Out-of-India - From Theory to Truth

[shiv]

Here is a readable primer on Vedic math. Don't forget to move on to the Geometry page "Sulva Sutra" linked at bottom.
http://www.robinstewart.com/personal/le ... vedas.html

[disha]

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

Sirji, is that a lament that lay SDREs are being ignorant and negligent by quoting furrin sources and lso including Wendy Doniger in it? It was discussed on this very pages that you need a PHd in Sanskrit from Harvard Univ (or from the school of divinity, univ. of chicago) to be considered a "world renowned indologist"? It is an incestous relation where biatches like Wendy D and Witzel are considered as premier scholars of Indian religious thoughts and history expressed through sanskrit" by their colleagues and they write promote each other's thesis.

Actually it is the lay SDRE who is fighting against the tide and not the Sitaram Yechury's of the world who oversee the wholesale rape and actually encourage it who should be target for your lament.

Here is something for you Whose history is it anyway? Or rather a urologist defending Indian History and religion

[disha]

Here is a readable primer on Vedic math. Don't forget to move on to the Geometry page "Sulva Sutra" linked at bottom.
http://www.robinstewart.com/personal/le ... vedas.html

There is a fotu in the link that points to a treatise on eclipse in 5 AD (according to the blog). Anybody who has access to that book itself? Link to that book?

Also from that blog, some links are not working and there are references to the books which are difficult to obtain, some are published in 1967 itself.

[disha]

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

Maybe they (the mythical aryans) were itinerant traders/merchanges trading in the industrial products from SDRE agriculturalists.

There was no invasion, no migration of "Aryans". If at all there was, it had to be OIT. The migration of sintis and ramahs (the gypsies) in last 2000 years prove that it has occurred and there is a distinct possibility that it might have occurred in the past.

[disha]

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

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

Manishji, you are using sleight of words here and murdering logic. Obviously you have to ignore people asserting Holocene and gents talkng about 80 Kbp. They are doing less crime than Witzels and Wendys with their analysis. At best you should ignore them.

Second, what went out with OIT? Humans or Ideas or both? If it is humans why? Was the mahabharata war between @3700 BC - 2700 BC an inflection point where people did a mass migration like Gypsies? In the present, if there was no artificial country called bakistan restricting movement of people and ideas, what do you think would have happened now?

Surkotada bones could mean that the idea of domestication of horse was widespread @2100 BC - 1700 BC.

Rigveda getting composed over time does not mean that the language was not existing. The question for the linguists is - does the spoken language come first or a highly evolved metered poem comes first?

[ManishH]

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

As shown in earlier post, the difference between centum group's velar and satem group's palatal is seen most of the times in adjacency of front vowels. Now front vowels being articulated near the palate, palatalization is the more likely hypothesis. IOW velar is the original sound there.

As to this being a special case or a regluarity, I just spent 30 minutes looking for these cognates which show palatalization,

Code: Select all

PIE				Centum		Skt
kʷetwor		quattuor		catvār
h₁ek̂wos		equus			aśva
wik̂				vīcus			viś
dek̂m			deka			daśam
wīk̂ṃtih₁		vīgintī			viṃśati
derk̂			dedorka                dadarśa
pek̂u			pecu			paśu
k̂em			kemas			śama
*wok̂ehₐ		vacca			vaśā
k̂ṛrēh₂			krāníon			śiras
kleik̂s			klaiks			kliśyati
nek̂			necō			naśyati
k̂eiwos			cīvis			śeva
kʷekʷlos		hwaegol		cakra
kʷei			poieō			cinoti
k̂els			cella			śāla
k̂lits			klita			śrit
kalVk̂			calix			kalaśa
h₂erĝentom		argentum		rajatam
pelek̂us			pelekus			paraśu
k̂el				kela			śalya
ĝeus			gustō			juṣati
worĝs			orgḗ			ūrja
k̂erhₓ			kirnēmi			śrīṇāti
meik̂s			misceō			mekṣayati
pekʷ			coquō			pacati
hₐeĝmen		agmen			ajman
h₃rḗĝs			rex				rājan

If one searches a larger database like "Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture", the full list of such regular sound changes will be 10 times more than this.

The effect of front vowels on palatalization is nothing specific to IE family, but seen in many other families too.

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

Firstly, these are not loan words but cognates; since they are used as roots. Without corroborating evidence, there is no way to figure out which of L or R is the original.

If one starts with 'R' being the original, Avestan has absolutely no L sound - an R occurs in all IE cognates instead of L. This is unlike Vedic where L sound is present but in very small frequency. So with your hypothesis, Avestan is even truer to original!

The more likely picture is that R and L difference is dialectical; and both dialects existed in India - the western (RgVedic) being R oriented and eastern (Gangetic) being L oriented.

If my arguments sound like I'm too partial attributing non-Sanskrit sounds as original, it isn't so. Sanskrit is the only language that preserves PIE voiced aspirates (bh/gh/dh). Just that on this forum, no one will oppose that, so not much discussion will happen on those.

