Kikkuli text for training chariot horses, 2nd. mill. BCE
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Kikkuli text for training chariot horses, 2nd. mill. BCE
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
The Kikkuli text. Hittite training instructions for chariot horses in
the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE
http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2009.pdf
End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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hari....@indero.com
http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2009.pdf
This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
The author states firmly that it shows the indueuropean language process
and is in a pre-sanskrit form.
The desperate attempts to put horses in the indus complex cultures fail.
Horses came from the nw with the vedic age long after those cultures.
Peter T. Daniels
> http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
> accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
>
> It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
Turkey.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 9, 9:21 am, hari.ku...@indero.com wrote:
>
> >http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> > This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
> > accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
>
> > It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
>
> Turkey.
Kikkuli was in Hatti-land in what is now Turkey but he was supposedly
Mitannian and used Mitannian loan words in his horse training document
meanings of some of which words he attempted to explain in Hittite.
At its largest extent, the Mitanni kingdom/ empire spanned areas that
are now in several states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitanni
http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=File:Mitanni.jpg
Urartu, the supposed predecessor of the Mitanni kingdom is depicted
here as including the Lake Urmia region which is now in Iran.
http://asbarez.com/App/Asbarez/eng/2011/01/kingdom-of-urartu-map.gif
The Mitanni kingdom was known by other names too:
"This kingdom was known as the Maryannu, Nahrin or Mitanni to the
Egyptians, Hurri to the Hittites and Hanigalbat to the Assyrians. All
three names were equivalent and interchangeable", asserted Michael C.
Astour.[2] Hittite annals mention a people called Hurri (Ḫu-ur-ri),
located in north-eastern Syria. A Hittite fragment, probably from the
time of Mursili I, mentions a "King of the Hurri", or "Hurrians." The
Assyro-Akkadian version of the text renders "Hurri" as Hanigalbat.
Tushratta, who styles himself "king of Mitanni" in his Akkadian Amarna
letters, refers to his kingdom as Hanigalbat.[3]
> > The author states firmly that it shows the indueuropean language process
> > and is in a pre-sanskrit form.
... depending on how broadly Sanskrit form is defined. Even if
"Sanskrit" means "following Panini's rules" does Panini prescribe a
vocabulary thereby ruling out aika as a Sanskrit word?
proto-Indo-Aryan says Asko Parpola:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/jis16-17.pdf'
Peter T. Daniels
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 9, 9:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 9, 9:21 am, hari.ku...@indero.com wrote:
>
> > >http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> > > This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
> > > accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
>
> > > It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
>
> > Turkey.
>
> Kikkuli was in Hatti-land in what is now Turkey but he was supposedly
> Mitannian and used Mitannian loan words in his horse training document
> meanings of some of which words he attempted to explain in Hittite.
The text is in Hittite and was found at Bogazkoy, near Ankara. If it
had been written in Mittani (and we don't know where the Mittani
capital was), it presumably would have been in Hurrian or Akkadian.
> At its largest extent, the Mitanni kingdom/ empire spanned areas that
> are now in several states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitannihttp://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=File:Mitanni.jpg
>
> Urartu, the supposed predecessor of the Mitanni kingdom is depicted
> here as including the Lake Urmia region which is now in Iran.http://asbarez.com/App/Asbarez/eng/2011/01/kingdom-of-urartu-map.gif
Urartu is later.
> The Mitanni kingdom was known by other names too:
> "This kingdom was known as the Maryannu, Nahrin or Mitanni to the
> Egyptians, Hurri to the Hittites and Hanigalbat to the Assyrians. All
> three names were equivalent and interchangeable", asserted Michael C.
> Astour.[2] Hittite annals mention a people called Hurri (Ḫu-ur-ri),
> located in north-eastern Syria. A Hittite fragment, probably from the
> time of Mursili I, mentions a "King of the Hurri", or "Hurrians." The
> Assyro-Akkadian version of the text renders "Hurri" as Hanigalbat.
> Tushratta, who styles himself "king of Mitanni" in his Akkadian Amarna
> letters, refers to his kingdom as Hanigalbat.[3]
>
> > > The author states firmly that it shows the indueuropean language process
> > > and is in a pre-sanskrit form.
>
> ... depending on how broadly Sanskrit form is defined. Even if
> "Sanskrit" means "following Panini's rules" does Panini prescribe a
> vocabulary thereby ruling out aika as a Sanskrit word?
> proto-Indo-Aryan says Asko Parpola:http://www.helsinki.fi/~aparpola/jis16-17.pdf'
Most of the Indic "words" in Mittani texts are personal names, several
dozen of them.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 10, 1:57 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com"
>
>
>
>
>
> <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 9, 9:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 9, 9:21 am, hari.ku...@indero.com wrote:
>
> > > >http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> > > > This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
> > > > accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
>
> > > > It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
>
> > > Turkey.
>
> > Kikkuli was in Hatti-land in what is now Turkey but he was supposedly
> > Mitannian and used Mitannian loan words in his horse training document
> > meanings of some of which words he attempted to explain in Hittite.
>
> The text is in Hittite and was found at Bogazkoy, near Ankara. If it
> had been written in Mittani (and we don't know where the Mittani
> capital was), it presumably would have been in Hurrian or Akkadian.
The portion of the text that is germane to this thread is the Aryan
loanwords rather than the Hittite verbiage.
> > At its largest extent, the Mitanni kingdom/ empire spanned areas that
> > are now in several states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitannihttp://www.armeniapedia.org/index...
>
> > Urartu, the supposed predecessor of the Mitanni kingdom is depicted
> > here as including the Lake Urmia region which is now in Iran.http://asbarez.com/App/Asbarez/eng/2011/01/kingdom-of-urartu-map.gif
>
> Urartu is later.
Thanks for the correction.
yangg
> Most of the Indic "words" in Mittani texts are personal names, several
> dozen of them.-
***
Normally the next Aramazd Journal should include an article of mine on
loanwords in Hurrian.
Hope you can enjoy it...
Kind regards
A.
anal...@hotmail.com
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
>
> Kikkuli text for training chariot horses, 2nd. mill. BCE
>
> Tuesday, February 8, 2011
>
> The Kikkuli text. Hittite training instructions for chariot horses in
> the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE
>
The linguistics/archeological establishment largely considers that
horse-training and chariot warfare were brought into the ancient near
east by Indo Aryans. My gloss on it is that It was Indo-Aryans whose
language was somewhat Iranized on the way out of India.
M. Ranjit Mathews
wrote:
... or the way out of wherever they came from since the area dominated
by Indo-Aryan speech need not have been limited to India; it could
have included Gandhara (Afghanistan). The historic Iranian speech area
was not Iran and Afghanistan but Central Asia, to the north of the
latitudes of the Hindukush, Pamirs and Karakoram ranges. That is not
to say it spanned all those longitudes but more to say that I haven't
seen it averred that the Proto-Iranian speech area extended to the
south of those latitudes. If PIIr is dated to 2000+ BCE, that allows
for some Iranian presence to the south of those latitudes by the time
of the Mitanni. Where the Proto-Indo-Iranian speech area was and
whether PIIr was identical to early Vedic is outside the scope of this
discussion and will hopefully not be introduced into this thread.
Peter T. Daniels
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 10, 3:08 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 10, 1:57 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com"
>
> > <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > On Feb 9, 9:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 9, 9:21 am, hari.ku...@indero.com wrote:
>
> > > > >http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> > > > > This text says it was the second half of the 2nd millennium bc, fully in
> > > > > accord with the 1300 bc date usually used.
>
> > > > > It is a hittite document of what is now iran.
>
> > > > Turkey.
>
> > > Kikkuli was in Hatti-land in what is now Turkey but he was supposedly
> > > Mitannian and used Mitannian loan words in his horse training document
> > > meanings of some of which words he attempted to explain in Hittite.
>
> > The text is in Hittite and was found at Bogazkoy, near Ankara. If it
> > had been written in Mittani (and we don't know where the Mittani
> > capital was), it presumably would have been in Hurrian or Akkadian.
>
> The portion of the text that is germane to this thread is the Aryan
> loanwords rather than the Hittite verbiage.
the matter that is germane to this thread is that the text did not
come from Iran, and neither did Kikkuli.
Peter T. Daniels
Just today I got the catalog of the American distributor. It's a very
expensive volume.
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
M. Ranjit Mathews
> On Feb 10, 3:25 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> the matter that is germane to this thread is that the text did not
> come from Iran, and neither did Kikkuli.
Looking over the thread, your response is indeed the right one for
Hari. It also brought up this train of thought: if Hari thinks India
had no horses, from whom does he think Kikkuli got the Indic word for
horse?
http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2009.pdf
yangg
wrote:
> > The linguistics/archeological establishment largely considers that
> > horse-training and chariot warfare were brought into the ancient near
> > east by Indo Aryans. My gloss on it is that It was Indo-Aryans whose
> > language was somewhat Iranized on the way out of India.
>
> ... or the way out of wherever they came from since the area dominated
> by Indo-Aryan speech need not have been limited to India; it could
> have included Gandhara (Afghanistan). The historic Iranian speech area
> was not Iran and Afghanistan but Central Asia, to the north of the
> latitudes of the Hindukush, Pamirs and Karakoram ranges. That is not
> to say it spanned all those longitudes but more to say that I haven't
> seen it averred that the Proto-Iranian speech area extended to the
> south of those latitudes. If PIIr is dated to 2000+ BCE, that allows
> for some Iranian presence to the south of those latitudes by the time
> of the Mitanni. Where the Proto-Indo-Iranian speech area was and
> whether PIIr was identical to early Vedic is outside the scope of this
> discussion and will hopefully not be introduced into this thread.-
***
You're begging for that, don't you?
So be it.
My opinion is that nearly all these words in relationship with horses
are of Altaic origin. And yesterday I found one more.
pseudo-word *mar-kos "horse" < celtic < germanic < Altaic *mor "horse"
pseudo-word *k^oHp-, *k^apH- "hoof", only Indo-Aryan and Germanic <
Altaic *kuHp- "foot, ankle"
pseudo-word *kul-, *gul "foal" < Altaic *qul "foal"
pseudo-word *(y)as'wa "horse < Altaic *osu "wild animal, herd"
I consider this word has nothing to do with Hekw (which seems
therefore to be a rather western dissemination)
I don't believe in the *k^w graphic gimmick. This cannot be a
phoneme.
This word *osu is widespread from Hebrew to Baltic and from Indo-Aryan
to Anatolian.
All this shows that PIE certainly has nothing to do with horse
domestication.
It can be noted that all these words have heavy phonetic problems and
data do not add up to a possible reconstruction.
What we have is a widespread dissemination of Altaic loanwords by Indo-
Iranians and to a lesser extent Germanic.
And obviously it tells us where they were.
A.
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
So Latin equus <> OIA ashwa looks like a classic Kentum-Satem pair of
reflexes - but you are saying it ain't so (as also OIA parashu <>
Greek peleku).
So the "labio-velar" series was invented only to be able to account
for why Greek sometimes shows dentals/labials for velars in other
Kentum languages?
I haven't seen a satisfactory reply from the establishment to your
destruction of *He(kw)os - it is just about THE textbook illustration
of the comparative method for IE.
hari....@indero.com
"Looking over the thread, your response is indeed the right one for
Hari. It also brought up this train of thought: if Hari thinks India
had no horses, from whom does he think Kikkuli got the Indic word for
horse?"
It is irrelevant where a word originates. What is relevant is the horse
did not show up in s. asia until the vedic age while it was widely known
elsewhere long before including the context being discussed.
It was not known to be present in the complex indus cultures until they
had come and gone.
yangg
wrote:
centum-statem is about centum *k being equivalent to satem *s'
It's not about funny graphic gimmicks like *kw being equivalent to
*s'w, when the standard equivalent is *k.
You try to parade as competent.
You got it 100% wrong.
The opposition between *k and *k^ is 100% bull.
A.
***
(as also OIA parashu <>
> Greek peleku).
***
Are you aware that both words are loanwords from Akkadian pilaqqu and
therefore worthless as cognates??
A.
***
>
> So the "labio-velar" series was invented only to be able to account
> for why Greek sometimes shows dentals/labials for velars in other
> Kentum languages?
>
> I haven't seen a satisfactory reply from the establishment to your
> destruction of *He(kw)os - it is just about THE textbook illustration
> of the comparative method for IE.-
***
Then the textbook is bullshit.
Try another one.
A.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Looking over the thread, this is indeed what you indicated. It looks
like I hadn't read what you wrote - any more carefully than I had read
what Peter Daniels wrote.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Pick out, at random, 100 small family farms in Texas and you have
something of greater extent in land area than the archaeologist's IVC.
Would you call 100 small Texan farms all of the US Heartland (for this
discussion, that's defined as the area between the Mississippi and
Rockies) or would you even call it all of Texas? If not, the Indus
Valley Civilization wasn't India; it occupied only a small fraction of
the subcontinent; and didn't even occupy most of the land in the
northwest. "The horse is not known to have been present in the IVC"
and "the horse is known to not have been in India at the time of the
IVC" are therefore totally different assertions; the former hardly
proves the latter. Would archaeologists studying Chernobyl (and
adjacent areas evacuated due to nuclear pollution) necessarily
discover that the Golden Horde's horses were in Europe without getting
lucky and without historians' writings documenting that there was such
a thing as the Golden Horde? If not, should you deduce from
archaeologists' non-discovery of Atlaic horse breeds in a few
archaeological digs in and around Chernobyl that horses from the
Atlaic region never came to Europe till Catherine et. al. extended the
Russian empire up to the Pacific Ocean?
hari....@indero.com
> Hari. It also brought up this train of thought: if Hari thinks India
> had no horses, from whom does he think Kikkuli got the Indic word for
> horse?"
