--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...>
wrote:
>
> Excellent points, Brian and Richard.
>
> I would add to the list: glyphs.
>
> Glyphs such as those found on Gundestrup cauldron, icons created
> during cultural breaks (say from Avestan to Judaism),
What cultural breaks, and why are such necessary to
explain the creation of glyphs? I suspect that you're
positing such breaks for no other reason than to explain
the lack of evidence for connection between what you're
calling "glyphs" found in various places. Although so
much of what you write is so unclear that I'm not sure.
What sort of cultural break was there between Avestan
(a language) and Judaism (a religion), and which glyphs
or icons were created during it?
> hieroglyphs such as those found on Sarasvati epigraphs should also
> be included. Because, glyphs are based on an underlying speech
> (parole)
Do you know what glyphs are? They needn't be based on
speech at all.
> and glyphs will lock the words with precision, like a cross-word
> puzzle,
What exactly does that mean? What are they "locking"?
The sound of the word? It's meaning? According to the
dictionary, a glyph is
"a symbolic figure or a character (as in the Mayan system
of writing) usually incised or carved in relief; a symbol
(as a curved arrow on a road sign) that conveys information
nonverbally."
So what is it about a glyph gives it in any greater
ability to "lock words with precision" than other
forms of writing?
> relating the glyphs to homonyms: at least two words of speech --
> one denoting the glyph itself and the other denoting a cognate
> word
No, not a cognate word, a _homophonic_ word, if your
referring to a rebus system. See more below.
> denoting something more substantive such as a possession, say, of
> minerals, metals, furnaces.
Are you referring to the rebus principle? It's not yet
proved that the I.V.C. was based on one. Although you
could test the hypothesis by making a tentative assumption
about the language used, and then seeing if replacing each
glyph with a word, or the homophone of the word, of which
the glyph seems to be a drawing, yielded a significant
number of sensible meanings. If that worked, it would
still only be the beginning, since you would have to
uncover the entire system. Since not every phone or
sequence of phones in any language has a meaning itself,
much less one that can readily be represented with a
picture. Such systems are high idiosyncratic and not
entirely obvious. You would have to deduce the complete
system used, and then finally you would have to prove
your system correct by showing how it gives sensible
meanings to the _entire_ corpus of seals, and without any
special tweaking or tuning to make each case work. You
haven't done that yet, so no one should believe your claim
of having cracked the code. Even if someone else someday
does that work, and proves it to have been built on the
rebus principle, you still couldn't take credit for being
the first to say so since others suggested it before you.
Another problem is your desire to see the I.V.C. language
as a prakrit, since the prakrits came into being only
long after the end of the I.V.C. There's simply no way
to get around that fact. A third problem is that you refer
constantly to the meanings of the glyphs and what they
represent picturewise, demonstrating, I fear, more
misunderstanding on your part. Because although rebus
systems originate from older word-picture systems, they
come down in the end to being sound-encoding systems.
A rebus system might write the word "car" with a picture
of car, but ultimately that picture doesn't represent the
concept of a car, but rather the sound sequence [kar], and
could potentially be used to write the same sequence in
words like "cartoon", "carpet", "Jacarta", etc. which have
no semantic connection with "car". If you understood that,
I would expect you to simply present us with I.V.C. glyphs
and the _sound_ value you believe each carries. We could
then see for ourselves whether or not the language of the
seals was a prakrit, and could leave your explanation of
the ultimate origin of each glyph for later.
> I wonder why Piotr bars discussions of ancient scripts on this list
> (Afte all, they are part of parole, writing systems).
Did he do that? I must have missed that post. I'm very
surprised that he would put an outright ban on a subject
like that. Piotr usually has the patience of Job. Although
I wouldn't be surprised if he were to put you on "parole"
with some of your topics. :-)
> Prakrits (e.g., Ardhama_gadhi, Bhojpuri, Dardic, Nahali,
> Burus.a_ski) should also be included on such lists. On
> Prakrits, let me note that there is a definitional problem
> on this Indo- segment.
There are definitely definitional problems. Because
Burushaski is not only not a prakrit, it's not even
Indo-Aryan.
> In my definition, Prakrits include dialects of mleccha such as:
> Proto-Gujarati, Proto-Kannada, Proto-Tamil, Proto-Telugu.
There is no language called "Mleccha". Please stop acting
as if there were. What's meant by "Proto-Gujarati"? What
could possibly be meant by "Proto-Kannada", "Proto-Tamil"
and "Proto-Telugu" that isn't properly covered by "Proto-
Dravidian"? In any case, those aren't prakrits either.
How do you hope to ever make a case if you insist on using
the terminology so idiosyncratically?
David