manufactured and derived from some earlier language.

Quite true if you speak of classical Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is likely to have had a parent (from which it was derived) and that parent had some earlier relationship with some proto-Latin and proto-Greek. And that relationship was restricted only to the IE parentage of Latin and Greek. Greek (and probably Latin too) have a huge percentage of Non IE parentage, so "common parent" is a stretch. It is guesswork and fudging of the type that the linguistic community has displayed uncommon excellence.

Yep - you're right. A common ancestor instead of 'parent' is more accurate.

1. empirical data that showed humans are capable of very wide rates of language change.
2. the specification of what is "core vocabulary" for a language is highly subjective.

In the case of Sanskrit, bot these statements are not true. The rate of change statement is clearly inapplicable to Sanskrit.

The codification and success of aṣṭadhyāyi is what has contributed to the observed constancy in Classical Sanskrit. But just compare the period before Pāṇini. Eg. the changes in Vedic dialect from ṛgveda to the brāhmaṇa texts. To give you one example -

In ṛgveda, the genitive singular fem has -yās but in brāhmaṇa-s, you will find the dative -yai ending reused in genitive as well as ablative!

The core vocabulary part is a little bit out of my expertise but what i have learned about the way words and meanings are derived in Sanskrit suggests that the "core vocabulary" of Sanskrit is itself bound by rules based on earlier philosophical judgements about the relationship of sound to life. I do not think any of this applies to Latin or Greek.

Probably you can give specific examples to illustrate your point. I haven't found Sanskrit to have Onomatopoeia (if that's what you mean by the underlined portion) any more than other languages.

I thought that precession meant that a distant reference point would return to the exact same spot with reference to the ecliptic after a period of 26,000 years or so.

Yes. But only if the original observation of winter solstice is w.r.t a star. But in this case, it was w.r.t a calendar month and that too the 13th intercalary month. That's where the exact duration of intercalary month becomes the important, missing piece, without which we have the error factor. For details, you can read the entire article "Philology and historical interpretation of the vedic textts" by H.H. Hock in Bryant's book pp 297

ramana: removed the offensive piece you quoted.

[shiv]

Probably you can give specific examples to illustrate your point. I haven't found Sanskrit to have Onomatopoeia (if that's what you mean by the underlined portion) any more than other languages.

No. This is not something I have read, but have heard from people who have studied some aspects of language and Indian culture (as amateurs). Primordial sounds as the basis for generation of words in Sanskrit is what I have heard. What is meant by primordial sounds is a question of belief I guess. For example it is easy to dismiss the orderly construction of a Vedic altar as equivalent to ruins dug up in central Asia graves and declare them one and the same.

Will try to recall examples, or will put it in my diary of things to do, behind checking out how the phonology of Hittite was actually derived.

You said

There are good indicators that even Vedic dialect was 'systematically refined' at some time in the past - the evidence of guṇa and vṛddhi.

As usual this is undated. However if you look at the timeline that is given to us by modern archaeo-linguists there was a time lag of about 300 years between the passage of horse riding pastoralists from the Pontic Steppe from Iran (where the left behind the Mitanni texts in "proto-Indic", 1467 BC) and then went eastwards to "Panjab" where they "compiled" the (previously composed) Rig veda in 1200 BC, And this came around the time sister language Avestan had branched off from proto-Indic. Now if Avestan has any of the refinements of Sanskrit in terms of grammar it means that grammatical refinements occurred somewhere en route from central Asia to Iran to India, done by a pastoral people who passed by city dwelling civilizations who left behind written records (Darius and his Persia) and eventually went on to compile the Rig Veda.

Considering that no evidence of any language that existed in the Pontic Steppe and the linguistic "evidence" of the Rig Veda is hardly consistent with the graves of Central Asia there has been an extraordinary dependence on saying horses did not exist in India to claim that the language existed in Central Asia.

