Re: Contact between Indo-Aryans and Semites in India

From: Francesco Brighenti
Message: 66210
Date: 2010-06-19

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...> wrote:

> How did Mesopotamian myths reach India? How if Babylonian and
> Indian parallels reflect a common substratal Pre-Aryan = Pre-
> Semitic?

*IF* an echo or resonance of the Tiamat myth ever reached India (which is something I still doubt), it might have been carried there via direct or indirect sea trade with Mesopotamia. Some scholars have hypothesized that the trade connections linking the India-Pakistan coastal tracts on the Arabian Sea with the Gulf and Mesopotamia, established during the Mature Harappan period, continued well into the late second millennium BCE (by which time the Atharvavedic hymns started being composed). Anyway, all such hypotheses rest on very meager archaeological and literary evidence.

Regards,
Francesco