Re: dating of aryans

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:

>
> For eg, if the Arkaim Culture of 17th century and that of Mitannis
> have something in common, that is Influence of Indic Aryans.
> Arkaim is a full blown civilization and so is that of Hurrians.
> In between how come the Indic Aryans are not only uncivilized
> nomads

'Uncivilized' in this context means no more than "not living in
cities". If you haven't already read it, please see my post at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/message/6772
where I write about transhumant pastoralists.

> inspite of having chariots (they are not exactly chariots, they
> are rathas)? And more interestingly, they have created a greater
> civilization of their own,

What exactly makes the civilization described in the Rig Veda, if
it can properly be called a civilization, any greater than that of
Mitanni?

> highly distinct

Aren't all cultures distinct?

> with complex potry

Is 'poetry' or 'pottery' intended?

> and rituals and identification (Gothras)

There's nothing particularly complex, advanced, or unique about
gotras. Nearly every other pre-modern culture in the world had
something very similar.

For those who don't know what gotras are, Kishore is basically
saying that traditional Hindus make a great effort to marry
within their tribe (jati) but outside of their patrilineage
(gotra).

> not only so very fast, probably in the next 100 years or so

Who says anything happened so fast? The aryanization of India
to the extent that we see it today was a long process, divided
into stages with each its own impetus.

> but also, it is something fantastic that this Aryan culture
> became substratum for the indegenous cultures of India, if
> any.

No, it's the other way around: the indegenous languages became
substrata to Indo-Aryan.

> The contradictory proposals that IE were wandering nomads and
> yet were held to have originated from a specific abode, and that
> they were primitive tribesmen and yet were able to formulate and
> utilize a language as intricate and complex as Indo European is
> a fallacy at best.

Neither Proto-Indo-European nor Sanskrit either one is as complex
as some modern languages spoken by peoples generally considered
fairly technologically primitive.

Though in fact the complexity you're referring to consists of no
more than using a large number of word inflections, but which is
really no big deal. English can do with its simple inflectional
system, prepositions, and word order anything and everything that
Sanskrit or Proto-Indo-European could do. The Chinese language
is even simpler still in that respect, and, again, fully capable
of conveying anything that a highly inflected language can.

Moreover even young children born into families using a highly
inflected language have no problem at all learning to use it.

> In India, they could rise to an Identification system that
> very scientifically prohibits endogamy,

You don't mean 'endogamy' but rather something like 'inbreeding'.
The traditional Hindu system does call for marrying within ones
jati, which falls under the heading of 'endogamy'.

> proving that the population available is quite large and does
> not indicate a small tribe.

It's just the opposite: the smaller the endogamous group is the
_greater_ the danger of marrying a close relative there is, and
hence the greater the need for something like a gotra system.

> Kosambi and others clearly derived that Gotra is pre varna. In
> other words, the migrations if any should have left a large
> trial of archaeological finds.

It's not clear what kind of migration you're talking about here.

You clearly don't deny that we find Indo-Aryans in Mitanni and
the subcontinent both, so obviously somebody did migrate at some
point in time.

> What is more fantastic that in every case, the IE was the
> substratum

How do you say "in every case"? In Mitanni Indo-Aryan remained
as no more than an adstratum or superstratum trace within a
dialect of Hurrian, while in North India is supplanted most of
the indigenous languages, the latter becoming its substrata.

> totally eradicating the ethnic culture almost without a trace.

In what case are they ever supposed to have eradicated a culture
without it leaving a trace? Dozens of posts to cybalist in the
last week alone have discussed such traces in Germanic, Celtic,
etc., and if you're referring to India specifically, then you're
especially wrong, as volumes have been devoted to examining the
non-Indo-European loans to the Indo-Aryan languages and to Hindu
culture.

> While the major branches of the main trunk of proto IE gathered
> strength , looked healthy and spread far and wide, the latter ,
> at the same time, withered, shriveled and failed to show any
> indication of life and vitality

Now it is you who reads like a "Romantic", attributing qualities
like strength, health, life, and vitality to languages. It's the
_speakers_ of a language whose chances of survival are effected
by their strength, health, or vitality, not their languages, which
merely rise or fall dependant on the success of their speakers.

> and disappeared from sight and
> was lost for ever without leaving any trace or mark that might
> lead to its identification, nor could any fossil remains of it
> be detected or found out , so that it could be inferred that such
> a society in such a stage of development existed at one time, on
> the surface of the earth.

The branches you've described as having "gathered strength, looked
healthy and spread far and wide" are the very "trace", "mark", and
"fossil remains" that allow us to infer "that such a society in such
a stage of development existed at on time".

> The old Romantists have given rise to the racial theories as well
> as the diffusion of Aryans from one specific area, other than
> India.
> While the racial theories that have been developed from these old
> beliefs were effectively refuted, since they do not fit into the
> western beliefs-

No, if "effectively" refuted they have been, then, logically, it
was not merely because they "do not fit into the western beliefs".

> especially since hold these theories in terror , post world wars,
> the linguistic theories giving rise to the AIT has been kept alive.

I can't make any sense of this part of your sentence.

> The liturgical, archaeological or proof from the traditions do
> not support such diffusion. The only proof that is there is the
> linguistics. But how this is reliable?

What archaeological proof is there contradicting that the Indo-
Aryan languages originated outside of India?

> In fact, there is evidence to prove that the laws of linguistics
> tree and borrowings were formulated mostly based on Rg Vedic
> geography.
>
> The Europeans have believed that, post Indus valley, the Aryans
> have migrated from West to East. Thus, the language in the
> books pertaining to East is thought to be more modern than those
> involving the Western area geography.(such as Punjab)
>
> These beliefs are incorporated into linguistics- the language
> of the books of west is archaic compared to that in the books of
> east. Accordingly, the three laws of linguistics are framed and
> based on this, the AIT is kept alive till today.

I don't know what the basis for any of these claims is, whether
it's all your own thinking or something you've found somewhere
online, but it's simply not true.

One good rule of thumb is: don't come to a list of linguists and
tell them what linguistics is or what linguistics says, but rather
let _them_ tell _you_.

David