--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> I wasn't aware of that, but yes, he's Paul Kekai; he's the man who
insists that Classical Sanskrit, as well as Middle Indo-Aryan and all
the modern Indo-Aryan languages, should not be classified as IE,
since represent a "native Dravidian" language with "heavy Austric and
Indo-European influence". He also claims that e.g. <dHarma> developed
out of <dhamma> rather than the other way round, as the Dravidian
Prakrit was "modified somewhat" to make it appear more like (IE)
Vedic.
>
> Piotr
>
That is the Manansala.
I found the list on the net after having read Oppenheimer's
book "Eden in the East". I am not subscribing to any of his ideas,
personally, I'll leave those questions open. In particular, the idea
that his list was supposed to corroborate, namely that Sanskrit was
not IE but developped from Austrnesian I found difficult to believe,
since most of the Sanskrit words he used had well-known (at least to
me) cognates all over the IE languages. To tell the truth, I got the
impression that IE languages didn't concern him much, as is the
impression I get from some out-of-India proponents; what interests
them is India. But another thing struck me, and this is the reason I
used it on my website: 78% (as I later calculated it) of the Sanskrit
roots of the comparisons he makes are descended from roots I had seen
earlier on the IE side in the root pairs in Møller's comparison of IE
and AfroAsiatic. Now how the heck did Manansala arrive at that? He
doesn't show any interest in AfroAsiatic (or IE, for that matter). He
probably never read Møller. And even if he had, and had secretly
followed a list of Møller's IE-AA "cognates" (probably loans, there
are just a few hundred), how could he come up with up to a hundred
(at least) similar-sounding Austronesian roots for those pairs? I
found it puzzling.
As regards contact, Oppenheimer has done some genetic research on the
Orang Asli, aboriginal peoples of Malaysia. Some markers from that
group reappear not just all over the South Sea islands, but also in
Kuwait, Turkey, and even, in one case, the Czech lands. Other markers
reapear in some Swedes and Finns. There is only one way for that to
have happened. The only question then is: Did they forget every
single word on the journey? Dog? Pig? But if one or two words can
make the trip, where's the limit?
And as for the trick of denigrating an opinion because the man who
holds other opinions that are patently wrong, I've hitch-hiked too
much to fall for that. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone is
right at least to some degree. That is my basic outlook, and I don't
think I will change that.
Torsten