February 9, 2007
Sanskrit - Mother of European Languages says Prof Dean Brown
Posted by swethaiyer under Education, General, India, Science and Technology, Society, World
Sanskrit gets a new spokesperson in Professor Dean Brown, an eminent Theoretical Physicist, cosmologist, philosopher and Sanskrit scholar, whose translation of the Upanishads was published by the Philosophical Research Society. The following is a very interesting interview where Professor Dean Brown brings about an interesting co-relation of Sanskrit & Physics
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4ush_thinking-allowed-sanskrit-tradition
[Duration: 23:28 |Taken: 04 June 2006 | Location: Israel]
Prof. Dean Brown points out that most European languages can be traced back to a root language that is also related to Sanskrit - the sacred language of the ancient Vedic religions of India. Many English words actually have Sanskrit origins. Similarly, many Vedic religious concepts can also be found in Western culture. He discusses the fundamental idea of the Upanishads - that the essence of each individual, the atman, is identical to the whole universe, the principle of brahman. In this sense, the polytheistic traditions of India can be said to be monistic at their very core.
While it might be considered a forgotten language in India, globally Sanskrit has found many takers. The American Sanskrit Institute was founded 18 years ago with a vision to spread “the ease and joy of learning Sanskrit through an immersion experience, the enjoyment of making the sounds, fluently reading the original Devanagari script, and directly reading, chanting and understanding sacred literature.”The Indological department, University of Bonn Germany conducts various courses and study programs.
While the world is waking up to Sanskrit – the divine language, where are we in terms of preserving the world’s oldest known tongue?
Cross posted here
February 10, 2007 at 1:21 am
Sanskrit is an Indo-European language, just like Latin, Greek, and English are Indo-European languages. This means that they are all descended from a common language: Proto-Indo-European.
Sanskrit is not the mother of European languages, as you claim. Sanskrit and Latin are sister languages, descended from the same mother - Proto-Indo-European.
February 11, 2007 at 6:54 am
Proto-Indo-European language is a fictional name. Nobody knows if such a language ever existed. For all we know, everything might have originated from sanskrit.
February 12, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Many people have studied Indo-European languages and reconstructed Proto-Indo-European. Its existence accounts for all the difference among the Indo-European languages. This is a generally accepted theory. If you don’t believe it, fine - but be aware that you need more proof than just “it might not have existed.”
http://www.bartleby.com/61/8.html
Also, you are misrepresenting Dean Brown’s views: he did not say that Sanskrit is the mother of Indo-European languages.
February 13, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Well, in that case you simply need to listen to the interview once again.
Cheers
February 13, 2007 at 11:09 pm
OK, I see how you could get that impression from what Dean Brown says:
“English, Russian, Icelandic, Greek, are all dialects of a mother tongue that’s spoken widely in India and many parts of the world.”
“Most of the words in English, say, go back either through the Teutonic, northern European, Icelandic route (root?), to the uh Sanskrit, Vedic, and then through the Mediterranean route, the Romance route.”
These quotes don’t make any sense. He makes it sound like the “mother tongue” is spoken widely in India, which is wrong.
The second quote makes it sound like English words came from Icelandic, which came from Sanskrit, which in turn came from Latin. This is wrong.
He says that “om” is the root of “human” and “humble” - there is no evidence of this as far as I know.
His connection of “sutra” and “suture” is correct - both are descended from Proto-Indo-European “syu-”.
He says Sanskrit “ritam” (?) is the origin of English “right”. This is wrong. “right” is from Proto-Indo-European “reg-”, and is cognate with “rajah” and “raita”.
He says “practical” and “act” are from Sanskrit - this is wrong. “practical” is from Greek “prassein” and “act” is from Proto-Indo-European “ag-”.
He connects “theory”, Latin “deus”, and Sanskrit “deva” - this is wrong. “theory” is from Greek “thea”. “deus” and “deva” are both from Proto-Indo-European “dyeu-”.
