Re: [cybalist] SV: Re: avestan and vedic

At 11:42 2000-04-13 +0200, you wrote:

It seems to me that the "Mitanni aryan" is significant in this context. Not
much is preserved but what there is is definitely Indian (not Iranian) and
it is quite close to but not identical to Vedic. The important thing is
that it can be fairly well dated to 1400-1250 BC which means that it can
hardly have separated from ancestral Vedic much later than 1500 BC (if
anything earlier I should think). The similarities are so striking that
neither branch could have had time to change very much, which should put
the earliest Vedic stratum well back in the second millenium BC.

Tommy Tyrberg

>> From: John Croft <jdcroft@...>
>>
>> As for the Vedic language, I know that the River Saraswati is
>> mentioned in the early Vedas, and on geological evidence that is
>> supposed to have dried up about 1,500 BCE. On this ground, Sanscrit
>> is a lot earlier than Avestan, although of course such evidence needs
>> to be taken carefully.
>>
>> Homer for instance, knew of a late Mycenaean seige of Troy, but the
>> language he wrote in was Ionian Greek, far removed from the
>> Paleo-Arcadian dialect the Mycenaeans are supposed to have spoken.
>> A similar set of events may have also occurred with Sanscrit.
>
>Yes, we mustn't forget that the languages of the Homeric poems and the

Rigvedic hymns are both highly formulaic and traditional (as is Avestan).
Any attempt to establish a terminus ante quem is therefore highly dangerous.

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