Re: Mitanni and Matsya

From: david_russell_watson
Message: 56481
Date: 2008-04-03

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
>
> Who is Kakawallah? what is kaka??

That's Rick's attempt at sarcasm.

Forgive him for he doesn't yet take you seriously, Kishore.

> IA adstrate upon Hittite languages is long established but why
> pre vedic?

Because the Vedas were composed in a dialect of Indo-Aryan
that had already lost the 'z' and 'z^' sounds of Proto-Indo-
Iranian, but which the dialect of Mitanni had retained.

> When obviously their documents are listing vedic gods

They're "Vedic" gods only in as much as they appear in the
Vedas _too_. However, as this very case shows, they're not
Vedic only, and go back to common Indo-Aryan.

> after a long list of Sumerian etc gods?

Not Sumerian, but Hurrian.

> There is no proof to show that Varuna et al were pre vedic gods.

The Mitanni documents are that proof, once it's understood
that the Indo-Aryan loanwords therein belong to a stage of
Indo-Aryan older than Vedic.

> The IA roots of Mitanni is no doubt strained reading

If by this you mean that it's strained to claim Indo-Aryan
roots for the Mitanni language, then you're quite correct.
Actually, it's not just strained but completely impossible.
Hurrian isn't even an Indo-European language, much less an
Indo-Aryan one.

> but calling Mitanni pre vedic is casual reading.

It's probably time to define exactly what we each mean by
'pre-Vedic'.

If you're using it to refer merely to something happening
prior in time to the composition of the Vedas, indifferent
to the evolution of whichever language, then you may have
at least the beginnings of a legitimate argument, setting
aside for the moment other evidence used to date the Vedas
and the arrival of Aryans in Mitanni.

However if we're using "pre-Vedic" to refer to a stage in
the evolution of Indo-Aryan earlier than that to which the
Vedic language belongs, as Rick is using it, then the Indo-
Aryan dialect of Mitanni most certainly was pre-Vedic, as
proved by its aforementioned retention of sounds that were
lost in Vedic.

David