Again, the view that Sanskrit is the ancestor of Indo-European languages is not a view that historical linguists take seriously. Personally I trust the historical linguists, the experts, rather than the word of a non-linguist.
February 15, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Sure one can dismiss Prof Dean Brown’s work and knowledge as that of the word of a non-linguist. But it would hold good in a discussion only when you have something as substantial as having translated The Upanishads behind you.
>>John: These quotes don’t make any sense. He makes it sound like the “mother tongue” is spoken widely in India, which is wrong
They sure make sense. Sanskrit was widely spoken in India during the vedic age and every language spoken in India today has its roots in Sanskrit.
The Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) is the “hypothetical” common ancestor of the Indo-European languages. Whereas, the sound of each of the 36 consonants and the 16 vowels of Sanskrit are fixed and precise since the very beginning. It was never changed, altered, improved or modified. So all the words of the Sanskrit language always had the same pronunciation as they have today. There was never any sound shift or change in the pronunciation of any word in the history of the Sanskrit language. The reason is its absolute perfection by its own nature and formation, because it was the first language of the world.
More over here - http://www.encyclopediaofauthentichinduism.org/articles/23_the_speculation_of.htm
February 15, 2007 at 8:53 pm
“Sanskrit was widely spoken in India during the vedic age and every language spoken in India today has its roots in Sanskrit.”
No, India is also home to Dravidian languages and Sino-Tibetan languages that are not related to Sanskrit.
That article is completely inaccurate - change is an observed fact of all languges. Of course Sanskrit changed. Sanskrit changed into the modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi-Urdu, Gujarati, Panjabi, etc.
There are 150 years of scholarship on reconstructing the Indo-European language. I recommend that you familiarize yourself with it. Start with Lehmann’s “Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics”.
February 16, 2007 at 12:21 pm
Vedic Sanskrit literature developed first in an oral form, and was first set down in written form only after centuries of oral transmission.
Unlike what you claim sanskrit has not changed but the mordern Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindu, Urdu, Punjabi have descended from Sanskrit. Classical sanskrit is still a spoken language in Mattur (village in Karnataka).
Yes, i agree Dravidian languages and Sino-tibetan languages are not related to sanskrit but nowhere in the article was it claimed to be related too.
Will surely look up Lehmann’s “Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics”.
February 17, 2007 at 1:47 am
“Vedic Sanskrit literature developed first in an oral form, and was first set down in written form only after centuries of oral transmission.”
I’m not sure what this has to do with Sanskrit being an unchanging language?
Just as the various dialects of Latin developed into French, Italian, Spanish, etc, so did Sanskrit develop into Hindi, Gujarati, Panjabi, etc. Saying that Hindi is descended from Sanskrit is the same as saying that Sanskrit developed into Hindi.
The reason that Sanskrit today is the same as the Sanskrit of 500 BCE is because like Latin, it is a fossilized language - it has no (or very few) native speakers. It has native speakers in Mattur because it has recently been revived, just as Hebrew was revived and is now spoken natively. I would expect that the Sanskrit spoken natively in Mattur will begin to change.
February 23, 2007 at 7:28 am
John,
are you still living in dark ages? Please wake up!
March 1, 2007 at 4:24 am
John,
I can understand your statements based on the influence of various theories you have read. the PIE (Proto-Indo-European) was a fictious language to put forth a theory with an assumption that Latin,Sanskrit and Greek belong to the same group, As you might know there was never a time that this language was spoken and your mention of PIE being origin of some english words is as correct as the truth of Aryan invasion on India..
It is not easy to understand the history of languages with our knowledge of actual history of World, most of the Eastern(East to Europe in a British centric Map) History till now was seen primarily from British Colored Lens, and huge number of theories generated by these “Historians” and “Linguists” should be understood in a broader perspective from both political and religious angles ..