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

It's corroborating evidence - as soon as I put the relation on phonetic basis, there were protests of disbelief - "the heart and faith is unrelated; the heart stands for centre etc" . But looks like there is a relation described in both devotional and philosophical texts of India.

The main evidence for common origin still is that no other language group associates the phrase "put our heart" with faith.

[ManishH]

Obviously you have to ignore people asserting Holocene and gents talkng about 80 Kbp. They are doing less crime than Witzels and Wendys with their analysis. At best you should ignore them.

Ok disha-ji; let's ignore the above set then.

Surkotada bones could mean that the idea of domestication of horse was widespread @2100 BC - 1700 BC.

I wouldn't use the word 'widespread' but yes it was domesticated. And the above dates still leave a wide gap of 3000 years between this and composition of RgVeda. The gap comes not from me, but chief claimants of OIT - which claim:

A. Mahabharata in ~3000 BC
B. RgVeda composition took 2 millenia to compose

Even ignoring the intermediary period of Brāhmaṇa and other Vedas, that adds to 5000 BC. And since all mandala's of RgVeda mention the aśva, that'd imply the domestication of horse in 5000 BC when RgVeda starts being composed.

Rigveda getting composed over time does not mean that the language was not existing. The question for the linguists is - does the spoken language come first or a highly evolved metered poem comes first?

The language comes first.

[ManishH]

But if a "pastoralist" has 500 head of cattle he can't really move very far from 2 or 3 areas where food is available.

But this was the bronze age - before industrial-grade cattle farming and availability of fodder in bags.

In that period, large-scale cattle rearing required one to be on the move - searching from one grassland to another. A large herd of cattle will erode a grassland in no time. A mobile lifestyle gives an edge in terms of survivability against adverse weather.

Horse domestication is said to have aided the 'scaling up'. One or two mounted riders with the aid of guard dogs can herd even 100s of cattle. Without a mount, the same will need a handful of herders.

Sheep however tend to follow the lead of one sheep, so require much less herding effort. One person can manage a large flock of sheep.

Smallscale domestic cattle keeping however can be done in a sedentary lifestyle.

[ukumar]

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

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

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

IE lanaguages shares word for horse but it doen't mean that they took the horses whereever they migrated. Since word for horse is shared PIE people knew horse (assuming they were also reffering to domesticated horse). This part of the logic is fine. But to assume that horse was the major reason for their expansion and they must have concured the world on horseback is a weak hypothisis. Obviously that hypothisis is false if IE language was spoken in Harappa. But to insist that horse must be present in Harrappa for it to be IE is circular logic.

I'll not defend 5000bc date for RigVeda and don't think it is necessary for OIT. If PIE were in India, they probably migrated long before RigVeda was composed so RigVeda doesn't have to be that early.

BTW personally I am leaning towards IE coming in to India before 3000BC. The case for IE in Harrapa is very strong but weak for them migrating from India to Europe.

[ukumar]

And since all mandala's of RgVeda mention the aśva, that'd imply the domestication of horse in 5000 BC when RgVeda starts being composed.

Family Mandala were composed in parallel and each of them composed over many generations. So mention of Asva in the mandla doesn't make the whole Mandala after the horse domestication. It could be part of the late addition.

Are you familiar with Sri Arvindo's interpretation of cow and asva in RigVeda? There is possibility that Vedic Rishi had different meaning for them.

[shiv]

But if a "pastoralist" has 500 head of cattle he can't really move very far from 2 or 3 areas where food is available.

But this was the bronze age - before industrial-grade cattle farming and availability of fodder in bags.

In that period, large-scale cattle rearing required one to be on the move - searching from one grassland to another. A large herd of cattle will erode a grassland in no time. A mobile lifestyle gives an edge in terms of survivability against adverse weather.

Horse domestication is said to have aided the 'scaling up'. One or two mounted riders with the aid of guard dogs can herd even 100s of cattle. Without a mount, the same will need a handful of herders.

Sheep however tend to follow the lead of one sheep, so require much less herding effort. One person can manage a large flock of sheep.

Smallscale domestic cattle keeping however can be done in a sedentary lifestyle.

Would you be able to hazard a guess at to whether the society described in the following passage in your translation was sedentary or pastoral

Translation mine (pardon the errors, but should give you idea)
=================
Undiminished praises I offer to the wise King Bhavya who lives on Sindhu's banks
The undefeated king desirous of fame, arranged a thousand sacrifices for me

A hundred gold pieces, a hundred horses, I the beseecher have accepted now
A hundred of the chief's cattle, I Kakshivan (took). Immortal fame has he spread in the heavens.

[member_20317]

Re. Manishji – “~5000 BC date of RgVeda (conservative by OIT standards). Actually I've seen people asserting Holocene and one gent actually said 80Kbp!”


Disha ji replied – “Manishji, you are using sleight of words here and murdering logic. Obviously you have to ignore people asserting Holocene and gents talkng about 80 Kbp. They are doing less crime than Witzels and Wendys with their analysis. At best you should ignore them.”
And ManishH ji agreed saying “Ok disha-ji; let's ignore the above set then.”


