Re: [tied] MIA and Vedic

--- In cybalist@..., "michael_donne" <michael_donne@...> wrote:

>
> Fascinating. So basically the ancient forms of Sanskrit are only
> distantly related to the modern Indian languages in that there is
> no clear lineage? The modern languages emerged from some other,
> presumably Sanskrit, dialect than the ones that are recorded in
> the Vedas and later classical Sanskrit texts?

Part of the misunderstanding here is caused by the common
misuse of 'Sanskrit' to mean Old Indo-Aryan. It doesn't even
properly apply to Vedic which was 'one' dialect of Old Indo-
Aryan, but only to that particular form of Old Indo-Aryan
codified by Panini and Company to preserve it against further
change after it had begun its natural evolution into Middle
Indo-Aryan (Pali, Prakrit and Apabhramsa) and on into the
Modern Indo-Aryan languages.

David