You might immediately say that I being an Indian will support all Brown’s comments, NO
We need to understand, By disporoving Max Mullers theories historians have established that Sanskrit was spoken even before 3000 BC on the banks of Saraswati River, which may surely bring forwards new ‘truths’ dispelling the old ‘theories’
Lets keep our minds open
“Nahi Nahi Rakshati dukrijnkarane… “
March 2, 2007 at 6:36 pm
“historians have established that Sanskrit was spoken even before 3000 BC”
And how exactly would that have been established? Brahmi-related Indic phonetic scripts do not date earlier than the first millennium BCE. The Indus Valley script is the only other script of significance dating earlier than that, and it has not been deciphered fully. Furthermore, it is most likely logographic, so we’d have no idea how it sounded anyway.
Let’s keep our minds open, but let’s also face reality … all evidence so far shows that Sanskrit’s fabled position as “the mother of all Indo-European languages” is nothing more than a remnant of European romanticism/appropriation of Indian history and culture, when it served their purposes. Don’t forget that the promulgators of this theory also once believed that all blond blue-eyed people originated in India. Sanskrit is a descendant of PIE and a sister/cousin to other IE languages, not an IE root language.
March 4, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Proto-Indo-European is not a fictitious language, it is a reconstructed language. Its hypothesized existence explains the regular phonological differences between IE languages.
If Dean Brown has an argument about why a Sanskrit word is the ancestor of an English word, I’d like to hear it - but “they have the same sound” is not an argument. The good thing about the Proto-Indo-European theory is that the rules of sound change that we’ve discovered are falsifiable - if we find evidence that doesn’t fit in with our rules, then something is wrong with the theory. But Dean Brown’s arguments are not falsifiable and are therefore useless.
March 8, 2007 at 12:49 am
“But Dean Brown’s arguments are not falsifiable and are therefore useless”
Wow… Nice conclusion… if something is not falsifiable then it is useless ???
So are you saying - “existence of air is not falsifiable” and therefore useless ?
March 8, 2007 at 4:54 am
Dean Browns claims are not testable or falsifiable. All he is saying is “word X is descended from word Y because both words have a similar sound and meaning.” How do I test it? How would I disprove it? He has no rules that explain the phonological differences between the two languages.
Indo-European historical linguistics, on the other hand, uses the comparative method:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_method
“It aims to prove that two or more historically attested languages are descended from a single proto-language by comparing lists of cognate terms. From these cognate lists, regular sound correspondences between the languages are established, and a sequence of regular sound changes can then be postulated which allows the proto-language to be reconstructed from its daughter languages. Relation is deemed certain only if a partial reconstruction of the common ancestor is feasible, and if regular sound correspondences can be established with chance similarities ruled out.”
March 10, 2007 at 11:01 am
I loved reading the responses… There is no point of arguing, as you can see John is very defensive of theories just emerged as late as 18th century…. He follows the dying breed of intellectuals who once distorted Indian History…. Anyway, keep up the good work guys… Always know: Satyamev Jayte ~~ Truth shalt triumph.
March 20, 2007 at 5:19 pm
“theories just emerged as late as 18th century”
Actually, the idea that Sanskrit is the “mother of IndoEuropean languages” is itself an idea that dates back to about that time … back when some European Indomaniacs thought their white bonde “Aryan” ancestors came from India. Now that this racial theory has been debunked, the linguistic component needs to be trashed as well, not turned on its head and rehashed for Indian/Hindu supremacist purposes.
March 22, 2007 at 11:28 am
Please refer to the below given URL which also aubstantiate it:
http://www.indusscript.com/
Rather this study goes beyond and says that IE , Dravidian and Munda languages have the same ancestor in Indus Script.
March 24, 2007 at 1:24 am
Most scripts of south and southeast Asia, including Devanaagarii, Gujarati, Panjabi, etc, and all the scripts used to write Dravidian languages, and also including Thai, Lao, Khmer and others, are ultimately derived from the Brahmi script. It is possible that Brahmi is descended from the Indus Valley script, but this is not conclusive. Some people think that Brahmi has its roots in Semitic scripts.
