Re: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 70063
Date: 2012-09-17

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Someone please explain to Shivkhokra the origin of Indo-Aryan languages. My understanding is that they are derived from Prakrits, i.e. local spoken languages that came from Old Indian, the ancestor of Sanskrit, which was and is, a written language. Sanskrit was used in the court, by the priests, etc. but was a polished artificial language, rather like Classical Latin. Just as Spanish, French, etc. did not descend from Classical Latin, but form Vulgar Latin, Indo-Aryan languages came from the local spoken analogues of Sanskrits, the Prakrits. This is my understanding of the matter. But it is superficial.

It might be better to describe Sanskrit as a *recited* language rather than a *written* language. We have the perverse situation that the Prakrits were written before Sanskrit even though Sanskrit shows every sign of being more archaic phonetically. The Indic writing system seems to be designed to handle Prakrits, especially with the simplification of not marking geminate consonants as geminate, a phenomenon also seen in Old Latin.

We also have the confusing situation that literary Sanskrit borrowed from the early Prakrits, so in _cakrava:la_ 'universe' we have Sanskrit /l/ < Pali /l./!

Until recently the oldest Sanskrit inscriptions came from SE Asia and were within a few hundred years of Gothic. It now seems that a much earlier one has been identified in India.

I'm not sure that the difference between Sanskrit and reconstructed Proto-Modern Indic is analogous to the distinction Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin; I had the impression that it might be more akin to the distinction between (West Saxon) Old English and (most) Modern English, which descends from Anglian dialects. (The distinction does seem sound, regardless of what version of the Anglo-Saxon Invasion Theory you hold to.)

The point here would be that Sanskrit had a regional bias - but I do not have facts or analyses to hand, so for now treat what I'm saying as speculative. There have been remarks on a similar disconnect between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.

To answer Shivraj's post properly, I need to check details, which is why I had been hoping someone else would do the blooming work. I don't have the resource to check first attestations of individual words. It may get even trickier if we go for dates of manuscripts rather than originals of which they may be an imperfect copy.

Richard.