The context as I gather is dating of RV.


Disha ji,

What are you agreeing on? What is Pratyaksha before you to agree on? What is the Pramaan that you have that I don’t? Request you to provide me with something here, anything to enable me to agree with you too. Even anumaan (a reasonable one) one will do for what prima facie appears a very pretentious position?

[ManishH]

Here is an image of an ancient Indian chariot


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

Some points to note if we have to correlate the Daimabad vehicle with the RgVedic horse drawn chariots:

- Horses don't have horns or humps
- This book : "Metalwork of the Bronze Age in India" by Paul Yule, claims that the Daimabad sculpture shows the animal has cloven hooves (although given the size of images, I cannot verify the claim) If true, then oxen have cloven hooves, not horses.
- Since horse doesn't have a hump, it cannot be yoked like oxen; as depicted in the sculpture
- Horses are yoked by fashioning a strap around their back and fastened to a thill (draft-pole). Unlike the Daimabad vehicle, a horse doesn't have a hump on which the thill can directly rest. For an accurate picture of a chariot horse, see:

http://travel.sulekha.com/india/orissa/ ... mple-7.jpg
or
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... asuram.jpg

- The wheels in Daimabad chariot are not spoked - so they cannot withstand the speed of horse's. RgVeda describes chariots with spokes (अर)

- There are no weapons in this vehicle; the purpose cannot be warfare; nor moving goods or warfare. So most probably recreational racing.

The technology was already there. the knowhow was there.

Solid block wheels go back to at least 3000 BC. These cannot stand the speed that a chariot needs. A horse-driven chariot needs special technology which allows steering as well as can withstand speed.

A chariot is not the work of a pastoralist in some steppe. Chariots imply a sedentary life for many related specialists.

Yet, the first evidence for chariots comes from a fortification called Sintashta Arkaim on the Ural-Tobol river.

[ManishH]

Would you be able to hazard a guess at to whether the society described in the following passage in your translation was sedentary or pastoral

Since the chhanda doesen't name a city or a state that can be called the domain of the "king", and just names the general area of a river, it appears that there were dwelling places but not settled for long period, long enough to refer to the dwelling by a unique name.

The identification of the king is more to the river - which I assume forms a basis for sustenance. The chief of sustenance could not be agriculture, since the poet does not ask for crops or regular floods (compare with post vedic धन-धान्य प्राप्ति etc.). Studies of Harappan society show that flooding by rivers was a major factor in agriculture. Whereas in the sukta, the hyperbole around cattle suggests multiplying cattle was a significant aim.

Reading RgVeda, very few state or place names occur - all "kingdoms" are mostly identified with rivers. Whereas the enemies seem to have place names like 'Vailasthana'.

[ManishH]

I'll not defend 5000bc date for RigVeda and don't think it is necessary for OIT. If PIE were in India, they probably migrated long before RigVeda was composed so RigVeda doesn't have to be that early.

OIT itself has two versions:
1. No pie-shie: all the world's languages and cultures descend from Sanskrit and from India
2. PIE in India

#2 is more defensible than #1

[member_22872]

Reading RgVeda, very few state or place names occur - all "kingdoms" are mostly identified with rivers. Whereas the enemies seem to have place names like 'Vailasthana'.

Manish ji,
Even naming kingdoms idetified with rivers too is fine, that should place the geographic location of vedic composition in India. The river names that are quoted like for example Sarasvati, is either altered to mean another river, or it's location is conveniently moved to West, hence shown as non-Indian river? and Vailasthana could be an adjective from google, not a noun. Can you comment on geographic location of river Sarasvati?

[Murugan]

Fossil Find turns human history on its head - our earliest ancestors came from Asia, not Africa

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z1x0dpLsBU

http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/ ... 79864.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ation.html

[ManishH]

The reasons why such a cooked up language is incomplete could be one of the following:

But why was loco added to motion to create locomotion? Are there any other parallels or rules that use locus as loco? Words that use the "ablative" form of locus to create a pattern? if no such pattern exists it is a one-off. Clearly such one-off words are being ignored.

That is the realm of morphology. For PIE to be a real language, we'd also need a set of suffixes that show as regular a pattern in geographically separated branches. To give some insights, the PIE case system can be compared to Vedic and another language family

Code: Select all

               PIE        Vedic      Kannaḍa   
accusative     -om        -am        -annu   
genitive       -os        -as        -ina            
ablative       -ōd        -āt        -inda           
dative         -ōi        -āy        -goskara/-ge    
locative       -oi        -i         -alli/-oḷage   
instrumental   -oh₁       -ya        -inda/-mūlaka   

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

For Vedic, I believe the percentage is not so low as 10%. In the more critical area of verbs and verb roots, it's much much higher. To give an idea of the breadth of IE words in Vedic, just go through the contents page of this book:

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/s ... 0199296682

The spread of IE words is from physical, natural, social to religious realm. Once an awareness of phonetic correspondence is there, it's hard to ignore the pervasive commonality in the vocabularies of these languages.