In any case, this has nothing to do with how the languages themselves are related. Hindi, Tamil, and Thai are not related to each other, even though the scripts that are used to write them are.
March 24, 2007 at 3:55 pm
All three languages Hindi, Tamil, and Thai are related with Sanskrit. My mother tongue is Tamil, and I know very well how much this language has Sanskrit influence.
The origin of the theory about Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) and Indo-European language is fictional and is it not based on factual or authentic study. An unauthentic study, even if it is constructed for 150 year or 1000 years to come is still will be flawed. Because it is based on wrong theory to serve vested interest and not based on facts.
Anyone who understands Sanskrit will know the fact that Sanskrit is the mother of European Languages. Only an ignorant person will say otherwise. It is not only the mother of European Languages; it is also the mother of many South East Asian languages.
What Prof Dean Brown discovered is nothing new but a natural assertion by anyone who understands Sanskrit.
March 26, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Tamil is a Dravidian language
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_lang_family.asp?code=TCV
and Sanskrit is an Indo-European language
http://www.ethnologue.com/14/show_lang_family.asp?code=SKT
March 29, 2007 at 12:41 am
[...] http://mutiny.wordpress.com/2007/02/09/sanskrit-mother-of-european-languages-says-prof-dean-brown/ [...]
April 5, 2007 at 10:08 pm
The astronomical dates mentioned in mahabharatha (which is written in sanskrit) dates back to 3500 BC and earlier guys.. Gurutva in Sanskrit is gravitation in English.. want more proof?
Do not forget the fact that zero and place value system (which infact led to the creation of true scientific mathematics as opposed to the unscientific roman-numerals) has its roots in vedic mathematics which is a part of Atharva Veda which in turn has its mentions in Mahabharatha and hence pre dates mahabharatha is again completely written in sanskrit. Vedic mathematics is taught in the western world today in the disguised name of mental mathematics!!
Any proof about PIE?? Any text written in it?? Any authors?? People of which civilization spoke PIE? Star trek??
April 6, 2007 at 4:53 am
I don’t see how astronomical dates or mathematics in the Mahabharata have anything to do with the age or unchangeability of Sanskrit.
“Gurutva in Sanskrit is gravitation in English”
Because both words are from Indo-European “gwer-1″.
http://www.bartleby.com/61/roots/IE183.html
“Any proof about PIE?”
Yes, 150 years of actual research by actual linguists on the subject. Start with this
http://www.bartleby.com/61/8.html
April 6, 2007 at 10:23 pm
The astronomical dates indicate that sanskrit is much older than 3500 BC, as simple as that! Because the mentioned works which contain the astronomical dates are written in sanskrit.
Why are there no texts written in the so called PIE?? What script did it use??
The research article published in forbes magazine in 1987 july clearly is a proof of the unchangeability of sanskrit which makes sanskrit the only eligible language spoken by humans fit to be a software programming language!!
There is a saying in sanskrit ‘Satyam eva Jayate’ which means ‘Truth alone is victorious’, Let it be so…
April 7, 2007 at 3:22 am
The Bharata dates to the 6th century BC. Because it is written in Sanskrit, and might mention astronomical dates in 3500 BC, is not proof that Sanskrit was the language spoken in 3500 BC. Perhaps the stories were passed down, either orally or written, and assembled into the Bharata in 6 BC. Just like the Old Testament, written in Hebrew, describes events that apparently took place long before anyone spoke Hebrew.
The fact that PIE was not written down is not proof of anything. The Common Germanic language was not written down, but we know it exists.
Do some reading on the subject.
April 9, 2007 at 11:04 am
John,
I think you need to study Sanskrit, and you will realise it is unlike any other language known. To say it belongs in the same category as Latin and Greek, because of the similarity in sounds and verbs is showing ignorance of the phonology and morphology of Sanskrit, which is perfect.
Sanskrit is a highly scientific language, with an inbuilt scheme for pronounciation and grammar and word formation. It is the closest to what Saussere envisaged as a language that produces objective meaning, and is much less ambigious.