Manishji, i might be wrong but you seem like a well read and reasonable man, even if you get irritated by my posts. But do you seriously believe that Rig Vedic Sanskrit developed in the 200 to 300 years between the time "PIE" speaking horse riders came to Iran and went on to "Panjab" while branching off into Old Persian, Avestan and Old Indic (Vedic Sanskrit) ? The idea seriously stretches credulity and when you look at other corroborative evidence like astronomy, the more recent findings in The Saraswati-Sindhu civilization, the timeline cooked up by linguistic scholars and their archaeologist pals (who depend on mistranslations of the Rig Veda as evidence) is seriously suspect.

I believe that predating the Rig Veda by 500 or 1000 years would still be perfectly rational. That will hand nothing to the "Out of India" theorists. It could still be language coming into india. But the only thing that gets broken down is decades of theories built up by linguists about language origins. Predating the Rig Veda would put it smack bang in the middle of the Saraswati Sindhi civilization and ahead of the orderly language spread models they have for Europe starting with Mycenaean Greek of 1800 BC and it appears to me that linguists do not want that. But the evidence of language in the Pontc Steppe is as meager as the evidence against Sanskrit in Punjab 2000 BC. The WitMer community are fighting an absurd and inexplicable battle which looks more like echandee saving to me than scholarship. For them there is no looking back. No reappraisal. Their theories are too far down the path of commitment to sleight of hand and bluff. That makes them tempting targets. It must be their karma.

The fundamental conflict here is to tear down what appear to be a huge body of false assumptions that have been passed of as modern day scholarship and those scholars are fighting what I see as a losing battle holding up all the false assumptions and theories they have created over the decades, starting from linguistic "evidence" from century old translations of the Rig Veda by culturally blind Europeans reading indian texts.

[RoyG]

The virtual absence of India-specific mtDNA haplogroups outside of India argues against a large scale population movement out of India.[73] Tracing a possible "out of India" migration has therefore until recently focused upon Y-chromosome haplogroups. Concerning Y DNA, haplogroup R2 is characterized by genetic marker M124, and is rarely found outside India, Pakistan, Iran, and southern Central Asia. Outside of southern Eurasia, M124 was found at an unusually high frequency of 0.440 among the Kurmanji of Georgia, but at a much lower frequency of only 0.080 among the Kurmanji of Turkmenistan. The M124 frequency of 0.158 found among Chechens may be unrepresentative because it was derived from a sample size of only 19 Chechens. Outside of these populations and the Romani people, M124 is not found in Eastern Europe.[74]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_India_theory

Can someone comment on the findings?

[ManishH]

The translations of the Old Persian text in the Behistun inscriptions commissioned by Darius read "Aham Daravayus" - "I am Darius"

Shiv avare: this is wrong. The correct Old Persian is "adam Dârayavauš". You have purposely changed the 'adam' to 'aham' in order to make it appear just slightly more Sanskrit like. Why is it a 'adam' and not 'aham' is very apparent from the cuneiform syllabograms:



It is clear that the same syllabogram is used in 'adam', 'darayavus' as well as 'dahyunam'. The full transliteration is here

The phonetic value the 'da' in darayus comes from Greek sources (Herodotus). The phonetic value of 'da' in 'dahyunam' comes from Iranian as well as Sanskrit (dasyu) sources. If you see further in the inscription, 'da' is again confirmed from 'Auramazda'. There are multiple corroborations for 'da' and strong evidence that 'ha' has a separate syllabogram like in Harauvatiš

Not only do you confess to "not having a clue" as below, you have shown no evidence of digging into how exactly are phonetic values ascribed to syllabograms and you keep repeating rhetoric like 'quackery' and 'fake'.

But I have a clue as to how to go about finding the answer. Will get back on the topic soon. Somehow it seems very vital to me. I will explain later. It may show up another massive self deluding fraud by linguistic AIT Nazis.

What surprises me is that you confess to "not having a clue", yet you keep accusing whole groups of people of fraud. To me, this is propaganda-speak - yojanas away from scholarly rigour.

Dahyunam -= Dahyu+ naam = Named dahyu
...
Folks the Behistun Inscription in its Old Persian part is probably just plain Sanskrit.