>
hors=
For areas of much of e. europe and central asia horses are found
routinely in the time period in question. They did not become so in s.
asia generally until the vedic age. To the best of my knowledge this
holds for all of what is now "india".
If they had been in the complex indus cultures they would be as common
as were the remains of many other domestic animals found in digs there.
They are not found at all.
My use of it as the reference point is to head off the revisionist
historical radicals who are desperate to connect vedic age with indus
cultures.
You evoke special statistical pleading in your recitation above without
reason in the material to suggest it is valid.
Who knows, maybe we can find coca cola bottles from vedic age once all
of "india" is excavated.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> > "Looking over the thread, your response is indeed the right one for
> > Hari. It also brought up this train of thought: if Hari thinks India
> > had no horses, from whom does he think Kikkuli got the Indic word for
> > horse?"
>
> > It is irrelevant where a word originates. =A0What is relevant is the
Mongolian horses are not routinely found for the time period of the
Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in
Europe and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe
and bought European horses?
> If they had been in the complex indus cultures they would be as common
> as were the remains of many other domestic animals found in digs there.
> They are not found at all.
You didn't just say that they were not found in IVC digs. You also
claimed that they were not in S. Asia.
> My use of it as the reference point is to head off the revisionist
> historical radicals who are desperate to connect vedic age with indus
> cultures.
Such a goal would not be furthered in any way by an unprovable claim
that there was not a horse anywhere in India; indeed, such a pompous
claim would hardly tend to bolster what credibility you may have. You
could, of course, claim that there is no sign that people in the IVC
cities excavated thus far had interest in, or even knowledge of,
horses, but this would not prove that there were no horses in areas
removed from IVC cities but still within South Asia. Furthermore,
juxtaposing the age of the Vedic language with the IVC is hardly the
province of just the ones you call revisionist radicals. Consider
this: <<It is now widely accepted that the subcontinent began to be
infiltrated well before the middle of the first millenium BCE by
people speaking a IndoEuropean language>> page 47, A History of India
by Burton Stein & David Arnold. Do you think the authors mean that
this is widely accepted by your "revisionist historical radicals"?
> You evoke special statistical pleading in your recitation above without
> reason in the material to suggest it is valid.
If an assertion that nobody knows when the first horse came to India
be invalid, make an assertion to the contrary and follow it up with a
rationale for its validity.
> Who knows, maybe we can find coca cola bottles from vedic age once all
> of "india" is excavated.
A red herring has no effect on the beef at hand.
Christopher Culver
> I don't believe in the *k^w graphic gimmick. This cannot be a
> phoneme.
It's not "a phoneme". It's a sequence of two phonemes, the first being
the unvoiced palatal velar stop and the second the semivowel /w/. You
seem to be getting your PIE velars mixed up.
hari....@indero.com
s.
> asia generally until the vedic age. =A0To the best of my knowledge
> holds for all of what is now "india".
"Mongolian horses are not routinely found for the time period of the
Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in Europe
and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe and
bought European horses?"
You are pulling this out of the air. There are multiple sources of
knowledge about their horses completely independent of european sources.
> If they had been in the complex indus cultures they would be as common
> as were the remains of many other domestic animals found in digs
there. =
=A0
> They are not found at all.
"You didn't just say that they were not found in IVC digs. You also
claimed that they were not in S. Asia."
Correct, no evidence for it.
> My use of it as the reference point is to head off the revisionist
> historical radicals who are desperate to connect vedic age with indus
> cultures.
"Such a goal would not be furthered in any way by an unprovable claim
that there was not a horse anywhere in India; indeed, such a pompous
claim would hardly tend to bolster what credibility you may have. You
could, of course, claim that there is no sign that people in the IVC
cities excavated thus far had interest in, or even knowledge of, horses,
but this would not prove that there were no horses in areas removed from
IVC cities but still within South Asia. Furthermore, juxtaposing the age
of the Vedic language with the IVC is hardly the province of just the
ones you call revisionist radicals. Consider this: <<It is now widely
accepted that the subcontinent began to be infiltrated well before the
middle of the first millenium BCE by people speaking a IndoEuropean
language>> page 47, A History of India by Burton Stein & David Arnold.
Do you think the authors mean that this is widely accepted by your
"revisionist historical radicals"?"
You know well what I mean. The self glory radicals want to make a
direct connection between indus complex cultures and the vedic age. The
absence of the horse in the former is one proof they are all wet.
The complex cultures would have been magnets for goods of all kinds from
a large area. Horses would likely have been food and a status symbol
and military tools and efforts to have them present made. In complex
cultures elsewhere this was the rule. No evidence of it.
> You evoke special statistical pleading in your recitation above
without
> reason in the material to suggest it is valid.
"If an assertion that nobody knows when the first horse came to India be
invalid, make an assertion to the contrary and follow it up with a
rationale for its validity."
They came as part of the vedic age. The horsed based nomads from the nw
were central in the story of vedic age.
> Who knows, maybe we can find coca cola bottles from vedic age once all
> of "india" is excavated.
"A red herring has no effect on the beef at hand."
"Beef", are you making a pun? It was not a red herring but an example
of stating the extreme extension of logic to make a point. In this case
your assertion in short that it just hasn't been dug up yet.
A proper red herring would be something like saying that horses were not
present because they ate people instead.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> > For areas of much of e. europe and central asia horses are found
> > routinely in the time period in question. =A0They did not become so in
> s.
> > asia generally until the vedic age. =A0To the best of my knowledge
> this
> > holds for all of what is now "india".
>
> "Mongolian horses are not routinely found for the time period of the
> Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in Europe
> and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe and
> bought European horses?"
>
> You are pulling this out of the air. There are multiple sources of
> knowledge about their horses completely independent of european sources.
If they are not European sources, that would confirm a claim that
there is no information about Mongolian horses that came to Europe
with the Mongols.
> > If they had been in the complex indus cultures they would be as common
> > as were the remains of many other domestic animals found in digs
>
> there. =
> =A0
>
> > They are not found at all.
>
> "You didn't just say that they were not found in IVC digs. You also
> claimed that they were not in S. Asia."
>
> Correct, no evidence for it.
When you say they were not in S. Asia, it could mean that there is
evidence against their being in S. Asia but cannot mean that there is
no evidence for their being in S Asia.
> > My use of it as the reference point is to head off the revisionist
> > historical radicals who are desperate to connect vedic age with indus
> > cultures.
>
> "Such a goal would not be furthered in any way by an unprovable claim
> that there was not a horse anywhere in India; indeed, such a pompous
> claim would hardly tend to bolster what credibility you may have. You
> could, of course, claim that there is no sign that people in the IVC
> cities excavated thus far had interest in, or even knowledge of, horses,
> but this would not prove that there were no horses in areas removed from
> IVC cities but still within South Asia. Furthermore, juxtaposing the age
> of the Vedic language with the IVC is hardly the province of just the
> ones you call revisionist radicals. Consider this: <<It is now widely
> accepted that the subcontinent began to be infiltrated well before the
> middle of the first millenium BCE by people speaking a IndoEuropean
> language>> page 47, A History of India by Burton Stein & David Arnold.
> Do you think the authors mean that this is widely accepted by your
> "revisionist historical radicals"?"
>
> You know well what I mean.
Do you know what Burton Stein and David Arnold mean? If they mean that
it is widely accepted by the scientific community that the
subcontinent began to be infiltrated well before the middle of the
first millenium BCE by people speaking a IndoEuropean language, then
would it mean that the scientific community thinks pre-Vedic IE
speakers walked to India and only the immediate forerunners of Vedic
speakers came with horses?
> The self glory radicals want to make a
> direct connection between indus complex cultures and the vedic age. The
> absence of the horse in the former is one proof they are all wet.
Was there Vedic culture in areas far removed from India? For example,
were there Vedic Celts or Vedic Greeks? If not, Vedic culture was
peculiarly Indian. Did the earlier inhabitants of the places where
Vedic culture thrived have nothing to do with making Vedic culture
peculiarly Indian? If they did, then there is a direct connection
between them and Vedic culture.
> The complex cultures would have been magnets for goods of all kinds from
> a large area. Horses would likely have been food and a status symbol
> and military tools and efforts to have them present made. In complex
> cultures elsewhere this was the rule. No evidence of it.
Very well, show archaeological evidence that Mongolian horses were
food and a status symbol in East Europe. If you can't show it, you're
blowing smoke when you claim that this is the rule in cultures
elsewhere.
M. Ranjit Mathews
It would, at the most, tell us where PIE speakers were when they
borrowed these loanwords; it wouldn't tell us where (Proto)-Indo-Aryan
speakers were immediately before they showed up in the near-east.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> > "Mongolian horses are not routinely found for the time period of the
> > Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in Europe
> > and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe and
> > bought European horses?"
>
> > You are pulling this out of the air. There are multiple sources of
> > knowledge about their horses completely independent of european sources.
>
> If they are not European sources, that would confirm a claim that
> there is no information about Mongolian horses that came to Europe
> with the Mongols.
no archaeological information, I mean.
Nick Youngh
Nick Youngh
Historical evidence is notsufficient ?
M. Ranjit Mathews
It is sufficient for showing that Mongolian horses were in Europe, but
that's not comparable to what Hari is trying to show. What Hari is
trying to show is that absence of horses in IVC archaeology proves
that there were no horses anywhere in the Indus Valley. I'm suggesting
that if one makes the claim that the absence of horses in a few Indian
urban centers that were last populated 3900 years back definitively
proves wrong the legendary evidence of horses in India at that time,
then one would also have to make the absurd claim that the lack of
Mongolian horses in European archeology proves the historical evidence
wrong. This is not to say that the legendary evidence is definitively
correct but just to say that it is not definitively disproved by the
absence of horse remains in a few urban centers.
One datum that Hindus cite as evidence of horses in India in IVC times
is Balarama's legendary [my qualification, not theirs] ride alongside
the Saraswati river on a journey from Dwarka to Mathura. The cities
currently called by these names are in Gujarat and UP, respectively,
and the riverbed currently identified as the former Saraswati river
does run beside the shortest route but has been dry for nearly 4000
years because an earthquake changed its course that long back. Hindus
claim on this basis that the ride must have happened at least 4000
years back since at a time much later than that, there would have been
no Saraswati river for Balarama to ride beside.
Also, as I pointed out, Hindus in love with their legends are not the
only ones to claim an IndoEuropean presence in India in 2000 BCE;
according to the reference I quoted, academic communities in one or
more fields claim it too.
Peter T. Daniels
And no Hindu has sufficient imagination to create a tale that includes
things they knew about inserted into a time they had no way of knowing
about?
Is it your assertion that unicorns were rampant (as it were) in the
forests of Europe in Medieval times, because there are so many
depictions of them and so much is known about their nature and
behavior?
> Also, as I pointed out, Hindus in love with their legends are not the
> only ones to claim an IndoEuropean presence in India in 2000 BCE;
> according to the reference I quoted, academic communities in one or
> more fields claim it too.
Well, the only thing you've quited recently is a history of India by
Stein and Arnold. What is the date of that? What is their source for
"wide acceptance" of an early date for "infiltration," what do they
include under "the subcontinent," and what "IndoEuropean language"?
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Suppose you are in India in 200 BC, composing a legend. Suppose Dwarka
and Mathura exist (the latter certainly did; I lack knowledge about
the former) but the Saraswati has been dry for 1700 years. How would
you be able to incorporate into your legend a horse ride adjacent to a
flowing Saraswati river?
> Is it your assertion that unicorns were rampant (as it were) in the
> forests of Europe in Medieval times, because there are so many
> depictions of them and so much is known about their nature and
> behavior?
I didn't assert that the legendary evidence is correct; I merely
suggested insufficient data to prove a particular datum (not the
entire legend) wrong.
> > Also, as I pointed out, Hindus in love with their legends are not the
> > only ones to claim an IndoEuropean presence in India in 2000 BCE;
> > according to the reference I quoted, academic communities in one or
> > more fields claim it too.
>
> Well, the only thing you've quited recently is a history of India by
> Stein and Arnold. What is the date of that?
2nd edition, John Wiley and Sons, 2010
http://books.google.com/books?id=0K3GZfqCabsC&dq=stein+arnold+india&source=gbs_navlinks_s
> What is their source for
> "wide acceptance" of an early date for "infiltration," what do they
> include under "the subcontinent," and what "IndoEuropean language"?
I have not a clue but it strikes me that these authors seem unlikely
candidates for people who would refer to acceptance by just chauvinist
Hindus as "wide acceptance", so they must mean acceptance by savants
of repute in one or more fields of study.
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> > What is their source for
> > "wide acceptance" of an early date for "infiltration," what do they
> > include under "the subcontinent," and what "IndoEuropean language"?
>
> I have not a clue but it strikes me that these authors seem unlikely
> candidates for people who would refer to acceptance by just chauvinist
> Hindus as "wide acceptance", so they must mean acceptance by savants
>
> - Show quoted text -
I read it too and I think they are simply wrong. There is probably a
grand total of less than 10 scholars today who give a damn when IE
appeared in S Asia first. Perhaps there are a few dozen Out of India
chauvinists and some Witzelian "infiltration from outside"
chauvinists.
I think neutral obervers have seen nothing yet to make then change
from the establishment view (not before 1500 b.c.)
M. Ranjit Mathews
wrote:
> I read it too and I think they are simply wrong. There is probably a
> grand total of less than 10 scholars today who give a damn when IE
> appeared in S Asia first. Perhaps there are a few dozen Out of India
> chauvinists and some Witzelian "infiltration from outside"
> chauvinists.
