Re: Indus Valley script decoded?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Anthony Appleyard"
<a.appleyard@...> wrote:

> --- "wtsdv" <liberty@...> wrote:
> > ... misapprehensions ... that soma was electrum, ...
>
> There are various lines of evidence (linguistic, archaeological)
> recently found that show that soma is an extract of a particular
> plant. I am not saying which plant. It is not the same plant as the
> various well-known abused drugs.

I believe that soma is the amanita muscaria. It is a nice mushroom,
red with white spots. It is possible to extract drinks from it, with
variable strength. In many regions of the world people use it. In
Russia, for example, in some district muscaria is used in funerals.
In some valleys of Piedmont these mushrooms are almost disappeared,
because many youngsters eat them getting terrible halucinations and
rave.

> Admittedly later Indian literature equates Soma with the moon etc.
> Likely by then Indian priests had stopped using Soma and people

were

> forgetting what Soma was. Rigveda 10:34 (probably a late hymn)
> describes Soma as Maujavata = "coming from the land of the Mu_ja
> people". Someone told me that that is the Pamir mountains. It could
> be that the expense of importing is one reason why they stopped

using

> it in India.

It is more probable that the use of soma ended because of fierce
persecutions when Buddhism became the official religion of India.
After some centuries, if I'm not wrong, Indians rebelled and
destroyed it restoring the ancient cults. Buddhists at those times
were not tolerant as today they seem. They were almost like Talibans.
In Tibet until recent times there was a theocratic tyranny, and
people could not kill even lizards or worms, if someone was caught
killing a stag or performing sodomitic acts was severly punished.
When fanatic Buddhism was finally annihilated in India, Indians
didn't remember how to prepare inebriating drinks. Dionysos left
India, probably forever.

> In the big article, many of the quoted words seem to be Dravidian.
> Enough to fit in with opinions that the SSVC's main language was
> Dravidian.

I have many doubts, but I have not yet read the article with the
necessary attention.

> The Sanskrit words quoted in the long article with them may be
> Sanskrit loanwords from Dravidian. To check that, find how many of
> those words appear in other IE languages.

These Sanskrit words are the clear signals of a crackpot work.
I often met something similar when I analysed an attempt to link
Guanche language (Afro-Asiatic) with Dravidian.

> The presence of Elamite and Brahui in the Dravidian and related
> family may show that Dravidian or related once was spoken in parts

of

> Persia, and if so, Iranian languages may contain Dravidian

loanwords:

> is that so?

I'm rather skeptical about a link of Elamite with Dravidian. There's
no similarity at all. I found many strange items in Indo-Iranian that
must came from substrate language(s), but nothing is undisputably
Dravidian.

> Some say that the SSVC collapsed before the alleged Aryan invasion.
> That could have been due to a long drought, due to over-use of the
> land and deforestation and overgrazing, or from some other cause,
> like the long drought that put an end to the Old Kingdom of Egypt.

I

> suspect that before Man and his livestock and fires came, the

Indian

> monsoon and forest supported by it went much further into the
> northwest of India including the Indus plain, and the lower part of
> the River Sarasvati got plenty of water in the wet season from

local

> rain regardless of what the upper Sutlej and Yamuna flowed into.

I'm incline to think that Indus Valley civilization ended because of
the unending and terrible marauds of the Indo-Aryans tribes.

Regards

Marco