Aryan nation
Mike Adam
A co-worker has asked me to try and find information about the very
early Aryan nation (NOT the white supremacist group). He has travelled
in India and China and has read a great deal about this area. He keeps
coming across references to a very early Aryan nation and he would like
more information regarding this group ... historical, cultural,
linguistic, religious, etc.
If anyone can help with information, references, etc. it would be much
appreciated.
Mike
Leqz
I don't have time to go into detail about the "Aryans." The term Aryan
was popularized by Max Muller in his works talking about language
groups. I prefer to avoid using Aryan and instead use Indo-European
or Indo-Iranian.
The basic idea was that there a hypathetical group/groups of nomads
somewhere in Asia. Among these people they spoke a language that
formed the seed of the Indo-European language group. In short, it seems
that these tribes were pretty good at conquering other peoples. After
they conquered a group of people (let us say the ancient Indians) their
language became more chic and as a result the conquered people began to
speak
the language. If you use "Aryan" to refer to a people anyone speaking an
Indo-European language is one, thus, anyone in the modern world who
speaks German, English, Persian, Hindu or a handful of other languages
could be classified an "Aryan."
This is the reason most people stay away from using the term Aryan
Nation.
Besides as you said after WWII it has a bad ring to it. There has been a
lot f speculation about the original Aryan language and the people who
used it but as far as I know it is still only speculation.
leqz
< le...@aol.com>
Betty Cunningham
Joseph Campbell covers the Aryans during his discussions on early Indian
religions in his book ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY.
-Betty
jthund...@my-dejanews.com
In article <DU1xiDA5...@galatham.demon.co.uk>,
Mike Adam <mad...@rogers.wave.ca> wrote:
>
> A co-worker has asked me to try and find information about the very
> early Aryan nation (NOT the white supremacist group). He has travelled
> in India and China and has read a great deal about this area. He keeps
> coming across references to a very early Aryan nation and he would like
> more information regarding this group ... historical, cultural,
> linguistic, religious, etc.
Today's anthropologists are sensitive to that particular terminology.
They use the term Indo-European to denote the language stock from
which most Western languages are derived. But half a century back
there was this war, and the losers liked to use 'Aryan' as a race, so you
seldom hear that word used in an academic context because it is such
a loaded term.
But people use words loosely in casual settings, so what you will see
is Indo-European used for the group of people who spoke the Indo-
European languages. So I will use the word in that sense, so I don't
have to say 'Aryan'. I'm not even really happy about the word 'nation',
but at least it's better than saying 'race'. There are some modern
anthropologists who don't even believe in race at all, saying that
humanity is a pretty continuous spectrum of biological traits, and always
has been, so any division into races must be arbitrary rather than
natural.
When you use the word 'nation', I will take it as referring to a kinship
group rather than a political entity (because I'm prejudiced against
politics.)
Now I've talked about what I'm willing to talk about, so I might as well
start talking about it. These people who spoke proto-Indo-European had
their turf just East of the Caucasus mountains, in the late Neolithic.
earl
< jthund...@my-dejanews.com>
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanew
Kate Brown
>A co-worker has asked me to try and find information about the very
>early Aryan nation (NOT the white supremacist group). He has travelled
>in India and China and has read a great deal about this area. He keeps
>coming across references to a very early Aryan nation and he would like
>more information regarding this group ... historical, cultural,
>linguistic, religious, etc.
I recommend a very interesting book called 'In Search of the Indo-
Europeans', by J.P.Mallory (1989 Thames and Hudson, London), which has
an appendix on 'The Aryan Myth' and a bibliography.
--
Kate B
take time out to reply
Mike Adam
Thanks to all who responded to my query. I have passed the information
along to my co-worker and he indicated his appreciation for all of the
information and references. Thanks again,
Mike
Mike Adam
JohnCarr
On Wed, 10 Jun 1998 21:38:30 +0100, jthund...@my-dejanews.com
wrote:
><snip>
>... There are some modern
>anthropologists who don't even believe in race at all, saying that
>humanity is a pretty continuous spectrum of biological traits, and always
>has been, so any division into races must be arbitrary rather than
>natural.
I am 59 so may or may not be "modern" but have taught Physical
Anthropology and make my living as an archeologist. I have never met
an anthropologist who didn't believe and teach the above. To do so
always makes laymen angry...they are happy with their prejudices.
'Race' is a shopworn concept and worthless as well as dangerous.
The Aryans were a culture, not a race.
Mike Yates
In an article to sci.archaeology.moderated dated Wed, 10 Jun 1998,
21:38:30, jthund...@my-dejanews.com writes
>Now I've talked about what I'm willing to talk about, so I might as well
>start talking about it. These people who spoke proto-Indo-European had
>their turf just East of the Caucasus mountains, in the late Neolithic.
I wish you'd talk more.
The Caspian Sea takes up most of the area "just East of the Caucasus
mountains". Which shore of it do you mean? Where were the Neolithic
shores?
What I'd really like to know is: does anybody have any physical evidence
from that area which indicates a population explosion/expansion?
I get the general feeling that it's all an extrapolation of largely
legendary evidence - am I wrong?
--
Mike Yates Frome Somerset England
JoatSimeon
Mike Yates asked:
>
> What I'd really like to know is: does anybody have any physical
> evidence from >that area which indicates a population explosion/expansion?
> I get the general >feeling that it's all an extrapolation of largely
> legendary evidence - am I wrong?
>
>
>-- it's largely _linguistic_, not legendary.
Comparative/historical linguistics alone (some of the stones-and-bones
crowd hate this) makes it pretty certain that there was some group,
somewhere, around 3000 BCE or a little earlier, speaking a language
we've dubbed "Proto-Indo-European", from which the IE languages of
Europe, Asia, and since Columbus, of the Western Hemisphere et. al.
descend.
(This is a subject with an immense literature; for a good, mainstream
introduction try J.P. Mallory, IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS. Note
that linguistic descent does not necessarily imply physical descent;
Jamaicans and Scots both speak English, for various historical reasons.)
It's impossible to be absolutely certain where this language was first
spoken, but the bulk of the evidence (mainly from the internal
relationships of the IE languages) suggests that it was somewhere in
what's now the Ukraine, extending from there eastward along the forest-
steppe zone for a considerable distance.
Other guesses range from Sweden to Anatolia, but the Ukraine/Central Asia
one is the consensus -- there are severe problems with all the others,
and recent archaeological investigations do indicate that this was the
area where horses were first domesticated, and where the chariot was
invented, in the appropriate period. For complex but persuasive reasons,
horses and wheeled vehicles drawn by them are good 'tags' for early Indo-
European speakers.
(The vocabulary of proto-Indo-European has an extensive lexicon for the
domestic horse, for technology connected with it, and for religious
rituals associated with it; also for wheeled vehicles. The culture was
evidently Late Neolithic -- very late; familiar with one metal,
apparently copper, but not using it extensively; also with plows, dairy
products, and other 'secondary products revolution' era stuff.)
The "Aryans", as they called themselves, were a southeastern group
derived (linguistically) from this original core population.