It is fine to postulate the origin of the language family could be from India; but denying a common origin becomes very hard given the spread of common vocabulary.

[ManishH]

Can you comment on geographic location of river Sarasvati?

On this matter, I'm as confused as anyone.

Textual evidence is as self-contradictory as are a recent slew of geological papers analyzing the the dried paleo channel of Ghaggar-Hakra.

The texts mention Sarasvati as a wide flowing river from mountains to the sea, yet no one seems to live, fight battles or do any unspiritual activities around this river, unlike other rivers.

Some geological studies suggests the paleo-channel dried during early 2nd millenium BC. Whereas another set of studies say that this was a secondary drying and the paleo-channel had ceased to run to the sea before Pleistocene.

[member_22872]

The texts mention Sarasvati as a wide flowing river from mountains to the sea, yet no one seems to live, fight battles or do any unspiritual activities around this river, unlike other rivers.

Manish ji, The image below depicts human settlements along what was supposed to be Sarasvati river as black dots. settlement involves whole of activities other than spiritual activities.

[member_20317]

Fossil Find turns human history on its head - our earliest ancestors came from Asia, not Africa

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z1x0dpLsBU

http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/ ... 79864.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... ation.html

Does not really matter Murugan ji.

PIE is the lingua franca of all thought. So existence of humans or human likes before PIE does not count esp. since there is not 'consensus' amongst 'scholars'. Only the existence of PIE counts

[Anantha]

Reading RgVeda, very few state or place names occur - all "kingdoms" are mostly identified with rivers. Whereas the enemies seem to have place names like 'Vailasthana'.

Manish ji,
Even naming kingdoms idetified with rivers too is fine, that should place the geographic location of vedic composition in India. The river names that are quoted like for example Sarasvati, is either altered to mean another river, or it's location is conveniently moved to West, hence shown as non-Indian river? and Vailasthana could be an adjective from google, not a noun. Can you comment on geographic location of river Sarasvati?

The following is the basis of all Indilogy studies today
Postulate #1. AIT is sacred truth.
Postulate #2 All facts have to be tailored to align with postulate 1, All uncomfortable facts need to be ignored, like Aryans having left behind no trace in their fatherland.

Romila Thapar and associates have stated that the sacred rivers like Ganga, Saraswati were in oryan/persian lands and the Indian location and names are just a dedication by our forefathers just like New York and New Jersey etc

[brihaspati]

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

As shown in earlier post, the difference between centum group's velar and satem group's palatal is seen most of the times in adjacency of front vowels. Now front vowels being articulated near the palate, palatalization is the more likely hypothesis. IOW velar is the original sound there.

As to this being a special case or a regluarity, I just spent 30 minutes looking for these cognates which show palatalization,
[...]
If one searches a larger database like "Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture", the full list of such regular sound changes will be 10 times more than this.

The effect of front vowels on palatalization is nothing specific to IE family, but seen in many other families too.

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

Firstly, these are not loan words but cognates; since they are used as roots. Without corroborating evidence, there is no way to figure out which of L or R is the original.

If one starts with 'R' being the original, Avestan has absolutely no L sound - an R occurs in all IE cognates instead of L. This is unlike Vedic where L sound is present but in very small frequency. So with your hypothesis, Avestan is even truer to original!

Two things to point out :

First, none of the examples in your list actually go against my hypothesis that a sound originating in the front of the oral cavity is likely to be drawn back towards the palatal or even further back into k/kh/g etc by users who were perhaps used to pharyngeal predilection before.

Regarding Avestan, they might not have belonged to a predominantly pharyngeal dialect before absorbing the PIE(Ind) - hence no great urge to l-ify. Isnt it rather strange that we allow "oh-so-later" r->l transitions within India while not allowing it in a similar direction for non-Indic branches of the supposed PIE?

Additionally : do remember when searching for database versions of centum reconstructions - there are difficulties in exactly ascertaining how more ancient versions of centum consonants were pronounced given more modern usage. For example the "misceo" that you quote could have been proniunced more as "miskeo" rather than "ch" or explicit "c-as in cider or celestial" (as an s sound) in the past. Textual or epigraphic evidence need not be preserved in later known oral usage. For example most people pronounce Caesar with "s" sound now, but it was clearly "Kaesar" in pronunciation.

The more likely picture is that R and L difference is dialectical; and both dialects existed in India - the western (RgVedic) being R oriented and eastern (Gangetic) being L oriented.

If my arguments sound like I'm too partial attributing non-Sanskrit sounds as original, it isn't so. Sanskrit is the only language that preserves PIE voiced aspirates (bh/gh/dh). Just that on this forum, no one will oppose that, so not much discussion will happen on those.

I have already suggested that a possible hypothesis is : Sanskrit evolved out of an interaction between at least two groups of languages within the Indian subcontinent. The interactions happened in phases so that pre-existing liquid sound predominant or pharyngeal predominant languages could have flowed into less liquid sounds using dialects - meaning - r->l transition could have happened even within India earlier.

