--- kalyan97 <
kalyan97@...> wrote:
> http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/aryans.pdf
>
> Ths URL is a six-page extract from FBJ Kuiper's 1991
> book to show the
> extent to which the language of the R.igveda can be
> explained in
> terms of the impact of substratum languages.
>
> This lends significant evidence, in my view, to
> contest that `IE
> speakers' came from outside India.
*****GK: I haven't read anything by Kuiper but the
excerpts you have provided here do not support your
final conclusion. Unless I have misunderstood him (but
then I can only rely on these snippets) Kuiper argues
that there are some 380 non-Indo-European words in the
language of the Rigveda. Some of these pertain to
agriculture and were borrowed partly from the local
languages and partly from elsewhere. He also argues
that Rigvedic society had several ethnic components.
So the impression that I get is that at some point in
prehistory "Indo-Europeans" (already mixed in all
probability) entered India, where they mixed further
with local inhabitants, taking over much of their
culture, but largely keeping (though somewhat changing
also) their IE language. The Rigvedic texts were
written up in the context of this new society.******
P.S. Let me add that I find the older "racist" notions
of Aryanism not only appalling but a falsification of
history and (per Kuiper and others) linguistics also
to some visible extent. But the "Aryans out of India"
hypothesis seems like a calque in reverse. I'm not
certain whether a "proto-Indo-European people" ever
existed in the real world, but if it did, it very
swiftly fell apart like Humpty Dumpty, and there is no
single Indo-European community anywhere in the world
which can claim to be "prime" let alone "exclusive"
heirs. We IEans are all mixtures, and "no 'mixture' is
more equal than others" (:=)). Makes for a very
interesting world.*******
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