>
> I think neutral obervers have seen nothing yet to make then change
> from the establishment view (not before 1500 b.c.)
Curious as it might seem, what I once saw in Max Mueller's claims when
I looked into them was "not after 1500* BCE" rather than "not before
1500* BCE". Needless to say, he was lacking much information available
today, including but not limited to the discovery of the IVC.
* It might have been some other number; I don't remember that exactly.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> > What is their source for
> > "wide acceptance" of an early date for "infiltration," what do they
> > include under "the subcontinent," and what "IndoEuropean language"?
>
> I have not a clue but it strikes me that these authors seem unlikely
> candidates for people who would refer to acceptance by just chauvinist
> Hindus as "wide acceptance", so they must mean acceptance by savants
As seen from the google "snippet," the immediately following words are
"as evidenced from the ancient Zoroastrian text _Avesta_." Thus they
include eastern Iran in "the subcontinent."
Your quotation is from p. 47, but p. 47 does not appear in amazon's
"Look inside!" ISTR a very negative review of the 1st ed. of that
book, probably in JAOS, which caused me not to buy it when I was
collecting the volumes in that series.
The only "Notes" in the book are text references for direct
quotations. There is no hint of where they got the assertions you
quoted.
Peter T. Daniels
> * It might have been some other number; I don't remember that exactly.-
Max Muller wrote for the general English public for almost exactly
half a century. Over that time, he did not stubbornly maintain his
youthful positions when new evidence came to light.
yangg
wrote:
>
> > I think neutral obervers have seen nothing yet to make then change
> > from the establishment view (not before 1500 b.c.)
I'm afraid he does not know what the "establishment" is.
A.
***
>
> Curious as it might seem, what I once saw in Max Mueller's claims when
> I looked into them was "not after 1500* BCE" rather than "not before
> 1500* BCE". Needless to say, he was lacking much information available
> today, including but not limited to the discovery of the IVC.
> * It might have been some other number; I don't remember that exactly.-
***
Are you aware that by mentioning * Max Mueller *, you mention a
complete non entity, with about no relevance, and that you are clearly
sending a signal that you are some kind of Out-of-India-theory loonie?
Nobody with the slighest knowledge of these issues mentions * Max
Mueller *.
Only Out-of-India-theory siders do.
He's a Shibboleth and a Strawman at the same time.
A.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> On Feb 13, 11:42 pm, "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > > I think neutral obervers have seen nothing yet to make then change
> > > from the establishment view (not before 1500 b.c.)
>
> ***
>
> I'm afraid he does not know what the "establishment" is.
>
> A.
> ***
>
>
>
> > Curious as it might seem, what I once saw in Max Mueller's claims when
> > I looked into them was "not after 1500* BCE" rather than "not before
> > 1500* BCE". Needless to say, he was lacking much information available
> > today, including but not limited to the discovery of the IVC.
> > * It might have been some other number; I don't remember that exactly.-
>
> complete non entity, with about no relevance,
No relevance to what? Everything is relevant to something or the
other. Mueller has relevance to two things in the posting I responded
to: (1) a contrast between "not before 1500 BCE' and "not after 1500
BCE"..and (2) Out of India chauvinists (if you don't think they
mention Mueller, read what they write).
> and that you are clearly
> sending a signal that you are some kind of Out-of-India-theory loonie?
If you can catch clear signals that aren't sent, catch signals from
Martians. Out of India theorists take on Mueller as part of the
establishment, claiming that he said Aryans came to India not BEFORE
some date. I looked into it and seemed to find him claiming that they
came not AFTER some date.
> Nobody with the slighest knowledge of these issues mentions * Max
> Mueller *.
No one with the slightest knowledge of Out of India chauvinists
mentions Max Mueller? No one with the slightest knowledge of the
origin of the first estimate of 1500 BCE and what it was an estimate
of mentions Max Mueller?
yangg
wrote:
> On Feb 14, 3:13 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Feb 13, 11:42 pm, "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > > I think neutral obervers have seen nothing yet to make then change
> > > > from the establishment view (not before 1500 b.c.)
>
> > ***
>
> > I'm afraid he does not know what the "establishment" is.
>
> > A.
> > ***
>
> > > Curious as it might seem, what I once saw in Max Mueller's claims when
> > > I looked into them was "not after 1500* BCE" rather than "not before
> > > 1500* BCE". Needless to say, he was lacking much information available
> > > today, including but not limited to the discovery of the IVC.
> > > * It might have been some other number; I don't remember that exactly.-
>
> > Are you aware that by mentioning * Max Mueller *, you mention a
> > complete non entity, with about no relevance,
>
> No relevance to what? Everything is relevant to something or the
> other. Mueller has relevance to two things in the posting I responded
> to: (1) a contrast between "not before 1500 BCE' and "not after 1500
> BCE"..and (2) Out of India chauvinists (if you don't think they
> mention Mueller, read what they write).
Yes, I'm precisely writing that only Out-of-India-Theory siders
mention Max Mueller who is a non entity
that only Out-of-India-Theory think exists.
Real scholars care a rat about Max Mueller.
A.
***
>
> > and that you are clearly
> > sending a signal that you are some kind of Out-of-India-theory loonie?
>
> If you can catch clear signals that aren't sent, catch signals from
> Martians. Out of India theorists take on Mueller as part of the
> establishment,
***
They are precisely wrong to do that,
because Max Mueller is * nothing *.
Only Out-of-India-Theory retards think that non-entity exists.
A.
***
claiming that he said Aryans came to India not BEFORE
> some date. I looked into it and seemed to find him claiming that they
> came not AFTER some date.
***
Who cares about Max Mueller
but Out-of-India-Theory retards?
A.
***
>
> > Nobody with the slighest knowledge of these issues mentions * Max
> > Mueller *.
>
> No one with the slightest knowledge of Out of India chauvinists
> mentions Max Mueller? No one with the slightest knowledge of the
> origin of the first estimate of 1500 BCE and what it was an estimate
> of mentions Max Mueller?
***
So??
Who cares about what Max Mueller stated or did not state??
A.
***
M. Ranjit Mathews
> Who cares about Max Mueller but Out-of-India-Theory retards?
People who discuss Out of India theorists would naturally discuss what
they say, including what they say about Max Mueller. I seemed to find
something that contradicted a claim they make about Max Mueller, which
would seem to indicate that this particular windmill they tilt at
doesn't even exist. Be that as it may, even if Mueller didn't say it
and even if it doesn't matter what he said, there are modern books
that do say "about 1500 BC" (Arindam Banerjee once quoted such an
extract from a school textbook in Australia) rather than "at some
unknown date before 1500 BCE", so perhaps the scenario is that Max
Mueller is attacked as a proxy for modern authors in order to avoid
directly attacking authors who are currently alive and thereby able to
defend their opinions.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
Or maybe no one has offered any persuasive evidence for moving the
date away from "mid 2nd millennium." (Which is the more usual way to
phrase such approximations, in ancient Near Eastern studies.)
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
BB L:al, retired director general of the Archaeological Survey of
India claims (paraphrasing from memory, including paraphrases of
responses to his claims) that an apparent Vedic (in a religious sense
via named gods) and IndoAryan (in a linguistic sense) source for the
Mitanni Aryan lexicon (however little of it there is) would
"naturally" place India on a short list of places the lexicon could
reasonably be expected to have come from, and that since distinctive
gods and distinctive language features don't get established
overnight, this lexicon ought to be suspected to have been established
in the IndoAryan dialect of that place over a period of at least
centuries. In which century, at the latest, would "a few centuries
before Kikkuli" put us? If India were on a short list of locii for
Vedic and IndoAryan a few centuries before Kikkuli, wouldn't that make
awkward a definitive assertion that India lacked an IndoAryan presence
before (say) January 1, 1500 BCE? As for phonetic differences from
Vedic found in the Mitanni Aryan lexicon, here's a comment on an
observation from half a century back:
A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>
Peter T. Daniels
Why? What makes any location more "natural" for a language than any
other (barring "Woerter und Sachen" phenomena, such as identifiable
names of species with a very small range, though these are notoriously
slippery as exemplified by the IE words relating to Eng. "beech" and
"lox")?
> and that since distinctive
> gods and distinctive language features don't get established
> overnight, this lexicon ought to be suspected to have been established
> in the IndoAryan dialect of that place over a period of at least
> centuries. In which century, at the latest, would "a few centuries
> before Kikkuli" put us? If India were on a short list of locii for
> Vedic and IndoAryan a few centuries before Kikkuli, wouldn't that make
> awkward a definitive assertion that India lacked an IndoAryan presence
> before (say) January 1, 1500 BCE? As for phonetic differences from
> Vedic found in the Mitanni Aryan lexicon, here's a comment on an
> observation from half a century back:
All we know about Kikkuli is that he knew his horses and he knew his
II or IA language (I don't know whether the horse terminology is as
specifically IA rather than II as the personal names are).
> A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
> Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
> later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
> influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
> that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
> of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
> common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
> that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
> present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
> oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
> evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>-
Cuneiform has no way of distinguishing o from u and only very limited
ways of distinguishing e from i. (It can distinguish ay and aw from i/
e and u.)
But that doesn't tell us anything about the location of the RV
language-speakers.
(I didn't realize that Deshpande was old enough to have been cited by
Thieme 50 years ago!)
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 15, 2:49 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 15, 11:31 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > Or maybe no one has offered any persuasive evidence for moving the
> > > date away from "mid 2nd millennium." (Which is the more usual way to
> > > phrase such approximations, in ancient Near Eastern studies.)
>
> > BB L:al, retired director general of the Archaeological Survey of
> > India claims (paraphrasing from memory, including paraphrases of
> > responses to his claims) that an apparent Vedic (in a religious sense
> > via named gods) and IndoAryan (in a linguistic sense) source for the
> > Mitanni Aryan lexicon (however little of it there is) would
> > "naturally" place India on a short list of places the lexicon could
> > reasonably be expected to have come from,
>
> Why? What makes any location more "natural" for a language than any
> other
I don't remember what if anything he said about why it is natural.
Placing the origin of the Mitanni Aryan lexicon in locations removed
from Iranian speakers would explain the linguistic distinctions from
Iranian. Drawing from a long list of all places that were IIr speaking
in recorded history (500 BC and later) but removed from Central Asia
(a/the postulated locus of ProtoIranian) albeit readily accessible
over land from Central Asia,
1) The Indus Valley has been a particularly favored destination for
people on the move to settle, which should put it on a short list for
places where IndoAryan speakers settled long enough to make their
language peculiar.
2) A number of gods named were, at a later date, peculiar to India.
Since it's unlikely that many people in many different places
developed the same complement of gods, this too should put India on a
short list.
.
> (barring "Woerter und Sachen" phenomena, such as identifiable
> names of species with a very small range, though these are notoriously
> slippery as exemplified by the IE words relating to Eng. "beech" and
> "lox")?
> > and that since distinctive
> > gods and distinctive language features don't get established
> > overnight, this lexicon ought to be suspected to have been established
> > in the IndoAryan dialect of that place over a period of at least
> > centuries. In which century, at the latest, would "a few centuries
> > before Kikkuli" put us? If India were on a short list of locii for
> > Vedic and IndoAryan a few centuries before Kikkuli, wouldn't that make
> > awkward a definitive assertion that India lacked an IndoAryan presence
> > before (say) January 1, 1500 BCE? As for phonetic differences from
> > Vedic found in the Mitanni Aryan lexicon, here's a comment on an
> > observation from half a century back:
>
> All we know about Kikkuli is that he knew his horses and he knew his
> II or IA language (I don't know whether the horse terminology is as
> specifically IA rather than II as the personal names are).
I don't know either. but Lal gave (or made an appearance of giving)
his readers the impression that the IAness of the lexicon was a well
considered opinion. Be that as it may, why it was well considered was
outside the scope of what he presented in that paper.
> > A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
> > Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
> > later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
> > influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
> > that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
> > of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
> > common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
> > that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
> > present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
> > oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
> > evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>-
>
> Cuneiform has no way of distinguishing o from u and only very limited
> ways of distinguishing e from i. (It can distinguish ay and aw from i/
> e and u.)
If IndoAryan had no [e] allophone of /ai/ at the time, that would have
been good reason for it to be spelled in cuneiform Mitanni as <ay>
rather than <e>.
> But that doesn't tell us anything about the location of the RV
> language-speakers.
This might explain why Lal put India on a short list rather than
making it definitively the place the Mitanni got their Aryan lexicon
from.
> (I didn't realize that Deshpande was old enough to have been cited by
> Thieme 50 years ago!)
Thieme doesn't cite Deshpande; the commentator cites Deshpande.
hari....@indero.com
> "Mongolian horses are not routinely found for the time period of the
> Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in Europe
> and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe and
> bought European horses?"
>
> knowledge about their horses completely independent of european sources.
"If they are not European sources, that would confirm a claim that there
is no information about Mongolian horses that came to Europe with the
Mongols."
Wrong, there are multiple sources from sources east and west.
One notes some degree of desperation growing to make a point not yet
clear.
Why don't you just get to it.
snip
"When you say they were not in S. Asia, it could mean that there is
evidence against their being in S. Asia but cannot mean that there is no
evidence for their being in S Asia."
that I will wait until coca cola bottles are found. Can you prove
horses are not in s. asia because evidence is not lacking except where
there is evidence that they are and are not at the same time?
Did I mention desperation?