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

It's corroborating evidence - as soon as I put the relation on phonetic basis, there were protests of disbelief - "the heart and faith is unrelated; the heart stands for centre etc" . But looks like there is a relation described in both devotional and philosophical texts of India.

The main evidence for common origin still is that no other language group associates the phrase "put our heart" with faith.

The heart, for obvious reasons has long been connected with emotions. People can easily feel their heartbeat changing with intense emotions. Because memory, or recalled imagery can also change heartbeat -it is easy to imagine why people would also connect the heart with specific actions/phenomena in the brain.

The concept of abstracting emotional attachment into "faith" could have happened in India, but it does not necessarily imply a phonetic or linguistic common origin. This is stretching it quite a bit.

[shiv]

It is fine to postulate the origin of the language family could be from India; but denying a common origin becomes very hard given the spread of common vocabulary.

There is no need to deny a common origin actually. The facts can fit into other scenarios. Among the other scenarios is that some of the so called 'Indo-European" languages may themselves have their origins in Sanskrit rather than in a mythical PIE (which is a sort of out of India), and most of the Indo European group might represent an amalgamation of other languages with some sort of early common root "Indic" tongue. The actual "relationship" between the so called Indo-European languages may not be the one that has traditionally been proposed, but shaking the existing foundation, or questioning it causes intense struggling and thrashing among a particular community of scholars. It could well be cognitive dissonance because not all of it is science as far as I can tell.

One of the things that strikes me on a map of "Indo-European" tongues is that the largest number of them are "European" languages, some of which are extinct. Then there is a huge patch that is painted in Western China that is alleged to be "Tocharian" - another dead language. The Tocharian speaking people have been given "Indo-European" roots using the same racist identifiers as " blue eyes and blond hair" (Tarim Basin mummies). Genetically their roots don't appear to be clearly European. It seems to me that this long extinct Tocharian has become a sister member of the Indo-European family by dubious means. It could well have been an offshoot of Sanskrit. But this makes the India-Europe link in the map.

If you leave out those languages you are then left primarily with Indo-Iranian including Iranian and Sanskrit. These cover a huge area - about half of the total area of "Indo-Euroepan". These languages are also much closer to Sanskrit. Again the "Hurrians" who spoke some obscure dead language are supposed to have been covered over by an Indo-European language. This could well have been Sanskrit. They had Vedic gods.

If the Rig Veda has not been dated, it could still get dates that are +/- 1000 years. It could possibly be 5000 years old. But let us say that it is 3,500 years old as commonly stated. For a language to reach that degree of development I am arbitrarily saying that it would need at least 500 years, possibly more . So we are looking at a period of something like 4000-4500 years ago. What was happening with the other Indo European languages then - i.e 2000 BC? How do other Indo Euroepan languages, become "brothers"/cousins of Sanskrit from a common father/grandfather from that date in antiquity?

You have a Sanskrit that is dated to an earlier era and "cousins" from a much later era. Surely a common father is being cooked up on dubious grounds. You see the absence of horse bones is "good science" in saying the horse was not there. But the absence of evidence of developed languages before Sanskrit should eqully apply as "science" that those languages cannot have predated or lived syncronously with Sanskrit. There is fudging in the name of science here.

[ManishH]

Two things to point out :

First, none of the examples in your list actually go against my hypothesis that a sound originating in the front of the oral cavity is likely to be drawn back towards the palatal or even further back into k/kh/g etc by users who were perhaps used to pharyngeal predilection before.

B-ji, There are 3 things which go against this:

1. The evolution of Greek after separation from IE shows anything but a "pharyneal predeliction". In fact the trend is reverse - there is palatalization shown in greek as it moves from Mycenaean to Epic, just not the same as Indian branch. Eg PIE *medhyos > greek 'messos'. Also See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Gree ... talization

PS: coincidentally, I quoted the same example to one person who wanted to claim greek as the parent of all IE languages.

Similarily, another centum language Tocharian shows palatalization subsequent to IE dispersal, again not the same pattern as Indian branch. See:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ ... l-4-X.html

2. How can someone with "pharyngeal predilection" change a palatal back but convert the back vowel in the same syllable to front vowel. Eg. Skt daśam > greek deka. The more likely and simpler hypothesis is that the presence of a front vowel in the first syllable triggered a palatalization.

3. With your hypothesis, a Sanskrit palatal not only becomes a velar sometimes, but also a labial! Eg. Skt 'carati' > greek 'pel'.

So turns out that not only will you need a "pharyngeal predeliction", but also a labial predeliction. With no regularity on what kind of vowels result in which kind of predeliction. This violates notion of regularity in phonetics.

The more frugal hypothesis is an original labiovelar which becomes labial in some, velar in some, and subsequently, palatal in others.

Regarding Avestan, they might not have belonged to a predominantly pharyngeal dialect before absorbing the PIE(Ind) - hence no great urge to l-ify.

Human pharynx has nothing to do with liquids like L or R.

Isnt it rather strange that we allow "oh-so-later" r->l transitions within India while not allowing it in a similar direction for non-Indic branches of the supposed PIE?

