Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 19:22

Peter ji,

No dear. Apples and oranges. Having multiple theories about future unknown is fine and healthy. But having a million theories about what has already happened and is written clearly in a book is not kosher.

This is about multiple theories about what happened in the 'unknown past'. In any case, you do recognize that there are multiple proposals for the timing of MBH War. How did you make your selection from these multiple proposals down to Prof. Achar's - 3067 BC

If academic qualification is your filtering critera, then I can understand you not accepting mine (I am not really sure if you are familiar with my work and based on your posts, it appears that you are not. You tell me if this is not correct). On the other hand I may mention that many others who have proposed date for MBH War are Professors (Anand Sharan, Mohan Gupta, R N Iyengar), Bhrat Ratna (P V Kane), Bharatacharya (C V Vaidya), Medical doctor (P V Vartak), Lawyer (P V Holay).

Is the profession of researcher a reasonable criteria? I will leave it to you to decide. Just FYI - I am sales guy.. and sold everything from Plastics to Aircraft Engines.

I think Arundhati and Mizhar are not going to yield much for Mbh timing.

You are not in a bad company. Many had the same view as you are articulating. Fortunately, this is no longer a matter of guesswork. I have shown that Arundhati/Vasistha did yield the most important clue in the context of dating of MBH War. It placed a firm bounded interval for plausible timing of MBH war from 4508 BC to 11091 BC.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 19:27

The much fainter red dwarf star named Proxima Centauri, or simply Proxima, is about 15,000 A.U. away from Alpha Centauri AB.[19][27][32] This is equivalent to 0.24 light years or 2.2 trillion kilometres—about 5% the distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri AB. Proxima may be gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri AB, orbiting it with a period between 100,000 and 500,000 years.[27] However, it is also possible that Proxima is not gravitationally bound and thus is moving along a hyperbolic trajectory[46] around Alpha Centauri AB.[19] The main evidence for a bound orbit is that Proxima's association with Alpha Centauri AB is unlikely to be accidental, since they share approximately the same motion through space.[27] Theoretically, Proxima could leave the system after several million years.[47] It is not yet certain whether Proxima and Alpha are truly gravitationally bound.[48]

Proxima is an M5.5 V spectral class red dwarf with an absolute magnitude of +15.53, which is only a small fraction of the Sun's luminosity. By mass, Proxima is presently calculated as 0.123 ± 0.06 M☉ (rounded to 0.12 M☉) or about one-eighth that of the Sun.[49]

ravi-g
I did address this briefly in my book. The orbiting period I came across during my research at that time...was 750,000 years. In any case while 100K to 750K shows significant variation, it is a mute point in the context of evaluating different proposals from 1400 BC to 7300 BC.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 19:44

Peter ji,

First of all, let me thank you for taking interest in this subject, since many reject these efforts outright without even reading about them.

Now back to our discussion.

Raghavan and Achar concur and I quote Raghavan:

Achar must (and better) concur with Raghavan if he is going to insist on date proposed by Raghavan. My point is there is problem with this date whichever way you look at it.

Researchers have gone through hoops and loops (e.g. P V Holay, P V Vartak, P V Kane, SenGupta, Mohan Gupta and many others), bending it backward and forward to match this duration of 58 days for Bhishma on bed of arrows. This is because everyone is clear on translation. If you are unwilling to accept it, I would encourage you to post the original verse here. We have many here who know Sanskrit (ManishH, Atri, Brihaspati and many more).

So this argument for translation...I am on this bed of arrow.. AND have not slept for 58 days..... is ridiculous.
Achar and Raghavan seems to be hoping on 'weight of authority' and you are accepting their rationale, so it seems... e.g. Sriman Vidwan Melma Narasimha Thathacharya swamigal avl.

Not that easy and not so fast.

Besides let us not forget that Bhishma Ashtami is when the demise of Bhisma is celebrated.

Traditions have value and they do carry kernel of truth, but at best, they could be used as supporting arugments for soemthing that is been clearly corroborated by stronger evidence.
And while you are at it, let me quote (since I am confident you will quote it when we get to the first day of War discussion) another reference Achar/Raghavan quote which falls in this 'tradition' category... is that of Gita-Jayanti which is celebrated on Margashirsha S 11. I will talk more about it when we get there.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 19:50

Peter ji,

continuing our discussion further...

I am sorry I disagree:

That is it?

'Kaumude masi' is month of lotuses. Now depending on the time one is proposing, it could coincide with lunar month of Kartika, but the reference is not saying Kartika explicitly.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 19:57

According to these verses Referece (V) above -
Saturn is near Rohini (done, good for 3067 BC)

But also Mars going 'vakri' near Jyeshtha/Anuradha! This is not the case for year 3067 BC and what Achar has done is 'hand waving' hoping that no one notices and also hoping that many such as you - Peter ji - would be content accepting explanation coming from a Professor.

And let me mention that problems for 3067 BC have not yet begun.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 20:11

I am doing a little "research study" of my own. As a data source I used the following Wiki link that lists cognates that are used in the construction of PIE. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the cognate word lists, but I wanted to check a particular aspect.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... pean_nouns

Of the 299 or so words listed I chose 110 words in some categories that I thought may be called likely ancient words and checked on a spreadsheet the percentage of the total of 110 words that had cognates from Sanskrit and other languages. It is ongoing work but the data in spreadsheet form is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... WlfZHViLVE

Some preliminary observations.

