02-03-2004 23:35, mkelkar2003 wrote:
> Kelkar: It is good to hear, that the dates currently popular (say 1500
> BCE) are only provisional. You have are the first linguists i have
> talked to that even went as far as saying that much.
Dear Kelkar,
These dates have indeed been arrived on the basis of _various_ evidence.
Everything in science is provisional and subject to revision if new
evidence comes to light. At present, however, 3000 BC (not to mention
earlier dates) is ruled out as the time when the Rigveda was composed.
All the relevant linguistic and extralinguistic arguments have been
raised so often on this list that I definitely refuse to reopen the
subject without your checking the archives and acquainting yourself the
past discussions first. If you have no _new_ arguments to offer, I have
to ask you not to flog this particular dead horse. Cybalist is not a
soap box in the Speakers' Corner.
> Kelkar: I am afraid, that is where our paths diverge. I want to study
> the history of my own culture and civilization which i very
> subjectively believe is the greatest thing on earth. But as it so
> happens,Sansrkit according to some people is an "Indo_European"
> lanaguage. So i find myself living in the same apartment buiding with
> other IE neighbors who keep banging on my walls.
That, if true, would make you a blinkered nationalist by your own
admission. Forgive my saing so, but such an attitude is hardly a good
service to your own culture and civilisation. Unless you open your mind
a little, how can anyone discuss anything with you?
> And hence i am not intersted in the AIT/OIT debate for no matter who
> wins, lingustics, and by extension Piotr G. and Max Mullar, win.
> Therefore why i am here? Because every time i open any book on the
> ancient history of my country, be it by a Westerner or an Easterner,
> it always has this Indo-European stuff, and dates of arrival of some
> people around 1500 BCE who supposed to have spoken a family of languages.
They spoke a language (or, to be precise, a group of mutually
intelligible dialects) BELONGING to the so-called Indo-Iranian branch of
the so-called Indo-European family. We call that language Old Indic (or
Old Indian, or Old Indo-Aryan); Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are its
formalised varieties The family contains many other branches beside
Indo-Iranian (Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Greek, Balto-Slavic, Albanian,
Armenian, and the extinct groups called Tocharian and Anatolian, not to
mention a few other little-known ones). Their common origin was
established beyound reasonable doubt a long time ago.
> That is why i have just two questions for the IE lingusits experts:
>
> 1. When did this language family start diverging into all these other
> languages they call IE languages?
According to the most popular estimates and models of dispersal, not
earlier than the sixth millennium BC and not later than the fourth.
> 2. How has that point been decided?
The combined evidence of comparative linguistics, archeology, history
and "linguistic palaeontology" (for example, the reconstructed
vocabulary of Proto-Indo-European shows it to be the language of a
Neolithic culture, familiar with various ways of farming). The story is
too long to be summed up in a paragraph, but again, if you check the
archives you'll find many past discussions of this problem.
It may be difficult to swallow for a layman so exclusively interested in
Sanskrit that the Indic (sub)branch is just part of a much wider picture
and that the whole picture has to be coherent. Nevertheless, Indic
doesn't exist in a vacuum and has to fit in the more general scenario of
IE origins, like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. Any story you make about it
must account for the linguistic observation that Indic and Iranian are
very closely related within IE and that they both derive from a common
protolanguage (Proto-Indo-Iranian), which further shows exclusive
linguistic affinities with other so-called Satem languages
(Balto-Slavic, Albanian and Armenian). We also know that the
Proto-Indo-European language split into Anatolian and "non-Anatolian IE"
well before the above-mentioned groupings appeared. This means that you
have to allow quite a lot of time between Proto-Indo-European and Old
Indic, and any scenario of splits and dispersals must convincingly
account for the origin and geographical distribution of the _whole_
family, from Celtic in Western Europe to Tocharian in Xinqiang.
> If any expert including yourself can explain this to a layperson, i
> will be oblidged. if not, its been nice talking to you.
Piotr