This is wrong -nām is standard genitive plural suffix. Nothing to do with 'naam' (named). At some level, it is sad to see that the defence of OIT lies in the hand of people unwilling to check basic Sanskrit grammar. And at the same time accuse a scholar like Julius Eggeling who, with the limited resource of 19th century, has devoted his whole life to study of Vedic texts of "no cultural insight". What cultural insight, maharāya, do you show when you fumble at basic 'sup' vibhakti taught in lesson 1 or 2 of Sanskrit ? I suspect it is because you don't like that he was a westerner.

[RoyG]

The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate

By Edwin Bryant

http://books.google.com/books?id=Y2jfHl ... &q&f=false

[Virupaksha]

http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U103A0.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Persian_cuneiform

the old persian alphabets as explained, to my untrained eye, I could not find a logic behind it. Somebody is trying to weave a story out of incomplete materials. The symbols for AhuraMazda, the less I talk about it, the better. If what the wiki says is right and that the transliteration dependend on the names of the kings, we are trying to equate and pronounce chandrakuta or chandragupta written in sanskrit from sandrokottos in latin and with that the "scholarly linguists" generated the entire old persian.

However, I noticed if I start transliterating their "Da" as "Ha" and their "Ha" as some form of "SHa", for my untrained perspective it was not too bad. Ran an eyeball sanity check on 2 other inscriptions, nothing as yet blew in my face. With these changes that particular inscription's transliteration reads as

\ aham \ Hârayavauš \ xšâyathiya \ vazraka \ xšâyatha \ xšâyathiy
ânâm \ xšâyathiya \ Pârsaiy \ xšâyathiya \ dahyûnâm \ Višt
âspahyâ \ puça \ Aršâmahyâ napâ \ SHaxâmanišiya \ thâtiy \
Hârayavauš \ xšâyathiya \ manâ \ pitâ \ Vištâspa \ Vištâspahyâ \ pitâ \ Arš
âma \ Aršâmahyâ \ pitâ \ Ariyâramna \ Ariyâramnahyâ \ pitâ\ Cišpiš \ Cišp
âiš \ pitâ \ SHaxâmaniš \ thâtiy \ Hârayavauš \ xšâthiya \ avahyarâ
diy \ vayam \ SHaxâmanišiyâ \ thahyâmahy \ hacâ \ paruviyata \ âmâtâ \ ama
hy hacâ \ paruviyata \hyâ \amâxam \ taumâ \ xšâyathiyâ \ âha \ th

I will definitely like to see how and most importantly why the old persian alphabets have been transliterated. I hope it is not the case of somebody (i.e. trying to fill a puzzle) guessing like me and writing a book, the next guy simply "continued" my work and for the next guy "look at those guys". This was what exactly happened with the dating of vedas and led to the nonsensical AIT.

Any books which go into that kind of explanations??

[Arjun]

To me, this is propaganda-speak - yojanas away from scholarly rigour.

ManishH ji, you might want to explain what exactly 'scholarly rigour' is supposed to mean in a field that cannot even claim to be a science. Reconstruction of proto-languages in comparative linguistics is not 'falsifiable' ( I am not talking about decipherment using syllabograms here which is a different issue, which Shiv ji will address) - it therefore does not even meet the basic criteria of being a 'Science'. This fact is openly acknowledged by Clackson in his recent tome on 'Indo-European Linguistics'. In the absence of the field being a science, either we agree that both sides can indulge in polemics - or... maybe you might want to take a shot at defining what 'falsifiability' and 'scholarly rigor' are supposed to mean in your field ?

Can you also expand on the 'scholarly rigor' that went into determining which evidence was to be used and which ones rejected in arriving at a conclusive 'proof' of AMT - deemed fit enough to be taught as dogma to school-kids in California?

Also, since you talked of 'error probablilty' in archeo-astronomy, can you explain in what capacity comparative linguists can be posing that question - when their own field has zero concept of 'error probability', and prefers to arrive at 'conclusive' proofs based on voodoo logic? Can you give me an error probability for PIE Homeland not being in India +/- 5%, or do you think your 'proof' is conclusive enough as is ?

At least archeo-astronomers are able to clearly state the assumptions for their argument and quantify the error estimate in some fashion - linguists / philologists are not able to do either. The very concepts are alien to them. Deriving conclusive 'proofs' that morover have a deep impact on society - based on such voodoo 'Science', is laughable.

