--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...>
wrote:
>
> >
> > I have clearly mentioned what is the dffierence- undeniable
> > indic aryan influence , quite strong, is present on mittani.
> > However, it is not to be surmised that it points to an Aryan
> > Aristocracy ( say, as postulated by subhash kak).
>
> Please leave Kak out of this and any future discussion
> with myself. I consider him a rank crackpot and well
> below the level of serious consideration.
>
Subhash Kak has done good and original work on the mathematics and
astronomy implicit in Vedic texts and rituals. Very few would have
been qualified to seize the relevant information in the sources, as
few Sanskritists know enough maths and astronomy, and vice versa.
Admittedly, he's gone off on a tangent, too, as in his contrived
speculation that the numbers of hymns in the Veda samhitas were
chosen so as to correspond to the number of days in single or
combined planetary cycles (which, mea culpa, I've once cited from him
myself). And his work becomes cranky when he ventures into
linguistic speculation, though only to a mediocre extent, i.e. not
more than the average rejection of the IE/Dravidian distinction and
of the Indic-European kinship by other OIT stalwarts.
Then again, Kak's foray into the unfamiliar domain of linguistics is
not really crankier than that of philologists trying their hand at
the astronomical argument. Just as OIT non-linguists blindly sweep a
solid tradition of scholarship from the table in denying IE
linguistics, the argument about astro-chronological evidence shows
the same behaviour among astronomically illiterate philologists.
There, you can see a whole crowd of philologists assuring each other
that inconvenient astronomical data (which e.g. place the
linguistically very post-Vedic Vedanga Jyotisha in ca. 1350 BC,
pushing the Rg-Veda way out of its conventional time-slot of 1500-
1200 BC) are merely imprecise, not realizing the unlikely implication
that in that case, the pioneering author of the astronomical treatise
must have described the full moon as standing in one well-known
constellation while seeing it with his own eyes as standing in
another constellation. All in the same cavalier manner as OIT
hotheads claiming that Greek looks similar to Sanskrit only because
of areal influence rather than kinship.
Kind regards,
KE