It's not a question of allowing. The fact that L sound is miniscule in RgVeda is clear from reading it. The fact that a lot of L sounds become R in classical period is clear from reading them. The fact that whatever was R in centum languages and remained R in vedic, but becomes L in classical sanskrit also means that vedic -> classical is an independent process from IE dispersal.

there are difficulties in exactly ascertaining how more ancient versions of centum consonants were pronounced given more modern usage.

One can make mistake in one script, but not in all of centum languages esp not languages as widely separated as greek and tocharian.

For example the "misceo" that you quote could have been proniunced more as "miskeo" rather than "ch" or explicit "c-as in cider or celestial"

In Latin, 'c' is pronounced as a velar. In IPA: /mis-ke-o/

We also know from evidence of Sanskrit that original was indeed a velar. It's the english pronunciation that is palatalized.

For example most people pronounce Caesar with "s" sound now, but it was clearly "Kaesar" in pronunciation.

Thanks for these examples - all show palatalization subsequent to IE dispersals.

The heart, for obvious reasons has long been connected with emotions.

It's not just emotion - but "put our heart" = faith. If you know of any other language group that uses this exact phrase, let me know.

[shiv]

Tocharian alphabet. What is "European" about this extinct "indo-European" language.

[shiv]

Everything you wanted to know about Tocharian
http://www.oxuscom.com/eyawtkat.htm#phono

Tocharian is an SOV language. However, the nature of the texts upon which we base our current knowledge of Tocharian presents some problems in attempting to restructure the syntax of the language. One problem is that, since much of the material is comprised of translations from Sanskrit, we do not know when features of this language have intruded into the translation. Perhaps more potentially misleading is the fact that "much of our material is in metrical form, which means that before we can draw any conclusions, say, on word order we have to eliminate all distortions that have been introduced to make the text fit the requirements of the meter."

What impact did the Tocharian documents have upon IE studies? Obviously, the discovery of a hitherto unknown IE language promised to give linguists access to valuable new information about the whole language family. However, much of the information that was gleaned from analysis of the language ended up having a "negative" effect, in that the data upset a number of neat and convenient isoglosses that linguists studying IE languages had come up with. For example, prior to the discovery of Tocharian, the occurrence of -r as a marker of the mediopassive form of the verb was only substantiated in the Celtic and Italic branches of the IE language family. The fact that these two groups are relatively geographically close to each other helped to explain how this could have come about. However, Tocharian, lying far to the east, also has this feature.

An even more significant implication of the discovery of Tocharian was the effect it had on the centum-satem division that linguists had devised by observing the reflexes of the PIE velars. Before the evidence of Tocharian came to light, the IE languages could be neatly divided into two groups: those in the west which had velar reflexes (centum languages) and those in the east which had sibilant reflexes (satem languages). However, Tocharian threw that distinction out since, although it lay further to the east than any other IE language, it was centum, the word for 100 being känt in A and kante in B. 67 'Thus, the overall impact of Tocharian has been essentially negative in that it has provided evidence against hypotheses concerning Proto-Indo-European made before its discovery." 68 Lane points out that this has resulted in the need for "our 'late 19th century' conception of the IE parent language... to be radically changed in several aspects, and nowhere more radically than in the instance of the verb. For our conception of the verbal categories has been based entirely upon agreements between Greek and Indic."

Incidentally my uncle googal tells me that SOV languages are "Subject-Object-Verb" languages

SOV (subject-object-verb) is preferred by the greatest number of languages. Included are the Indoeuropean languages of India, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian languages of southern India, Armenian, Hungarian, Turkish and its relatives, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Basque, and most Australian aboriginal languages.

[member_20317]

wiki - "Around the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists recovered from oases in the Tarim Basin a number of manuscripts written in two closely related but previously unknown Indo-European languages. Another text recovered from the same area, a Buddhist work in Old Turkic, included a colophon stating that the text had been translated from Sanskrit via a toxrï language, which Friedrich W. K. Müller guessed was one of the newly discovered languages.[1]"


Shivji now I know how Alice must have felt. This fraud is damn serious and very insidious.

[brihaspati]

ManishH ji,

"Dasam"->"Deka" is not a counter example. First in deka, the "m" doesnt exist. You are ignoring the fact that the two "d"'s are not the same. Even palatilization rule in your format is unpredictive. There is no definite pointer as to why the "e" would appear in one case and turn into "a" in the other. In general, all the sounds are being shifted slightly back within the cavity - if you notice from "Dasam"-> "Deka". The "e-a" dynamics is difficult to explain unless you can see that a retreating-to-the-rear/contracting/lazy phonation brings the more dental "d" with a further parting of the teeth in "dasam" is being compressed into less movement and further back the cavity into the more palatal "d" of "deka" in combination with "e" [which can be literally quite short in pronunciation sounding more like very light e squeezed in between d+k]. Such a tendency will be facilitated by dropping m whenever feasible.