A total of 35 Indo European languages languages contribute to the cognates that make up those 110 words and PIE seems to have been cooked up using elements from all the languages that have cognates so that the PIE word in turn can be used to "explain" how it "led to" the original word in any one of the relevant languages via sound changes if need be. This is the manner in which PIE has been constructed and used.

Among these 35 languages seen in the chart I have posted we have at least one language from every single language family listed in the "PIE family tree" image that I have linked below. We have the Indo Iranian group (Sanskrit, Persian, Avestan, Kashmiri

, Kurdish. The Hellenic group (Greek). Italic group (Latin), Celtic group Irish, Welsh. Germanic (German, English and Norse) Balto-Slavic Serbo Croat, Russian, Polish, Lithuanian, Latvian. apart from Hittiite, Luwian, Tocharan etc.``

PIE language tree image link:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/language.gif

The idea behind the spreadsheet is to list the number and percentage of words from each language that contributes to the total 110 words I have chosen.

Now here are my preliminary observations from the results. Sanskrit leads the list in providing cognates to 78% of the 110 words. Greek and Latin are not far behind, with 76 and 72%. The contribution rapidly tails off after the first 11 languages with Avestan contributing only to 50% of words. The 20 plus languages after that contribute from 47 to less than 1% to that word list.

So what does all this mean to me?

You see - languages like Sanskrit and Latin have a 75% plus probability of sharing a cognate with any one of the other 30 plus Indo European languages. Let me call them root languages or core languages (Sanskrit, Latin and Greek)

That brings me to the following observation: Look at the image I have linked above

Under Indo-Iranian you find Vedic Sanskrit listed as "Indic". It has two sister languages, Avestan and Old Persian. If you look at the timeline that linguists have given us, Vedic Sanskrit is a branch that developed after Old Persian and Avestan. The time gap between the hypothesized "PIE" and Sanskrit is longer than the timeline between the development of Avestan and Old Persian. We are also told by linguists that all languages change and that the longer a language has developed the more it will change. Chnage is inevitable. In other words, the further a language is separated in time from PIE, the more its sounds, pronunciations and words should have changed away from PIE. And vise versa. The closer a language is to PIE, the fewer the difference it should have from PIE.

But you find exactly the opposite in my spreadsheet. Sanskrit retains nearly 80% of cognate words that are used in the reconstruction of PIE. Avestan just manages 50% - and according to linguists theories, less commonality means more change and more change means bigger time gap since it branched off from PIE. But remember - Avestan came before Sanskrit, not after. So it is closer to PIE and should have less change away from PIE. And look at Persian. In my spreadsheet Persian has contributed barely 30% of the cognates. Surely Persia comes long before India on the way from Central Asia. And Mitanni remember - it is according to some theories part of the language that was yet to go to India and yet to become Sanskrit at a time when Rig Veda was yet to be "compiled". So this Persian is alegedly even closer in time to the original PIE. It should have even more cognates because it has had less time to change. But it falls flat at 30%. And Sanskrit - separated from PIE by a thousand years contributes 80% of the cognates, in stark contrast to the 50% of "older" Avestan, and 30% of "even older" Persian - separated from PIE by a piffling 500 years.

What gives. Surely someone is bullshitting. And it's not me. The chart I have provided is from open source material and I have personally counted the cognates using a word editor of course) and charted them. The only way Sanskrit can retain more cognates with an older PIE than Persian and Avestan is for Sanskrit to be older than both those languages. But what does that do to AIT?

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 17 Sep 2012 20:25

Nilesh ji,
the gulf plot has to be taken carefully :
(a) its like the Black Sea pluvial formations problem : it s a basin that can be periodically flooded and then dried up, within a certain lower level of global sea-level. The climate above the water in the gulf zone changed quite drastically between 8000 -6000 BCE because of strengthening monsoon further to the south and east, and drying up of the previous more wet period following younger dryas - in the Arabian peninsula. Actually there were substantial lake formations around Oman inland which are now deserts [became deserts by 5000].

(b) isostatic changes depending on local strengths and weaknesses of offshore and inshore rock formations. When the sea-level rises, local shapes and strengths may make higher pressure offshore pull up land levels inshore. This makes local studies important. A less powerful but still effective factor can be the loss of weight of the north Indian glaciers, that would gradually tilt beach areas down and inland perimeter raised above. This effect partly is seen in the uplift of sites in the Kutch - with SSC sites between 4000 and 3000 BCE range with obvious sea-waterside port structures now sitting far offshore and showing signs of uplift.

If you look at that plot from gulf you posted - there is a small kink at round the middle of the 5000-6000 BCE period. It is a temporary reversal of the increasing trend for less than a hundred years I think, and could be a pointer to when reclamation might have looked feasible. I had tried to look for this before, but the problem is that such local studies have been undertaken more in the Oman area, and less for Gujarat coastline. So even though I noticed such short period reversals elsewhere around the north IOR, I could not conclusively claim a similar kink for Gujarat - because such high resolution data for Gujarat was at least not available until even early this year - the last time I checked.

brihaspati · Post by **brihaspati** » 17 Sep 2012 20:35

Shiv ji,
linguists have long noticed this problem - hence they quietly dropped numerical and quantitative claims and justifications, "lexicostatistics" for example, because numerical and statistical frameworks make things falsifiable and therefore testable. Linguists do not want such tests.