> > My use of it as the reference point is to head off the revisionist
> > historical radicals who are desperate to connect vedic age with indus
> > cultures.
>
> "Such a goal would not be furthered in any way by an unprovable claim
> that there was not a horse anywhere in India; indeed, such a pompous
> claim would hardly tend to bolster what credibility you may have. You
> could, of course, claim that there is no sign that people in the IVC
> cities excavated thus far had interest in, or even knowledge of, horses,
> but this would not prove that there were no horses in areas removed from
> IVC cities but still within South Asia. Furthermore, juxtaposing the age
> of the Vedic language with the IVC is hardly the province of just the
> ones you call revisionist radicals. Consider this: <<It is now widely
> accepted that the subcontinent began to be infiltrated well before the
> middle of the first millenium BCE by people speaking a IndoEuropean
> language>> page 47, A History of India by Burton Stein & David Arnold.
> Do you think the authors mean that this is widely accepted by your
> "revisionist historical radicals"?"
>
> You know well what I mean.
"Do you know what Burton Stein and David Arnold mean? If they mean that
it is widely accepted by the scientific community that the subcontinent
began to be infiltrated well before the middle of the first millenium
BCE by people speaking a IndoEuropean language, then would it mean that
the scientific community thinks pre-Vedic IE speakers walked to India
and only the immediate forerunners of Vedic speakers came with horses?"
I know what they mean and your point is vapid. Romans had african
animals in rome as amusement etc. and it is likely the bones on avrage
are not to show up in a dig. Here is the telling point, in the vedic
horses were fully known, in the indus complex cultures they were not
except as the roman example might illustrate. Because the horse was
such a central part of vedic age there is every reason to say the
claimed direct connections with indus cultures are wishful self glory
thinking.
> =A0The self glory radicals want to make a
> direct connection between indus complex cultures and the vedic age. =A0Th=
e
> absence of the horse in the former is one proof they are all wet.
"Was there Vedic culture in areas far removed from India? For example,
were there Vedic Celts or Vedic Greeks? If not, Vedic culture was
peculiarly Indian. Did the earlier inhabitants of the places where Vedic
culture thrived have nothing to do with making Vedic culture peculiarly
Indian? If they did, then there is a direct connection between them and
Vedic culture."
Except by the time vedic culture is clearly known the complex cultures
had come and gone. When the spanish came to mexico they encountered
mayan speaking people. But the high age of mayan complex culture was
even then history to those mayan speakers.
It was not a replacment process of vedic coming from the nw and suddenly
appearing in s. asia. As is illustrated many times in chinese history,
horse based nomadic cultures could in time always take control of a
seddled agriculture based culture. Many times the nomads defeated the
settled chinese cultures and became their head. There was a mixture of
cultures especially in the leadrs.
There is no reason to think s. asia an exception to this pattern when
the nomadids at regular intervalscame from the nw for the vedic age as
eis illustrated historically until the brits came from the sea to do a
similar thing.
> The complex cultures would have been magnets for goods of all kinds from> a large area. =A0Horses would likely have been food and a status symbol
> and military tools and efforts to have them present made. =A0In complex
> cultures elsewhere this was the rule. =A0No evidence of it.
"Very well, show archaeological evidence that Mongolian horses were food
and a status symbol in East Europe. If you can't show it, you're blowing
smoke when you claim that this is the rule in cultures elsewhere."
Oh we don't have to look at Mongolian which are rather late, there is
evidence of horse based cultures on the steps of e. europe and central
asia long before them. Long before the vidic age in fact.
I even posted an article to that effect some months ago. One could
hardly put a spade in the ground and not find horses and horse related
gear.
There is no dearth of evidence for early horse use in this area, which
was perhaps even the area of its domestication.
That is thought to be 6000 or so years ago or some 1000 years before
the time of the indus complex cultures. With about 4000 years being the
date they seemed to have shown up in s. asia.
Horses are known many thousands of years before that in cave art as were
other animals being hunted for food in europe.
To put your mind at ease, I commend to you this general survey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_horse_in_South_Asia
hari....@indero.com
> > Golden Horde. Does this prove that there were no Mongol horses in
e
> > and that the Golden Horde must therefore have walked to Europe and
> > bought European horses?"
>
> > knowledge about their horses completely independent of european
.
>
> If they are not European sources, that would confirm a claim that
> there is no information about Mongolian horses that came to Europe
> with the Mongols.
"no archaeological information, I mean."
I know little about the "golden horde" Archaeological information.
There is however much older archaeology from what is now mongolia with
horses in burial sites. There are also pictograms from early times
showing horses being used.
yangg
The features of Mitanni Aryan are indeed much more Indo-Aryan than
Iranian.
especially aika "one" as in eka.
A.
***
would
> "naturally" place India on a short list of places the lexicon could
> reasonably be expected to have come from, and that since distinctive
> gods and distinctive language features don't get established
> overnight, this lexicon ought to be suspected to have been established
> in the IndoAryan dialect of that place over a period of at least
> centuries. In which century, at the latest, would "a few centuries
> before Kikkuli" put us? If India were on a short list of locii for
> Vedic and IndoAryan a few centuries before Kikkuli, wouldn't that make
> awkward a definitive assertion that India lacked an IndoAryan presence
> before (say) January 1, 1500 BCE?
***
There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
In addition Vedic is phonetically younger than Mitanni Aryan, so
there's no reason to posit that Vedic is "a few centuries *before*
Kikkuli".
Vedic is quite clearly "a few centuries *after* Kikkuli".
A.
***
As for phonetic differences from
> Vedic found in the Mitanni Aryan lexicon, here's a comment on an
> observation from half a century back:
>
> A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
> Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
> later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
> influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
> that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
> of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
> common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
> that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
> present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
> oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
> evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>-
***
That's a good trick to try to make the RgVeda older than it is.
The major problem is that there is no indication the RgVeda ever was
different from what it is.
This is just a wild conjecture with no basis.
There's no scar in the RgVeda that something happened and changed the
contents (contrary to Homer for example, where we have clear signs
that the original text was different as some verses are now false).
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I don't know either. but Lal gave (or made an appearance of giving)
> his readers the impression that the IAness of the lexicon was a well
> considered opinion. Be that as it may, why it was well considered was
> outside the scope of what he presented in that paper.
>
> > > A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
> > > Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
> > > later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
> > > influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
> > > that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
> > > of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
> > > common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
> > > that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
> > > present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
> > > oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
> > > evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>-
>
> > Cuneiform has no way of distinguishing o from u and only very limited
> > ways of distinguishing e from i. (It can distinguish ay and aw from i/
> > e and u.)
>
> If IndoAryan had no [e] allophone of /ai/ at the time, that would have
> been good reason for it to be spelled in cuneiform Mitanni as <ay>
> rather than <e>.
For your information
the archaisms of Mitanni Aryan include:
- au for o in sauma
- ai for e in aida
- z retained in mista-nni for skrt mId.ha
- affricated dz in DzirdamiaSda for zrda "heart" -myazda.
Now there's also the strange case of sapta which is satta in Mitanni
Aryan sattavartana
This can be explained as a phonological feature of Hurrian, which does
not allow stop clusters (other than tk).
Theses issues are being ruminated over and over again by OIT siders
but the picture is quite clear: Mitanni Aryan is consistently more
archaic than Vedic.
A.
***
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Try to show the same iconoclasm that you showed in the unravelment of
*Hekwos.
I am sure you are aware that Trubetzkoy didn't believe in PIE.
Everything is explained by OIA > Avesta language (goodbye Proto-Indo-
Iranian) as has been proposed by Beckwith who has no horse running in
OIT-AMT. while swallowing "aika" eagerly, you have to go through
contortions for "satta", "maninnu" etc. to maintain the orthodoxy
(also that a verse containing the Mitanni IA deities in the exact same
order was composed outside of India etc.)
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> On Feb 16, 3:44 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > - affricated dz in DzirdamiaSda for zrda "heart" -myazda.
? Not notatable in cuneiform.
> > Now there's also the strange case of sapta which is satta in Mitanni
> > Aryan sattavartana
> > This can be explained as a phonological feature of Hurrian, which does
> > not allow stop clusters (other than tk).
>
> > Theses issues are being ruminated over and over again by OIT siders
> > but the picture is quite clear: Mitanni Aryan is consistently more
> > archaic than Vedic.
>
> Try to show the same iconoclasm that you showed in the unravelment of
> *Hekwos.
>
> I am sure you are aware that Trubetzkoy didn't believe in PIE.
>
> Everything is explained by OIA > Avesta language (goodbye Proto-Indo-
> Iranian) as has been proposed by Beckwith who has no horse running in
> OIT-AMT. while swallowing "aika" eagerly, you have to go through
> contortions for "satta", "maninnu" etc. to maintain the orthodoxy
> (also that a verse containing the Mitanni IA deities in the exact same
> order was composed outside of India etc.)-
Beckwith has no training in and no understanding of linguistics, and
never offered any arguments in favor of his vaguely stated
impressions.
Citing Beckwith is like claiming that Jones "founded" comparative
linguistics by suggesting that Skt was not the parent but the sibling
of Greek, Latin, and Germanic ("sprung from some common source"). It
was idle speculation; he himself did no linguistic investigation.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> A.
> ***
>
> would> "naturally" place India on a short list of places the lexicon could
> > reasonably be expected to have come from, and that since distinctive
> > gods and distinctive language features don't get established
> > overnight, this lexicon ought to be suspected to have been established
> > in the IndoAryan dialect of that place over a period of at least
> > centuries. In which century, at the latest, would "a few centuries
> > before Kikkuli" put us? If India were on a short list of locii for
> > Vedic and IndoAryan a few centuries before Kikkuli, wouldn't that make
> > awkward a definitive assertion that India lacked an IndoAryan presence
> > before (say) January 1, 1500 BCE?
>
> ***
> There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
> Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
> branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
Who located it to the north of the Caspian sea? How did a branch that
went to Turkey develop innovations in common with a branch that went
to India?
> In addition Vedic is phonetically younger than Mitanni Aryan, so
> there's no reason to posit that Vedic is "a few centuries *before*
> Kikkuli". Vedic is quite clearly "a few centuries *after* Kikkuli".
The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
> A.
> ***
>
> As for phonetic differences from> Vedic found in the Mitanni Aryan lexicon, here's a comment on an
> > observation from half a century back:
>
> > A commentator says: <<Thieme (JAOS 1960 – ‘Aryan gods of Mitanni
> > Treaties’) says that it is possible that ‘ai’ and ‘au’ in RV were
> > later replaced by ‘e’ and ‘o’ during the later period due to the
> > influence of spoken language and recitation. Deshpande even opines
> > that the retroflex sounds may not have existed during the composition
> > of early hymns but that they crept into the corpus as they become
> > common usage. Thus, many scholars do agree that there is a possibility
> > that the sounds were changed in the RV before it was frozen in its
> > present form. It is quite possible. After all, RV was a living text in
> > oral form whereas Mitanni was written. While RV sounds changed with
> > evolutions, inscriptions do not change.>>-
>
> ***
> That's a good trick to try to make the RgVeda older than it is.
Even if it isn't older than its language seems to you, this is a non-
issue if there was a ProtoIndoAryan before Vedic; the Mitanni Aryan
lexicon could have come from PIA and the locus of PIA could have
possibly been India.
> The major problem is that there is no indication the RgVeda ever was
> different from what it is.
Notwithstanding that this is a non-issue as noted above, the
alternative is that it remained unchanged from when it was composed
till Panini observed it. How likely is that? Within the Rg Samhita
itself, mandala 10 has a much higher incidence of l, so the Vedic
language changed over the duration of the composition of the Rg
Samhita.
> This is just a wild conjecture with no basis.
> There's no scar in the RgVeda that something happened and changed the
> contents (contrary to Homer for example, where we have clear signs
> that the original text was different as some verses are now false).
Modern Greeks pronounce plays in classical modern Greek pronunciation
rather than Attic Greek pronunciation. Are there scars (whatever that
means) in these plays to show that their pronunciation changed? If
not, why would we necessarily have to see "scars" before we can know
that something changed?
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> Everything is explained by OIA > Avesta language (goodbye Proto-Indo-
> Iranian)
Where is this explanation? Does it come with sound change laws from
OIA to Gathic/ Avestan?
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> On Feb 16, 3:22 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
> > Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
> > branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
>
> Who located it to the north of the Caspian sea?
Generations of (mostly Soviet, so that their work was little-known in
the West until the last two decades) archeologists comparing the
physical remains of successive cultures, seeing which ones developed
their material possessions out of which other ones, and how those
cultures correlate with the locations of presumable speech-
communities.
See Kuzmina's immense *The Origins of the Indo-Iranians*, ed. and
trans. by Mallory (Brill 2008 or so; unaccountably in their
"Etymological Dictionaries" series).
> How did a branch that
> went to Turkey develop innovations in common with a branch that went
> to India?
What makes it a "branch"? All we have is a single horse-specialist at
Boghazkoy who could have come there seeking work (or been brought
there), perhaps along with a stableful of horses that were purchased
from horse-breeders.
> > The major problem is that there is no indication the RgVeda ever was
> > different from what it is.
>
> Notwithstanding that this is a non-issue as noted above, the
> alternative is that it remained unchanged from when it was composed
> till Panini observed it. How likely is that?
The Avesta was preserved for at least a millennium longer than when
Panini did his work and in fact the archaic language was barely
understood -- but preserved with considerable fidelity.
> > This is just a wild conjecture with no basis.
> > There's no scar in the RgVeda that something happened and changed the
> > contents (contrary to Homer for example, where we have clear signs
> > that the original text was different as some verses are now false).
