From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 18974
Date: 2003-02-21
----- Original Message -----
From: <kalyan97@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2003 3:23 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: "Will the 'real' linguist please stand up?"
> Yes, indeed. I don't know who to believe in a babel of linguistic
> theories and chronological labels. I just want to know if there are
> enough studies about Prakrits (= proto-Indian, proto-Vedic); if they
> have partly dined with proto-indo-european prior to 3500 BCE, any
> light which dispels the darkness of ignorance, is welcome.
You contribute to the confusion if you give familiar terms non-standard meanings of your own. "Prakrit" is a cover term for all Indic languages and dialects that developed out of Old Indo-Aryan and existed alongside Classical Sanskrit. It may refer to such old languages as Pali and the dialects of As'oka's inscriptions, or to any variety of Middle Indo-Aryan. It does NOT refer, in normal usage, to pre-Vedic Indic or to Proto-Indo-Aryan, or to any pre-Indo-Aryan substrate of India, if that's what you mean.
As to studying Proto-Indo-Aryan, well, it can't be studied directly because it isn't documented. We can only draw inferences about it on the basis of the languages that grew out of it.
Piotr