They have therfore devise a qualitative way of bypassing this problem :

(a) the criticism of different time lengths accumulating different amounts of changes - is addressed by claiming that "changes do not occur at a uniform rate". So Sanskrit not changing that much is ascribed to a "much lower rate of mutation" in Sanskrit compared to others. If you ask why suddenly one branch evolving out of the mother-steppe suddenly slowed down its mutation rate - the answer is - "random human whims".

(b) To avoid being pressed to provide estimates of rates of change, becuase after all some rate of change still has to be assumed to preserve the the linguist assumed model of flow from assumed source to assumed sink - they bypass this completely now by claiming that this has to be determined by archeology

(c) to strengthen the archeological bypass - they viciously criticize any attempt at statistical models, even with much greater sophistication than they applied initially to form their flow hypotheses - because I guess they already realize among themselves, that any quantification will show serious problems with their models.

(d) archeology is a good escape route - because archeology can be selective: archeological investigations are funded based on preconceptions and expectations of what should be found where. In order to get funding for continued archeological research, people have to justify it based on already existing "expert opinion", often based on guesses or hunches from "literature" and ancient narratives. Each such narrative has to be interpreted according to linguistic dogma - so you have far more sites being dug in "steppes" or at best "Aantolia" rather than a proper uniform/representative sampling from the intermediate zones that lie between so-called sources and sinks.

KLP Dubey · Post by **KLP Dubey** » 17 Sep 2012 20:51

shiv wrote:And Sanskrit - separated from PIE by a thousand years contributes 80% of the cognates, in stark contrast to the 50% of "older" Avestan, and 30% of "even older" Persian - separated from PIE by a piffling 500 years.

Indeed. For this to be a voluminous activity, the "cunning linguists" have to use large amounts of information/data from Sanskrit, yet their objective at the end of the day is to turn around and suppress the antiquity of Sanskrit using that data. Also, in addition to the sound changes, it is the same story with the accent. Much of the information they use comes directly from Vedic Sanskrit, yet they employ desperate tactics to obscure that it is indeed the original language. They come up extremely abstract, indeed nonsensical, models of the accent in a way that Vedic Sanskrit is made to look like "one of many".

I have not seen such a pestilence affect the interpretation of Sanskrit words since the period of Mahayana Buddhism in India. They followed the same approach - use all of the information, concepts, principles from Vedic literature with the objective of ultimately turn it around and destroy the foundation of the Veda itself. The pestilence of Mahayana Buddhism was successfully wiped out in India, and we must wipe out this PIE one as well.

Namaskar

KL

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 21:07

KLP Dubey wrote:
shiv wrote:And Sanskrit - separated from PIE by a thousand years contributes 80% of the cognates, in stark contrast to the 50% of "older" Avestan, and 30% of "even older" Persian - separated from PIE by a piffling 500 years.
Indeed. For this to be a voluminous activity, the "cunning linguists" have to use large amounts of information/data from Sanskrit, yet their objective at the end of the day is to turn around and suppress the antiquity of Sanskrit using that data. Also, in addition to the sound changes, it is the same story with the accent. Much of the information they use comes directly from Vedic Sanskrit, yet they employ desperate tactics to obscure that it is indeed the original language. They come up extremely abstract, indeed nonsensical, models of the accent in a way that Vedic Sanskrit is made to look like "one of many".

I have not seen such a pestilence affect the interpretation of Sanskrit words since the period of Mahayana Buddhism in India. They followed the same approach - use all of the information, concepts, principles from Vedic literature with the objective of ultimately turn it around and destroy the foundation of the Veda itself. The pestilence of Mahayana Buddhism was successfully wiped out in India, and we must wipe out this PIE one as well.

Namaskar

KL

And add 'western universalism' as expounded and explained by Rajiv Malhotra to this list, which also tries to digest Indian traditions (besides all other world traditions)and then package it in 'fast food' packet as Western invention/discovery.

disha · Post by **disha** » 17 Sep 2012 21:08

shiv wrote:The image below from Google earth shows how shallow the water is off the coast of Gujarat. The line marks the point up to which the depth of water is less than 10 meters. This line extends out tens of kilometers. In fact areas of Kutch are low lying swamp land. The River Saraswati, draining into this region could well have appeared as a river draining into a vast shallow lake - a meter or less in depth extending for several km. depending on average ocean water levels.

The river pushes a vast plume of fresh water into the ocean. The plume is about 400 kilometres (250 mi) long and between 100 and 200 kilometres (62 and 120 mi) wide. The fresh water, being lighter, flows on top of the seawater, diluting the salinity and altering the color of the ocean surface over an area up to 1,000,000 square miles (2,600,000 km2) in extent. For centuries ships have reported fresh water near the Amazon's mouth yet well out of sight of land in what otherwise seemed to be the open ocean.[4]

Of course the above is for Amazon., but Sarasvati being a mighty river will have created the same effect, that is an "ocean of fresh water"., otherwise called a lake. Particularly, the basin around Sarasvati is shallow unlike the deeper and turbulant atlantic ocean. So the freshwater lake affect will be even more pronounced.

Intriguingly this actually aids sea based travel, since you have access to relatively calm and fresh water and fish (food) upto 20% of your journey (some 200km out of 1000km from Dwarka to Sur/Muscat Oman).