>
> Modern Greeks pronounce plays in classical modern Greek pronunciation
> rather than Attic Greek pronunciation. Are there scars (whatever that
> means) in these plays to show that their pronunciation changed? If
> not, why would we necessarily have to see "scars" before we can know
> that something changed?-
The texts were recorded, with almost all the phonemic distinctions
preserved (length of alpha isn't notated), at the time they were
written. The _texts_ remain available even as the spoken language
changed all around them. Perhaps there are editions of the classics in
some sort of modern pronunciation, but since contemporary orthography
is not phonemic, what purpose would that serve?
yangg
wrote:
> Try to show the same iconoclasm that you showed in the unravelment of
> *Hekwos.
>
> I am sure you are aware that Trubetzkoy didn't believe in PIE.
***
I would describe the issue in those words.
A.
***
>
> Everything is explained by OIA > Avesta language (goodbye Proto-Indo-
> Iranian) as has been proposed by Beckwith who has no horse running in
> OIT-AMT. while swallowing "aika" eagerly, you have to go through
> contortions for "satta", "maninnu" etc.
***
There's no "contortion" at all.
Satta is adjusted to Hurrian native phonology, which does not accept
stop clusters.
I know that OIT siders refuse that simple explanation in order in
indulge in wild speculations.
I can't see the issue with maninni: this word has a Gaulish cognate
and has nothing specifically Indian.
Actually there's not a single word of Mitanni Aryan that does not have
a clear IE pedigree (except for aSSuSSa "horse" which I consider an
Altaic loanword).
A.
***
to maintain the orthodoxy
> (also that a verse containing the Mitanni IA deities in the exact same
> order was composed outside of India etc.)-
***
Yes, so what?
Have you heard of Dumezil's tripartite system?
That order is PIE made, not Indian made.
A.
yangg
> On Feb 16, 6:17 am, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 3:44 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > - affricated dz in DzirdamiaSda for zrda "heart" -myazda.
>
> ? Not notatable in cuneiform.
zi-ir-dam-ia-aS-da
z is an affricate.
A.
yangg
wrote:
> > ***
> > There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
> > Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
> > branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
>
> Who located it to the north of the Caspian sea?
***
Common sense.
A.
***
How did a branch that
> went to Turkey develop innovations in common with a branch that went
> to India?
***
They developed them before they got separated.
or maybe
it's just a chance coincidence.
A.
***
>
> > In addition Vedic is phonetically younger than Mitanni Aryan, so
> > there's no reason to posit that Vedic is "a few centuries *before*
> > Kikkuli". Vedic is quite clearly "a few centuries *after* Kikkuli".
>
> The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
> How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
> religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
***
The theme of divine twins is PIE-stage.
Read Dumezil.
A.
***
>
> > ***
> > That's a good trick to try to make the RgVeda older than it is.
>
> Even if it isn't older than its language seems to you, this is a non-
> issue if there was a ProtoIndoAryan before Vedic; the Mitanni Aryan
> lexicon could have come from PIA and the locus of PIA could have
> possibly been India.
>
> > The major problem is that there is no indication the RgVeda ever was
> > different from what it is.
>
> Notwithstanding that this is a non-issue as noted above, the
> alternative is that it remained unchanged from when it was composed
> till Panini observed it. How likely is that? Within the Rg Samhita
> itself, mandala 10 has a much higher incidence of l, so the Vedic
> language changed over the duration of the composition of the Rg
> Samhita.
***
This is a different issue that to state it changed after it was
composed.
A.
***
>
> > This is just a wild conjecture with no basis.
> > There's no scar in the RgVeda that something happened and changed the
> > contents (contrary to Homer for example, where we have clear signs
> > that the original text was different as some verses are now false).
>
> Modern Greeks pronounce plays in classical modern Greek pronunciation
> rather than Attic Greek pronunciation. Are there scars (whatever that
> means) in these plays to show that their pronunciation changed? If
> not, why would we necessarily have to see "scars" before we can know
> that something changed?-
***
Because it's an explicit fact that refutes the per default hypothesis
of no change.
Like Homer andra which should count only for one syllable, showing the
underlying language used to have nr. not andra as in Classical Greek.
As far as I know the RgVeda has no such case.
Therefore there's no reason to think the RgVeda as we know it is
different from the RgVeda as it was composed.
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 16, 6:17 am, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 3:44 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
Not my words.
A.
***
> > Everything is explained by OIA > Avesta language (goodbye Proto-Indo-
> > Iranian)
>
> Where is this explanation? Does it come with sound change laws from
> OIA to Gathic/ Avestan?
>
***
Avestan does not originate in Indo-Aryan.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
Why voiced?
Peter T. Daniels
> On Feb 16, 5:20 pm, "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
> > How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
> > religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
>
> ***
> The theme of divine twins is PIE-stage.
> Read Dumezil.
And Watkins (*How to Kill a Dragon* [Oxford, 1995] collects nearly 60
articles on IE poetics, myth, and epic, perhaps more data-based than
Dumezil); he hasn't read a paper at the AOS in a while, but he attends
every year -- I expect I'll see him in Chicago next month and could
ask a question or two if you'd like.
yangg
> On Feb 16, 12:17 pm, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com>
> > I am sure you are aware that Trubetzkoy didn't believe in PIE.
>
> ***
>
> I would describe the issue in those words.
>
> A.
> ***
Sorry.
I meant: I would * not * describe etc.
A.
yangg
***
Because IIr is voiced.
I agree that Hurrian has only voiceless phonemes.
A.
yangg
> On Feb 16, 12:30 pm, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 5:20 pm, "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
> > > How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
> > > religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
>
> > ***
> > The theme of divine twins is PIE-stage.
> > Read Dumezil.
>
> And Watkins (*How to Kill a Dragon* [Oxford, 1995] collects nearly 60
> articles on IE poetics, myth, and epic, perhaps more data-based than
> Dumezil);
They have similar qualities and defects.
Both tend to incorporate in their systems or their lexical formulas
rather inhomogeneous material.
Watkins 1995 is clearly not an easy book to read...
But valuable for the Celtic and Hittite material. This is really PIE,
not just Central IE.
His book is also conspicuous for mentioning quite often works by
French people.
A.
***
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> wrote:
>
> > > ***
> > > There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
> > > Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
> > > branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
>
> > Who located it to the north of the Caspian sea?
>
> ***
> Common sense.
How does common sense dictate "North of the Caspian" rather than east
of the Caspian (Central Asia) or west of the Caspian (Armenia) or any
number of other locations?
> How did a branch that went to Turkey develop innovations in common with a branch that went
> > to India?
>
> ***
> They developed them before they got separated.
> or maybe it's just a chance coincidence.
Are you postulating a proto-Indo-Irano-Mitanni group, the last getting
absorbed into a Hurrian speech group while retaining some Aryan words?
If so, why didn't Iranians have Nasatyas (in Zarthosht's time)? Is
Iranian /aiva/ derived from Indo-Irano-Mitanni /aika/ according to
you, whereas by a chance coincidence, Indic and Mitanni Aryan (not a
language but a lexicon) retained the same phonemes /aika/ (albeit
with /ai/ developing a realization of [e] in Indic)? The odds against
so many coincidences seem incredibly high. Incidentally, "incredibly"
literally means "impossible to believe").
> > > In addition Vedic is phonetically younger than Mitanni Aryan, so
> > > there's no reason to posit that Vedic is "a few centuries *before*
> > > Kikkuli". Vedic is quite clearly "a few centuries *after* Kikkuli".
>
> > The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
> > How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
> > religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
>
> ***
> The theme of divine twins is PIE-stage.
> Read Dumezil.
Georges Dumezil doesn't say PIE speakers called them Nasatyas. How did
only the Mitanni Aryan lexicon and the Indic language (or
protolanguage) come to call them Nasatyas whereas others used other
names such as Dyoscuri?
> > > This is just a wild conjecture with no basis.
> > > There's no scar in the RgVeda that something happened and changed the
> > > contents (contrary to Homer for example, where we have clear signs
> > > that the original text was different as some verses are now false).
>
> > Modern Greeks pronounce plays in classical modern Greek pronunciation
> > rather than Attic Greek pronunciation. Are there scars (whatever that
> > means) in these plays to show that their pronunciation changed? If
> > not, why would we necessarily have to see "scars" before we can know
> > that something changed?-
>
> ***
>
> Because it's an explicit fact that refutes the per default hypothesis
> of no change.
>
> Like Homer andra which should count only for one syllable, showing the
> underlying language used to have nr. not andra as in Classical Greek.
>
> As far as I know the RgVeda has no such case.
Indeed? What, then, is postulated about the origin of the independent
swarita? Can you find anyone who postulates that it was always
independent? What is postulated about an avagraha? If there had never
been a vowel in a location marked by an avagraha, why is an avagraha
used to represent an elided vowel? Why are there instances of
disyllabic [e:] and [o:] if they were not formerly a sequence of two
vowels such as [ai] and [au]? (Look for dysyllabic on the page
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/RV/ ).
anal...@hotmail.com
eka/aika is purely IA. PIE used to be "*Oinos" and for some reason we
now also see *Oinos/*Oikos/*Oiwos - *Oikos being productive exactly
once - to bring the troublesome "eka" into the fold.
"Nasatya" seems purely Indian, but apparently "sat" has cognates in
european langauges. I'd like to see analogues of the weird compound
"not untrue" in IE outside of India before I can be convinced..
What exactly is the ai that Sanskrit is supposed to have fused into
"e"?
a and i in hiatus, the sound of "paid", the sound of "ice"?
At any rate there is an adjectival form "aika" in Sanskrit "Pertaining
to one".
If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
The number of special pleadings required to make Mitanni-Aryan pre-
Rig-Vedic boggles the mind.
anal...@hotmail.com
He does have reasons based on a typology of stop-systems. He has no
axe to grind one way or the other, believes resoundingly in "PIE
speakers" spreading out of Central Eurasia. Its not even clear if
this obiter dictum is remotely important to his theories of ancient
Central Asia.
Another piece in the puzzle which when solved would throw all those
pretty tree daigrams out the window - which explains why the
establishment woudn't even touch this.
Entire sentences corresponding to each other with fairly regular sound
changes ought to have been a clue for researchers over the centuries.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
I have read a claim that the phoneme /ai/ had a single allophone [Ai]
(deduced by studying Vedic metre) which changed to two allophones [ai]
& [e:]. It doesn't seem proper usage to call monophthongization fusing
but there might conceivably also be instances of fusing - where
phoneme sequences /a//i/ (like in "naive") fused into the single
phoneme /ai/ with the above realizations (pronunciations).
> a and i in hiatus, the sound of "paid", the sound of "ice"?
>
> At any rate there is an adjectival form "aika" in Sanskrit "Pertaining
> to one".
Its antonym, OTOH is aneka, not anaika.
> If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
> already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
Does the cuneiform say s or sh? With the former, it looks somewhat
similar to Dasarata if Hurrian changed voiced to unvoiced in initial
contexts, although your example has the merit of having something
closer to the vowel u.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 16, 12:30 pm, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 16, 5:20 pm, "M. Ranjit Mathews" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > > ***
> > > > There's no reason to make Mitanni Aryan come from India.
> > > > Indo-Iranian was located to the north of the Caspian Sea and one
> > > > branch went to Turkey instead of going to India.
>
> > > Who located it to the north of the Caspian sea?
>
> > ***
> > Common sense.
>
> How does common sense dictate "North of the Caspian" rather than east
> of the Caspian (Central Asia) or west of the Caspian (Armenia) or any
> number of other locations?
1. Indo-Iranian shares a number of features with Greek, Armenian, and
Balto-Slavic.
2. Indo-Iranian also influenced (and was influenced) by Finno-Volgaic
and Uralic.
3. We find Indo-Iranian languages there in historical times.
4. Hydronyms are Indo-Iranian in that area.
That location North of the Caspian is consistent with these points.
Maybe you can extend it to the west to the Black sea.
A.
***
>
> > How did a branch that went to Turkey develop innovations in common with a branch that went
> > > to India?
>
> > ***
> > They developed them before they got separated.
> > or maybe it's just a chance coincidence.
>
> Are you postulating a proto-Indo-Irano-Mitanni group, the last getting
> absorbed into a Hurrian speech group while retaining some Aryan words?
***
There was a Proto-Indo-Iranian population,
Apparently a fraction of them went to Anatolia.
A.
***
> If so, why didn't Iranians have Nasatyas (in Zarthosht's time)?
***
The Iranian religion is considerably reformed
so maybe the word was lost.
A.
***
Is
> Iranian /aiva/ derived from Indo-Irano-Mitanni /aika/ according to
> you,
***
Obviously not derived.
A.
***
whereas by a chance coincidence, Indic and Mitanni Aryan (not a
> language but a lexicon) retained the same phonemes /aika/ (albeit
> with /ai/ developing a realization of [e] in Indic)? The odds against
> so many coincidences seem incredibly high. Incidentally, "incredibly"
> literally means "impossible to believe").
***
Which coincidences?
Please be more explicit.
A.
***
>
> > > > In addition Vedic is phonetically younger than Mitanni Aryan, so
> > > > there's no reason to posit that Vedic is "a few centuries *before*
> > > > Kikkuli". Vedic is quite clearly "a few centuries *after* Kikkuli".
>
> > > The Nasatyas were clearly deified only a few centuries after Kikkuli?
> > > How can you know that? (Vedic was used in the above text only in a
> > > religious sense, not in a linguistic sense.)
>
> > ***
> > The theme of divine twins is PIE-stage.
> > Read Dumezil.
