Re: Indo-Aryan? No. Indian language union (sprachbund)

[Navaratna Rajaram]

 

    Edwin Bryant is an illiterate when it comes to Sanskrit but has gained some legitimacy as an expert on India because Indians take him seriously.

 

    He has no qualifications to sit in sanctimonious judjment over what positions scholars should or should not take.

 

N.S. Rajaram

On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 11:39 PM, S. Kalyanaraman <kaly...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/indo-aryan-no-indian-language-union.html

The recent discussion article of Nicholas Kazanas http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.in/2012/07/semantics-of-indo-aryan-controversy-dr.html -- Semantics of Indo-Aryan Controversy -- Dr. Nicholas Kazanas' Article, comments and response (July 2012) -- takes us back to the discussions sought to be promoted by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton who edited a 535-page book titled 'Indo-Aryan Controversy - Evidence and inference in Indian History' (2005, Routledge). The views of Bryant and Patton can be summarised from the following two quotes: 

Quote 1: "To conclude the discussion of the data, then, while the horse and chariotevidence cannot be simply brushed aside, it will only be the decipherment of thescript that will prove decisive in this whole issue to the satisfaction of most scholars,since the recent discovery suggests that the script could go back to 3500 BCE (providing, of course, that it encapsulates the same language throughout). If itturns out to be a language other than Indo-Aryan, then obviously the Indigenist position need no longer detain the consideration of Indologists or serious scholarsof ancient history. In my opinion, this eventuality will be the only development that will convince a large number of scholars that the Aryans were, indeed, immigrants into India. On the other hand, an Indo-Aryan decipherment will radicallyalter the entire Indo-European homeland-locating landscape, not just the proto-history of the subcontinent. If it is Indo-Aryan, everything  will need to be recon-sidered   –  Indo-Aryans, Indo-Iranians, and Indo-Europeans. We can note thatVentris, the decipherer of Linear B script from Crete, was amazed to see Greek emerge from Linear B –  he was expecting to see a pre-Indo-European language,the consensus gentium of his day. The answer, after all is said and done, is writtenon the seals. If it is not Indo-Aryan, then the standard Migrationist scenario willlikely remain an excellent rendition of events which can always be updated and improved as new evidence surfaces." (Edwin Bryant, Page 511) 

 

Quote 2: Barring any new discoveries, neither internal evidence from the Veda, nor archaeological evidence, nor linguistic substrata alone can make the turning point in any given hypothesis. This situation should be the most persuasive case of all for schol-ars to allow the questions to unite them in interdependence, rather than suspicions todivide them in monistic theory-making. It is far too early for scholars to begin taking positions and constructing scenarios as if they were truths. Rather, it is time for scholars to rewrite and then share a set of common questions, such as the ones artic-ulated earlier. Then, a lack of conclusive evidence can be a spur for further research,rather than a political bludgeon which wastes precious intellectual resources. (Laurie Patton, Page 30). Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/54128303/Bryant-Edwin-and-Laurie-Patton-Ed-the-Indo-Aryan-Cotroversy

A new discovery? A decipherment of Indus script?

In my view, a melting of the glaciers that separate the 'invasionists' and 'indigenists' can occur if an agreement can be reached on the nature of the Indian language union (sprachbund) ca. 3500 BCE. The links provided at the above-mentioned blogpost do NOT include discussions on the Indian sprachbund. 

I suggest that the discussions may start with this topic of Indian sprachbund articulated in: Emeneau, 1956; Kuiper, 1948; Masica, 1971; Przyludski, 1929; Southworth, 2005).

Emeneau, MB, 1956, India as a linguistic area, Language 32, 1956, 3-16.

Kuiper, FBJ, 1948, Proto-Munda words in Sanskrit, Amsterdam, 1948; 1967, The genesis of a linguistic area, IIJ 10, 1967, 81-102

Masica, CP, 1971, Defining a Linguistic area. South Asia. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Przyludski, J., 1929, Further notes on non-aryan loans in Indo-Aryan in: Bagchi, P. C. (ed.), Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in Sanskrit. Calcutta : University of Calcutta: 145-149

Southworth, F., 2005, Linguistic archaeology of South Asia, London, Routledge-Curzon.

-- 

S. Kalyanaraman

https://sites.google.com/site/kalyan97/national-water-grid

https://sites.google.com/site/indianoceancommunity1/

[Shrisha Rao]

El jul 29, 2012, a las 5:34 p.m., Navaratna Rajaram escribió:

> On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 11:39 PM, S. Kalyanaraman <kaly...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A new discovery? A decipherment of Indus script?
>
> In my view, a melting of the glaciers that separate the 'invasionists' and 'indigenists' can occur if an agreement can be reached on the nature of the Indian language union (sprachbund) ca. 3500 BCE. The links provided at the above-mentioned blogpost do NOT include discussions on the Indian sprachbund.

In this regard, see the recent paper "Indus writing is multilingual: a part-syllabic system at work":

http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/103/02/0147.pdf

This paper is probably not the last word on the subject, but it may have some insights of interest.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

> S. Kalyanaraman