The easternmost of the Indo-European speakers were the Tocharians of the
Tarim Basin, in what's now western China. A good deal of research has
been done on them lately; since they lived in a hyperarid climate, we
even know what they looked like (much like central/northern Europeans, as
it turns out) and how they dressed (among other things, in herringbone
twill plaids and those goofy hats with feathers Bavarians are fond of).
Incidentally, the Tocharians didn't call themselves Tocharians; that's a
modern archaeologist's guess. The written records indicate they called
themselves something like "Arsi", meaning "free" or "noble".
There's a _possible_ linguistic connection between "Aryan" and "Irish";
Aryan or something cognate may well have been the original ethnic self-
identifier of the PIE speakers, but that's conjectural.
-- S.M. Stirling
Mike Yates
In an article to sci.archaeology.moderated dated Sun, 14 Jun 1998,
08:59:34, JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> writes
>Mike Yates asked:
>> What I'd really like to know is: does anybody have any physical
>>evidence from that area which indicates a population
>>explosion/expansion?
>>
>
>Comparative/historical linguistics alone (some of the stones-and-bones
>crowd hate this) makes it pretty certain that there was some group,
>somewhere, around 3000 BCE or a little earlier, speaking a language
>we've dubbed "Proto-Indo-European", from which the IE languages of
>Europe, Asia, and since Columbus, of the Western Hemisphere et. al.
OK, fine. That's the linguistic consensus. It's a politician's answer to
my question, though, isn't it? And why should "stones-and-bones" involve
such obvious "party-politics"?
Isn't it a little odd that you describe at least some of the proposed
area of origination as "hyper arid", so it would be unlikely to sustain
a source of power and dominance, to the extent of forced linguistic
changes (like Jamaica and Scotland), even with the aid of chariots?
How does a linguistic group originate in and spread from a low-density
high-mobility population to a settled high-density population?
I hope "pretty certain" theories are not getting to be totally
unquestioned here. I have been reading recently how wrong the linguists
got their time-scales in Africa, where hardly any written evidence was
available and attempts to extrapolate European and Asian rates of
linguistic change have come into direct conflict with C14 and other
evidence.
I'm not attacking anyone's sacred cow here, I hope. I just feel that
this science, any science, should be constantly questioning its axioms.
Have fun,
Kate Brown
In article <MPG.fed93194...@news.demon.co.uk>, dated Sun, 14
Jun 1998, JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> writes
>
<snip lots of interesting stuff about IndoEuropeans>
>
>Incidentally, the Tocharians didn't call themselves Tocharians; that's
a
>modern archaeologist's guess. The written records indicate they called
>themselves something like "Arsi", meaning "free" or "noble".
>
>There's a _possible_ linguistic connection between "Aryan" and "Irish";
>Aryan or something cognate may well have been the original ethnic self-
>identifier of the PIE speakers, but that's conjectural.
>
Has anybody else come across an interesting but possibly completely mad
book (though it was published by OUP, so somebody must have thought it
solid) about the Origins of Russia, by Vernadsky? It's a long time
since I read it, but I recall part of his theory - he was proving that
the Rus came from Central Asia rather than Scandinavia - revolved around
the many early tribal names with 'As' or 'Ar' or 'Ras' etc as an
element, meaning 'shining' or indeed 'noble'.
JoatSimeon
In article <3f4MwAAz...@galatham.demon.co.uk>, on Mon, 15 Jun 1998
00:59:47 +0100, kate...@cockaigne.demon.co.uk said...
>
> Has anybody else come across an interesting but possibly completely mad
> book (though it was published by OUP, so somebody must have thought it
> solid) about the Origins of Russia, by Vernadsky? It's a long time
> since I read it, but I recall part of his theory - he was proving that
> the Rus came from Central Asia rather than Scandinavia - revolved around
> the many early tribal names with 'As' or 'Ar' or 'Ras' etc as an
> element, meaning 'shining' or indeed 'noble'.
>
-- I think I saw that some time ago. Apart from quite solid evidence on
the Scandinavian origins of the early Russ, it runs up against the
problem that most tribal names mean something flattering -- The Brave
People, or the Real People, or the Singing People, or something of that
nature.
While names for neighbors usually mean something like The Enemy, or the
Dog People, or the Slave Tribe, or the Dirty Flatheads, or the Raw Meat
Eaters, or the Disgusting Perverts, or something of -that- nature.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Mike Yates
>How does a linguistic group originate in and spread from a low-density
high-mobility population to a settled high-density population?
-- any number of ways; technological superiority is one, although not a
common
one; more adaptive social structures; etc.
When you're talking about very remote periods like this, a mixture of
infiltration, bashing people on the head, and a social organization more
adapted to large-scale (comparatively) organization and better suited to
assimilate outsiders would pretty well account for it.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Mike Yates
>Isn't it a little odd that you describe at least some of the proposed
>area of origination as "hyper arid", so it would be unlikely to sustain a
>source of power and dominance,
-- the Tarim Basin is not a proposed area of origination; it's an area of
dispersal. It's particularly significant because the Tocharians were evidently
the first agriculturalists (irrigation agriculture) to inhabit it, and because
they were very isolated for a very long time there.
The most popular theory of their origins is that they were the easternmost of
the proto-Indo-European speakers at a very early date -- 3000 BCE or so -- and
that they moved south over the Tien Shan sometime in the 3rd millenium BCE.
That would make them valuable for determining the nature and origins of the
earliest PIE speakers.
-- S.M. Stirling
joshua geller
Dear Mr. Stirling,
This is certainly correct, as far as it goes.
But there is something very interesting going on with the
Indo-europeans. There are these two families of gods. The Indians call
them the Deva and the Ashura; the Deva are "good" and the Ashura are
"bad" (in fact, 'Ashura' is usually translated as 'Demon').
The Zoroastrians, on the other hand worship the Ahura and vilify the
Deva. Gathic and Vedic are very similar dialects; some recent work
(by Ms. Hannah M. G. Shapero and others) suggests that this is an echo
of a political conflict, or rebellion of the military caste among the
ancient (at least 1500 BC if not earlier) inhabitants of Aria.
The Germanic "gods" are the Aesir, an obvious cognate with
Ashura/Ahura, and the Germanic "old gods" are the Vanir, which is
cognate with Deva. Interestingly the Vanir are not "bad", although
they have fought a war, in the remote past, with the Aesir.
This tells me that the Northern stuff represents a very old stratum of
myth.
I hope that this information helps you, sir.
my very best sir,
josh
JoatSimeon
> joshua geller
> But there is something very interesting going on with the Indo-europeans.
There are these two families of gods. The Indians call
them the Deva and the Ashura; the Deva are "good" and the Ashura are
"bad" (in fact, 'Ashura' is usually translated as 'Demon').
-- that division is specific to the Indo-Aryans, not to Indo-European
speakers in general. The Iranian demotion of the "devas" to 'demon'
status is a product of the Zoroastrian religious reforms -- post-1000 BC
or so.