Added later:

Bullock cart and Boat as used today : http://www.imagesofasia.com/html/mohenj ... -cart.html
Boat seal from Mohenjodarohttp: //www.imagesofasia.com/html/mohenjodaro ... indus.html

And in case anybody still plays pittu: http://www.imagesofasia.com/html/mohenj ... discs.html

Lalmohan · Post by **Lalmohan** » 17 Sep 2012 21:21

how does fresh water make it calmer and increase the fish levels?

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 21:29

brihaspati wrote:Shiv ji,
linguists have long noticed this problem - hence they quietly dropped numerical and quantitative claims and justifications, "lexicostatistics" for example, because numerical and statistical frameworks make things falsifiable and therefore testable. Linguists do not want such tests.

They have therfore devise a qualitative way of bypassing this problem :

(a) the criticism of different time lengths accumulating different amounts of changes - is addressed by claiming that "changes do not occur at a uniform rate". So Sanskrit not changing that much is ascribed to a "much lower rate of mutation" in Sanskrit compared to others. If you ask why suddenly one branch evolving out of the mother-steppe suddenly slowed down its mutation rate - the answer is - "random human whims".

(b) To avoid being pressed to provide estimates of rates of change, becuase after all some rate of change still has to be assumed to preserve the the linguist assumed model of flow from assumed source to assumed sink - they bypass this completely now by claiming that this has to be determined by archeology

(c) to strengthen the archeological bypass - they viciously criticize any attempt at statistical models, even with much greater sophistication than they applied initially to form their flow hypotheses - because I guess they already realize among themselves, that any quantification will show serious problems with their models.

(d) archeology is a good escape route - because archeology can be selective: archeological investigations are funded based on preconceptions and expectations of what should be found where. In order to get funding for continued archeological research, people have to justify it based on already existing "expert opinion", often based on guesses or hunches from "literature" and ancient narratives. Each such narrative has to be interpreted according to linguistic dogma - so you have far more sites being dug in "steppes" or at best "Aantolia" rather than a proper uniform/representative sampling from the intermediate zones that lie between so-called sources and sinks.

+1

You have summed up all the excuses that are made.

But is is always nice to get into an argument with someone who wants argue. As long as we are arguing about things that are nowhere close to irrefutable facts, it hardly matters what one says. Especially the business of language change. Maybe some languages do not change much because of "slow rates of change". But that is such a fascinating idea that you can say - hey. Sanskrit did not change at all. It is PIE. But other languages changed. In any case there is no proof whatsoever. Only general observations and careful selection of convenient data.

The other thing that tickles me is that there has been so much bullshitting that you can pick up the same information and data that is used to say one thing and say exactly the opposite. It was never my original intention to try and diss anyone, linguists or the study of languages. But I learned in the course of this thread that unless you join the game and are ruthless about doing exactly the same things that are said and done by linguists you are restricted to a small space allowed for yes men by a century and a half of cooking up history based on language change and evolution.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 21:30

Why is Achar vague when it comes to reference of Mars?

It is because for year 3067 BC, Mars went retrograde (interpreation of 'vakri' by Achar) near Swati/Vishakha and not near Jyeshtha/Anuradha and thus 3067 BC DOES NOT corroborate this Mars references from Udyogaparva of MBH text.

"Chitra is being harrassed by graha"
Which 'graha' is Achar referrign to? Mars? any other? In either case, how does that description corroborate for year 3067 BC?

disha · Post by **disha** » 17 Sep 2012 21:31

Lalmohan wrote:how does fresh water make it calmer and increase the fish levels?

Elementary Dr. Watson.

Have to rush, holding this as a marker to explain later.

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 21:33

Shiv ji: In addition to Brihaspati's points, one other reason for the relatively slow mutation of Sanskrit could be the Pratishakhya itself. Other languages didnt have such rigor in their phonetic & theoretical foundations.

I am not saying that this means that the relative timelines of Sanskrit and Persian are correct. But it can explain why Sanskrit contributed more cognates to the PIE reconstruction

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 21:35

shiv wrote:
You have summed up all the excuses that are made.

But is is always nice to get into an argument with someone who wants argue. As long as we are arguing about things that are nowhere close to irrefutable facts, it hardly matters what one says. Especially the business of language change. Maybe some languages do not change much because of "slow rates of change". But that is such a fascinating idea that you can say - hey. Sanskrit did not change at all. It is PIE. But other languages changed. In any case there is no proof whatsoever. Only general observations and careful selection of convenient data.

The other thing that tickles me is that there has been so much bullshitting that you can pick up the same information and data that is used to say one thing and say exactly the opposite. It was never my original intention to try and diss anyone, linguists or the study of languages. But I learned in the course of this thread that unless you join the game and are ruthless about doing exactly the same things that are said and done by linguists you are restricted to a small space allowed for yes men by a century and a half of cooking up history based on language change and evolution.

And while field of lingustics deserves gold medal, disciplines of genetics,geology, archelology, archeo-astronomy and other are not to be given clean chit either.. as will become clear .. as Peter ji and my discussion progresses.

Ramana Garu, Rajesh A ji

If you think discussion between Peter Ji and myself on dating of Mahabharata War to be too much OT, I am willing to take to it epic thread, subject to consent of Peter ji.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 21:45

Are you saying that Achar is not only 'selective' when it comes to astronomy references from MBH text, but also in selecting who to call 'scholar'.