>
> Georges Dumezil doesn't say PIE speakers called them Nasatyas. How did
> only the Mitanni Aryan lexicon and the Indic language (or
> protolanguage) come to call them Nasatyas whereas others used other
> names such as Dyoscuri?
***
There was considerable poetic freedom to coin nicknames for deities in
PIE.
I suppose that some groups more or less selected this or that name.
I don't think that kind of situation should be over-interpreted.
Nasatyas has a good IE etymology, with *nes- "to return, to be safe".
The idea of "return" is associated with the idea of "to be cured"
because they believed illness was somewhat similar to loss of soul.
hence soul returned = cured.
That's what this word means.
A.
***
>
> > ***
>
> > Because it's an explicit fact that refutes the per default hypothesis
> > of no change.
>
> > Like Homer andra which should count only for one syllable, showing the
> > underlying language used to have nr. not andra as in Classical Greek.
>
> > As far as I know the RgVeda has no such case.
>
> Indeed? What, then, is postulated about the origin of the independent
> swarita? Can you find anyone who postulates that it was always
> independent? What is postulated about an avagraha? If there had never
> been a vowel in a location marked by an avagraha, why is an avagraha
> used to represent an elided vowel? Why are there instances of
> disyllabic [e:] and [o:] if they were not formerly a sequence of two
> vowels such as [ai] and [au]? (Look for dysyllabic on the pagehttp://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/RV/).
***
I can't answer this.
Can you word it in English please?
A.
***
>
> > Therefore there's no reason to think the RgVeda as we know it is
> > different from the RgVeda as it was composed.
***
=> this is the point you have to address.
A.
yangg
wrote:
>
> > Actually there's not a single word of Mitanni Aryan that does not have
> > a clear IE pedigree (except for aSSuSSa "horse" which I consider an
> > Altaic loanword).
>
> eka/aika is purely IA. PIE used to be "*Oinos" and for some reason we
> now also see *Oinos/*Oikos/*Oiwos - *Oikos being productive exactly
> once - to bring the troublesome "eka" into the fold.
Do you prefer making it an Ugric loanword?
Vogul-Mansi: Middle Losva, Jukonda äk-, Pelymka äk-, Sosva akwa "one".
Thinkable...
A.
***
>
> "Nasatya" seems purely Indian, but apparently "sat" has cognates in
> european langauges. I'd like to see analogues of the weird compound
> "not untrue" in IE outside of India before I can be convinced..
***
The root is *nes- "to return, to be safe".
A.
***
>
> What exactly is the ai that Sanskrit is supposed to have fused into
> "e"?
> a and i in hiatus, the sound of "paid", the sound of "ice"?
***
as in ice in RP [ajs] or Southern English paid [pajd].
What's the issue here?
A.
***
>
> At any rate there is an adjectival form "aika" in Sanskrit "Pertaining
> to one".
>
> If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
> already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
***
Sh in cuneiform is to be read [s].
Tushratta is also attested written tu-(e)-ish-ra-at-ta [twesrata]
A.
***
>
> The number of special pleadings required to make Mitanni-Aryan pre-
> Rig-Vedic boggles the mind.
***
What kind of special pleadings?
A.
***
yangg
wrote:
> Entire sentences corresponding to each other with fairly regular sound
> changes ought to have been a clue for researchers over the centuries.-
***
Is it not the case?
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
> > already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
>
> Does the cuneiform say s or sh? With the former, it looks somewhat
> similar to Dasarata if Hurrian changed voiced to unvoiced in initial
> contexts, although your example has the merit of having something
> closer to the vowel u.
***
ts, ts. Tushratta or Tueshratta, no -u- in the second syllable.
Cuneiform sh is conventional and corresponds to [s].
A.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 16, 9:51 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Georges Dumezil doesn't say PIE speakers called them Nasatyas. How did
> > only the Mitanni Aryan lexicon and the Indic language (or
> > protolanguage) come to call them Nasatyas whereas others used other
> > names such as Dyoscuri?
> There was considerable poetic freedom to coin nicknames for deities in
> PIE. I suppose that some groups more or less selected this or that name.
> I don't think that kind of situation should be over-interpreted.
> Nasatyas has a good IE etymology, with *nes- "to return, to be safe".
> The idea of "return" is associated with the idea of "to be cured"
> because they believed illness was somewhat similar to loss of soul.
> hence soul returned = cured.
> That's what this word means.
<<The aśvinau twins, Ašvieniai of the ancient Baltic religion, are in
(and only in) Indic also called nāsatyau (kind/helpful pair; the dual
au ending makes them a pair).>>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashvins
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Like classical Greek has epenthetic d* in andra, Vedic has cases that
suggest a different older pronunciation. In the case of an avagraha
which is an orthographic marking for an elided (dropped) vowel; the
vowel that no longer exists affects sandhi. How can this be if Rg
Vedic is unchanged from an earlier pronunciation as you claim.
* if it is an epenthetic delta, that is, which it isn't necessarily;
for example, in romanized Tamil, <dr> indicates a trill which is why
the English name of a certain Tamil magazine is <thendral> even though
there is no d in its Tamil spelling. The digraph <dr> is used to
represent a trill to ensure that it doesn't get pronounced with a
tapped/flapped r which it might be if spelt <thenral>. I have no way
to know whether such an orthographic trick was used in Greek too, but
it doesn't seem like an impossibility that Greek authors too
introduced <dr> as a digraph for an allophone of a phonemic /rho/
rather than for a phoneme sequence /delta/ /rho/.
> I can't answer this.
> Can you word it in English please?
The current response is, one hopes, in plainer English.
> > > Therefore there's no reason to think the RgVeda as we know it is
> > > different from the RgVeda as it was composed.
> => this is the point you have to address.
... already have, to a limited extent.
anal...@hotmail.com
Apparently you have to be considered the world's leading authority on
Mitanni:
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=23215716
"Mitanni" itself is Indo-Aryan, eh? Hwo could anybody have missed
that :-)?
By the way, among the numerals, not one is recorded the same as
Sanskrit:
in a-i-ka-a-ar-ta-an-na (aika-artanna) “One Round” (Vedic éka-
“one”), ti-e-ra-a-ar-ta-an-na (tēra-
artanna) “Three Rounds” (Vedic trī- “three”), pa-an-za-a-ar-ta-an-na
(panza-artanna) “Three
Rounds” (Vedic páñca- “fünf”), ša-at<-ta>-a-ar-ta-an-na (šatta-
artanna) “Three Rounds” (Vedic
saptá- “sieben”), na-a-a-ar-ta-an-na (naartanna- haplological
[shortened] from a reconstructable form
*naa-artanna) “Three Rounds” (Vedic náva- “neun”).
Why are overwhelmingly Western Researchers desperately imputing
linguistic time to "aika" only and not the other slight variants?
And apparently Mitanni IA had completed the alleged collapse of a e o
to a (vartana, babru,pinkara etc. etc. etc.) and just "forgot" to
"simplify" "aika" - had invented Bahuvrihi and Tatpurusha compounds
(does any other IE culture attest the naming of warriors along the
lines of "he of the vehement chariot") - and had Mitra, Varuna,Indra
and Nasatya in the treaty in that order - while a Vedic verse shows
Mitra,Varuna,Indra (Agni) and the Ashwins in the same order.
By the way - is it Nasatya with a long a in the treaty? If it is,
then "nes" cannot be the root.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> And apparently Mitanni IA had completed the alleged collapse of a e o
> to a (vartana, babru,pinkara etc. etc. etc.) and just "forgot" to
> "simplify" "aika" - had invented Bahuvrihi and Tatpurusha compounds
> (does any other IE culture attest the naming of warriors along the
> lines of "he of the vehement chariot") - and had Mitra, Varuna,Indra
> and Nasatya in the treaty in that order - while a Vedic verse shows
> Mitra,Varuna,Indra (Agni) and the Ashwins in the same order.
>
> By the way - is it Nasatya with a long a in the treaty? If it is,
> then "nes" cannot be the root.
nasatianna
http://www.google.com/search?client=opera&rls=en&q=nasatianna&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
http://tech.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaArchaeology/message/9409
M. Ranjit Mathews
> What exactly is the ai that Sanskrit is supposed to have fused into
> "e"?
>
> a and i in hiatus, the sound of "paid", the sound of "ice"?
>
> At any rate there is an adjectival form "aika" in Sanskrit "Pertaining
> to one".
>
> If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
> already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
tvayasharata is what the Hurrian text indicates which would seem best
parsed as tvaya+sharata.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_superstrate_in_Mitanni
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Like classical Greek has epenthetic d* in andra, Vedic has cases that
> suggest a different older pronunciation. In the case of an avagraha
> which is an orthographic marking for an elided (dropped) vowel; the
> vowel that no longer exists affects sandhi. How can this be if Rg
> Vedic is unchanged from an earlier pronunciation as you claim.
Can you provide references in RgVeda for that phenomenon?
A.
***
>
> * if it is an epenthetic delta, that is, which it isn't necessarily;
> for example, in romanized Tamil, <dr> indicates a trill which is why
> the English name of a certain Tamil magazine is <thendral> even though
> there is no d in its Tamil spelling. The digraph <dr> is used to
> represent a trill to ensure that it doesn't get pronounced with a
> tapped/flapped r which it might be if spelt <thenral>. I have no way
> to know whether such an orthographic trick was used in Greek too, but
> it doesn't seem like an impossibility that Greek authors too
> introduced <dr> as a digraph for an allophone of a phonemic /rho/
> rather than for a phoneme sequence /delta/ /rho/.
***
I don't think so.
H2nr.- was changed into an-d-ro or an-th-ro-
People keep denying that anthr-opos is not the same as andros, I
consider that to be nonsense.
That kind of dental insertion is commonplace. It's nearly "in the
movement" from n to r.
Same with sr- > Germanic straum "stream".
A.
***
>
> > I can't answer this.
> > Can you word it in English please?
>
> The current response is, one hopes, in plainer English.
>
> > > > Therefore there's no reason to think the RgVeda as we know it is
> > > > different from the RgVeda as it was composed.
> > => this is the point you have to address.
>
> ... already have, to a limited extent.-
***
Not entirely yet !
A.
yangg
wrote:
> > If you accept tvesaratha > tushrutta then the parent language had
> > already acquired the (unconditioned) retroflex "tvesha" = "vehement".
***
Who has splendid chariots.
A.
****
>
> tvayasharata is what the Hurrian text indicates which would seem best
> parsed as tvaya+sharata.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Aryan_superstrate_in_Mitanni
>
***
Not a very good wikipedia article.
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 9:29 pm, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > And apparently Mitanni IA had completed the alleged collapse of a e o
> > to a (vartana, babru,pinkara etc. etc. etc.) and just "forgot" to
> > "simplify" "aika" - had invented Bahuvrihi and Tatpurusha compounds
> > (does any other IE culture attest the naming of warriors along the
> > lines of "he of the vehement chariot") - and had Mitra, Varuna,Indra
> > and Nasatya in the treaty in that order - while a Vedic verse shows
> > Mitra,Varuna,Indra (Agni) and the Ashwins in the same order.
>
> > By the way - is it Nasatya with a long a in the treaty? If it is,
> > then "nes" cannot be the root.
It's short.
na-sha-at-ti-ya-an-na
which corresponds logically to [nazatya] with -z- not -s-.
-nna is the Hurrian article plural.
Quite surprisingly Mitra and Aruna/Uruwana are dual with -ssil but the
twins are plural.
Note that nearly all the names have problems:
1. Mitra is ok with IA Mitra
2. Aruna / Uruwana is not the same as Varuna
Uruwana seems to be a variant name, not at all the name attested in
India
This point is constantly ignored.
3. Indar / Indara is not exactly the same as Indra
4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
A.
yangg
wrote:
> Apparently you have to be considered the world's leading authority on
> Mitanni:
> http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=23215716
***
Lol.
And that's only a beginning. I'm going to become the absolute
authority on Hurrian...
So far:
Journal of Near Eastern Studies. (accepted Maybe 2012). About the
Hurrian word for ‘god’ eni.
The JNES is so slow to publish that article that it's at high risk of
becoming obsolete.
Aramazd. 2011. About some features of Hurrian loanwords. Vol. VI.
A thorough and detailed survey of loanwords in Hurrian.
Journal of Linguistic Relationships. 2011. Response to Alexei
Kassian’s Review of The Indo-European Elements in Hurrian. JLR
5:135-141.
Establishes that 60% of Hurrian basic vocabulary is cognate with PIE.
Journal of Indo-European Studies. 2010. About the Mitanni Aryan gods.
(1-2: 26-40)
That's mainly a detailed analysis of the famous paragraph with Vedic-
sounding deities.
Two of my current bombs in store are:
1. Etruscan is in fact an evolved dialect of Hurro-Urartean.
I've written a paper on that, we'll see if it can get published. I
hope I can make it in the coming year.
For example:
Apennini = Hurrian waban, Urartean baba "mountain"
Rasenna = Hurro-Urartean tarSuwani "human being, mankind"
Not a chance coincidence.
I tend to think that Etruscan probably arrived from somewhere around
Syrian in the last half of the 3rd mil. BC.
They are not Troyans or Lydians but a kind of modified Proto-Hurrians.
There are possibly at least four Akkadian loanwords in Etruscan, which
also exist in Hurrian.
2. Carian is basically an archaic dialect of Hurrian.
The current decipherment of Ray-Adiego-Schuerr is complete crap and
must be dismissed.
I've translated the bilingual of Kaunios with Hurrian.
So far I've not been able to get that thru peer-review. Resistance to
refutation is enormous.