Incidentally, "devas/dievas" etc. is a term derived from PIE *dyeus, as
in "dyeus pitar", Sky Father, apparently the original IE over-god.
Proto-Germanic "Tiwaz" (later the Tyr of the Norse pantheon) is a
cognate, given the Gemanic sound shift of PIE *dy ==>tw.
The Vanir are probably the aboriginal fertility deities of northern
Europe; the Aesir represent the imported Indo-European sky-and-war gods.
-- S.M. Stirling
jos...@tezcat.com
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
> There are these two families of gods. The Indians call
> them the Deva and the Ashura; the Deva are "good" and the Ashura are
> "bad" (in fact, 'Ashura' is usually translated as 'Demon').
>
> -- that division is specific to the Indo-Aryans, not to Indo-European
> speakers in general. The Iranian demotion of the "devas" to 'demon'
> status is a product of the Zoroastrian religious reforms -- post-1000 BC
> or so.
The date of Zarathustra is pretty unsettled, and there are credible
people other than Mary Boyce pushing for a date prior to 1000 BC. You
can find references to some of the arguments in her history of
Zoroastrianism, which is in three volumes thus far from the <Handbuch
der Orientalistik>. In, I believe, the <Cambridge History of Iran>,
I've seen her argue for still earlier dates - the *third* millennium BC
I think? ! - but the arguments of other writers *against* a late date
seem pretty good to me.
I posted a much more detailed discussion to soc.history.ancient,
alt.religion.zoroastrianism, and (seeking expertise which was not
forthcoming) humanities.classics, on May 1. My archiving method doesn't
give message-IDs but the subject line began "Date of Zarathustra". In
essence I was summarising and evaluating (without specialised expertise)
the arguments Boyce and her references present.
Even though it pushes this post somewhat off-topic, I should concede
that those arguments rely quite little on archaeology. Um, on the other
hand, I notice earlier in the thread a reference to 1500 BC as a date
for (perhaps) Vedic / Gathic conflict. Please note that 1500 BC for the
Rgveda is a wild guess. The later Vedic literature is archaeologically
identifiable with a "culture" called the Painted Grey Ware culture,
whose terminus ante quem seems to be around 550 BC but whose terminus
post quem has not been established (but must be before 900 BC), but the
earlier Vedic literature, in particular the Rgveda's older hymns
(whichever those may be), has not been identified with any
archaeologically known culture and shows no sign of being. There are
two reasons for this: it's set in the Punjab, which tends to be
difficult to do archaeology in, and it's about a herding society which
isn't fond of settlements, which tends to make archaeology difficult in
its own right... I've posted a bunch about this general topic before;
at the moment the most current source is probably <The Archaeology of
Early Historic South Asia>, ed. F. R. Allchin, for my review of which
see my postings to this group on 12/3 or 12/4/96. The upshot: for
pre-PGW/later Vedic events, you're better off saying "second millennium
BC" than trying to give any more specific date.
Mr. Stirling's general description of how to get Aryans into a country,
posted elsewhere in this thread, does broadly mirror current Western
thinking (my own included) on the arrival of Aryans in South Asia; see
Allchin's book to witness some scholars disagreeing on details.
Archaeologists in India go further and (at least many of them) contest
any assertion of "Aryans" appearing from outside in any important way.
This has been extensively discussed on sci.archaeology and elsewhere;
one can have fun with a DejaNews search on the phrase "Out of India".
Some non-scholarly expositions of the "out of India" viewpoint are
linked to from my web site; I don't have any good references for
scholarly expositions but they do exist.
Joe Bernstein
--
Joe Bernstein, writer and bookseller http://www.tezcat.com/~josephb/
Speaking for myself alone jos...@tezcat.com j...@sfbooks.com
pete
joshua geller (dcl...@shell5.ba.best.com) sez:
`But there is something very interesting going on with the
`Indo-europeans. There are these two families of gods. The Indians call
`them the Deva and the Ashura; the Deva are "good" and the Ashura are
`"bad" (in fact, 'Ashura' is usually translated as 'Demon').
I had thought the Vedic demons were the Rakshasas, who were identified
with the aboriginal dravidian culture which the aryan invaders drove
into the south, at least according to some theorists.
--
==========================================================================
vin...@triumf.ca <== faster % Pete Vincent
vin...@vcn.bc.ca (freenet) % Disclaimer: all I know I
%
learned from reading Usenet.
joats...@aol.com
>josephb
> Archaeologists in India go further and (at least many of them)
> contest any >assertion of "Aryans" appearing from outside in any
> important way.
-- nobody but Indian nationalists takes this seriously; it's the usual
we-were-first tripe, like Graeco-Macedonian squabbling over the use of
"Macedonia".
-- S.M. Stirling
joats...@aol.com
JoatSimeon
>josephb
In particular the Rgveda's older hymns
(whichever those may be), has not been identified with any archaeologically
known culture and shows no sign of being.
-- linguistic analysis puts the Rig-veda in the second half of the second
millenium BCE.
However, elements of it are much older. Eg., the Homeric poems use 'hieron
menos' (might and powerful) as a poetic 'tag' for heroes; the Vedas use
'ishiram manas' for exactly the same thing.
Vedic-style sacrificial burials (chariots, decapitated human sacrifices with
horses heads substituted for their own, etc.) have been found in what's now
Kazakhstan, dated to around 2100 BCE -- that was, of course, North Iranian
territory in historic times, Saka/Sarmatian/Scythian.
-- S.M. Stirling
Joe Bernstein
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
[I wrote:]
>> In particular the Rgveda's older hymns
>> (whichever those may be), has not been identified with any
>> archaeologically known culture and shows no sign of being.
>
> -- linguistic analysis puts the Rig-veda in the second half of the second
> millenium BCE.
I'd be interested in knowing what analysis: reference, please?
The best chasing-down I've been able to do led me back to Max Muller's
dating of it, which is, quite honestly, pure guesswork: he took the
'fixed date' of the Buddha (and this has also become increasingly
controversial recently), allocated a few centuries per layer of the
Vedic corpora, and wound up back around 1500 BC for the oldest. I am
*not* making this up, though I don't have the reference to hand.
Perhaps he published a more sophisticated analysis elsewhere, but it
never got cited: if you're relying on Muller, could you point me to it?
What I know of linguistic analysis of the Rgveda amounts to, "Wow! This
language is a lot like Avestan!" And patently earlier than the Sanskrit
of, say, the Brahmanas. Neither of these is anything I would call a
fixed date. It's worth remembering that rate of language change is
*not* a constant across languages and cultures; in fact, there's good
reason to think Sanskrit might have been unusually conservative.
Anyway, my point in the particular sentence you quoted was not, the
Rgveda is hard to date (though it is), but, it doesn't line up with any
known *archaeological* cultures. And this is true, unless something
revolutionary has happened in the archaeology of the Punjab since I last
paid attention. Linguistic analysis bears on this point in no way I can
imagine (or have unwritten words become archaeological artifacts? :-).
