--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Anthony Appleyard"
<a.appleyard@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
Soma means 'pressing, extract', and on that basis alone
could refer to the juice of any plant. But I think it's
fairly clear that _the_ soma, the original *sauma of the
important Proto-Indo-Iranian rite, invaryingly contained
extract of ephedra, possibly along with other varying
additions. The word amshu 'stem, shoot, ray' aptly describes
the ephedra bush, which has no leaves but rather clusters
of long thin tapered stems radiating from the ends of the
main branches. Although its suggested in a footnote 145 in
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~sanskrit/images/C._ASIA_.pdf
that 'amshu' could derive from a pre-I.Ir. substrate, or
be a wanderwort.
> 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.
Does Kalyanaraman think it was Dravidian, or does he still
think it was Prakrit? What _does_ he think? If you can
make sense of the page you directed us to, please do give
a summary of what he thinks was spoken, by whom, where,
and when. If you can do even just that, we can take up
the reasons he believes so later on. He uses words such
as "parole", "substrate", "Sprachbund", " and others in
such bizarre ways, that I have trouble trying to figure
what, if anything specific, he's trying to say. He has
even written recently of "a dialectical continuum of
Prakr.t, Siamese (Laua) and Tamir.. speakers, it appears
that the concordant parole was: milakkha" (See http://
groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivilization/message/47505).
In what world do Prakrit, Siamese and Tamil form a
"dialectical contiuum"? What is the "concordant parole"
in a dialectical continuum? In other words, someone
needs to decipher Kalyanaraman's "parole" before we can
try to make anything of his claim of deciphering the
I.V.C. script. In all of his voluminous writings and
posts, about the only consistent theme is that mainstream
or Western linguistics is wrong and needs to overhaul
itself, but no consistent, and certainly no logically
argued, alternative has ever been offered by him.
> 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.
No kidding? Didn't research like that begin over a
century ago, with constant review and revision ever
since? Aren't the conclusions published for reference?
Unless you're saying that Kalyanaraman believes he has
proved the I.V.C. language Dravidian, I don't see how
this is relevant to the question.
> 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?
Which Iranian languages? South-west Iran is an Iranian
frontier. If they do contain such loanwords, I still
don't see how that "shakes the very foundations of IE."
> Some say that the SSVC collapsed before the alleged Aryan invasion.
This is the last word that I heard/read, and which of
course means there could have been no Aryan "invasion",
or at least not of the I.V.C.
> Rigveda 2:12 verse 11 seems to say that the Indian god Indra had to
> search in the high northwest frontier mountains many years to find
> and slay Vrtra the dragon-spirit of drought and similar demons.
> (Security forces in the southeast of modern Afghanistan know well
> what it is like looking for bandits in that sort of country.) That
> sounds to me like thanks for rain coming at last after many years
of
> drought, rather than an ordinary winter drought.
Indra's an Indo-Iranian, not just an Indian, god, and
you're assuming that tales about him have something to
do with historical events. That's not necessarily the
case, but even so, I still don't see what it has to do
with Kalyanaraman's claim of decipherment.
David