--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "kishore patnaik"
<kishorepatnaik09@...> wrote:
>
> Traditionally, Indians were better at Linguistics.
Thousands of years ago they were better than any of their
contemporaries, but in the meantime there has been almost
no advancement in Indian linguistics, and in the last two
centuries or so the West has passed them by.
In addition ancient Hindu linguistics was compromised to
a certain degree by virtue of its being an adjunct to the
Vedic religion, and thus it was never a pure science in
the way that modern linguistics is able to be.
> The borrowings from Sanskrit are often underplayed. For eg.,
> if you consider the evidence of Mitannis,(1500 bce) it is
> clear that they are under the influence of purely Indic
> Sanskrit*,
That's not the case. There's no evidence of Sanskrit ever
being spoken in Mitanni. The Indo-Aryan language which
left impressions there was _not_ Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is a specific dialect of Indo-Aryan developed in
the subcontinent, and in the subcontinent alone, by Panini
and his school. All Indian dialects of Indo-Aryan, which
includes Sanskrit, demonstrate the loss of the Proto-Indo-
Aryan voiced fricatives, but which the Indo-Aryan dialect
of ancient Mitanni does not, which makes it impossible for
Sanskrit to even be the ancestor of that dialect, much less
identical to it.
Please, Kishore, we've been all over this a few times before.
Don't lead us around in circles.
> *bereft of Iranian impressions.
This inclusion is unnecessary, because noboby supposes any
Iranian impressions, and it also shows that you still don't
understand the significance of the terms 'Indo-Iranian' and
'Proto-Indo-Iranian'.
'Indo-Iranian' doesn't mean "Indian with an Iranian imprint',
and neither does it mean 'Iranian with an Indian imprint'.
> Evidently, Sanskrit came into being prior to 1500 bce and what is
> important to note that this kind of influence on Mitannis seem to
> be running deeper than in mere language or science of chariots.
> You would note that only the Kings were allowed to assume names in
> Sanskrit and no one else.
Again, the names weren't in Sanskrit, but in another dialect
of Old Indo-Aryan, and we have no evidence to think that non-
royals were forbidden to use such names. We have no reason
to suppose that people in Mitanni of non-Aryan heritage had
any _interest_ in using Indo-Aryan names. Why would they?
If you moved to the U.S., Kishore, and all of your descendants
remained here for some generations, it might be found in the
future that the first three or four generations of your family
always used Indian names, but that wouldn't be because Indians
in the U.S. aren't allowed to use English names. Would it?
> This goes on to show that Indo Aryans were more of a sociological
> reference group to Mitannis rather than mere influencers .
Rating something like influence on a scale is a difficult thing
to do, and it will tend to be difficult to do objectively, but
given the fact that the Indo-Aryan language of Mitanni did in
fact die out in a relatively short time, leaving the Hurrian
language in place just as it was before the Aryans came, it's
not out of line to say that Indo-Aryan had a limited influence
there.
> This would lead us to think that Sanskrit must have had a lofty
> and rich heritage in order to grow to such an extent of being a
> reference group towards 1600 or so.
Languages can't be lofty or rich. They're simply systems by
which we communicate with each other. On what objective basis
can we say that it's better to call the four-legged animal
that chases cats 's^van' than it is to call it 'dog', 'hund',
or 'perro'? There is none, and ranking languages as you are
trying to do is an illegitimate exercize ascribable only to
ethno-centrism. Good linguists, just as any good scholars,
eschew such things.
No language can be any loftier or richer than another, just as
no race is better than another. All that is implied by the
imposition of a language, such as might have happened to a very
limited degree in ancient Mitanni, is that the _speakers_ of
the language had the military might to impose themselves. The
situation tells us absolutely nothing at all about the nature
of the language itself.
> Arguably, Iranian languages could not boast of such background,.
Nonsense, and any adult should be ashamed to go around boasting
about anything. Do you know anything of the Zand Avestak and
its language, about Old Persian or Pahlavi and their literatures
that you can say such things, Kishore?
> There is no proof to say that Iranian languages existed prior to
> 1000 bce.
>
> In other words, IIr is a mere conjecture -
We've already been over this too. Proto-Indo-Iranian is most
certainly not mere conjecture. It's impossible for any sane
person who is actually familiar with the languages to believe
that the Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups aren't related, and
upon careful examination it can be seen that no language in
either group can possibly be ancestral to any in the other.
The logical and inescapable conclusion then is that both
groups descended from a common ancestor. Since that ancestor
gave rise to both the Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups, we, by
normal convention of linguistics, refer to it the family as
'Indo-Iranian' and its necessary ancestor as 'Proto-Indo-
Iranian'.
> or you have to equate IIr with Sanskrit from which the Persian
> languages have grown.
Absolutely not. Iranian retains the voiced fricatives of
Proto-Indo-Iranian which were lost in Indo-Aryan, including
Sanskrit, so we can't possibly derive any Iranian language
from Indo-Aryan. Likewise Indo-Aryan, including Sanskrit,
retained the aspirated whisper-voiced stops of Proto-Indo-
Iranian, and so we can't possibly derive any Indo-Aryan
language from Iranian either.
These are by no means the only features showing the manner
in which the two groups are related, but merely two oustanding
ones that came first to my mind.
> Now,. my question is can you negate with certainty what I am
> talking above from the view point of Linguistics?
We already have, several times now.
> For eg., it is only a statistical probability that the direction
> of borrowings are determined. If you are clever enough, you can
> prove that the Indian word Jagannath owes its origin to Juggernaut
> using the same Linguistic principles.
No, you can't. This is merely your misunderstanding of the
matter, not the facts.
For one thing, what etymological connection is there between
'Juggernaut' and any other English word? Are the roots at
all analyzable in English or Germanic? Try the same with
Sanskrit and its family and you'll get much better results.
> (which is obviously , leading to the wrong direction of borrowings)
> In other words, the principles of borrowings of Linguistics are
> not absolute in their conclusions.
On the contrary some of them are absolute, though the question
of the Indo-Aryan dialect of Mitanni or the existence of Proto-
Indo-Iranian doesn't hinge on any question about the direction
of borrowing of any loan words, and which again shows that you
don't understand the terms of the question. You can't merely
borrow from Indo-Aryan to produce Iranian, or vice versa, and
you can't even derive one from the other by means of evolution.
> This is what I am trying to say. I want to know in as simple
> words as possible, the flaws in my conclusions.
As simply as possible:
The Indo-Aryan dialect of ancient Mitanni was not Sanskrit.
The Indo-Aryan dialect of ancient Mitanni and Sanskrit were
indeed related, just as you are related to your uncle, brother,
cousin, or nephew, Kishore.
The Indo-Aryan dialect of ancient Mitanni wasn't ancestral to
Sanskrit, and Sanskrit wasn't ancestral to the Indo-Aryan
dialect of Mitanni, just as you are neither father nor son to
your uncle, brother, cousin, or nephew.
The Indo-Aryan dialect of ancient Mitanni and Sanskrit had
besides each other many other brothers, and their father we
call 'Proto-Indo-Aryan'.
Avestan and Old Persian also had besides each other many
other brothers, and we call their father 'Proto-Iranian'.
Proto-Indo-Aryan and Proto-Iranian, it turns out, were
brothers to one another, and we call their father 'Proto-
Indo-Iranian'.
Proto-Indo-Iranian himself had several brothers, including
Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic, Proto-Celtic, etc., and their
father we call 'Proto-Indo-European'.
Now surely Proto-Indo-European had brothers too, but no
records have been left, and none of the fossil DNA is in
good enough condition to do a test, and so we don't who
those brothers might have been.
David