> Vedic-style sacrificial burials (chariots, decapitated human sacrifices with
> horses heads substituted for their own, etc.) have been found in what's now
> Kazakhstan, dated to around 2100 BCE -- that was, of course, North Iranian
> territory in historic times, Saka/Sarmatian/Scythian.
Interesting. References? I don't know where to start for Kazakhstan
archaeology.
In a separate post, he also wrote, again quoting me:
> > Archaeologists in India go further and (at least many of them)
> > contest any assertion of "Aryans" appearing from outside in any
> > important way.
>
> -- nobody but Indian nationalists takes this seriously; it's the usual
> we-were-first tripe, like Graeco-Macedonian squabbling over the use of
> "Macedonia".
No, it isn't. It started as such tripe, and that's still a significant
component, but it's become a whole lot more sophisticated than such
tripe usually becomes. (For example, the Celtic Perfection Irish
traditionalists are decades older, but I've never seen a footnote worth
the ink in any of their works; this is hardly an issue with the Out of
India writers.)
The idea that there was a significant "Aryan" component in the Indus
Valley civilisation is taken seriously by a *lot* of people by now.
This is partly because of a find of something alleged to be a Vedic fire
altar, which was much derided as late as the early 1980s when I was
doing my research but which is now often taken at face value. (Not by
me, but ...) There is also apparently a permissible reading of the
Rgvedic hymns which allows you to see them as the works of people who
know cities. I gather finds of horse bones in Indus contexts are now
becoming reasonably frequent. Etc. Since Western archaeologists tend
to favour Parpola's view that the Indus Valley script reflects a
Dravidian language, they usually wind up asserting ethnic diversity in
the civilisation. See the Allchin book already cited on this.
The idea at the opposite extreme on the credibility scale, that human
life evolved in India, did actually appear in a paper published in the
<Journal of Indian History> during that publication's decline in the
1970s, but is not normally argued any more.
The slightly less-extreme idea that the Indo-European languages
originated in South Asia is still claimed by some Indian nationalists;
it's probably in one of the papers linked to from my web site, though I
can't remember for sure.
*These* ideas are routinely ignored outside India, yes. Less extreme
variants, such as Aryans present in Harappa, are not; nor are the potent
*negative* arguments of the Out of India school.
1) People opposed to Indian nationalism take this stuff seriously
because it's part of what they're opposing.
2) People who want to do archaeological work in India take this stuff
seriously, or at least politely, because it's helpful in getting
permissions and stuff.
3) People who want to figure out what really happened take this stuff
seriously because there are some very good arguments behind it. Almost
every major archaeological claim of some sort of Aryan irruption into
India proper, especially, is pretty easy to deflate. (Note that the
same is not true for a number of places in Pakistan.) Two examples:
a) Iron. Aryan iron plays a number of important roles in a
'traditional' Western view of early South Asian history. First it
allows the invaders to slaughter the natives. Then it allows them to
cut down the jungle of the Ganga valley. And finally, the discovery of
the massive deposits in Bihar allows them to build the Magadhan / Maurya
empire. All of these roles have been exploded.
(i) No sign of slaughters. Remains the strongest argument though.
(ii) No deforestation necessary nor observed; iron tools not
necessary for deforestation. See Makkhan Lal, "Iron Tools, Forest
Clearance and Urbanisation in the Gangetic Plains", <Man and
Environment> 10, 1986.
(iii) Early Indian iron working did not use massive deposits but
surface-found ores; it also differed from West Asian methods in a number
of other respects. See Dilip Chakrabarti, "Distribution of iron ores
and the archaeological evidence of early iron in India", <Journal of the
Economic and Social History of the Orient> 20, 1977; idem, "The
beginning of iron in India", <Antiquity> 50, 1976. Chakrabarti argues
for Indian priority over Southeast Asian ironworking of similar kinds,
if not there then in his <Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities>; I'm not
sure I find this persuasive, but anyway it's clear that Indian iron is
of the Southeast Asian *category* not the West Asian.
b) Painted Grey Ware. Since this can be identified so well with the
later Vedic texts, people like to identify either the greyness or the
characteristic shapes (very distinctive but unhelpfully called "dish"
and "bowl") with the Aryans. Well, the greyness may work for this. The
shapes, however, come from the middle Ganga valley. See M. D. N. Sahi,
"New light on the life of the Painted Grey Ware people as revealed from
excavations at Jakhera (Dist. Etah)", <Man and Environment> 2, 1978; if
you like, I can develop this argument at greater length than Sahi
offers.
I'm not aware of any positive arguments offered by the Out of India
school (which Makkhan Lal and Dilip Chakrabarti are not comfortable
members of anyway...) which are worth much. But the school's
commitments involve it in some diligent questioning of the positive
arguments of Westerners, and this is valuable even though negative.
JoatSimeon
>joesphb
>I'd be interested in knowing what analysis: reference, please?
-- J.P. Mallory, IN SEARCH OF THE INDO-EUROPEANS.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>josephb
>Interesting. References? I don't know where to start for Kazakhstan
archaeology.
-- ARCHAEOLOGY magazine, March/April 1995, "Birth of the Chariot" by David W.
Anthony and Nikolai B. Vinogradov. (The article on the Tarim basin in the same
issue is also valuable.)
S.M. Stirling
joats...@aol.com
JoatSimeon
>josephb
>
>No, it isn't. It started as such tripe, and that's still a significant
>component, but it's become a whole lot more sophisticated than such
>tripe usually becomes.
-- the linguistic relationships between the Indo-Iranian languages, and
between Indo-Iranian and the other IE languages, alone make it clear that
Sanskrit was intrusive in the Indian subcontinent.
In 500 BC, everyone from the Zagros to the Ganges called themselves
"Aryans" and spoke very closely related languages. So did a huge complex
of nomadic peoples on the Eurasian steppe from the Ukraine to the Tien
Shan.
Incidentally, Sanskrit isn't just _similar_ to Avestan, it's virtually
the same language. Eg.,
Sanskrit:
tam amavantam yajatam
suram dhamasu savistham
mitram yajai hotrabhyah
Avestan:
tem amavantem yazatem
surem damohu savistem
mithrem yazai zaothrabyo
("This powerful strong god Mithra
strongest in the world of creatures
I will worship with libations.")
-- that's less than the difference between the Tuscan and Sicilian
dialects of Italian.
Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
originate in the Punjab, and since the historic direction of migration
has always been from Central Asia and Afghanistan down into the Indian
lowlands, the inference should be obvious.
Futhermore, even the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the Rig-Veda, shows
Dravidian influences -- Avestan doesn't, by the way -- and historically
Dravidian has been in retreat before Indo-Aryan languages; the existance
of small pockets of Dravidian speakers west of the Indus combines with
this to make a very strong case that Dravidian languages (probably
related to Elamite) once stretched much further north and west. Probably
all the way across southern Iran, in fact, at
an Elamo-Dravidian stage.
Nor can all this be trumped by negative archaeological data. It's
perfectly clear that substantial migrations do not necessarily leave any
trace at all in the stones-and-bones record -- eg., that of the Dalradian
Gaels to Scotland, for instance. A case of absence of evidence being no
evidence of absence. (Although, incidentally, "gray wares" also show up
in Iran, in the 3rd
millenium.)