Who is he referring to (Kochhar? Witzel? Farmer?)when he states that "Only Raghavan takes these references as astronmical.. and all other scholars treat them in some other fashion". He does not clearly explain who is referring to as 'others' and also how do they treat these observations (of Karna from Udyoga) , if not in astronomy fashion.

Out of 125+ dates proposed some 50% of them are based on astronomy data. Is Achar suggesting that these ~60 scholars are treating astronomy data as NOT astronomy data.

Interestingly, when convenient, Achar is willing to accept speculation of 'Sengupta' as 'data suitable for mother goose tale' in referrign to enormous astronmy evidence from Bhishma Parva, 3rd Adhyaya. But let me not give away all the fun, humor and comedy too early.

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 21:45

Acharya wrote:
KLP Dubey wrote:
Yes, it is indeed important to identify clearly the "collaborators" who help to perpetuate this nonsense. At the same time, I believe there may be only a few truly "die-hard/dead-ender" types in the AIT/AMT crowd who will not change their views till they die. The rest need to be given an open "escape route" to rehabilitate themselves in a new and more correct/honest scheme of thinking.

KL
I agree with your proposal. We need a safe haven for many 'secular' scholars and accomodate them within the Bharatiya system

+1. This is important. Every human has an ego and a public humiliation doesnt offer the fence-sitters & the slightly-left seculars an honorable climb-down. The target of our ire should be the ones who have already sold out. Its akin to the British policy towards the Indian independence movement. Be ruthless towards the extremists and cultivate/co-opt the moderates

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 17 Sep 2012 21:55

So per Achar/Raghavan,

War began on 22 Nov 3067 BC

They also acccpet war lasted for 18 days (correct me if I misquoted them)

Thus War ended on 9 Dec 3067 BC

Peter ji, would you be kind to quote the day of Balarama, as asserted by Achar/Raghavan, when he returned from Sarasvati Tirthyatra to witness the fight between Bhima and Duyrodhana? This is critical.

Here it is (let me know if you disagree). Achar/Raghavan claim the day of return of Balrama to be = 12 December 3067 BC, 3 days after the War was over!

Against this single proposal of Achar, consider your statement below.

I don't know about you but to me it seems like a perfect match of dates and time.

Since you have access to planetarium like software why don't you see if Achar is right for at least these days and shlokas that he has quoted? This will be a good starting point for the debate.

Peter ji,
You missed the entire point. What Achar has shown usign Planetarium software does match for the days he has claimed when MBH war occured. The SMALL problem is, the dates proposed by Achar/Raghavan DO NOT match/corroborate/validate astronomy observations form MBH text, but rather CONTRADICT them.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 22:11

Prem Kumar wrote:Shiv ji: In addition to Brihaspati's points, one other reason for the relatively slow mutation of Sanskrit could be the Pratishakhya itself. Other languages didnt have such rigor in their phonetic & theoretical foundations.

I am not saying that this means that the relative timelines of Sanskrit and Persian are correct. But it can explain why Sanskrit contributed more cognates to the PIE reconstruction

No it cannot work that way if language change theories are followed. First there was PIE. That changed with time and became the various language branches of which Indo Iranian was one. That branch too changed and split, giving off the Iranian branch that became Avestan and Old Persian and last came Sanskrit. And that Sanskrit that came last has remained unchanged. But it is still the last and latest and should have changed the most from PIE before it came into being and was preserved.

The Mitanni texts are very similar to Vedic Sanskrit and it is argued that those texts represent an early Iranian language that later became Old Persian and Avestan before the people reached India and made Sanskrit. The language would have been changing all the while no? Until it became Sanskrit. So Sanskrit should still have changed away from PIE and should not be such a huge contributor to PIE. Certainly not more than Avestan and Old Persian which are so soo much older than Sanskrit and surely have had less time to change from mother PIE.

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 22:31

What is the relative dating of Mittani texts & Pratishakhya?

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 22:35

ManishH:

a) do we have evidence that within a language, the words/verb-roots which are cognates (similar sounding words) in other languages are more ancient than the words which aren’t? I’d think this is a logical conclusion from the PIE tree model. Have exceptions to these been found?

b) since the PIE model is used to predict/support migration theories, can you state how many such migrations does the theory support? This is somewhat related to point (a) above. Amongst cognates, some are more ancient than others. Example: its not surprising that there are cognates for the words father & mother. This is because pretty much everyone accepts the out-of-Africa theory and words for father/mother would have been among the earliest human sounds. But then there were later evolutions – fire, wheel, bronze age, iron age etc. The fact that there are shared verb roots point to common ancestral languages & migrations like you said – more on that below. So, surely the theory must support the possibility of multiple migration-waves, which fundamentally alter language structure. Then there are the smaller influences – like word borrowings & (at least according to me) verb-root/rule borrowings as well. Question is: how many migration waves does the theory suppose/support?

c) Saying that “Lexico statistics is discredited” is a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even if statistics cannot be used to prove the depth of linkage between languages, it doesn’t mean that the lack of statistical data cannot be used to question the depth. Sorry for the double negation. To give an example: if only 1 verb root is common between 2 languages and each has 100 verb roots, does it mean that the language had a common proto-ancestor? Potentially yes. But the alternate hypothesis that one language could just have borrowed verb roots/rules from another is equally (or more) attractive. This could have happened due to trade, back-and-forth travel leading to knowledge sharing, small-scale migrations etc. So a % match of verb roots is an important metric before establishing parenthood.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 17 Sep 2012 22:38

Prem Kumar wrote:What is the relative dating of Mittani texts & Pratishakhya?