Regarding R<->L - pharyngeal was just one aspect. Different groups could have different predilections for differnt parts. A dental/labial influence could be equally strong. Overall, instead of assuming a mythical common word by near mathematical averaging of different locations [within cavity] and then imposing a vague rule like "palatilization" which still cannot predict direction conclusively- its much better to assume multiple dialects origin.

Crude use of Occam's razor is fruitless. By that pseudo-scientific approach - assuming existence of God is much better than all the science we deal with, [or for the PIE existence and spread for that matter] - because on the paper it looks like the shortest possible explanation for everything or TOE. The reason it is not because when you go down to the nitty gritty of it - you need increasing number of assumptions to actually explain why God did something in one case and did the exact opposite in the other. This is what happens with the PIE linguistics you are projecting. When it comes to details - it needs more and more assumption to fit in with more and more assumptions. You are not doing any parsimonious analysis.

[brihaspati]

ManishH ji,
using Tocharian for phonetic arguments now - is highly dubious. The phonetics of that language is itself reconstructed based on assumptions based on assumptions based on assumptions....

[member_22872]

1. The evolution of Greek after separation from IE shows anything but a "pharyneal predeliction".

Manish ji Greek is a real language, it exists. So since you are comparing it to PIE ultimately, is it okay to assume PIE too exists? if not, what is the basis for your comparison or drawing a parallel between an existing language and one that is theoretical at the best?

[ramana]

shiv, OT but what the heck. Humans are social ANIMALS. Social hence need to communicate but still animals. In animals there is a need to establish dominance. Humans especially those with a veneer of civilization do this dominance subtly or insidiously.
After the Christianization of Europe and subsequent Reformation and Colonization they want to establish this dominance over the colonials. Hence they say 'your grandfather was slave to my mythical grandfather your lands who invaded ! Hence you obey forever!!!"

Now its up to us whether to accept the dominance or not. Those of former category become Gungadins and the latter are termed rebels and recalcitrant Hindus.

I don't want to be a Gungadin. I was born in a free nation state and in a everlasting civilization. Instead of Sons of God, Gods walked in my nation state. Hence I categorically reject all this nonsense.

Thanks for listening.

ramana

[member_20317]

ManishH ji,
using Tocharian for phonetic arguments now - is highly dubious. The phonetics of that language is itself reconstructed based on assumptions based on assumptions based on assumptions....

Shiv garu ji this is why i (a naive at linguistics) mentioned Epicycles. The mention was not exactly serendipitous. Nothing accidental about it. Inspired by ManishH ji's confidence I tried to start learning some of this bull. But then realised there is no 'why' anywhere, in the absense of which a 'presumptous know how' is sought to be imposed. Hell there are more rules then verb roots with nothing to explain the variations. These guys are very fertile in that sense.


Kind of like cow ke uppar cow ke uppar cow....till 1000 cows.

[member_20317]

ramanna ji - "In animals there is a need to establish dominance."

guru ji, even animals have languages for sure and some may even have songs. Wonder how long till a linguist claims a IE origin for whale songs.

[shiv]

What is the date of separation of real Greek from non existent Indo-European? This is like the event horizon around a black hole. One side is my universe. The other side .. hmmm.

[Prem]

What is the date of separation of real Greek from non existent Indo-European? This is like the event horizon around a black hole. One side is my universe. The other side .. hmmm.

The day first Euro-peon made in India .

[RamaY]

#2 is more defensible than #1

I know the strategy to aim for low-hanging fruits. But what happens to 'Satya-Sodhana' the pursuit of truth?

[tyroneshoes]

But if a "pastoralist" has 500 head of cattle he can't really move very far from 2 or 3 areas where food is available.

But this was the bronze age - before industrial-grade cattle farming and availability of fodder in bags.

In that period, large-scale cattle rearing required one to be on the move - searching from one grassland to another. A large herd of cattle will erode a grassland in no time. A mobile lifestyle gives an edge in terms of survivability against adverse weather.

Horse domestication is said to have aided the 'scaling up'. One or two mounted riders with the aid of guard dogs can herd even 100s of cattle. Without a mount, the same will need a handful of herders.

Sheep however tend to follow the lead of one sheep, so require much less herding effort. One person can manage a large flock of sheep.

Smallscale domestic cattle keeping however can be done in a sedentary lifestyle.

Sorry, cannot put up with this junk!
Have you ever lived on a ranch? Do you have any idea what it takes to keep cattle growing?
Do you think cattle ranchers in Brazil, Mid-west US, etc. moved around randomly trying to find grasslands?
Raising beef is entirely different art to raising sheep or goats!!!!

Majority of Western Movies have fights between ranchers and free rangers!
Free ranging is very expensive and cannot be sustained without stealing from ranchers...
It happened in the Sapta-Sindhu, it happened in the Mid-west!

All this during times of plenty full rains, and abundant meadows along large rivers.... unclaimed lands vast all the way to the Gangetic plains....

Also, many of the rituals in the Rig Veda needs a homestead and a hearth.
Heck all my main gods are claimed to be lords of the homestead.