But facts are stubborn. And I'm not that old, so I'll see the walls
fall.
Here's the verbatim to my paper on Carian:
"Reviewers' comments:
This is not serious scholarship, it's worthless: it does not
acknowledge or does completely misrepresent the way in which starting
with Ray, Adiego et al. have come to their transliteration system. The
claim that Carian would be related to Hurrian is, sorry to say,
ridiculous [sic] and shows the author as devoid [sic] of any [sic]
sense of realism and knowledge of the Ancient Near East.
Editor's comments:
Dear Arnaud Fournet, This is a rather harsh evaluation from our
reviewer and I am sorry for that. At the same time, I think it is
probably time for you to try to place your work in another journal.
Good luck to you."
Awesome. Lol.
This is not the first time in the history of science that the obvious
is being denied by conservative people.
I've written four papers on Hurrian (plus some others that have not
yet been accepted) and I am supposedly *devoid [sic] of any [sic]
sense of realism and knowledge of the Ancient Near East.* What a joke.
I suspect Eteo-Cypriot to be also Hurrian but it would take too much
time to decipher the damn writing.
A.
***
>
> "Mitanni" itself is Indo-Aryan, eh? Hwo could anybody have missed
> that :-)?
***
Nobody's perfect. Mayrhofer missed two items:
Mitan-ni < *maita(m) "union" < *m(a)ith "to unite, join, meet".
Assiyan-ni "embroidery" < *syav- "to sew".
I let all the idiots who negate the existence of Mitanni Aryan *
people * explain how Mitanni can be the Union of Hurrians with erh..
*nobody* and funny wanderworts.
Just stoooopid.
A.
***
>
> By the way, among the numerals, not one is recorded the same as
> Sanskrit:
>
> in a-i-ka-a-ar-ta-an-na (aika-artanna) “One Round” (Vedic éka-
> “one”), ti-e-ra-a-ar-ta-an-na (tēra-
> artanna)
***
Archaic aika
A.
***
“Three Rounds” (Vedic trī- “three”),
***
Usually explained as tainted by Hittite
A.
***
pa-an-za-a-ar-ta-an-na
> (panza-artanna) “Three
> Rounds” (Vedic páñca- “fünf”),
***
This one is about the same.
[pantsa] or [pandza]
A.
***
ša-at<-ta>-a-ar-ta-an-na (šatta-
> artanna) “Three Rounds” (Vedic
> saptá- “sieben”),
***
Hurrian-made distortion [sata] with lost p.
Impossible cluster -pt- in Hurrian.
A.
***
na-a-a-ar-ta-an-na (naartanna- haplological
> [shortened] from a reconstructable form
> *naa-artanna) “Three Rounds” (Vedic náva- “neun”).
***
simplified nawawa- > nawa
A.
***
>
> Why are overwhelmingly Western Researchers desperately imputing
> linguistic time to "aika" only and not the other slight variants?
>
> And apparently Mitanni IA had Mitra, Varuna, Indra
> and Nasatya in the treaty in that order - while a Vedic verse shows
> Mitra,Varuna,Indra (Agni) and the Ashwins in the same order.
***
The order is the same but the names are not exactly the same
especially for Varuna: Variant 1 Aruna, Variant 2 Uruwana.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
And how would you propose to spell the three-consonant sequence in
cuneiform without either a graphic epenthetic vowel or omitting a
consonant? Clearly they didn't think id-ra was adequate.
> 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
voiceless consonant?
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 17, 4:54 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com"<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Like classical Greek has epenthetic d* in andra, Vedic has cases that
> > suggest a different older pronunciation. In the case of an avagraha
> > which is an orthographic marking for an elided (dropped) vowel; the
> > vowel that no longer exists affects sandhi. How can this be if Rg
> > Vedic is unchanged from an earlier pronunciation as you claim.
>
> ***
>
> Can you provide references in RgVeda for that phenomenon?
The vivritti (hiatus) in Rg Vedic recitation is also called an
avagraha (possibly because this is the name of a grapheme used to mark
a vowel lost in a sandhi). Can you think of any reason to introduce a
hiatus other than because an older sandhi retained a vowel lost in the
currently seen sandhi? Here, it is claimed that a vivritti should not
be called an avagraha because it isn't as long as a vowel but that a
vivritti is necessary at all should indicate something:
http://books.google.com/books?id=_BffBsafptsC&pg=PR58&lpg=PR58&dq=avagraha+veda&source=bl&ots=T3gJxTPuhW&sig=2i1uRwhROn315Rh0LlxJbaxmE88&hl=en&ei=PMVeTbhMhYqXB_KEubMM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=avagraha%20veda&f=false
Apart from a vivritti (hiatus), there is another artifice called a
kampa meaning quaver; kampa also means quake as in
bhu:kampa=earthquake. A kampa is a lengthened retained vowel with two
tones one of the tones being the tone that used to be on a lost vowel
adjacent to the retained vowel. Under what scenario without a lost
vowel could this happen?
yangg
>
> > 3. Indar / Indara is not exactly the same as Indra
>
> And how would you propose to spell the three-consonant sequence in
> cuneiform without either a graphic epenthetic vowel or omitting a
> consonant? Clearly they didn't think id-ra was adequate.
Your reasoning applies to in-da-ra which may indeed stand for *indra
but it does not apply to in-tar with no final a.
A.
***
>
> > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> voiceless consonant?-
***
There is no long voiceless consonant.
Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 18, 1:36 am, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 17, 4:54 pm, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com"<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Like classical Greek has epenthetic d* in andra, Vedic has cases that
> > > suggest a different older pronunciation. In the case of an avagraha
> > > which is an orthographic marking for an elided (dropped) vowel; the
> > > vowel that no longer exists affects sandhi. How can this be if Rg
> > > Vedic is unchanged from an earlier pronunciation as you claim.
>
> > ***
>
> > Can you provide references in RgVeda for that phenomenon?
>
> The vivritti (hiatus) in Rg Vedic recitation is also called an
> avagraha (possibly because this is the name of a grapheme used to mark
> a vowel lost in a sandhi). Can you think of any reason to introduce a
> hiatus other than because an older sandhi retained a vowel lost in the
> currently seen sandhi? Here, it is claimed that a vivritti should not
> be called an avagraha because it isn't as long as a vowel but that a
>
> Apart from a vivritti (hiatus), there is another artifice called a
> kampa meaning quaver; kampa also means quake as in
> bhu:kampa=earthquake. A kampa is a lengthened retained vowel with two
> tones one of the tones being the tone that used to be on a lost vowel
> adjacent to the retained vowel. Under what scenario without a lost
> vowel could this happen?
>
I requested quotations **** from the RgVeda ****.
I don't care a shit of a fuck of a rat's asshole about Mueller's
blather.
I have not even bothered to read.
So you do ** not ** have any real quotation from the RgVeda to support
your claims?? Is that what I have to understand??
Please confirm.
First time I ask.
I plan to ask more than once.
A.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Feb 18, 2:41 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > 3. Indar / Indara is not exactly the same as Indra
>
> > And how would you propose to spell the three-consonant sequence in
> > cuneiform without either a graphic epenthetic vowel or omitting a
> > consonant? Clearly they didn't think id-ra was adequate.
>
> ***
>
> Your reasoning applies to in-da-ra which may indeed stand for *indra
> but it does not apply to in-tar with no final a.
It could be as simple as a matter of room in the line on the tablet --
the signs ta-ra are both quite wide and tar is quite narrow.
> > > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> > And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> > voiceless consonant?-
>
> ***
>
> There is no long voiceless consonant.
>
> Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
I can't tell what your problem is. You said it's spelled <na-sha->,
which in Hittite is taken to be /nasa-/, and then you said "logically"
it is [naza-].
But the Indic form, you seem to agree, is Nasa-. The "Naza-" is your
invention.
Peter T. Daniels
Max Mueller's little study grammar of Sanskrit is a lot easier for the
beginning student to use than Whitney's masterpiece. They were
published at almost exactly the same time. Mueller's was recently
reprinted very cheaply, presumably to compete with Gonda's very
expensive (Brill) comparable volume.
anal...@hotmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think he means that the accent markings in the Rig Veda should
follow the sounds also and in the Rig Veda that we have now there are
some accent markings (what westerners call "Independent svarita") that
are out of kilter with the sounds.
Therefore he seems to be saying that the sounds were different when
the accents were correctly marked and later Sandhi changed the sounds,
but leaving the accents where they were.
You can find examples yourself by googling "independent svarita".
Could very well be true - we know that Sandhi rules were fluid until
Panini fixed them - Rig Veda apparently mostly left "o" and "e" in
hiatus with a following "a" but Paninean Sanskrit invariably elided
the a (but its presence was indicated by avagraha in writing).
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
He's not the only one who has written on the subject. You can try to
look up others now that I've given you keywords.
> So you do ** not ** have any real quotation from the RgVeda to support
> your claims?? Is that what I have to understand??
I'm not a Vedic scholar. I can only reproduce observations that others
have made. I don't remember where I got the information about the
kampa but now that you have that keyword, you can see whether you can
find anything on it.
> Please confirm.
I confirm that I'm not going to become a Vedic scholar just to answer
your question. I might for other reasons if it were not for there
always being more pressing concerns.
yangg
>
> It could be as simple as a matter of room in the line on the tablet --
> the signs ta-ra are both quite wide and tar is quite narrow.
This seems irrelevant.
A.
***
>
> > > > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> > > And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> > > voiceless consonant?-
>
> > ***
>
> > There is no long voiceless consonant.
>
> > Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
>
> I can't tell what your problem is. You said it's spelled <na-sha->,
> which in Hittite is taken to be /nasa-/, and then you said "logically"
> it is [naza-].
>
> But the Indic form, you seem to agree, is Nasa-. The "Naza-" is your
> invention.
***
hmhm
So you confirm once again your incompetence on what is supposed to be
your specialty.
For your information, Hittite did not have a phoneme /z/
Hurrian does as shown by Ugaritic script.
A single graphic stands for voiced and a geminate for voiceless.
na-sha- reads [naza] in Hurrian.
On the same line: Mi-it-ra-ash-shi-il for [mitrasil] or possibly
[midrasil]
A.
Peter T. Daniels
> On Feb 18, 11:03 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > It could be as simple as a matter of room in the line on the tablet --
> > the signs ta-ra are both quite wide and tar is quite narrow.
>
> ***
>
> This seems irrelevant.
Just as I thought, you show that you know nothing about cuneiform. If
someone handed you a tablet, you probably wouldn't know which was the
front and which was the back (or maybe even which way was up).
Probably the most important single document in Hincks's decipherment
of Mesopotamian cuneiform was the Urartian annals copied by Schultz in
the 1820s but not published (in JA) until the 1840s. They were
invaluable because the fornulaic repetitions were spelled slightly
differently according to the amount of space available on the rock --
which enabled him to identify CV-VC sequences equivalent to CVC signs.
> > > > > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> > > > And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> > > > voiceless consonant?-
>
> > > ***
>
> > > There is no long voiceless consonant.
>
> > > Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
>
> > I can't tell what your problem is. You said it's spelled <na-sha->,
> > which in Hittite is taken to be /nasa-/, and then you said "logically"
> > it is [naza-].
>
> > But the Indic form, you seem to agree, is Nasa-. The "Naza-" is your
> > invention.
>
> ***
>
> hmhm
> So you confirm once again your incompetence on what is supposed to be
> your specialty.
"My specialty"?? From attending a seminar in Hurrian with Gene Gragg
35 years ago??
yangg
wrote:
> I think he means that the accent markings in the Rig Veda should
> follow the sounds also and in the Rig Veda that we have now there are
> some accent markings (what westerners call "Independent svarita") that
> are out of kilter with the sounds.
>
> Therefore he seems to be saying that the sounds were different when
> the accents were correctly marked and later Sandhi changed the sounds,
> but leaving the accents where they were.
>
> You can find examples yourself by googling "independent svarita".
>
> Could very well be true - we know that Sandhi rules were fluid until
> Panini fixed them - Rig Veda apparently mostly left "o" and "e" in
> hiatus with a following "a" but Paninean Sanskrit invariably elided
> the a (but its presence was indicated by avagraha in writing).- Hide quoted text -
***
This phenomenon has obviously no relevance at all when it comes to
potential changes in the RgVeda.
They are changes which occured in later times after the RgVeda was
composed.
A.
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > So you do ** not ** have any real quotation from the RgVeda to support
> > your claims?? Is that what I have to understand??
>
> I'm not a Vedic scholar. I can only reproduce observations that others
> have made. I don't remember where I got the information about the
> kampa but now that you have that keyword, you can see whether you can
> find anything on it.
>
> > Please confirm.
>
> I confirm that I'm not going to become a Vedic scholar just to answer
> your question. I might for other reasons if it were not for there
> always being more pressing concerns.
***
ok
so be it
You claimed that you could point at underlying proofs of changes in
the RgVeda
and you failed to prove that claim.
A.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
Reproduce the text where I claimed any such thing.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
If they occurred, then they changed the already composed Rg Veda even
if not necessarily to a substantial extent.
> A.
yangg
> On Feb 18, 11:14 pm, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 18, 11:03 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > It could be as simple as a matter of room in the line on the tablet --
> > > the signs ta-ra are both quite wide and tar is quite narrow.
>
> > ***
>
> > This seems irrelevant.
>
> Just as I thought, you show that you know nothing about cuneiform.
You are a joke.
How can this feature play any role in two versions of the same treaty
on standard tablets?
You idiot.
A.
***
>
>
>
> > > > > > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> > > > > And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> > > > > voiceless consonant?-
>
> > > > ***
>
> > > > There is no long voiceless consonant.