Whose dating?

If you are looking at the current AIT tales Mitanni 1500 BC, Vedic Sanskrit 1200 - 1000 BC. That would put Panini around 500 BC.

Lexicostatistics (or to be more specific, glottochronology) works perfectly well when languages are moving from west to east. East to west movement is a problem. This may be because of the earth's rotation. Or it could be because Noah's son Ham saw his dad naked.

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 22:41

I thought both the Mittani texts & Pratishakhya were attested texts. Maybe I am wrong

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 22:42

Also Shiv, if we state that "since Sanskrit is closer to PIE, PIE=Sanskrit or PIE=proto_Sanskrit", we would have the burden of proof explaining why such an ancient language is relatively un-mutated, compared to its offspring like Avestan. The shoe would be on the other foot

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 17 Sep 2012 22:46

shiv wrote: Lexicostatistics (or to be more specific, glottochronology) works perfectly well when languages are moving from west to east. East to west movement is a problem. This may be because of the earth's rotation. Or it could be because Noah's son Ham saw his dad naked.

Didnt get it - are you saying that the Linguists use Lexicostatistics when convenient? Or that there is enough Lexicostatistical data to support an East-to-West movement, which is why Linguistics discredit the theory altogether?

member_20317 · Post by **member_20317** » 17 Sep 2012 23:06

Nilesh Oak wrote:
The much fainter red dwarf star named Proxima Centauri, or simply Proxima, is about 15,000 A.U. away from Alpha Centauri AB.[19][27][32] This is equivalent to 0.24 light years or 2.2 trillion kilometres—about 5% the distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri AB. Proxima may be gravitationally bound to Alpha Centauri AB, orbiting it with a period between 100,000 and 500,000 years.[27] However, it is also possible that Proxima is not gravitationally bound and thus is moving along a hyperbolic trajectory[46] around Alpha Centauri AB.[19] The main evidence for a bound orbit is that Proxima's association with Alpha Centauri AB is unlikely to be accidental, since they share approximately the same motion through space.[27] Theoretically, Proxima could leave the system after several million years.[47] It is not yet certain whether Proxima and Alpha are truly gravitationally bound.[48]

Proxima is an M5.5 V spectral class red dwarf with an absolute magnitude of +15.53, which is only a small fraction of the Sun's luminosity. By mass, Proxima is presently calculated as 0.123 ± 0.06 M☉ (rounded to 0.12 M☉) or about one-eighth that of the Sun.[49]
ravi-g
I did address this briefly in my book. The orbiting period I came across during my research at that time...was 750,000 years. In any case while 100K to 750K shows significant variation, it is a mute point in the context of evaluating different proposals from 1400 BC to 7300 BC.

Nilesh ji,

100,000 and 500,000 years is for Alpha Centauri - Proxima Centauri.

750000 for Arundhati-Vashishtha is quite ok. More then one stars there. Need that much space for the crowd. Otherwise if we do not have ample space over there then we risk the whole system collapsing into itself or at least a lot of material gettiing exchanged and the whole system would become very very bright. Enough to drown out the smaller Alcor in a haze.

That means Precession is the only reason for the change in relative position kya?

In which case the software solutions would become very believable, entirely so on account of the simplicity of the back calculations.

Nilesh Oak · Post by **Nilesh Oak** » 18 Sep 2012 00:08

ravi_g wrote: Nilesh ji,

100,000 and 500,000 years is for Alpha Centauri - Proxima Centauri.

750000 for Arundhati-Vashishtha is quite ok. More then one stars there. Need that much space for the crowd. Otherwise if we do not have ample space over there then we risk the whole system collapsing into itself or at least a lot of material gettiing exchanged and the whole system would become very very bright. Enough to drown out the smaller Alcor in a haze.

That means Precession is the only reason for the change in relative position kya?

In which case the software solutions would become very believable, entirely so on account of the simplicity of the back calculations.

Precession but also proper motions of Arundhati and Vasistha.

Proper motion (PM-D, i.e. Proper motion in the direction of declination - north south. and PM-A, Proper motion ascenstion - east west.)

Proper motion is the reason (especially PM -D, both are going south, but Vasistha is traveling twice faster than Arundhati) why 'Epoch of Arundhati ' is only a unique instance, as far as past in concerned.

It is easy to show why Arundhati walks ahead of Vasistha during 'Epoch of Arundhati by simple diagram.. albeit simplified- from speherical to linear projection of space as follows. No need of software simulation, at least not anymore, now that someone

figured it out.

When point of North Celestial pole is along the arc (shown by years 11091 BC and 4508 BC) of the circle, cut by the cord that went through Arundhati and Vasistha, Arundhati would appear to walk ahead of Vasistha.

In year 4508 BC and 11091 BC, Arundhati and Vasistha would walk together (no one ahead and one one behind).

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 18 Sep 2012 02:03

Something I noticed - given the length of this thread, its possible others have commented on this. Even if we accept the PIE model of languages & their "commonly accepted" relative antiquity, we see the following data.

