Re: [tied] Almost NO Indian or Iranian scholars active in IE lingui

29-02-2004 21:56, mkelkar2003 wrote:

> P & G:
>
> "The arguments for very early dates for Vedic have been
> rehearsed again and again, and rejected again and again. So it is possible
> that there is nothing racist in this at all, merely a refusal to publish
> (yet again!) unsubstantiated claims."
>
> mkelkar2003: I dont get it. Very early in relation to WHAT? If a Rig
> Vedic verse describes an ocean going river in the present tense that
> ceased to be that way around 3000 BCE as geologist have conformed,
> every single word in that verse must be older than that date.

Provided that the interpretation of the Vedic passage and the
identification of the river are both correct.

> Anyone can see that Sarasvati and Haraquitti

You mean <haraxVaiti:>.

> are similar words and it
> makes sense to construct a proto language to explain that similarity.
> But how can the "evidence" from such a mythical proto language be
> used to argue that one river was named after another by
> invading/migrating/vacationing people in either direction?

Proto-Indo-Iranian was not invented to explain this particular
correspondence. <sarasvati:> and <haraxVaiti:> match each other not
because they are "similar" but because they show regular (and
independently established) correspondences, segment for segment. They
demonstrably _are_ the same original name (not that it can't have been
applied to more than one river) filtered through the sound changes of
two closely related languages. We know which river was called
<haraxVaiti:> by the Iranians. The unambiguous identification of the
Vedic <sarasvati:> is difficult, but given the evidence I've seen so far
I wouldn't bet a penny on a river gone dry 3000 BC.

> For, if the
> words were not similar sounding you would not have a proto language to
> begin with. This is the scientific equivalent of conveting one's own
> feces into food. As a chemist i would love to do that, but
> unfortunately it violates the fundametnal laws of chemistry.

Oh, you'd love to... ;-)? But the reasoning is _not_ viciously circular,
so your objection doesn't apply. Let me reiterate that "similar
sounding" is not a criterion of relatedness. Cognate forms show
_systematic correspondences_ established on the basis of _other_
evidence; for example, the correspondence Skt. s- = Av. h- is supported
by scores of examples: soma- = haoma-, sapta = hapta, sakHa: = haxa:,
satya- = haiþiia- etc.

Piotr