Re: Meaning of Aryan: now, "white people"?

Sounds like there is some fascinating work to be done.
I don't have van Driem's book and here in El Salvador
the only thing I can find is on the web.
It sounds like Dravidian is in serious need of
historical linguistics --to sort out the substrate,
etc.
At the same time, someone could figure the real story
of Brahui. I saw an article (Hock, I think) that
claims that the other N. India Dravidian languages
came from the SW and influenced Kolto (Nahali) on the
way north. Looking at a list of Brahui words, it does
seem to be an outlier with much more than say a
thousand years of separation. But many have pointed
out that its adstrate is Balochi rather than any
language that would have been in the region say 3,000
year ago.


--- Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Hi Rick,
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> <gabaroo6958@...>
> wrote:
>
> > There is some Vedda substrate in the Vedda dialect
> of Sinhala,
> > from what I read, but I gather it's not very
> substantial.
> > Is there a Vedda substrate in Sinhala as a whole?
> Wikipedia
> > mentions a substrate in S. Dravidian but doesn't
> state if it's
> > Vedda or not. Is there any way to tell?
>
> From M. Witzel's paper on South Asian substrate
> languages in _Mother
> Tongue_, Special Issue, Oct. 1999:
>
>

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/MT-Substrates.pdf

>
> << The South is frequently supposed to have been
> Dravidian from times
> immemorial. However, in the refuge area of Nilgiris
> with their
> isolated Drav. tribes (Toda, etc.), we find a
> substrate, see
> Zvelebil 1990, 63-70. Isolated words indicating this
> pre-Drav.
> substrate (Zvelebil 1990: 69f., Zvelebil 1979: 71f.)
> include the
> following Irula words: mattu 'lip', Do"kene, dekene,
> Dekena,
> Dekkada 'panther', ovarakaGku, OrakaGku, OraGgeku,
> OraGge,
> Orapodu 'tomorrow' (unless DEDR 707 Tam. uR2aGku 'to
> sleep'),
> buNDri 'grass hopper' (unless DEDR 4169), muTT(u)ri
> 'butterfly'
> (unless DEDR 4850 miTL 'locust'), vutta 'crossbar in
> a house'. These
> instances should encourage Drav. specialists to look
> for substrates
> in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, etc. However, just like
> the propagators
> of indigenous "Aryans" in the North, Dravidians of
> the South
> frequently think that they are autochthonous. >>
> [Note:
> Anthropological literature says that Irulas possess
> "Negrito"
> morphological features -- Francesco]
>
> << In Sri Lanka, the remnant population of the Vedda
> now speaks
> Sinhala (De Silva, M.W. Sugathapala, Vedda language
> of Ceylon; texts
> and lexicon. Mu"nchener Studien zur
> Sprachwissenschaft. Beiheft n.F.
> 7. Mu"nchen: R. Kitzinger, 1972). The substrate that
> they may have
> preserved is in urgent need of thorough study,
> carried out by
> comparing Pali, Sinhala and Tamil words. Some
> typical words,
> interestingly many with geminates, that cannot be
> linked either to
> Sinhala or to Tamil are: cappi 'bird', munDi
> 'monitor lizard',
> potti 'a kind of bee', panni 'worm', rukula 'home,
> cavity' (see de
> Silva 1972 : 16; his vocabulary, pp. 69-96, does not
> contain
> etymologies). >>
>
> << [E]xcept for the few items pointed out for the
> Vedda and Nilgiri
> languages, the prehistoric linguistic situation of
> South India
> (before Dravidian) is entirely unclear: in this
> respect, a lot of
> spade work needs to be done by Dravidian
> specialists. >>
>
> I recall that G. van Driem treats the subject of the
> alleged Vedda
> substrate in Sinhalese extensively in his _Language
> of the
> Himalayas_ (while I'am not sure he does the same
> with the alleged
> Nilgiri substrate). I think you may have access to
> that book to
> study the matter further.
>
> > Were there any Dravidian languages in Sri Lanka
> before the arrival
> > of Sinhala? Or was Tamil the first to arrive? I'm
> guessing Tamil
> > arrived not too long after Sinhala.
>
> This is also what I am inclined to think judging
> from what I've read
> on this subject, but mind that tens of thousands of
> people have died
> in Sri Lanka in the past twenty-odd years due to the
> opposite views
> held, respectively, by the Sinhalese and the Tamils
> on this very hot
> historical issue; better don't touch it if you don't
> want to get
> burned!
>
> Best wishes,
> Francesco
>
>

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