[RajeshA]

At some level, it is sad to see that the defence of OIT lies in the hand of people unwilling to check basic Sanskrit grammar. And at the same time accuse a scholar like Julius Eggeling who, with the limited resource of 19th century, has devoted his whole life to study of Vedic texts of "no cultural insight". What cultural insight, maharāya, do you show when you fumble at basic 'sup' vibhakti taught in lesson 1 or 2 of Sanskrit ? I suspect it is because you don't like that he was a westerner.

You see when the Kshatriyas of a nation get bought over and co-opted and either they align with the Mughals or they conscript themselves in the British Army as Sepoys, then of course the common farmer would have to pick up the lathi!

It is indeed sad as you say!

But the thing is very few on this thread are really claiming to be Sanskrit scholars, so really any rebuke for less than perfect knowledge of Sanskrit by them is nothing more than 'putdown-rhetoric', which one sees so often in the 'Western Sanskritist circles'. It is like hitting a baby in the face and saying one is strong!

In India there has been almost zero research in comparative and historical linguistics which involves non-Indic languages, and if there has been any, Indian academics have really taken over what the racist Westerners had fabricated earlier, all in the Macaulayist submissive manner! The Indian political leadership has simply not deemed it important to encourage this field of study, and the various traditional Sanskrit scholars in India are not acclimatized to an academic environment of peer reviews and Western accredited scholarship.

It is indeed sad as you say!

So no, Sanskrit may not be the strong point of many of us here, nor do we claim it to be so, but what 'Indigenists' do have is logic on their side, enough logic to see when some fakeology is being promoted in the name of scholarship!

The biggest in-the-face-glaring fakeology starts with the Language Tree itself! It is nice that the linguists have tried to decorate it like a Christmas Tree, but it is a fake plastic tree!

Where in the tree are all the languages which were spoken in Europe before the arrival of the "Indo-Europeans" there? Why is Basque an isolate? What is the history of the substrates in various Germanic languages? Why are Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi all daughters of Sanskrit?

The whole common origin theory of Proto-Indo-European is really nonsense because that flies in the face of how languages develop. It would be far more a bidirectional graph than a hierarchy!

So if the basic model of European linguistics is wrong, how is one to evaluate the sciences of such a community. Of course as fakeology, because the whole effort of these linguists is channelized in upholding this unnatural tree, a simplistic thinking which grew out of the simple minds of the 19th century European scholars!

On the other hand it must also be said, that linguistics can be used to show commonality relationships between various languages, and perhaps their evolution, but never evolution as long as they adhere to linear sound-change evolution models.

The biggest fakeology is "Common Source == Single Source"!

So what the farmers with their lathis are going to do is to improve their martial skills and with time bring down the AIT fortress based on make-believe scholarship!

The Sikhs did it once with arms, and Indics too though yet not learned in the ways and 'sorcery' of the Western 'Sanskritists' can do so by nibbling at their foundations with teeth of logic!

Somebody please give me a prize for corny rhetorical poetry - the Zafar Shamsheer Prize would be good!

[RajeshA]

I thought that precession meant that a distant reference point would return to the exact same spot with reference to the ecliptic after a period of 26,000 years or so.

Yes. But only if the original observation of winter solstice is w.r.t a star. But in this case, it was w.r.t a calendar month and that too the 13th intercalary month. That's where the exact duration of intercalary month becomes the important, missing piece, without which we have the error factor.

Nilesh Oak ji, Kaushal ji,

if you would be so kind, could you comment on the above!

Thanks

[Arjun]

I think the inter-calary month can only be 35 or 36 days...so Hock may be mixing up normal and inter-calary months in his range of 29...36. In any case, my understanding is each of the 4 calendars used till VJ had clearly defined rules of when to add inter-calary months and of what size. If the rules are not clearly defined - yes there will be ambiguity in results.

Disclaimer: am no expert, and all of 4 days into archeo-astronomy starting from zero base.