So the archaeological problem is not _whether_ the Aryans migrated into
India from the northwest; that's settled by the historical-linguistic
evidence _alone_. All archaeology can do is provide details about
physical culture.
-- S.M. Stirling
M. Shreesh
From: "M. Shreesh" <smu...@ford.com>
Subject: Re: Aryan nation
Approved: john...@met-net.com
JoatSimeon wrote:
> -- the linguistic relationships between the Indo-Iranian languages, and
> between Indo-Iranian and the other IE languages, alone make it clear that
> Sanskrit was intrusive in the Indian subcontinent.
How does that make it clear that Sanskrit was intrusive?. Is it because
it brings peace to your mind.
> In 500 BC, everyone from the Zagros to the Ganges called themselves
> "Aryans" and spoke very closely related languages. So did a huge complex
> of nomadic peoples on the Eurasian steppe from the Ukraine to theTien Shan.
References which lists the people and the sources where each people
calls themselves "Aryans", please.
> Incidentally, Sanskrit isn't just _similar_ to Avestan, it's virtually
> the same language. Eg.,
>
> Sanskrit:
>
> tam amavantam yajatam
> suram dhamasu savistham
> mitram yajai hotrabhyah
>
> Avestan:
>
> tem amavantem yazatem
> surem damohu savistem
> mithrem yazai zaothrabyo
>
> ("This powerful strong god Mithra
> strongest in the world of creatures
> I will worship with libations.")
>
> -- that's less than the difference between the Tuscan and Sicilian
> dialects of Italian.
Agreed, but again my conclusions here will depend upon your answers to
my first two questions.
> > Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
> > originate in the Punjab, and since the historic direction of migration
> > has always been from Central Asia and Afghanistan down into the Indian
> > lowlands, the inference should be obvious.
How is it clear to you or anybody else?.
> Futhermore, even the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the Rig-Veda, shows
> Dravidian influences -- Avestan doesn't, by the way -- and historically
> Dravidian has been in retreat before Indo-Aryan languages; the existance
> of small pockets of Dravidian speakers west of the Indus combines with
> this to make a very strong case that Dravidian languages (probably
> related to Elamite) once stretched much further north and west. Probably
> all the way across southern Iran, in fact, at an Elamo-Dravidian stage.
What according to you are Dravidian influences, please list them?. How
did you or anybody else conclude that Dravidian has been in retreat
before Indo-Aryan?. What archaeological evidence indicates the presence
of Dravidian speakers west of the Indus?.
> Nor can all this be trumped by negative archaeological data. It's
> perfectly clear that substantial migrations do not necessarily leave any
> trace at all in the stones-and-bones record -- eg., that of the Dalradian
> Gaels to Scotland, for instance. A case of absence of evidence being no
> evidence of absence. (Although, incidentally, "gray wares" also show up
> in Iran, in the 3rd millenium.)
Again, this assertion is a natural follower to your earlier assertions,
I would be ready to accept this if you can provide satisfactory answers
to my questions?.
> So the archaeological problem is not _whether_ the Aryans migrated into
> India from the northwest; that's settled by the historical-linguistic
> evidence _alone_. All archaeology can do is provide details about
> physical culture.
I have many more questions to ask about linguistic and archaeological
data, but I will ask them after receiving some reasonable answers.
Shreesh Mudri
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
>> In 500 BC, everyone from the Zagros to the Ganges called themselves
"Aryans"
and spoke very closely related languages. So did a huge complex of
nomadic
peoples on the Eurasian steppe from the Ukraine to theTien Shan.
> References which lists the people and the sources where each people calls
> themselves "Aryans", please.
-- The Persians referred to themselves as Aryans; if you'll read Darius'
inscriptions, for example, he refers to himself as an "Aryan of Aryan
descent"; they referred to the Iranian plateau as the "Aryan-Land"; ditto
the Medes, Bactrians, Sogdians, etc.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh asked:
> What archaeological evidence indicates the presence of Dravidian speakers
> west of the Indus?.
-- Brahui is a Dravidian language, and is spoken west of the Indus.
Historical records indicate it was formerly spoken more widely there.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
>What according to you are Dravidian influences, please list them?
-- there are Dravidian loan-words in the Vedic poems -- this is a commonplace
you'll find in any textbook. Eg., the Encyclopedia Britannica or Mallory.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
>> -- the linguistic relationships between the Indo-Iranian languages, and
between Indo-Iranian and the other IE languages, alone make it clear that
Sanskrit was intrusive in the Indian subcontinent.
>How does that make it clear that Sanskrit was intrusive?
-- Because it was on the southeastern fringe of the Indo-Iranian language
group. So either the Indo-Iranian languages had to spread from the Punjab
north and west, or Sanskrit had to spread south and east.
However, just to point out one impossibility, if the Indo-Iranian languages had
spread north and west from the Punjab, then they'd all contain the Dravidian
loan-words Sanskrit (and the Prakrits) do, and they don't.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
> > Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
originate in the Punjab, and since the historic direction of migration has
always been from Central Asia and Afghanistan down into the Indian lowlands,
the inference should be obvious.
>How is it clear to you or anybody else?.
-- well, look up any reference work on the internal relationships of the
Indo-European languages.
The pattern of isogloss boundaries alone shows that .
S.M. Stirling
joats...@aol.com
Doug Weller
>M. Shreesh
> How did you or anybody else conclude that Dravidian has been in retreat before
> Indo-Aryan?
-- because historical records, which you can find in any good university
library, show that the Dravidian languages were, in historic times,
spoken further to the north and west than they are now.
If anyone wants some general references,
R. Ghirshman L'Iran et la Migration des Indo-Aryens et des Iraniens,
T. Burrow, The Sanskrit Language
Would be a good start.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
Joe Bernstein
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote, quoting me in regard to the "Out
of India" writers, whose views he had previously called "tripe":
> >No, it isn't. It started as such tripe, and that's still a significant
> >component, but it's become a whole lot more sophisticated than such
> >tripe usually becomes.
>
> -- the linguistic relationships between the Indo-Iranian languages, and
> between Indo-Iranian and the other IE languages, alone make it clear that
> Sanskrit was intrusive in the Indian subcontinent.
Well, I won't disagree, although the stronger "Out of India" claimants
will. But I will say that I don't much care.
> Incidentally, Sanskrit isn't just _similar_ to Avestan, it's virtually
> the same language. Eg.,
snip excellent example of this point; but then we get to...
> Futhermore, even the oldest layer of Sanskrit, the Rig-Veda, shows
> Dravidian influences -- Avestan doesn't, by the way
How's that again?