The Mycenaean Greek tablets from the period (1600 - 1200 BC) feature the following - Wiki quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greek

The texts on the tablets are mostly lists and inventories. No prose narrative survives, much less myth or poetry

OTOH, the oldest hymns of Rig Veda are dated to 1500 BC (again per Wiki) and contains hymns about philosophy and other poems.

So, you have 2 texts from roughly the same period, one containing lists of items and another containing philosophy. But per the PIE Tree, Mycenaean Greek is more ancient than Vedic Sanskrit.

How does one arrive at this conclusion?

JE Menon · Post by **JE Menon** » 18 Sep 2012 02:16

Well, to begin with, it apparently helps if you are from Europe and believe that anything worthwhile East of Greece (and that because you have no choice, since anything West of Greece was pretty crappy too) came after the flowering of Greek civilisation. It also helps if you have a sneaking sense of appreciation for the whole Aryan thing developed by the Third Reich. OK, don't show it much, but that little twinge of pleasure you feel inside when you read the RV and feel all "Aryan" is a good indicator. Finally, it does not hurt at all, if your name rhymes with schnitzel.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 18 Sep 2012 02:18

shiv wrote: No it cannot work that way if language change theories are followed. First there was PIE. That changed with time and became the various language branches of which Indo Iranian was one. That branch too changed and split, giving off the Iranian branch that became Avestan and Old Persian and last came Sanskrit. And that Sanskrit that came last has remained unchanged. But it is still the last and latest and should have changed the most from PIE before it came into being and was preserved.

Shiv, I have a vague memory that Talageri argues that Sanskrit sometimes contains cognates for words that sometimes are found only in one of the two branches - Eastern or Western - of the Indo-European family of languages. It would suggest that Sanskrit has to stand at the head of the tree or very close to it.

ShyamSP · Post by **ShyamSP** » 18 Sep 2012 02:34

Nilesh Oak wrote:

Thank you for simplifying the complexity for aam admi.

May your Arundati tear all that wicked joy of all the w*easels.

anmol · Post by **anmol** » 18 Sep 2012 02:37

"Out of Africa" Theory Called Into Question By Originator

"Christopher Stringer is one of the world's foremost paleoanthropologists. He is a founder and most powerful advocate of the leading theory concerning our evolution: Recent African Origin or 'Out of Africa.' He now calls the theory into question: 'I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the "Out of Africa" model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin. Twenty years ago, I would have argued that our species evolved in one place, maybe in East Africa or South Africa. There was a period of time in just one place where a small population of humans became modern, physically and behaviourally. Isolated and perhaps stressed by climate change, this drove a rapid and punctuational origin for our species. Now I don't think it was that simple, either within or outside of Africa.'"

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 18 Sep 2012 02:47

JE Menon wrote:Well, to begin with, it apparently helps if you are from Europe and believe that anything worthwhile East of Greece (and that because you have no choice, since anything West of Greece was pretty crappy too) came after the flowering of Greek civilisation. It also helps if you have a sneaking sense of appreciation for the whole Aryan thing developed by the Third Reich. OK, don't show it much, but that little twinge of pleasure you feel inside when you read the RV and feel all "Aryan" is a good indicator. Finally, it does not hurt at all, if your name rhymes with schnitzel.

LOL. Feeling "Aryan" = good. Feeling "Indian" = not so good.

The West first appropriated Greece. Then appropriated Sanskrit. A feel good PIE/Aryan hypothesis followed. To show your secular credentials, you place PIE in the middle of nowhere, where no existing civilization could claim credit.

These migration theories seems to follow a scaffolding pattern. Propose one theory and use it while it lasts. When it gets too flimsy, propose a 2nd scaffolding theory and discard the old one. Look how AIT has been discarded in favor of AMT, with Schnitzel casually mentioning "who speaks of AIT anymore?" as if he had been an AMT proponent from day one. This is intellectual dishonesty of the highest sort & if done in say Physics, would have made him a pariah in the scientific community.

I have a feeling that, if Indians become sufficiently de-racinated and no longer "own Sanskrit", AIT-Nazis and Linguists will gladly accept India as the homeland. They just dont want us to be full of ourselves in the interim

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 18 Sep 2012 02:54

Out of Africa = evolution & genetics. Its not a choice. So, the West has no problems accepting that we were all black to begin with & monkeys prior to that.

But civilization - now, that's different. Its a product of human endeavor. Its a choice. Cant give those damn Indians credit for it. So, if we cannot own it, lets just secularize it and make several languages/civilizations equal-equal, as long as Greek is one of them.

Prem Kumar · Post by **Prem Kumar** » 18 Sep 2012 04:18

ManishH: replying to your post from a few days ago. As always, thanks for sharing your knowledge.

You said

Sometimes, inconsistencies in laws w.r.t evidence have later been explained either due to
a) Evidence from another branch
b) Better understanding of phonetic conditions

What does this mean? Can you explain each with an example?

Regarding Consistency, you gave the Greek Hippo example. Its not a consistency example but a falsifiability one. In consistency, I am referring to only the universal laws themselves (not data/evidence). For example: are there rules in Verner’s law that are in contradiction to (or can be modified by) RUKI law or vice versa? I'm suspecting yes.

Falsifiability: are there sufficient contrary evidence to universal laws where either the law predicts X and the data observed is Y (or) the law forbids a change but the evidence shows otherwise. The Hippo example you gave seems to belong to the former category. Are there more examples you can share? And are there examples in the latter category

To take the Verner’s law example: has this law been violated? Also, when Grimm’s law was adjusted to become Verner’s law, did the new rules just apply to only the Germanic sub-tree? It seems so, based on Wiki

I know I am asking you for evidence that can be used against you

But I hope you will indulge, in the spirit of a healthy debate.