[shiv]

The translations of the Old Persian text in the Behistun inscriptions commissioned by Darius read "Aham Daravayus" - "I am Darius"

Shiv avare: this is wrong. The correct Old Persian is "adam Dârayavauš". You have purposely changed the 'adam' to 'aham' in order to make it appear just slightly more Sanskrit like. Why is it a 'adam' and not 'aham' is very apparent from the cuneiform syllabograms:

+1 for noticing my little bluff
+10 for falling or the bait.

I did use the same Livius link that you posted and my doubts stem from that. In his post above Virupaksha has summed up how a da/ha change hardly seems to make a difference and I was tickled by that, but let me take you up on the Behistun issue.

Would you be able to say how "adam darayavaus" was translated to "I am Darius"? How does "adam" become "I am". "adam" could be a title - like "Shri" or "Mr" or "His highness". I put it to you that it was translated to "I am" by a person who saw the similarity with Sanskrit "aham". Please deny or confirm this if you know. How would phonetic change theory explain two sister languages having "aham" and "adam". How does aham become adam or vice versa? Does that sound change have parallels? What is your explanation for the similarity in sound and meaning of "aham" and "adam"?

How was "xšâyathiya vazraka xšâyatha xšâyathiyânâm " translated as " great king, king of kings"

On what basis was "Vištâspahyâ puça" translated as "son of Vistashpa" if the similarity to Sanskrit was unknown? Could be heir of Vistashpa. "Pita" in another line is clearly father, given that the names were known from other sources

Some words are so similar to Sanskrit that I wonder if the original cuneiform symbols themselves were inadequate to convey the actual phonetics. There is no proof that this is not the case, and the assumption is that the cuneiform symbols accurately convey the sound of a language that that language has been termed "Old Persian".

How was "Dârayavauš xšâthiya avahyarâdiy vayam Haxâmanišiyâ thahyâmahy hacâ paruviyata âmâtâ ama" translated as "King Darius says: That is why we are called Achaemenids; from antiquity we have been noble; from antiquity has our dynasty been royal.". Particularly the words "says" , "noble", "antiquity" and "royal"?

[shiv]

But the thing is very few on this thread are really claiming to be Sanskrit scholars, so really any rebuke for less than perfect knowledge of Sanskrit by them is nothing more than 'putdown-rhetoric', which one sees so often in the 'Western Sanskritist circles'. It is like hitting a baby in the face and saying one is strong!

Thanks for putting it in better words than I could have done.

But one does not even need to be an expert to see faking by AIT Nazis when it goes beyond the limits of credibility. Ignore the insults and carry on.

[Murugan]

Oupnekhat was the name of the book which Arthur Schopenhauer used to keep on his table. That was Upanishad book.

Schopenhauer once called sanskrit knowledge of German Indologists == Knowledge of School Children

[member_20317]

I have seen claims by Subhash Kak and Elst that this 8 day 10 day margin that ManishH is talking about is about the biggest fly the AIT wala can put in the ointment and this basically affects the later dates like Buddha and Maurya Dynasty more (in relative sense) then it affects the older periods that we are right now dealing with here. Hardly anybody from the Indian side has said anything about the most definitive dates. They give a date (as a best judgement assessment) and the best circumstantial evidence that they can provide. Never the 'authorised', 'scientific', 'pear reviewed', 'we have the money', 'na na na na' bull that 'we' will repeat forever in propaganda material.

The 5-700 year error affects the Buddha dating because that is actually the quantum of difference between the two competing claims but what do you do with such a 500-700 year 'error probability' when the other side is mentioning 'periods' instead of 'dates' and these periods stretch over 7000-10000 years. What is really important is the rationale provided for the respective claims and the test of the rationale being provided and not the dates.

In any case the appellant and the respondent have to come to the judge with clean hands and the judge is the janta janardan. They will decide what is organic and what is not based on their own understanding of the underlying assumptions.

