Re: who are indus people?

Hello Kishore,

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Kishore patnaik" <kishormohan@...>
wrote:

> It is said Telugu people are said to be of Dravidian origin

This isn't merely "said": it is _certain_. Telugu is, under all
aspects, a Dravidian language.

> and so are the Indus valley people.

That the Indus people(s) were Dravidian speakers is, on the
contrary, just one theory among many which is, moreover, not
supported by the most recent studies on the substrate (= non-IE)
words found in the earliest layers of the Rgveda. Actually, to date
nobody knows which language(s) the Indus people spoke.

> While I do not believe in this classification, I believe that both
> Indus people and Telugu people belong to the same classification,
> what ever it is.

Why so (see above)? You are -- perhaps inadvertently -- merely
suggesting that the Indus people(s) were Dravidian speakers, for
Telugu _is_ a Dravidian language.

> The reasons are given in my earlier message.

In your earlier message you had suggested that the Indus Valley folk
and the Brahuis spoke/speak a Dardic language with Dravidian
influences!

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/31443

> There is a language called Brahui in Balucistan. It closely
> resembles Tamil but it is not a Dravidian langauge. It is a Dardic
> language. Similarly, in the same belt, the Kashmiri is a Dardic
> language. The Indus people lived some where in between or at least
> very close to these two places -- Balucistan and Kashmir. Then,
> there is a reasonable possibility that they should be speaking
> a Dardic language too and it is more likely that they should be
> speaking a language which has some characteristics of Dravidian
> language -- since Balucistan is nearby...

In the same post you had also written:

> I have argued and perhaps, without much opposition, that the
> language of Paisaci (a forerunner of Prakrit Andhra) has these
> characteristics. So, it is quite likely that the Andhras who were
> speaking Prakrit Andhra were residing in Indus valley.

Paisachi, a probably artificial (and only literary?) Middle Indo-
Aryan language of classical India for the reconstruction of which
only little little evidence has survived, may be a "forerunner of
Prakrit Andhra" (a Middle Indo-Aryan language the kings of the
Satavahana dynasty of the ancient Deccan used in their
inscriptions), but this doesn't mean the common people of present
Andhra Pradesh -- the Satavahanas' homeland -- did not speak Old
Telugu, a _Dravidian_ language! The oldest Prakrit inscriptions on
stone and copper from the Andhra region contain many Old Telugu
place names and personal names. This indicates that Old Telugu was
one (probably the most widespread) of the languages spoken by the
people(s) of that region.

Now, you seem to argue that Telugu was originally a Middle-Indo-
Aryan language, that the Indus people "originally" spoke a Dardic (=
Indo-Aryan) language, and that, FOR THESE REASONS, the historical
Andhras could have migrated from the Indus Valley to the Deccan in
the protohistoric period. Am I right? Yet, how can you come to such
far-fetched conclusions if the premises of your argument are so
shaky?

> On the other hand, it is also possible that Indus valley
> civilization is a Jain Yaksha civilization.

What do you mean by "Jain Yaksha" civilization?

Regards,
Francesco