Even the word Sanskrit itself has an objective meaning. It is formed of the roots Sams and kritam, and means perfectly formed or done. Now you tell me what root words are Latin and Greek formed of? What is their meaning?
Panani writes down approx 4000 rules, which are like a set of algebaric rules, which generate Sanskrit sentences. It is compared to the power of a Turing Machine.
Thus, Sanskrit is actually a scientific, almost computer language based on sound. This is why it has not changed or shifted a single sound even today. If you change a single sound, the meaning changes.
Somebody mentioned Gurutva earlier. That’s the short form of the actual Sanskrit word for gravity: Gurutvakarshan, which is used to describe the sun. You can anaylse the word by using Pannini rules like putting it through a computer algorithm that parses the word. It is formed of Gurutva and akarsh. The word Guru, is further divisible into Gu and Ru. Gu means darkness(Go means light and true) and Ru means removal. Guru is therefore he who removes darkness(i.e., ignorance) Guru as a combined term also means heaviness. Akarsh means to attract or pull. Therefore the full meaning is: The attraction or pull by the one that removes darkness, by the virtue of heaviness.
The Vedic texts describe the Sun as upholding the solar system by its attractive force. Now, perhaps you may begin to appreciate that Sanskrit is like a coded language; based on root verbs, a precise set of algaberic rules, meaning is created. This meaning is multilayered and context based, and is represented in few words as possible.
Take for example Go, which means light, but is also taken to mean cow. This is because the cow is seen as a symbol of light, due to its sattvic nature. The word gopathi means both sun and cow-herder depending on context.
The 19th century European scholars could not understand this multilayering of coding of information. So they wrongly translated Sanskrit texts, especially the Vedas, mistranslating light for cow or swiftly-moving for horse.
For example the Vedic texts describe the Sun’s chariot as being driven by 7 horses, tied by crooked snakes. The word for horse is Ashwa. It is derived from the root verb Ash, which means swifting-moving. So anything that is swifting-moving is denoted by ash+x. It is used in the Vedas to describe arrows, thoughts, rays of light and horses.
In this context it means rays of light and the word for “snake” here means curved. What is being said: The sun has 7 rays of light, which travel in curved motion.
They have also claimed horse, cow and human sacrifice in the Vedas, mistranslating terms such as Ashwameda, gomedha and naramedha. When in their context they mean something completely different.
The 19th century European scholars and linguists you are abiding by thus clearly show they do not understand the language and are in no position to study it, let alone translate Sanskrit into English, or make sweeping statements on Sanskrits origin.
Going back to Sanskrit belonging to the same category as other classical languages. Does Latin and Greek have similar morphological and phonetic syntax? I don’t think they do.
The Alphabet is Latin for Alpha and Beta, the first two letters of the Latin Alpabet. This means that the language is based on written letters. Sanskrit, however, is based on sound. The script does not matter.
Each Sanskrit verb is formed of these sounds(36 constants and 15 vowels) and there are 2000+ root verbs.
In other words this is a highly scientific language and very precisely formed. If you are going to claim that Latin, Greek and Sanskrit have emerged from PIE. Then why is Latin and Greek so different from Sanskrit? Why doesn’t it have the same structure and precision?
Much has been written about Sanskrit by scientists and Linguist experts. Rick Briggs, a NASA scientist, published a paper on how Sanskrit was the only natural language that could be used to program artificial intelligence. As it was very much like machine code.
The phonology and morphology of Sanskrit Grammar was admitted by European Linguistics to be superior to its modern counterpart. It was not until the development of Bakus Normal Form(Modern computer code) that a language similar to Sanskrit was developed.
Do Latin and Greek have similarities with Bakus Normal forum? Nope they don’t. Therefore how could you say that Sanskrit belongs in the same category?
We can employ Occams razor here. The most simple explanation is that Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages. There is no need to invent any PIES, when Sanskrit explains it well enough.
