Re: Substrate language which contributed sar

> [ Extraordinary claims (in this case, the nonexistence of a Dravidian language family,
> unrelated to Indo-European) require extraordinary evidence ]
>
> The claim that looks extraordinary is pretty straightforward and wd be so for every body
> who reads Rigveda and understands making of words

Or so you believe.

> this is just a tip of iceberg that i opened up, rest wd come in proper forum in appropriate
> manner,I wd correct and change the entire dogmatic views thats created in last 150 Yrs.

Talk is cheap. We'll see. :)

> I think differently than your assumption, I wd rather present another perspective in the line
> of sense you ventured into, the belief made by western scholars that Vedic people who
> made Vedas and other vedic literature has been unaware of writing is a utter nonsense.

I was not talking about the Vedic peoples here, but the Dravidian peoples. And all the other indigenous peoples of the world whose languages were not written down until recently (if at all).

> [The default position to hold should be that of inertia: Dravidian languages exist as
> separate now, therefore they existed as separate earlier]
>
> Yes, however, note that Its already highlighted a sanskrit speaking Vedic Rishi Agastya
> shaped up Tamil in the form of a structured language backed up by grammar by initiating
> Sangam movement

It's a known phenomenon that ancient written grammars of languages were largely shaped after the grammar of the current prestige language. E.g. some of the earliest Finnish grammars to have been written were presented in a shape very similar to that of Latin; it doesn't mean that Finnish descends from Latin, it means that the ancients did not know much about the variety of grammars that can exist in the world's languages. They knew nothing more than Latin (or, Sanskrit, as may be the case) and attempted to shove every square (or triangular, or octahedral, or star-shaped) peg they encountered into the same circular slot. Written grammars of this type are poor evidence and must be considered only in close comparision to what later, less presumptious descriptions of the language show.

More specifically: if there is a Very Old Tamil that is supposedly a lot like Sanskrit, but also a Slightly Less Old Tamil that is substantially different from Sanskrit, it won't do to present an explanation that accounts for the 1st but not the 2nd.

> however, stating that Tamil is a language existed even before existence of Sanskrit
> is no more than a blind belief as far as textual evidences goes

We don't need any textual evidence whatsoever; the fact that Tamil didn't descend from Sanskrit is perfectly well shown by its relationship to Kannada, Kurukh, Brahui, etc. The evidence comes from the spoken languages itself.

> However, your argument is pretty generic, in the 20th century, grammars are written
> afresh for many dialects in India and such dialects got status of language, Munda is one
> of such dialect, therefore, saying that that what exists as seperate now has had seperate
> existance earlier also is not always true.

"A is always true", "A is not always true" and "A is never true" are three very different statements. The fact that some new written languages (say, Chattisgarhi) have been established in recent times for what were previously considered simply dialects of e.g. Hindi (and Prakrits before that) also does in no way mean that any other recently created written language would have originally been a dialect of some other language.

Also, all languages have grammars. They are never "written afresh". The establishment of a written standard language does not in any way affect the status of a certain language variety as related to or unrelated to any other ones.

In short, you seem to be laboring under the elementary misconception that a written grammar is what constitutes an "actual language", and anything else is a "dialect", which would then be "corrupted variants" of the former. The reality is of course the exact opposite: spoken language varieties are the foundation, and some of them have been artificially elevated to the status of written languages.

_j.