Re: Me-lah-ha

--- In cybalist@..., "kalyan97" <kalyan97@...> wrote:

> There were earlier messages on Nahali. I deeply appreciate the
> insightful comments of Piotr. Here is an elaboration which proceeds
> on the assumption that Nahali is an Indo-Aryan dialect and provides
> an outline of Me-lah-ha dialect, c. 4th to 3rd millennia BCE.
>
> http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/sindhu1.pdf
>
> Mleccha, Milakkha or Me-lah-ha: maritime people and their language
>
> The argument is that mleccha connoted the parole of a proto-Indo-
> Aryan language and that mleccha speakers were the dominant
> population – Bha_ratam janam --, from the days of the R.gveda,
> variously referred to as da_sa, dasyu, vra_tya or asura – all terms
> used as behavioral traits as were the terms, a_rya or deva,
> connotations of 'excellence' or 'righteous behaviour'. There is not
> an iota of evidence, in early periods of the civilization of
> Bha_ratavars.a, to treat these terms as ethnic identities.
>
> Art, cultural texts, epigraphs, archaeological discoveries, notes

on

> early shell- and metallurgical- techniques and economic texts are
> used to substantiate this argument.
>
> A surprise result emerges: a key to decode epigraphs using rebus
> method and proto-phonetic variants (substratum) of present-day
> languages of the Sarasvati Civilization area, relating epigraphs to
> the professions of lapidaries and smiths: shell-/stone-/mineral-
> /metal-workers.
>
> The indigenously evolved civilization matured in an extensive area
> from Ropar to Lothal along the banks of River Sarasvati and the
> cultural heritage lives on in Bha_rata, thanks to the contributions
> made by mleccha (me-lah-ha), contributions exemplified by samudra
> manthanam (churning of the ocean), as a co-operative endeavour

among

> bha_ratam janam.

The other night I got a really, really bad idea:

The Mleccha are from the Moluccas, Maluku.

In

http://www.irja.org/anthro/malmel1.htm

"
The protoforms are: *ntiti "copper", *mamu / *maum "iron", and
*buLauan "gold". The two former are practically restricted to East
Indonesia. The form for gold apparently originally had the
meaning "copper" or "bronze" when it was propagated, perhaps through
trade contacts, from Taiwan through the Phillipines into Kalimantan
and Sulawesi. In the Philippines and Sulawesi, it came to
mean "gold", and it is under this meaning that it was dispersed
throughout East Indonesia, and also in West Indonesia where, after
having been mostly superceded by reflexes of *emas, it is only still
attested on small islands to the west of Sumatra (Simalur, Sikhule),
and in the interior of Kalimantan (Busang, Penihing). I reported on
this in the publication of 1994.
"

*buLauan "copper"?

Torsten