>
> > > > Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
>
> > > I can't tell what your problem is. You said it's spelled <na-sha->,
> > > which in Hittite is taken to be /nasa-/, and then you said "logically"
> > > it is [naza-].
>
> > > But the Indic form, you seem to agree, is Nasa-. The "Naza-" is your
> > > invention.
>
> > ***
>
> > hmhm
> > So you confirm once again your incompetence on what is supposed to be
> > your specialty.
>
> "My specialty"?? From attending a seminar in Hurrian with Gene Gragg
> 35 years ago??
***
I was talking about writing systems.
Obviously you have only a very superficial understanding and knowledge
of cuneiform but try to parade otherwise.
This is not the first time you make completely stupid statements on
cuneiform.
A.
***
yangg
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > This phenomenon has obviously no relevance at all when it comes to
> > potential changes in the RgVeda.
>
> > They are changes which occured in later times after the RgVeda was
> > composed.
>
> If they occurred, then they changed the already composed Rg Veda even
> if not necessarily to a substantial extent.
***
These are only marginal phenomena mostly in relationship with syllabic
fusion of vowels.
There's utterly no reason to think that the metrically restored
version is not the oldest one to have existed.
They have nothing to do with cases like Greek andra which must have
been nr. with a different phonology of the language.
A.
anal...@hotmail.com
Jai Maharaj) wrote:
> Forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
>
> Kikkuli text for training chariot horses, 2nd. mill. BCE
>
> Tuesday, February 8, 2011
>
> The Kikkuli text. Hittite training instructions for chariot horses in
> the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE
>
> http://www.lrgaf.org/Peter_Raulwing_The_Kikkuli_Text_MasterFile_Dec_2...
>
> End of forwarded message from S. Kalyanaraman
>
> Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
> Om Shanti
>
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The excellent Kazanas has some recent musings on this matter:
http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/AC_on_RV_&_K_Thomson.pdf
citing from the above:
"Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the RV was
composed c1200-1000 BCE - none other than fanciful theory and
mechanical
repetition. All the tremendous arsenal used once upon a time to
support the
Invasion scenario has now been reduced to horses and chariots:
chariots for war
and races did not exist before 2000 and horses appear in Saptasindhu
only after
c1500 – according to Prof. Witzel who has become the main spokesman
for this
theory."
and apparently even the horse-argument isn't all that strong as it was
once though to be (in fact - I wonder if horseback riding as opposed
to riding horse-drawn vehicles is ever mentioned in the Veda)
And here is Kazanas on the horse evidence:
"The meagre evidence for domesticated horse at the Harappan sites
often
adduced in discussions, is a red herring. There is no significant
increase of
horse-remains after the period 1500 BCE. If there was an entry of
Indoeuropeans
bringing horses and chariots at c 1500 BCE, there should be masses of
such
remains. There is no such evidence until the centuries of the Common
Era. KT,
as others before, rightly points out (p36) that horses are not quite
so common in
the RV, as many scholars claim (see also Kazanas 2002: §VII,1 with
many more
references). She also shows that the much mistranslated and thus
maligned rátha
is not a “war-chariot”. In fact, in his translations in his Vedic
Reader, MacDonell
never gives the word ‘chariot’ but always ‘car’. The “chariot’ is a
legacy of
classicism (Greece and Rome). Moreover, rigvedic cars are made from
native
timber (RV 3.53.19; 10.85.20). They have space or seating for three
trivandhurá
(RV 3.6.9; 6.47.9 etc) and one is a minibus rátha having space for
eight
aṣṭāvandhurá (late 10.53.7): they are drawn by oxen, donkeys,
antelopes and
rarely by horses! There is not a single mention of one- or two-spaced
ráthas. All
this was discussed extensively in Kazanas 2002, §VII, 2-3. So the ”war-
chariot”
is another red-herring"
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> The excellent Kazanas has some recent musings on this matter:
>
> http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/AC_on_RV_&_K_Thomson.pdf
>
> citing from the above:
>
> "Moreover, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the RV was
> composed c1200-1000 BCE - none other than fanciful theory and
> mechanical
> repetition. All the tremendous arsenal used once upon a time to
> support the
> Invasion scenario has now been reduced to horses and chariots:
> chariots for war
> and races did not exist before 2000 and horses appear in Saptasindhu
> only after
> c1500 – according to Prof. Witzel who has become the main spokesman
> for this
> theory."
Since no one except you hindutvas gives a flying fuck about "the
invasion theory," who cares?
> is another red-herring"-
You put your faith in an author who thinks the anachronistic word
"car" is relevant to the discussion? Let alone "minibus"??
Peter T. Daniels
> On Feb 19, 5:22 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:> On Feb 18, 11:14 pm, yangg <fournet.arn...@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > > On Feb 18, 11:03 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > > > It could be as simple as a matter of room in the line on the tablet --
> > > > the signs ta-ra are both quite wide and tar is quite narrow.
>
> > > ***
>
> > > This seems irrelevant.
>
> > Just as I thought, you show that you know nothing about cuneiform.
>
> ***
>
> You are a joke.
>
> How can this feature play any role in two versions of the same treaty
> on standard tablets?
Oh, did you not realize that cuneiform wasn't produced on a printing
press, with every copy of a text identical?
And you think that ignoring the existence of Urartian, as you did in
that worthless exercise with Bomhard, makes it go away?
> > > > > > > 4. Nazatya is also not exactly the same as Nasatya.
>
> > > > > > And how, exactly, would Hurrian write a non-long intervocalic
> > > > > > voiceless consonant?-
>
> > > > > ***
>
> > > > > There is no long voiceless consonant.
>
> > > > > Only voiceless as opposed to voiced.
>
> > > > I can't tell what your problem is. You said it's spelled <na-sha->,
> > > > which in Hittite is taken to be /nasa-/, and then you said "logically"
> > > > it is [naza-].
>
> > > > But the Indic form, you seem to agree, is Nasa-. The "Naza-" is your
> > > > invention.
>
> > > ***
>
> > > hmhm
> > > So you confirm once again your incompetence on what is supposed to be
> > > your specialty.
>
> > "My specialty"?? From attending a seminar in Hurrian with Gene Gragg
> > 35 years ago??
>
> ***
>
> I was talking about writing systems.
>
> Obviously you have only a very superficial understanding and knowledge
> of cuneiform but try to parade otherwise.
>
> This is not the first time you make completely stupid statements on
> cuneiform.
Well, you have yet to make an accurate one. At least you didn't try to
claim that you could, indeed, tell the back and front of a cuneiform
tablet apart (and maybe even which way is up).
BTW, the Ugaritic letter <z> is not used in the (handful of, almost
all fragmentary) alphabetic Hurrian texts. The "sibilants" are spelled
only with the letters <T> and <D> (i.e., the Semitic interdentals),
and there is no agreement on the phonetic interpretation of <D> in
Hurrian. (Dietrich & Mayer in the HdO Handbook of Ugaritic Studies)
So we now know that your command of Hurrian is far, far less than you
pretend, showing that that collaboration with Bomhard was even more
worthless than the reviewer showed it to be.
Back in the virtual killfile with you.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> On Feb 19, 6:27 am, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > The excellent Kazanas has some recent musings on this matter:
> >http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/AC_on_RV_&_K_Thomson.pdf
> Since no one except you hindutvas gives a flying fuck about "the
> invasion theory," who cares?
If no one gave a ff, no one would have a preference for PIE having
developed outside India over PIE having developed in India and no one
would care to present arguments that the data better fit the former
scenario.
> > "The meagre evidence for domesticated horse at the Harappan sites
> > often adduced in discussions, is a red herring. There is no significant
> > increase of horse-remains after the period 1500 BCE. If there was an
> > entry of Indoeuropeans bringing horses and chariots at c 1500 BCE,
> > there should be masses of such remains. There is no such evidence
> > until the centuries of the Common Era. KT, as others before,
> > rightly points out (p36) that horses are not quite so common in
> > the RV, as many scholars claim (see also Kazanas 2002: §VII,1 with
> > many more references). She also shows that the much mistranslated
> > and thus maligned rátha is not a “war-chariot”. In fact, in his translations
> > in his Vedic Reader, MacDonell never gives the word ‘chariot’ but
> > always ‘car’. The “chariot’ is a legacy of classicism (Greece and Rome).
> > Moreover, rigvedic cars are made from native timber (RV 3.53.19; 10.85.20).
> > They have space or seating for three trivandhurá (RV 3.6.9; 6.47.9 etc)
> > and one is a minibus rátha having space for eight aṣṭāvandhurá
> > (late 10.53.7): they are drawn by oxen, donkeys, antelopes and rarely
> > by horses! There is not a single mention of one- or two-spaced ráthas.
If there were such mention, Kazanas might call them roadsters:-)
> > All this was discussed extensively in Kazanas 2002, §VII, 2-3.
> > So the ”war-chariot” is another red-herring"-
>
> You put your faith in an author who thinks the anachronistic word
> "car" is relevant to the discussion? Let alone "minibus"??
"Car" is a heckuva lot more relevant to the vehicles it is applied to
than dogs were relevant to "dog-carts". If rata (which is literally as
generic as "wheeler") refers to various wheeled vehicles with various
capacities, what's not kosher about improvisations that facilitate
distinguishing between them? If only terms like three-seater and eight-
seater are suitable, then why are any other vehicles called car, mini-
bus and bus rather than 5 seater, 20 seater and 50 seater?
Peter T. Daniels
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Feb 19, 8:04 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 19, 6:27 am, "analys...@hotmail.com" <analys...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > The excellent Kazanas has some recent musings on this matter:
> > >http://www.omilosmeleton.gr/pdf/en/indology/AC_on_RV_&_K_Thomson.pdf
> > Since no one except you hindutvas gives a flying fuck about "the
> > invasion theory," who cares?
>
> If no one gave a ff, no one would have a preference for PIE having
> developed outside India over PIE having developed in India and no one
> would care to present arguments that the data better fit the former
> scenario.
On the basis of the vast amount of known data, it would never occur to
anyone at all to suggest that PIE developed in India.
> bus and bus rather than 5 seater, 20 seater and 50 seater?-
I don't know what a dog-cart is; it appears occasionally in old
fiction, from which I deduce that it's some sort of animal-drawn
wheeled vehicle. "Car," OTOH, is a truncation of "carriage," used
primarily in the US for both railway cars and automobiles (UK:
motorcars), but not for any sort of animal-drawn carriage.
"Minibus" is a sort of triple neologism: "omnibus" is shortened from
some phrase or other, then itself shortened to "bus," then diminished
by "mini-."
I also don't know "3-seater" and "8-seater" -- are they Indian?
M. Ranjit Mathews
> On Feb 19, 10:58 am, "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 19, 8:04 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > You put your faith in an author who thinks the anachronistic word
> > > "car" is relevant to the discussion? Let alone "minibus"??
> > "Car" is a heckuva lot more relevant to the vehicles it is applied to
> > than dogs were relevant to "dog-carts". If rata (which is literally as
> > generic as "wheeler") refers to various wheeled vehicles with various
> > capacities, what's not kosher about improvisations that facilitate
> > distinguishing between them? If only terms like three-seater and eight-
> > seater are suitable, then why are any other vehicles called car, mini-
> > bus and bus rather than 5 seater, 20 seater and 50 seater?-
> I don't know what a dog-cart is; it appears occasionally in old
> fiction, from which I deduce that it's some sort of animal-drawn
> wheeled vehicle.
two wheeled lightweight horsedrawn carriage
> "Car," OTOH, is a truncation of "carriage," used
> primarily in the US for both railway cars and automobiles (UK:
> motorcars), but not for any sort of animal-drawn carriage.
Unless the ancients had pedicabs, it was once animal drawn.
Etymologically, it seems to have meant courser - that which courses
(runs); perhaps automobile users are the first to use car
etymologically correctly since before self-propelled cars, a car was
something made to run rather than something that ran.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/car
from Norm.-Fr. carre, L. carrum, carrus (pl. carra ), orig. "two-
wheeled Celtic war chariot," from Gaul. karros, from PIE *krsos,
from base *kers- "to run." Extension to "automobile" is 1896.
hiranyavandhuram translated by J. MUIB, D.C.L., LL.D., PH.D.
http://www.archive.org/stream/originalsanskrit05muir/originalsanskrit05muir_djvu.txt
the car, golden, or sunlike, in all its various parts and
appurtenances, wheels, fellies, axle, pole, reins, etc.
> "Minibus" is a sort of triple neologism: "omnibus" is shortened from
> some phrase or other,
Voitre(sp?) omnibus, I think, presumably meaning "conveyance for all",
shortened to omnibus meaning "for all" but still implying "conveyance
for all" which would seem to make bus either a back-formation meaning
conveyance or a short form of a conveyance for all; in electronics,
it's a conveyance for electronic signals that's shared by multiple
devices.
> then itself shortened to "bus,
possibly after changing to motor bus or auto bus given that the modern
"car" was preceded by "motor car".
> " then diminished by "mini-."
> I also don't know "3-seater" and "8-seater" -- are they Indian?
trivandhurá and aṣṭāvandhurá; this looks like the latter:-)
GMC Vandura
http://www.edmunds.com/gmc/vandura/
The equivalent of vandhura in Tamil-Malayalam is [wan.d.i]. One
possible etymology of the Sanskrit term seems to suggest the first
vandhuras being made by lashing together pieces of wood; binding with
only ropes and no nails/screws at all is how catamarans and boars were
made until recently by traditional artisans most of whom might be out
of business since traditional crafts have not held up, in market
share, against industrial compwtition.