The problem with accepting Sanskrit as the mother of IE languages, is not a linguistic issue, but a racial one. It would suggest that the Indians must have spread their culture across the world or colonised Europe. This was too difficult to digest by ethnocentric historians and linguists of the 19th century. Thus why they invented PIE and AIT.
By the way. You said that PIE is a forgotten language. Yet you also comfortably assert what the PIE verbs are e.g, you write: “deus” and “deva” are both from Proto-Indo-European “dyeu-”.
That looks very dubious to me. What you seem to be doing is combining the different variants of the sound of a verb and finding a middle ground.
Thats rubbish. So if the original word, ends up being pronounced differently in several languages. You will look at all of these, find a middle ground, and then claim they all must have stemmed from this proto source, including the original word.
This again reveals ignorance of how Sanskrit is formed: sound. If you change a single sound, the meaning changes. Div and Dvi, are subtly different, but mean different things. You can’t go around arbtarily changing the sound of words.
Sanskrit is self-contained. It has not been influenced by any other language, however it has influenced other languages.
April 9, 2007 at 12:39 pm
For all Sanskrit enthusiasts here is a site that would interest you -
http://www.mssmulund.org/
April 10, 2007 at 4:06 am
Raj,
I know Hindi, and I know some Sanskrit grammar. However, what I know the most about is linguistics, and I know that there is no such thing as a perfect language, or a language that produces objective meaning. To suggest that Sanskrit is perfect in a way that other languages aren’t is to completely misunderstand how languages work.
Read some introductory texts on linguistics and historical linguistics.
April 10, 2007 at 4:19 am
Raj wrote:
“By the way. You said that PIE is a forgotten language. Yet you also comfortably assert what the PIE verbs are e.g, you write: “deus” and “deva” are both from Proto-Indo-European “dyeu-”. That looks very dubious to me.”
OK. If you think that “deus” and “deva” are both from Sanskrit, then show me the rules that explain the sound change in that word and all other words that you think are derived from Sanskrit. For instance, how do we get “gravity” from “gurutva”?
Indo-European linguistics has formulated regular rules of sound change that explain all the difference between IE cognates. If you want to convince me of your theory, you’ll have to do the same.
April 11, 2007 at 9:57 pm
John Wrote:
OK. If you think that “deus” and “deva” are both from Sanskrit, then show me the rules that explain the sound change in that word and all other words that you think are derived from Sanskrit. For instance, how do we get “gravity” from “gurutva”?
The English word Gravity is derived from the Latin word Gravis(or gravi), it means heavy and also means teacher(as something having gravitas) However, you cannot break apart gravis, into smaller parts to explain the meaning such as (gra and vis) because Latin does not have this feature.
The prefix and suffix tradition is actually derived(as well as genders: masculine, feminine, neuter) from Sanskrit, and is partly inherited by Greek and Latin, but not completely. This is because these features are not independent and have been extracted from a another system of grammar(Sanskrit)
So we must find that system of grammar that Greek and Latin borrows from. This brings us to studying Sanskrit Grammar. We learn that each word in Sanskrit, is formed of other words, and each word is built from a root verb(of which 2000+ exist) Therefore each verb(pada) is dependent on the other to form meaning(artha) they do not exist in isolation as in other languages.
The Latin Gravis exists in isolation. It cannot be broken down any further. Therefore this word was either created or borrowed from another language to signify heavy. We find in Sanskrit that the equivalent guru, can be broken down further, into gu and ru.
Therefore the verb guru, is dependent on the particle verbs gu and ru. If you change these constituent sounds the meaning changes. Perhaps you can now appreciate how every word-sound in Sanskrit is dependent on others to produce meaning. So arbitrarily changing the sounds is going to change the meaning. As I said before.
The constituent sounds of gravis or gravi are “Gra” and Vi” and therefore they do not produce the same meaning.
We can therefore conclude that the word has been borrowed from another language — Sanskrit. This can be assumed because Sanskrit explains the etymology of the word, and we understand the word is generated by Sanskrit’s precise and mathematical Grammatical rules.