I've seen wildly conflicting claims as to what percentage of the
Sanskrit of the Rgveda is of Dravidian origin; the percentages vary from
something like 1 to 50 depending on who's talking. So I'm not
interested in arbitrating between your conflicting claims here so much
as pointing them out. It sounds like you want the Rgveda to have a
*few* Dravidian words, but not a lot; but this is unhelpful, because we
*CANNOT DATE THE RGVEDA*, as I've been at pains to point out several
times now. A cite from Mallory simply does *not* refute this. Please
consult any of the standard works on South Asian history - Smith,
Majumdar et alii, Majumdar et different alii, Thapar - see who they
reference on the date of the Rgveda, and work backwards. Please consult
any of the standard works on South Asian archaeology - Allchins,
Agrawal, Allchin - see what they offer on second-millennium archaeology
of the Punjab, and work backwards. You will simply not find a
justification for any specific date for either of the Rgvedic corpora,
nor for any specific hymn within them.
So what if I reply, "Sure there's Dravidian words in the Rgveda. Those
are all in the hymns they composed after the Iranians et al. had left
the area. See, the reasons people left had a lot to do with this
radical teacher with new ideas, and he's the one who used Dravidian
words..." How are you going to refute me?
(I have in actual fact seen a very similar argument used with regard to
the date of Zarathustra, and I don't think *that* argument is
worthless.)
> Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
> originate in the Punjab,
Even relatively middle-of-the-road Out of India writers will disagree
here. There's an essay linked to from my web site that argues that you
find what you're looking for, more or less, and lists off a bunch of
vocabulary words common to many Indo-European languages that imply a
less nomadic and northerly origin than the steppes would offer.
I personally think this is nonsense, but this is strictly my general
inclination to disbelieve anyone writing about their own country's
history at work; I lack the equipment to argue the point, and think such
arguments (as many of those you give) belong on sci.lang not here.
> Nor can all this be trumped by negative archaeological data. It's
> perfectly clear that substantial migrations do not necessarily leave any
> trace at all in the stones-and-bones record -- eg., that of the Dalradian
> Gaels to Scotland, for instance.
How substantial was that migration? You have good evidence on this
point? Seems to me the Dalriadan Gaels spent a couple-three centuries
getting whupped in battle on a regular basis, except under one really
good war leader of a king; this does not imply huge population to me.
Furthermore Scotland was not especially populous to *start* with, from
what I've heard, so a relatively small (hence archaeologically
inconspicuous) migration could have a more readily magnified effect.
Consult the settlement surveys of either Makkhan Lal or George Erdosy on
how populous the Ganga valley was at 1000 BC - it's way ahead of
Scotland in AD 600 - and there are a bunch of relevant writers (M.
Rafique Mughal is the first who comes to mind; Harappa is not my focus)
on how populous the Punjab was in the 3rd and 2nd millennia. My
personal concern is not when the Aryans got there - the Out of India
writers answer *that* question with positive data, not negative, by the
way - but with what, if anything, they did.
> So the archaeological problem is not _whether_ the Aryans migrated into
> India from the northwest; that's settled by the historical-linguistic
> evidence _alone_. All archaeology can do is provide details about
> physical culture.
Well, no. It can do a bunch more than that. See, if archaeology shows
that physical culture continues essentially without any break for
centuries either side of the ostensible invasion, then we *have to
abandon* the traditional picture of Aryans arriving in the Punjab to
sack Harappa, marrying there with Dravidians, and then slaughtering the
hunter-gatherers of the Ganga valley and points south in a mighty tide.
And the picture is *wrong*. What little we know of the archaeology of
the Punjab after Harappa is desperately unclear, and could justify talk
of invasions. There are disruptions in Sindh and Gujarat, though not
particularly well timed ones if you really want the Rgveda to date to
1500 BC. But in places like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh -
absolutely *crucial* places for later South Asian civilisation - the
breaks just do not exist. There *was no slaughter*: the original
farmers of these regions' valleys were descended from the peoples of the
hills, and were ancestral to the builders of the Maurya empire.
But what you seem not to appreciate is that the false picture has held
sway in South Asian archaeology for much of this century. Despite
occasional criticisms from people like Jim Shaffer and K. K. Sinha as
the evidence against it accumulated, it remained a visible consensus,
actively supported by the Congress Party Governments for quite some
time, through the 1970s; well past the point where it could be supported
in full without contradiction, but this was not discussed.
While someone like Dilip Chakrabarti who bitterly opposes diffusionist
thinking in general is not the same thing as an Out of India writer who
produces the kind of stuff I note on my web site, the two have had in
practice a synergistic effect. To my mind, one sort of pernicious error
has been replaced by another; but since the other has not (until the
past few months) had government support, there has been more room
recently for intelligent thinking such as Chakrabarti's.
So you'll now find a few people saying things that resemble "Sanskrit
doesn't matter", which is the conclusion I reached researching the topic
in 1985-87 but did not find written anywhere. There were cities around
when the Vedic writings other than the Rgveda were written. If the
Vedic writers chose not to pay attention to those cities, I don't think
it's unreasonable to conclude that we cannot take them as perfect
reflections of their time. If I want to know the history of South Asia,
yes, Sanskrit *does* matter, even for very early times; but so do the
people who didn't speak Sanskrit, who were already there, and who
created 95% of the material culture we find in the Buddha's time.
This is not Out of India as the extremists would have it; but in the Out
of India extremists' day, today, this can be found in published work,
which was not true in the day of happy unity around the cause of the
bloody and devastating Aryan Invasion.
M. Shreesh
I have only come across sources where it has been surmised that
Brahui is a Dravidian language, justify your statement in detail.
--
Shreesh Mudri
****************************************************************************
****
If it looks WRONG,
it is WRONG.
If it looks RIGHT,
it MIGHT be RIGHT!
****************************************************************************
****
JoatSimeon
>josephb
>There *was no slaughter*: the original
farmers of these regions' valleys were descended from the peoples of the
hills, and were ancestral to the builders of the Maurya empire.
-- nobody's talking about a slaughter or replacement of populations. That's
fairly rare. Linguistic turnover usually involves assimilation.
There were at least 4 million people in Roman Britannia, and pollen indicate
that the area of clearned land remained approximately the same throughout
the period of Anglo-Saxon settlement.
In other words, a relatively small number of Angles, Jutes, Saxons,
Frisians, and what-have-you moved in and "Anglicized" a much larger Celtic
(and/or Latin) speaking people in a quite short period.
-- S.M. Stirling
Doug Weller
In article <MPG.ffe203e8...@news.demon.co.uk>, on Fri, 26 Jun 1998
22:17:22 +0100, jos...@tezcat.com said...
>
> So what if I reply, "Sure there's Dravidian words in the Rgveda. Those
> are all in the hymns they composed after the Iranians et al. had left
> the area. See, the reasons people left had a lot to do with this
> radical teacher with new ideas, and he's the one who used Dravidian
> words..." How are you going to refute me?
-- Occam's Razor. It's an unnecessarily complicated hypothesis.
-- S.M. Stirling
Doug Weller
"It is, however, a well established hypothesis that Dravidian speakers must
have been widespread throughout India, including the northwest region. This
is clear because a number of features of the Dravidian languages appear in
the Rgveda, the earliest known Indo-Aryan literary work, thus showing that
the Dravidian languages must have been present in the area of the Indo-Aryan
ones.
Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian
bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of
Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology (eg., the
retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled upward toward the palate),
syntax (eg., the frequent use of gerunds, whicha re non-finite verb forms of
nominal character, as in "by the falling of the rain"), and vocabulary (a
number of Dravidian loanwords appearing in the Rgveda itself.)"
-- Encylopedia Britannica, (1978 ed.)
-- S.M. Stirling
M. Shreesh
[Moderators note: I do not want to terminate this thread but it must return to
archaeological discussion. For this newsgroup it is getting too /linguistic/ and
is also getting near the bone /flamewise/.]
joats...@aol.com wrote:
>
> >josephb
>
> > Archaeologists in India go further and (at least many of them)
> > contest any >assertion of "Aryans" appearing from outside in any
> > important way.
>
> -- nobody but Indian nationalists takes this seriously; it's the usual
> we-were-first tripe, like Graeco-Macedonian squabbling over the use of
> "Macedonia".
> -- S.M. Stirling
> joats...@aol.com
Not really, it is being considered seriously in all quarters.
--
Shreesh Mudri
********************************************************************************
M. Shreesh
JoatSimeon wrote:
>
> >M. Shreesh
>
> >> -- the linguistic relationships between the Indo-Iranian languages, and
> between Indo-Iranian and the other IE languages, alone make it clear that
> Sanskrit was intrusive in the Indian subcontinent.
>
>
> -- Because it was on the southeastern fringe of the Indo-Iranian language
> group. So either the Indo-Iranian languages had to spread from the Punjab
> north and west, or Sanskrit had to spread south and east.
>
> However, just to point out one impossibility, if the Indo-Iranian languages had
> spread north and west from the Punjab, then they'd all contain the Dravidian
> loan-words Sanskrit (and the Prakrits) do, and they don't.
> -- S.M. Stirling
There are too many questions I would love to ask in this topic
but
lets take it slowly. What proof do you have have which says Sanskrit was
on the southeastern fringe of Indo-Iranian language froup. Vedic
sanskrit does not contain any dravidan loan words as far as I know, so
what literary refernces are you using to say this. All your dating
depends upon the context that Sanskrit is foreign to Punjab, so in order
to even write about the other way you will have to start the process
with an assumption in the reverse, and you are not doing that. The
premises are not clear.
--
Shreesh Mudri
************************************************************************
********
JoatSimeon
[Moderators note: I do not want to terminate this thread but it must return to
archaeological discussion. For this newsgroup it is getting too /linguistic/ and
is also getting near the bone /flamewise/.]
>josephb
>There are disruptions in Sindh and Gujarat, though not particularly well timed
ones if you really want the Rgveda to date to 1500 BC.
-- "somewhere between 2000 BC and 1000 BC" would be more in line with the
linguistic extrapolations. 1500 BC is just a middle date in a range.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
>I have only come across sources where it ahs been surmised that Brahui is a
Dravidian language.
-- this isn't a surmise, it's a fact. Brahui is Dravidian, genetically related
to Tamil et. al.
-- "Brahui language, an isolated member of the Dravidian family, spoken in
Pakistan by about 300,000 people. All other Dravidian languages are spoken in
peninsular India."
-- Encyclopedia Britannica.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
In article <c4r$kMAkrh...@galatham.demon.co.uk>, on Sun, 28 Jun 1998
11:28:52 +0100, smu...@ford.com said...
> What proof do you have have which says Sanskrit was
>
-- well, a map, for starters. It's southeast of Iran, isn't it?
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
Concurrently, we have the interesting case of the "Tocharians" of the
Tarim Basin (Chinese Turkestan.)
(The Tocharians didn't call themselves that, by the way; according to
their written records, they referred to themselves as the "Arsi", meaning
something like "free" or "noble".)
The Tocharian area shows strong continuity of settlement from the 3rd
millenium on, and the Tocharians spoke an Indo-European but not
specifically Indo-Iranian language -- it's a peripheral-archaic IE tongue,
more similar to Celtic or Germanic than to Iranian.
Of course, Tocharian was (like proto-Celtic and proto-Germanic) isolated
from the 'core' or innovating languages of the IE group, Indo-Iranian and
Slavic.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
Coming back to the strictly archaeological record for a moment, we have the
intriguing case of the chariot burials of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture (c.
2100 BCE). (Archaeology Magazine, March/April 1995, David Anthony and Nikolai
Vinogradov)
As Anthony and Viogradov note, the horse-chariot sacrificial burials in
Kazahkstan are extremely similar to those described in the Rig-Veda.
Eg., "Let them bury death in this hill... I shore up the earth, all around you;
let me not injure you as I lay down this clod of earth. Let the fathers, hold
up this pillar for you; let Yama build a house for you here."
-- which is a fairly precise description of these graves.
The presence of a human sacrifice where the body of the decapitated victim had
been placed on top of the central grave pit after it was filled with earth, and
where the human's head had been replaced with a horse head, is also highly
significant.
This is, of course, extremely similar to the replacement of the head of the
human fire-priest Dadhynac Atharvana by the Asvins, the Divine Twins.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
To amplify that a little:
At the beginning of the historic period, say around 500 BCE, there were
Iranian-speaking peoples in the Ukraine (Scythians/Sarmatians) and all
the way from there east to the Tien Shan and western Mongolia. They
occupied the steppe and forest-steppe zones of the whole of Eurasia
between the Dneister and what's now Mongolia.
Before Mr. Shreesh pops up, I refer anyone who wants confirmation to the
Cambridge Ancient History, specifically _THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF
EARLY INNER ASIA_ or any other work on the area; eg., Rolle, _THE
WORLD OF THE SCYTHIANS, Sulimirski, _THE SARMATIANS_, etc.
(The Indo-European, but non-Indo-Iranian Tocharians were also in the
Tarim Basin and parts of adjacent western China.)
Archaeological evidence indicates that the Eurasian steppe zone had been
inhabited by the ancestors of historic Iranian-speaking pastoral nomad
groups for a very long time.
Linguistic evidence -- Iranian loan-words in Proto-Slavic, and
proto-Finno- Ugrian, for instance, and Iranian river-names throughout
the area, such as Dneister and Dneiper -- confirms this.
Iranian-speakers also occupied the whole of Central Asia, Afghanistan,
the Ferghana Valley, the Iranian plateau, and the Zagros.
Speakers of specifically _Indo-Aryan_ languages -- descendants,
linguistically speaking, of Sanskrit -- occupied much of peninsular
India, although less than they do today.
So the Indo-Iranian groups occupied an enormous area of Europe, northern
and central Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
josephb wrote:
> See, if archaeology shows that physical culture
> continues essentially without any break for centuries
> either side of the ostensible invasion, then we *have to
> abandon* the traditional picture of Aryans
-- not in the slightest. Pots are not people.
This sort of Renfrewesque argument is self-referential, and ignores the
fact that material culture bears no necessary alignment with language.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
josephb wrote:
>not true in the day of happy unity around the cause of the bloody and
>devastating Aryan Invasion.
