Re: Hindu noise-makers, Elst and OIT -- a review

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <koenraad.elst@...> wrote:

Dear listfolk,

 

sorry for not answering earlier, and even now only in a hurry.

 

F Brighenti's text I could not find, it's best if you provide URL's.

 

Talageri's chronology of the Rg-Veda is based on Oldenberg and other Western scholars, as he himself explains and specifies whenever the issue comes up. But for that, it is necessary to read his book, not a review. That e.g. book 6 is older than book 3 may not be universally acknowledged, but that the family books predate the others is a widely shared opinion, which I learned in university in the eighties, from AIT believing-profeesors and before the Aryan question became an issue again. And in this scheme, the elephant is mentioned before the Afghan animals, of whom the camel is only one.

 

Colin Masica's contribution to Aryan + non-Arya (1979) contains a claim that ushtra meant Buffalo in Vedic and camel only in the MBh. That is certainly disputed, but let's assume he is right. In that case, he proves the same thing as Talageri: an Indian animal early, an Afghan animal late. So, for what it is worth, the movement suggested is India to Afghanistan, not the reverse.

 

There is no funnel theory of the isoglosses in Talageri. HH Hock projects this approach onto Talageri, and then sets out to refute it. Talageri has most of the IE languages take shape after leaving India. He  should not have tried to put this process on a map, as we really don't know,-- though in that respect he does no worse than the many scholars who have attempted similar scheme elsewhere on the map, such as the much-quoted C Carpelan + A Parpola's situating the whole genealogy of both the Uralic and the IE families on the map of the Wolga area. He also underestimates the substratal influence of the native European languages in making the incoming IE dialects quickly grow apart into different languages. But otherwise, his treatment of the isoglosses is fine, and solves questions which the many existing genealogies of the IE language groups and their account of the isoglosses have failed to do.

 

Meanwhile, observation among Indo-European linguists teaches while those competent to defend the OIT can be counted on one hand, those capable of defending the AIT are, in spite of massive institutional support, not much more numerous. Precisely because the AIT is the established theory, students are spoonfed the AIT framework without questioning it. In their later work, they all just assume the AIT and its concomitant chronology without, for that, being capable of refuting alternative frameworks. Thus, many cite the centrality of the steppe Urheimat within the IE expansion area as an argument in favour; whereas even a layman can see that the application of this same principle would make Panama or so the homeland of Amerind, Zambia or so the homeland of Bantu, Turkmenistan the homeland of Turkic, mid-Siberia the homeland of Russian, Libya the homeland of Arabic, etc.

 

One German professor who tried to argue this point, said that Austronesian (which is deemed to have originated in its northern corner, viz. Fujian/Taiwan, and not at all in its centre) was given this homeland following the criterion of greatest diversity, which should be greater near the homeland. Fine. But the Wolga region is by no means the area of greatest diversity. For a millennium or so, the only IE language spoken there, for thousands of miles at a stretch, as Scythian Iranian. Later, just as lonely, it became Russian. Areas of far greater diversity are any areas where two IE language families border each other, and especially the Balkans, meeting-place of Slavic, Germanic, Romance, Albanian, Greek and Indo-Aryan (Romany). Secondly, the southward expansion of Austronesian contrasting with the total absence of a northward expansion (which the professor attributed to the presence of the strong Chinese) illustrates my point, viz. that the factors determining the direction of expansion and constraining it, may be of many kinds, but are rarely geographically symmetrical. That is why Bantu expanded southeastwards from the West-African Sahel, into areas fit for agriculture and animal husbandry, and not northward into the Sahara. And that is why it was perfectly possible for the Indo-Europeans to expand from NW India all the way to the Atlantic coast, rather than symmetrically in both directions from the Wolga area.

 

Kind regards,

 

Koenraad Elst   

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <frabrig@...> wrote:

 

 

Koenaraad Elst wrote:

 

> I have already opened two lines of argument: one about languages families

> tending to expand from a corner rather than from the centre,

 

This “bottleneck” or “funnel” theory of language expansion – remember that only the Khyber and Bolan passes connect NW South Asia to Central Asia! – is very suspicious to start with...

 

> and a second about the Rg-Vedic gradient from east to west, as shown by the

> appearance of biological and geographical names in its early and late part.

 

On Hindu nationalist bank clerk Talageri’s decrees on what are the “early” and “late” Books of the Rg-Veda (which assumptions you seem to accept without any reservations), see my e-mail exchange with M. Witzel soon after Talageri’s 2008 book was published:

 

_________________________________________________________

 

My mail to M. Witzel (May 24, 2008):

 

> > Dear Michael,

> >

> > Talageri's main "revolutionary" argument now seems to be

> > the following chronological sequence for the compositions of the

> > mandalas of the RV:

> >

> > old: book 6, 3, 7;

> > middle: 2, 4;

> > late: 5, 1, 8, 9, 10.

> >

> > ...from which it would descend a "new" Rigvedic geography having

> > Haryana and the Ganga-Yamuna Doab as its "heartland"

> >

> > According to Elst, the supposed 3rd mill. BCE Rigvedic Aryans would have been

> > distinct from the Harappans, their *western* (!) neighbors. See Elst’s post at

> >

> > http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/cybalist/conversations/messages/58813

> >

> > Regards,

> > Francesco

 

Witzel’s reply (May 24, 2008):

 

> Yes, I had seen Elst. I wonder whether Talageri has read Oldenberg (in English) by now

> (Elst seems to indicate it twice) -- but to no avail: He still has his crazy ordering of the

> RV books and "conclusions" drawn from it for a N. Indian homeland.