I cannot move around when I need to tend my family fire.
I guess one needs to know what it meant to be a Vedic first!!!
I am no one without my family fire, it has to be kept alive in a sacred place.

Absolute retardness and lack of understanding of the culture occurs
when one tries to take texts, translate it to a different cultural context.

Again, we will use non-Indians (Griffith) to tell us what is truth:

Rig Veda - 1.174.3

अजा वर्त इन्द्र शूरपत्नीर्द्यां च येभिः पुरुहूत नूनम |
रक्षो अग्निमशुषं तूर्वयाणं सिंहो न दमे अपांसि वस्तोः ||

With whom thou drivest troops whose lords are heroes, and bringest daylight now, much worshipped Indra,
With them guard lion-like wasting active Agni to dwell in our tilled fields and in our homestead.

Rig Veda - 7.16.5

तवमग्ने गर्हपतिस्त्वं होता नो अध्वरे |
तवं पोता विश्ववार परचेता यक्षि वेषि च वार्यम ||

Thou, Agni, art the homestead's Lord, our Herald at the sacrifice.
Lord of all boons, thou art the Cleanser and a Sage. Pay worship, and enjoy the good.

Rig Veda - 1.123.3-6

यदद्य भागं विभजासि नर्भ्य उषो देवि मर्त्यत्रा सुजाते |
देवो नो अत्र सविता दमूना अनागसो वोचति सूर्याय ||
गर्हं-गर्हमहना यात्यछा दिवे-दिवे अधि नामा दधाना |
सिषासन्ती दयोतना शश्वदागादग्रम-अग्रमिद भजतेवसूनाम ||
भगस्य सवसा वरुणस्य जामिरुषः सून्र्ते परथमा जरस्व |
पश्चा स दघ्या यो अघस्य धाता जयेम तं दक्षिणया रथेन ||
उदीरतां सून्र्ता उत पुरन्धीरुदग्नयः शुशुचानासोस्थुः |
सपार्हा वसूनि तमसापगूळ्हाविष कर्ण्वन्त्युषसो विभातीः ||

If, Dawn, thou Goddess nobly born, thou dealest fortune this day to all the race of mortals,
May Savitar the God, Friend of the homestead, declare before the Sun that we are sinless.
4. Showing her wonted form each day that passeth, spreading the light she visiteth each dwelling.
Eager for conquest, with bright sheen she cometh. Her portion is the best of goodly treasures.
5. Sister of Varuna, sister of Bhaga, first among all sing forth, O joyous Morning.
Weak be the strength of him who worketh evil: may we subdue him with our car the guerdon.
6. Let our glad hymns and holy thoughts rise upward, for the flames brightly burning have ascended.
The far-refulgent Mornings make apparent the lovely treasures which the darkness covered.

How does one move along grasslands, maintain a homestead and randomly try to find new grasslands for my larger and larger cattle herds and tend and keep alive my family fire in my sacred hearth?

Aryan Random Walk Theory - Nonscience wins yet again!

[member_22872]

In that period, large-scale cattle rearing required one to be on the move - searching from one grassland to another. A large herd of cattle will erode a grassland in no time. A mobile lifestyle gives an edge in terms of survivability against adverse weather.

Horse domestication is said to have aided the 'scaling up'. One or two mounted riders with the aid of guard dogs can herd even 100s of cattle. Without a mount, the same will need a handful of herders.

tyroneshoes ji is already on fire . But Manish ji I too find something is wrong. You are using the western methodologies of animal husbandry to Indian settings. Pray tell me where in India have you seen our cow herders taking cows for grazing on grass lands? how many grass lands do we have that one needs to be on the move even if one accepts your arguments that herding on grass lands needs one to be on the move?

secondly, guard dogs? no idea when domestication of dogs started but, even if we assume for a second that dog domestication was in full swing, how many Indian cow herders have you seen with guard dogs?

if you are looking for grasslands and guard dogs in Indian context you wont find any in India.

[svinayak]

It is fine to postulate the origin of the language family could be from India; but denying a common origin becomes very hard given the spread of common vocabulary.

One of the things that strikes me on a map of "Indo-European" tongues is that the largest number of them are "European" languages, some of which are extinct. Then there is a huge patch that is painted in Western China that is alleged to be "Tocharian" - another dead language. The Tocharian speaking people have been given "Indo-European" roots using the same racist identifiers as " blue eyes and blond hair" (Tarim Basin mummies). Genetically their roots don't appear to be clearly European. It seems to me that this long extinct Tocharian has become a sister member of the Indo-European family by dubious means. It could well have been an offshoot of Sanskrit. But this makes the India-Europe link in the map.

If you leave out those languages you are then left primarily with Indo-Iranian including Iranian and Sanskrit.

The maps show only the European language and their spread. The amount of literature of Sanskrit and Indian langauges is atleast 10 times the literature of ancient European languages.
They have deliberately reduced the importance of Sanskrit and the information that its literature dwarfs the European literature.

So when Indo-European term is used it should be seen as Large Indo group and a small Euro group of languages.