-- linguistics merely says -- and says conclusively; archaeology just has
to lump it -- that Sanskrit, and the Indo-Aryan languages derived from it,
is intrusive in South Asia and moved in from the northwest starting
sometime in the 2nd millenium BCE.
The precise mechanisms by which this occurred is best left to the
stones-and-bones people. That's what they're for; filling in details.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>M. Shreesh
>Vedic sanskrit does not contain any dravidan loan words as far as I know, so
what literary refernces are you using to say this.
-- I'm not using literary references; I'm using textbooks.
Manfred Mayrhoper, CONCISE ETYMOLOGICAL SANSKRIT DICTIONARY, for starters.
-- S.M. Stirling
joats...@aol.com
JoatSimeon
>josephb
>>Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
originate in the Punjab,
>Even relatively middle-of-the-road Out of India writers will disagree here.
interpretation. Nobody in the mainstream of the world linguistics community
entertains it.
It's not simply a matter of PIE vocabulary (although the absence of any
words for tropical plants and animals should be conclusive in itself) it's the
interrelationship of the IE languages themselves and their relationships with
non-IE languages.
Eg., proto-Slavic contains an extensive set of very early Iranian loans, and
many of the river names in the Ukraine are Iranian in origin.
Also, proto-Finno-Ugrian contains a very early layer of Iranian loan-words.
Imagining they spread from a point on the extreme SE fringe of the IE zone
again is, to put it mildly, not the most parsimonious hypothesis. I see no
reason why it should be seriously considered at all.
-- S.M. Stirling
<joats...@aol.com>
M. Shreesh
Moderator's Note: If this thread does not return to specifically
archaeological issues and to more polite language VERY soon,
it is danger of being terminated by the moderators.]
I sure hope you have read the inscriptions you mentioned, from what
I have heard it is open to interpretation, they are not as clearly stated
as you say. I am not sure Darius's time was 500BC but much later.
Tell me a short story, how did you arrive at the statement you made
above. One can find facts and then build a story or build a story and
then look for facts. Both have occurred with western historians on this
topic starting from Max Mueller, so it is but perfect that one has to be
sceptical about anybody who only looks at western sources.
--
Shreesh Mudri <smu...@ford.com>
**************************************************************************
***
***
If it looks WRONG,
it is WRONG.
If it looks RIGHT,
it MIGHT be RIGHT!
**************************************************************************
***
***
M. Shreesh
standard reference in any scientific journal article. It can at best be
termed as a book to know and understand the generally held opinions of
some people. A lot of inconsistencies or outdated information have
appeared in the named encyclopedia before, what I would like to see is
some good references from the latest scientific sources.
In most scientific publications I have come across, the best is that is
a hypothesis.
--
Shreesh Mudri
********************************************************************************
Ross Clark
[Moderator's Note: This thread must return to the discussion of
archaeological issues relating to the Aryan nation.]
M. Shreesh wrote:
>
> JoatSimeon wrote:
> >
> > >M. Shreesh
> >
> > >I have only come across sources where it ahs been surmised that Brahui is a
> > Dravidian language.
> >
> > -- this isn't a surmise, it's a fact. Brahui is Dravidian, genetically related
> > to Tamil et. al.
> >
> > -- "Brahui language, an isolated member of the Dravidian family, spoken in
> > Pakistan by about 300,000 people. All other Dravidian languages are spoken in
> > peninsular India."
> >
> > -- Encyclopedia Britannica.
> > -- S.M. Stirling
> Note Mr. Stirling that a 1978 edition of Encyclopedia is not the
> standard reference in any scientific journal article. It can at best be
> termed as a book to know and understand the generally held opinions of
> some people. A lot of inconsistencies or outdated information have
> appeared in the named encyclopedia before, what I would like to see is
> some good references from the latest scientific sources.
> In most scientific publications I have come across, the best is that is
> a hypothesis.
> --
> Shreesh Mudri
If by a "hypothesis" M.Shreesh means some level of certainty _less_ than
that with which languages are usually assigned to families, then I would
be interested to know which scientific publications he has been looking
at. In my own experience, every discussion of the Dravidian family I have
seen, without exception, considers Brahui to be a member of that family.
To take two examples which I have to hand, Kamil Zvelebil, _Comparative
Dravidian Phonology_ (1970), p.13; and Sanford B.Steever, "Tamil and the
Dravidian Languages", in Bernard Comrie,ed. _The World's Major Languages_
(1987), pp.725-6.
If, on the other hand, M.Shreesh is simply using the word "hypothesis" to
hint at uncertainty, in the same way as Creationists who like to say
"Evolution is only a theory", then probably there is no need to waste
further time in discussing this peripheral and uncontroversial point.
Ross Clark
r.c...@auckland.ac.nz
JoatSimeon
In article <MPG.10021458e...@news.demon.co.uk>, on Mon, 29 Jun
1998 22:24:32 +0100, smu...@ford.com said...
>
> I sure hope you have read the inscriptions you mentioned
>
-- "Darayavaush xsayathiya vazrka..."
The inscription is trilingual (Elamite, Old Persian, and
Babylonian/Akkadian), engraved on rock at Behistun in western Iran. It
was first deciphered in the 1840's.
In it, Darius refers to himself as "Aryan" (Airyanam).
The Behistun inscription is one of the best-known and most famous of the
Old Persian inscriptions. The language itself, of course, is well-
understood and has been for a long time.
> I am not sure Darius's time was 500BC but much later.
-- Darius I, King of Persia, 522-486 BC.
-- S.M. Stirling
cy...@mailexcite.com
joats...@aol.com wrote:
>
> josephb
>
> Since it's also abundantly clear that the Indo-European languages did not
> originate in the Punjab,
>
> Even relatively middle-of-the-road Out of India writers will disagree here.
>
> interpretation.
> Nobody in the mainstream of the world linguistics community entertains it.
Your logic is that if a proposition is not accepted "by the mainstream"
then it is to be discarded because it offends prejudices.
> It's not simply a matter of PIE vocabulary (although the absence of any
> words for tropical plants and animals should be conclusive in itself)
it's the
> interrelationship of the IE languages themselves and their relationships
with
> non-IE languages.
Let's say proto-IE began in the Punjab. The migrants from the Punjab
would cross over many types of terrain before reaching Europe. Over time
one could easily imagine the names of tropical plants and animals to fall
out of use as the environment changes. The word for a swamp-tree would be
forgotten after a eneration or two in the desert.
> Eg., proto-Slavic contains an extensive set of very early Iranian loans, and
> many of the river names in the Ukraine are Iranian in origin.
>
> Also, proto-Finno-Ugrian contains a very early layer of Iranian loan-words.
>
> Imagining they spread from a point on the extreme SE fringe of the IE zone
> again is, to put it mildly, not the most parsimonious hypothesis. I see no
> reason why it should be seriously considered at all.
>
> -- S.M. Stirling
> <joats...@aol.com>
It is a hypothesis that works as well as many other I have heard.
-Cyruz
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