Proving India is the Indian Homeland

"Dean_Anderson" <dean_anderson@...> wrote:
<<It really does seem to be true that the concern about Hindutva propaganda
has caused Western scholars to be excessively sceptical about Indian claims.
No linguist that I know of takes Renfrew's claims at all seriously, but he is
still respectfully mentioned in almost every survey of IE origins.>>

If linguists didn't take any of Renfrew's claims seriously, he would not be
"respectfully" mentioned. The relevant idea that Renfrew promoted (though he
did not introduce it) is that IE spread with the introduction of neolithic
technology. This premise is in fact a favored linguistic explanation for the
spread of major language groups in other parts of the world, including the
Far East.

From what I can see of the Indian origin arguments, it seems to be about how
early the earliest horse or the spoked wheel has been found in India or when
a certain river changed its course. I still don't understand how
linguistically you can argue that Vedic "nearly equals" *PIE and be
respectfully mentioned by serious linguists.

<<The OIT is worthy of consideration simply because "it really might be
true." The re-evaluation of the India Urheimat Theory by mainstream scholars
is primarily due to the recent archaeological and geological discoveries, not
to the Hindutva agenda.>>

So, there's no respect from linguists but there is a re-evaluation by
"mainstream scholars." What kind of scholars? And what specifically do they
have to say about Vedic's linguistic relation to the other IE languages? Or
are you saying that these mainstream scholars have some other way of knowing
what language was spoken in pre-IA India? By the way, how does Dravidian fit
in all this? Did it have any hand in this Vedic civilization?

And what archaeological and geological discoveries specifically are you
talking about that tell you something specifically about the origins of IE
languages?

<<the absence of horses is a major strike against the OIT. So the presence of
horses is a central obstacle that must be cleared before most people would
begin to consider the theory.>>

I don't think that anyone recently arguing here against an Indian origin on
this list has mentioned horses. I guess you're talking about press releases,
Amazon breasts and the Great Flood and Atlantis-type acceptance. The
presence of horses has no effect on the comparative method, which is where
*PIE came from. Unless you're not talking about *PIE, but some other kind of
idea.

<<is it not more reasonable to postulate that the Vedic tradition is native
to South Asia? An increasing number of people in the field are starting to
think that that critical mass has been reached. All of the evidence, with the
exception of linguistics, seems to point to the likelihood of an
indigenous origin of Vedic civilization in India.>>

What does "indigenous Vedic tradition" have to do with *PIE again? Vedic
civilization can be indigenous, but what does that have to do with Danish,
which is IE but not V-E-D-I-C? And what the hell happened to the Dravidians
- or did they not share in this glorious cultural continuity?

You start with language, then you suddenly switch to selling a whole
civilization. THAT IS WHY there is a credibility problem. IE has been the
language of many, many different "material cultures." Most of them do not
have "Vedic tradition" as a common denominator.

*PIE on the other hand is a linguistic concept. It is a comparatively
derived construct that comes from the languages of a dozen or so cultures,
most of which share no clear cultural continuity with pre-Vedic or Vedic, but
do have cultural continuity with older local elements that are as old as
anything in India. So this "civilization/continuity" business says nothing.

<<If the Vedic civilization is native to India and Vedic is an Indo-European
language and it can be shown archaeologically to have cultural continuity
back to neolithic Mehrgarh, then this completely changes both the dates (and
the possible origin) of the IE languages.>>

Well, Danish civilization is native to Denmark and Danish is an Indo-European
language and it CAN be shown to have cultural continuity back to the
neolithic times... so? I don't get it. What are you proving?

And BTW whose dates? What dates are you talking about? There isn't a damn
culture on earth that can't be shown to have some cultural continuity back to
neolithic times. The only thing that interferes with cultural continuity is
innovation or disappearance. What does this have to do with IE languages?

<<To postulate that you have a civilization that is archaeologically
demonstrably overwhelmingly Vedic and that they kept all of their practices
but suddenly and completely changed their language without any convincing
archaeological evidence is special pleading indeed.>>

Kept all their practices? What, they stayed in the stone age? This falls
under the category "The Worst of Kossina Reborn a Half-a-Contnent Away."
Basically, the fact is that even if these proto-Vedics kept all their
practices and stayed in the stone age (which they didn't), the rest of IE
certainly did not share those practices. So this "archaeologically
demonstrably overwhelmingly Vedic" evidence doesn't support a darn thing
regarding IE languages, UNLESS somewhere there's some IE writing on any of
it. Meanwhile, if you want an example of a language change with no radical
change in cultural continuity, try looking right next door at
Sumerian/Akkadian.

And what actually takes extra-special pleading is leaving Dravidian out of
this whole scenario.

<<While the linguistic question may be autonomous, the search for truth
about the origins of IE is not. This is something that will only be resolved
through a multi-disciplinary approach.>>

Fine. Let's start with what you mean by IE.

If you mean anything more than a family of languages, then define what that
is. If not, take a little time to figure out why the Vedic language is often
placed so late in the development of the IE tree. Start your proof there.

If you mean by IE some bigger idea, well then you really need to answer
another big question. Which is how archaeology can be bent to support an
archaeologically unsupportable theory. Archaeology has no way of identifying
a pre-literate language. If you need linguistic help for that, then you are
back at learning why Vedic is not a tolerable candidate for *PIE.

<<This is an internet chat room not a refereed journal. Let down your hair!
Think dangerous thoughts!>>

Here's a dangerous thought. The neolithic revolution came to India out of
the middle east and far east and had nothing to do with IE languages until
thousands of years later, when IE served as a unifying trade language among
diverse Dravidian and other speakers who had already developed advanced
bronze age cultures. Try that one on the India "Urheimat" chat room if you
want to know what dangerous is.

Steve Long