I would have been surprised if such ambiguity was not there. Its not like we have access to all the work done by the ancients. Another thing that needs to be studied is the methodology of approximations. If Indians were using a method whereby they got a 19-20 wala difference that remained there without getting compounded I would say that is much better then say a 100% accuracy in one set of conditional observations that are then sought to be applied without corrections to another set of conditional observations. Kind of like the difference between Western and Indian astrology. Indics relying on actual observations that are obviously approximates provide a better basis of composing a horoscope. One may not believe in horoscopes but the calculative basis is an entirely different thing.

[Murugan]

Paul Deussen, Indologists, their work and

if this search was diverted by the theories of ‘Indo-Germanic’ as a mother tongue, and other later vested interests such as ‘Aryanism’, the scholarship of these pioneers stands in its own right.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Deussen

And about Schopenhauer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Schopenhauer

***

How this transformation has taken place - Schopenhauer to Halfwitz and Shetkaris??

[Murugan]

Key to the Vedas

By M. I. Mikhailov, N. S. Mikhailo

***

In this book, read chapter pertaining to M Moneir-Williams.

MMW candidly admits that he created Sanskrit English dictionary to facilitate translation of Bible into Sanskrit.

For what purpose then this huge territory has been handed to England? Certainly, not to be contemptible object of political, social or military experiments, not for benefit our trade or increase in our riches - but for that each adult person and child from Cape Comorin upto the mountains of Himalayas could be elevated, educated and converted to Christianity

- MMW

[Murugan]

Look, who is imparting Sanskrit Education at Harvard

http://www.summer.harvard.edu/courses/sans.jsp

[RajeshA]

Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa Translations



Publication Date: 1882
Translated By: Julius Eggeling
The Satapatha-Brâhmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina School (Part 1) - Books I & II [@sacred-texts]




Publication Date: 1885
Translated By: Julius Eggeling
The Satapatha-Brâhmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina School (Part 2) - Books III & IV [@sacred-texts]




Publication Date: 1894
Translated By: Julius Eggeling
The Satapatha-Brâhmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina School (Part 3) - Books V, VI & VII [@sacred-texts]




Publication Date: 1897
Translated By: Julius Eggeling
The Satapatha-Brâhmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina School (Part 4) - Books VIII, IX & X [@sacred-texts]


Publication Date: 1900
Translated By: Julius Eggeling
The Satapatha-Brâhmana, according to the text of the Madhyandina School (Part 5) - Books XI, XII, XIII & XIV @sacred-texts

[Arjun]

There has been a surge of interest over the last few years in arriving at a non-Eurocentric history of Mathematics that takes into account contributions from other sources - most notably China, India Mesopatamia, Egypt & Islamic. Hope there are enough researchers in India who are involved seriously in this research.

Most notably - the Kerala school seems to have been the one that may have transmitted key mathematical knowledge that eventually led to the Renaissance...: The Crest of the Peacock: Non European Roots of Mathematics

[RajeshA]

There has been a surge of interest over the last few years in arriving at a non-Eurocentric history of Mathematics that takes into account contributions from other sources - most notably China, India Mesopatamia, Egypt & Islamic. Hope there are enough researchers in India who are involved seriously in this research.

Most notably - the Kerala school seems to have been the one that may have transmitted key mathematical knowledge that eventually led to the Renaissance...: The Crest of the Peacock: Non European Roots of Mathematics

For reference, also linked previously here!

[shiv]

It is clear that the same syllabogram is used in 'adam', 'darayavus' as well as 'dahyunam'. The full transliteration is here

adam (I am) Dârayavauš (Darius) xšâyathiya (king) vazraka (great?) xšâyatha xšâyathiyânâm (king of kings)

The interesting bit here is xšâyatha xšâyathiyânâm - king of kings

Wiki says (and I am unable to find a source)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah

The full title of the Achaemenid rulers was Kshatriya Kshatriyanamah, "King of Kings"

I suspected that xsayathiya may be some kind of derivation or corrupt from of "kshatriya". But hey what else can you expect, writing Sanskrit in cuneiform?

As an aside - I first heard the name "cuneiform" to mean "wedge shaped". Wedge shaped is associated with female external genitalia - hence "cu.nt" and "cunnilingus". I just wonder if the Tamil word (for those who know) has any similar origin? Wonder if corner and kone in Hindi have any connection.