When I read Wiki about RUKI law, it looked like the following was the reconstruction procedure when RUKI was involved:

Code: Select all

If language=Indo_Iranian
    Use RUKI for reconstruction
ElseIf language=(Baltic or Albanian)
    Use RUKI with care because other sound laws can take precedence
Else
    Don’t use RUKI
EndIf

You agreed that RUKI is not a universal law, but it can be useful for reconstruction in Indo-Iranian. Fair enough.

Question: if RUKI was not used for Indo_Iranian, wouldn’t the reconstructed PIE words have been different (i.e if only the universal laws were followed)? If so, this implies that a local law (RUKI) can modify a universal law, where appropriate. Don’t you see a potential for abuse in such a construct?

As a linguist, can’t you come up with a SKT law, that goes along the same lines – but with a fundamental premise that Sanskrit is PIE:

Code: Select all

If language=Indo_Iranian
    Use SKT for reconstruction
ElseIf language=(Baltic or Albanian or some others)
    Use SKT with care because other sound laws can take precedence
Else
    Don’t use SKT
EndIf

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 18 Sep 2012 06:38

Prem Kumar wrote:
shiv wrote: Lexicostatistics (or to be more specific, glottochronology) works perfectly well when languages are moving from west to east. East to west movement is a problem. This may be because of the earth's rotation. Or it could be because Noah's son Ham saw his dad naked.
Didnt get it - are you saying that the Linguists use Lexicostatistics when convenient?

Yes. It is used when it fits. Having said that what linguists have themselves discredited is the use of language change theory combined with guesses regarding rate of change of language to reach conclusions about chronology. They have not entirely given up on chronology. They have discarded only "rates of change" as a tool.

The fact that languages do change over time is not in dispute. The fact that Sanskrit - whenever it was created 7000 BC or 700 AD has not changed after that is also not in dispute because Sanskrit is an exception. Apart from that all languages change over time. If a mother language forms two daughter languages - they are likely to be very similar in the initial period and then "grow apart" over time. The reasons for "growing apart" can range from "natural" changes in sound and pronunciation to external influences.

If you leave out Sanskrit (with its well preserved constancy) from the equation all languages that arise from a common root language will gradually drift apart and become languages that cannot be mutually understood by speakers. At that stage the only way similarities can be discovered is via cognates and grammar. But the grammar per se means little without the cognates. If two languages share 90% of all words then they are practically the same language. It is only when the sharing comes down that they become unintelligible.

But if Ancient Greek is 1800 years old, and PIE is older, then Ancient Greek must in theory have some similarity to PIE. Languages that were formed in the centuries after ancient Greek can be expected to have lesser and lesser similarities with PIE due to the processes of language change. If you look at my spreadsheet you will find that this rule actually works when you compare the number of cognates in "older languages" like Greek and Latin with "younger" languages like Polish, Pashto, Welsh, Irish etc. The "rule" even holds true for Persian and Avestan. But the rule breaks down in the case of Sanskrit and this has nothing to do with pratishakhya because the latter came after Sanskrit was created and as per AIT, Sanskrit got created after the Iranians had settled in Iran and were busy developing Avestan and Persian.

What I am saying is that if linguists follow their own rule of language change (and say nothing about rate of change, which is discredited) you will still find that Sanskrit is an anomaly that does not fit their theory and their dates. The only way everything can be made to fit is to assume an earlier date for Sanskrit. That also means that other languages like Greek and Latin may need earlier dates. That is not a problem. That probably represents the truth. And it also gels in well with traditional Indian methods of dating and a true internal Indian record of history which have willy nilly been discarded as unreliable in favor of western fakeology that we have swallowed wholesale in this matter.

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 18 Sep 2012 06:39

Shiv, also remember, per AIT, the IndoAryans moved into an area as large as Western Europe, and with a large population, and managed to pick up so little non-IE.

shiv · Post by **shiv** » 18 Sep 2012 06:57

Prem Kumar wrote:Something I noticed - given the length of this thread,
....
So, you have 2 texts from roughly the same period, one containing lists of items and another containing philosophy. But per the PIE Tree, Mycenaean Greek is more ancient than Vedic Sanskrit.

How does one arrive at this conclusion?

Prem Kumar. because you missed much of this thread you missed how linguists have gradually (over time) pushed dates for Sanskrit to more and more and more recent times to fit in with certain specific theories. Wiki is less accurate here than the dates quoted by David Anthony or Witzel. Ancient Greek goes back to 1800 BC and Sanskrit comes to 1200 to 1000 BC. The "Vedic period" itself is arbitrarily dated as ending around 500 BC.

I think that you represent the typical example of the educated, honest Indian going through the initial phase of cognitive dissonance and disbelief that I (and others) went through in the early phases of this thread. You cannot believe that scholars have lied and bluffed their way out. You want to somehow reconcile what has been said by these so called "scholars" without giving disrespect or humiliation. Welcome to the world of cultural looting and academic racism. In a few weeks you will yourself discover the lies and faking that have been used for the last 150 years.

This thread is long for a reason. None of us is illiterate and all of us have successful alternate careers.