>  

> I think his order now differs somewhat for his earlier one (?) based on wrong non-Oldenberg

> paradigmata. No time to check. Elst writes:

>  

> > old: book 6,3,7;

> > middle: 2,4;

> > late: 5,1,8,9,10 ???

>  

> Oldenberg would instead have 10 and RV 1.1-50 as late but would not be so clear about 5, 8, 9.

> (9, he thinks, refers back to the earlier books 2-7, etc.)

>

> Why 3 and 7 are early is beyond me: Puru-Bharata books!

> Also: why 4 is middle?

> One can discuss 2 and 5 as later than 4, 6...

>  

> Anyhow, who cares?

>  

> Michael

___________________________________________________________

 

(Koenraad continues:)

 

> So, you may answer these first before I set myself to answering your additional

> challenges. You may, for instance, explain how the Aryan invaders encountered

> the Indian elephant first (that word again!)

 

I have just uploaded two files in the List’s Files section, which are the outcome of some past discussions I had on these two linguistic topics:

 

1) Sanskrit ibha 'elephant'.docx

 

2) Proto Indo-Iranian us^tra ‘camel’.doc

 

Kindly go through them and then tell me whether you are so sure that ibha- meant ‘elephant’ in the RV; moreover, tell me why Ancient Near Eastern terms for ‘camel’ are loans from Indo-Iranian.

 

Enough for now!

 

Best wishes,

Francesco

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear Francisco,

 

You may start with my review:

 

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.be/2009/01/great-book-about-great-book.html 

 

As for "first", it is too late to come up with anything as "first", for I have already opened two lines of argument: one about languages families tending to expand from a corner rather than from the centre, and a second about the Rg-Vedic gradient from east to west, as shown by the appearance of biological and geographical names in its early and late part. So, you may answer these first before I set myself to answering your additional challenges. You may, for instance, explain how the Aryan invaders encountered the Indian elephant first (that word again!) and the Bactrian camel later.

 

Kind regards,

 

Koenraad Elst

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

 

 

Koenraad Elst wrote:

 

> The whole point of this discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to

> finally get some people on both sides to really discuss the contentious

> issues, those that may make a difference. By contrast, so far the debate

> has been cloud by all sorts of diversions. In the present case, questions

> of the degree of Sanskit knowledge in Talageri’s, Fournet’s and Witzel’s

> case is one such diversion.

 

To start with, why don’t you tell us what is *YOUR* take on Shrikant Talageri’s implicit but transparent denial of the existence of an Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family? He reduces the genetic unity of Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages to mere “interaction” limited to a specific and late period, thereby suggesting nothing has ever been inherited from a common linguistic ancestor (i.e. from Proto-Indo-Iranian). What about Talageri’s negation of the most basic features and principles of historical linguistics and of Indo-European studies in spite of his claiming to address the issue of the Proto-Indo-European homeland? What about the absence from his works of basic words, generally appearing in the works and articles dealing with the Proto-Indo-European issues like cognate word, change, phonetic, correspondence, proto-language, etc.? What about his ridiculous map which mechanically (but unscholarly) translates the scheme of Indo-European isoglosses devised by H.H. Hock in geographical terms and ends up showing Proto-Greek in Afghanistan, Proto-Italic in Turkmenistan etc.?

 

If you wish to discuss Talageri’s works (and then Kazanas’, your own, etc.) on the so-called Out-of-India Theory, you should kindly reply to these and similar other preliminary questions *FIRST*.

 

Thanks and best regards,

Francesco

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Dear listfolk,

 

The whole point of this discussion, as far as I am concerned, is to finally get some people on both sides to really discuss the contentious issues, those that may make a difference. By contrast, so far the debate has been cloud by all sorts of diversions. In the present case, questions of the degree of Sanskit knowledge in Talageri's, Fournet's and Witzel's case is one such diversion. I don't care if anyone has the right background or not. Even village bumpkins can say the truth once in a while, and even qualified people may be wrong -- that is why they are challenged regularly by other qualified people.

 

Such questions are typical of both academics and Hindus: instead of dealing with the truth of the matter, they deal with the Adhikara ("entitledness") of the debaters concerned. Being of the anti-authoritarian generation (thrown out of a secondary school for growing my hair), I really don't care for this entitledness. As you can see for yourself surveying this debate, quite a few replies have already been wasted on these questions of Adhikara, and very few were about the actual AIT/OIT argumentation.

 

On the Hindu side, one of the main irritants, especially for the audience of the present list, is either the rejection of linguistics (as a "pseudo-science") altogether, or the attempt to try a linguistic argument for once but ignoring fundamental facts of this scholarly field, such as the distinction between genetic kinship and areal influence. With a record of truly laughable folk etymologies ("PN Oakisms"), Hindus should be extra careful not to mistake mere look-alikes (between, say, Munda and Sanskrit) for cognate words.

 

Kind regards,

 

Koenraad Elst

 

 

 

 

 

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <cybalist@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

 

Oregon based Living Tongues Institute for endangered languages conducted a project on Munda languages, Project team published a table of few Munda words, a sample. As usual, project team studies Munda words in isolation like students try to learn how to translate into a different language, They didn't investigate the origin of munda words in Sanskrit since project doesnt talk about Sanskrit, In the table below, I am prviding Sanskrit source of those few Munda words, some words have got direct origin in Sanskrit whereas some are taken from Hindi, the language spoken in surrounding Munda region. The methodolgy used in all such projects is ineffecient and error prone, since it doesn't study eco-system of a language and it's speakers, and as a result of such inefficent methodologies, Munda has become a language of Dravid family, Indian Linguistics have been obviously excelled in following outcome of such projects and pulishing their researches built on top of such errorneous outcomes.

 

From: Lalit Mishra <litsol@...>