Indian Linguistics

From: kishore patnaik
Message: 59566
Date: 2008-07-13


Traditionally, Indians were better at Linguistics.

For eg., look at the way the alphabet is created in a systematic way.Similar phonetic  Letters are not only grouped together  according to the way they are pronounced, but in accordance with the places of articulation. This is surprising since it was not recognized by western scholars till 1800 or 1900's.

I  quote:

 

" Indians scribes have consciously redesigned the Semitic writing they 'borrowed' according to well-understood phono-logical principles. The Indians were antiquity's finest linguistics; the West did not begin to approach their level of linguistic sophistication until the early 1800s- in some cases the early 1900s. Ancient Indian scribes classified their letters according to places of articulation( a surprisingly 'modern' practice); first vowels and diphthongs, then consonants (with default /a/'(such as ka and not merely K-Kishore)), in exact back to front order as in the human moth-gutturals, palatals, cerebral palatals, dentals, labials, semi vowels and spirants. Indians, possessing such linguistic insight, did not abandon their 'cumbersome' system for a streamlined alphabet once they encountered Greek writing (since, their system) best conveyed the full repertoire of Indic sounds. The graphic syllables of their abudiga system of system of consonant + diacritic seemed, at least to Indian scribes, to yield more salient phonetic information than a mere letter. So in all derivative scripts, Indic writing remained consonantal alphabetic. "

 From A History of Writing  By Steven Roger Fischer


The borrowings from Sanskrit are often underplayed. For eg., if you consider the evidence of Mitannis,(1500 bce) it is clear that they are under the influence of purely Indic Sanskrit, bereft of Iranian impressions.

Evidently, Sanskrit came into being prior to 1500 bce and what is important to note that this kind of influence on Mitannis seem to be running deeper than in mere language or science of chariots. You would note that only the Kings were allowed to assume names in Sanskrit and no one else. This goes on to show that Indo Aryans were more of a sociological reference group to Mitannis rather than mere influencers .

This would lead us to think that Sanskrit must have had a lofty  and rich  heritage in order to grow to such an extent of being a reference group towards 1600 or so.

Arguably, Iranian languages could not boast of such background,. There is no proof to say that Iranian languages existed prior to 1000 bce.

In other words, IIr is a mere conjecture - or you have to equate IIr with Sanskrit from which the Persian languages have grown.

Now,. my question is can you negate with certainty what I am talking above from the view point of Linguistics?

For eg., it is only a statistical  probability that  the direction of borrowings are  determined. If you are clever enough, you can prove that the  Indian word Jagannath  owes its origin to Juggernaut using the same Linguistic principles.(which is obviously , leading to the wrong direction of borrowings) In other words, the principles of borrowings of Linguistics are not absolute in their conclusions.

This is what I am trying to say. I want to know in as simple words as possible, the flaws in my conclusions.

best regards,

kishore patnaik

 






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