Re: Origin of Sanskrit (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 70094
Date: 2012-10-01

Read a reliable history of Classical Sanskrit. I'm sure Richard and Francesco can recommend a good one. My knowledge of Sanskrit is about at the Wikipedia level. Keep in mind that to have a polished court language, you must have a sedentary court to recite it in. AFAIK, the first evidence of Sanskrit is c. 200 BCE but writing reached again c. 3-400o BCE. Panini lived c. 400 BCE and he was the one who codified Classical Sanskrit. FInd out what court or courts he served in and you may have a clue as to exactly where Classical Sanskrit arose. My understanding is that even in Vedic Old Indic, there were regional dialects in Vedic Old Indic (see Witzel), in the form of the texts we possess, goes back to about 1,000 BCE, although the events referred to are clearly from about 500 years earlier or so. Have you read Michael Witzel's articles? If not, read them.
The early history of Indo-Iranian has some conundrums, e.g. how do Dardic and Nuristani fit in? Are they Indian, Iranian or neither. If Indian, how early did they diverge? What if anything do they tell us about early Indic? 
And then, there's a Twilight Zone of Mitanni Indian, Sindos Indian and possible Indic substrate in Iran.


From: shivkhokra <shivkhokra@...>
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2012 1:15 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Origin of Sanskrit (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...)

 

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "shivkhokra" shivkhokra@ wrote:
> >
> > Does Sanskrit bear no relationship to the language used in Rg Veda?
> > If not what is Sanskrit derived from?
>
> The Indian languages usually described as Indo-Aryan are clearly related. What is more complicated is their precise relationships. As at least until recently the bulk of the Indo-Aryan languages of village India formed a dialect continuum, any tree may be expected to be fuzzy.
>
Here is an example of Sanskrit, Gatha and Pali:

Sanskrit_Gatha_Pali

Gatha was a language of the bards in Buddhist times.

Regards,
Shivraj