Now how do we explain how the borrowing has taken place and why the sounds have changed?
Linguists should understand this, that if a language is allowed to develop independently, it begins to change: sounds change, meanings change, words are lost, added, extended or reduced.
You can see this in the differences in English spoken between New Zealand, Britain, Autralia and USA. They all were originally speaking British English, today they have their own variants and idosynchrocacies. The changes are more pronounced when a language develops in a foreign country e.g., English in a french country or German country is spoken much more differently than English in English countries.
These changes are not structured, so looking for rules on how these changes occur is begging the question. We find even today that words change quite dramatically based on trends: such as “want to” becomes “wanna” or “vanna”.
Now do you realise how dubious it is to compare the variant of each word, and then find a middle ground? Let’s look at an example:
want to, wanna, vanna, venna. You could say that because these words are similar, they must have evolved from the same source. Looking for a middle grounds, perhaps we can say the source root is vwa, vew or vwe. The original word might have been vwanna. This is nothing more than guessing. We know for a fact that want is the original source. However, this kind of analysis will invalidate that fact. Thus the analysis is flawed; it is producing wrong results.
April 11, 2007 at 10:30 pm
How the borrowing has taken place:
Obviously, the similarity of the IE family of languages, suggests contact. This is explained as the migrations of Aryans throughout Indo-Europe, taking with them their language and culture.
This migration does not necessarily have to be the migrations of people. It could simply be diffusion of Aryan culture throughout Indo-Europe(and arguably South East Asia) We know for a fact that India and Europe were in contact in one another from as early as the Harappa phase. This is evidenced by the existence of Indus-valley seals, and goods found in Mesopotamia etc
It is also evidenced by the highly developed, artistan and scientific Harappa civilisation, that these people must have explored and ventured beyond India. Further corroborated by the knowledge that they were seafaring people.
The extent to which the Harapans were developed cannot be found anywhere in the known world. We know that other races existed, but they were still in primitive stages.
This establishes cultural superiority. Therefore, by travelling westwards, they took with them this superior culture, and civilised the indigenous people of Indo-Europe. They may have even colonised parts of Europe.
Is there evidence of this? The fact that IE languages are based on a common source(Aryan); the fact that Harappan symbols and icons occurr in IE cultures e.g., Swastikas.
The dynamics is exactly the same as to how Britain was able to spread its culture throughout the world. Through travelling around the world and subjugating the indigenous peoples of the world and colonising their lands. However, the Aryan spread of culture, seems to be more peaceful, and there does not seem to any suggestion of military conquests; more about acceptance of Aryan culture.
With recent evidence, we have been able to prove that the Harappans and the Aryans are the same people. Thus everything fits together.
This explains how Sanskrit was diffused throughout Indo-Europe. Thus it should not be surprising that the closest cousin of Sanskrit is Avestan, as Persia neighoured the Harappans. Thus the change in language was minimal. It should also not be surprising that Latin and Greek are distant cousins of Sanskrit, as the geographical distance between them was greater, thus the change in language was greater.
As a general rule of thumb: The greater the distance from the original source language, the greater the change in language.
April 11, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Two things.
Your analysis of “guru” as “gu” + “ru” is not one that most scholars would accept. It is a folk etymology.
If you want to prove that English “gravity” and Latin “gravis” are both derived from Sanskrit “gurutva”, then you have to show me the rules that explain how the sound changes happened - rules along the lines of Grimm’s law, Verner’s law, etc. You have not done that.
April 12, 2007 at 12:14 am
And no, Avestan is not the most closely related language to Sanskrit. Avestan was an Iranian language and is closely related to Pashto
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90019
and Sanskrit is Indo-Aryan
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90032
The most closely related languages to Sanskrit are Hindi, Gujarati, Sinhala, Panjabi, etc.
