--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:> I fail to see what Nahali has to do
with the Indus or the Sarasvati. As for the rest, the term "the
Indus Valley (or Harappan) Civilisation" represents traditional
usage, justified by the fact that most of the cities of that
civilisation were located within the Indus system.
Let me cite from Hans Henrich Hock, Pre-Rigvedic convergence between
Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and Dravidian? A survey of the issues and
controversies in: Jan E.M. Houben, 1996, Ideology and Status of
Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, EJ
Brill.
My hypothesis: multiple migrations to-and-fro from out of Bharat
absorbing retroflexion and alveolarization from a non-Indo-Aryan
prehistoric northwestern substratum, creating INDIC. (e.g.
Burushaski, Nahali)
I think the failure of the linguists in classifying Burushaski and
Nahali may hold the key to the decipherment of the language spoken
on the Sarasvati River Basin and in the coastal regions of Gulf of
Khambat, Gulf of Kutch and Makran Coast (South of Karachi).
[quote]South Asia is home to at least six distinct language
families: Indo-Aryan, Eastern Iranian, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-
asiatic, Munda, and Dravidian, plus an 'unaffiliated' language in
the extreme north, Burushaski. [Footnote: Nahali might constitute
the remnant of yet another language family -- Kuiper 1962, 1966 with
references]...Indo-Aryan and Iranian are closely related to each
other, and Munda is remotely related to Austro-Asiatic. For the
remaining language families, outside genetic relationship is at best
controversial. If they are related to each other, their relationship
is so remote that any shared similarities must be secondary...The
closest relatives of Brahui, thus, either migrated from the south or
are now located there. This fact lends credence to the Brahuis' own
tradition of foreign origin. As concluded in Hock 1975, 1984, we
therefore cannot take the present location of Brahui as guaranteeing
a Dravidian presence in the prehistoric northwest. [Note that
Emeneau (1962: 70, fn.10), while preferring to consider Brahui an
isolated relic, does admit the possibility that further work may
show the language to have migrated from a more southerly
position.]..In fact, various Indo-Aryan languages and their speakers
have likewise remigrated to the north, including Dumaki (close to
present-day Shina), Gandhari Prakrit (medieval Khotan and farther
east), and Parya in modern Uzbekistan (Comrie 1981). The most famous
group is that of the D.om (or 'Gypsies') who via Central Asia spread
all over Eurasia. The evidence cited above combined with the
possibility of remigration, however, casts doubt on the cogency of
what might have appeared the simplest explanation, namely that the
present-day location of Brahui coincides roughly with its location
in prehistoric times...Subversionists operate with the assumption of
unidirectional Dravidian influence on Indo-Aryan, affecting four
major structural features. Three of these are syntactic (SOV order,
absolutives, and quotative marking); one is phonological (the
contrast dental: retroflex)...Anti-Subversionists question the
cogency of the arguments for a prehistoric Dravidian presence in
northwest South Asia...Retroflexion is more problematic; but the
early Dravidian and Indo-Aryan phonological systems of retrofled
(and alveolar) sounds differ too much to be explainable by
Subversion...Overall, then, the Subversionist hypothesis is not
established beyond a REASONABLE DOUBT. Finally, as shown especially
in 4.1 and 4.2, the claik that Subversion is the SIMPLEST account
meets with the objection that the simplest explanation is not always
the most accurate one. WHile many of the objections to the
Subversion hypothesis cast doubt on its cogency, they do
not 'disprove' it. Rather, they should be considered challenges for
Subversionists to improve their arguments or to find additional, and
better, evidence...In this regard, a few of the observations in 4.1-
9 may suggest possible new avenues for research. One of these is
Tikkane3n's claim (1987 with 1988) that the structural similarities
between Dravidian and Indo-Aryan are due to an unknown prehistoric
northwestern substratum, which is also responsible for the large
number of non-Dravidian (and non-Munda) borrowings in early Indo-
Aryan...As noted in 4.9, the testimony of the RigVeda suggests that
the early relation between Indo-Aryans and non-Indo-Aryans was not
as unequal as generally assumed, but may rather have constituted an
extended relationship of shifting alliances with each other,
requiring bi- or multi-lingual interaction as near-equals...In fact,
the Dravidian dental: alveolar: retroflex contrast and the Indo-
Aryan d3ental: retroflex contrast might very well be attributed to
prehistoric convergence -- if the hypothesis that these contrasts
arose through a JOINT innovation (4.8) can be supported by
additional arguments...avenues for further research therefore would
seem to lie in further pursing this 'Convergence Hypothesis'
regarding the origination of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian retroflexion
(and alveolarization). [unquote]