--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
>
> On 2008-01-22 07:47, kishore patnaik wrote:
>
> > Btw, I envisage today's scientist to be paranoic and your mail
seems to
> > be proving the point once more.
> >
> > Can you please explain why the thesis Mayans are connected to
> > India(which have undeniable archeaological and some linguistic
> > evidence) will destabilitze your theory that PIE has come from
> > Uzbekistan or wherever?
>
> Of course it would not destabilise anything and nobody here is
> eveluating it in this light. It's absurd on its own, not because
it goes
> against somebody's favourite scenario of IE origins (a completly
> different and unrelated issue).
I can't get rid of the nasty suspicion that Mr. Kishore Patnaik is
pretty aware of the absolute untenability of his (?) Mayan theory
and that the only reason we still hear from him is the desire to
reassert his sense of national pride which he seemingly perceives as
being hurt by "Western science", "traditional scholars" etc. Mr.
Kishore Patnaik may have personal grounds for it which I don't know.
And I'd never indulge in para-Freudian speculations regarding Mr.
Kishore Patnaik's behavior if only I could rationally explain his
continuous referring to Mayans from India theory as "indubitable",
"undeniable" and the like without bringing a shred of evidence to
support this claim, as well as his reproaching us with paranoia
himself demonstrating the worst kind of it. Now, if that is true,
can we bring this discussion back to linguistics, somehow? Or is it
hopeless?
> What's the linguistic evidence? The fact that a name like "Maya"
occurs
> here and there? Such a fact does not constitute evidence of
anything in
> linguistics. I've given you a link to a dictionary of Classical
Maya.
> Please show us the linguistic evidence of contacts with
> Sanskrit-speakers, which, as you claim, is "beyond doubt". Such
evidence
> is obvious and indeed indubitable e.g. in Malay and Indonesian.
The only example of "Maya-Sanskrit relations" which I could find is
yuk- "unite" which slightly reminds of Sanskrit yuj- "idem" (and
English 'yoke'). Needless to say that this similarity is purely
accidental. "Matches" like this can be found with other languages as
well. For instance,with Altaic:
k'in "day", "sun" Turkic kün
sak, sakal "white" Mongolian tsagaan
with Sumerian:
a' "water" Sumerian a
with FU:
tal- "come" Finnish tulla
with AA:
matan "offering (of grace)", "privilege" Hebr. matan, matana "gift"
mut "omen" Hebr. mavet "death"
ha', hi "this" Hebr. ha- (definite article)
(but I guess you can find more in Mormon writings)
with IE:
hun "one" Latin unus
and even xok [shok] "shark" English shark
Certainly a person with a wider linguistic competence than me (and
so are the most people on this list) would have found much
more "isoglosses". Now, shall we assume that speakers of all the
languages enumerated above did migrate to Mesoamerica, mix with each
other and became Maya?
> What's the "undeniable archaeological evidence"?
Yes, would be very interesting to hear.