April 12, 2007 at 1:45 am
Let me also add this: you say sound change is not regular, but in fact it is very regular. We have formulated rigorous rules that explain how the sounds of Proto-Indo-European changed into the different IE languages of today. These rules are regular. For instance, PIE word initial /*dh/ becomes Germanic /d/, Latin /f/, and Sanskrit /d/. So PIE *dhu̯ē̆r- became English “door”, Latin “foras”, and Sanskrit “dvār”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_sound_laws
If you have an alternate theory about the origins of IE languages, you have to provide the same level of detail in explaining how the IE languages are derived from your root language.
April 12, 2007 at 7:32 am
John,
No offence, but the burden of proof lies with me you not me. You are claiming to know what the words would have been in some unknown language, by comparing the IE languages. The logic you are using is circular.
1. It is assumed that because these languages are so similar they must have a common source
2. This common source must be PIE
3. We can create formal rules to recreate PIE words by comparing others.
These laws are not even consistent. From Wiki:
[quote]A second difficulty has emerged much more recently (Sihler 2006): the actual passages from the Rigveda cited in Edgerton’s two large articles in 1934 and 1943 as examples of the effects of his theory in action seriously misrepresent the facts in all but a handful of cases. No more than three Rigvedic passages cited in the 1934 article, and none at all in 1943, actually support the claims of Edgerton’s Law regarding word-initial sequences. This lies well within the operation of pure chance. And it has been shown also that the apparent success of Lindeman’s more modest claims are not without troubling problems too, such as the limitation of the reliable examples to vocalic semovowels (the glides *y and *w) even though such alternations in the other four semivowels should have left robust outcomes; and that the syllabified alternants (e.g. *diyēws) are very much rarer than they should be: they account for only fifteen to twenty percent of the total, when they should account for at least eighty percent. Further, only the diyēws alternants have a “distribution”: the dyēws shapes show no sensitivity to phonetic environment at all.[/quote]
This is an exemplary example of circular logic. Hence it is a fallacy. You cannot claim to know with 100% certainty what the words would have been in a lost language.
To even propose this lost language, without any proof whatsoever, is seriously begging the question and is unnecessarily multiplying quantities.
Why do we need to invent imaginary languages to explain the common origin of IE languages, when Sanskrit best explains it.
The etymology I discussed aboved is expounded on in the Upanishads. However, it is a moot point, whether Guru is derived Gu and ru or not, as we know that Sanskrit is based on root-words(dhatu) and this is a feature unique to Sanskrit. Thus every word is dependent on another. If you change the sound of one word, you change not only its meaning, you change the sound of many words based on it, and thus the meaning.
Lets look at the root word daa, meaning to give and numerous words can be formed from it, by simply adding subtle sounds(this is not an exhaustive list)
daaH = giving
dattaM = given
dattaan.h = things given
dadati = give, donate
dadaami = I give
dadaasi = you give , confer upon
dadau = gave (from daa : to give)
dadhaatu = let them give( us welfare)
dadhaami = create
daatavya = shouold be given
daatavyaM = worth giving
daataa = (masc.Nom.S) the giver
daataaraM = the giver
daataaram.h = one who gives
daadhaara = holds
daana = the act of giving
daanaM = charity
daane = in charity
daanena = by charity
daaneshhu = in giving charities
daanaiH = by charity
daasyaami = I shall give charity
Each sound signifies something. Let’s look at some of those subtle sounds added to daa. To illustrate my argument I will use ami, and look at other words which use ami:
ichchhaami = do I wish
kathayishhyaami = I shall speak
gR^iNaami = I hold
namaami = I bow
pachaami = I digest
pashyaami = I see
karomi = I do
Some more:
kath.h = to tell
kathaM = tell
kathanta = howness
kathaya = describe
kathayataH = speaking
kathayati = to narrate, to tell
kathayantaH = talking
kathayishhyanti = will speak
kathayishhyaami = I shall speak
kathaa = story
kathaamR^ita = Gospel
kathaamR^itaM = Gospel
kathita = told
And more:
kaama = lust
kaamaM = desire
kaamaH = desire
kaamakaama = desirer of desires (kaamaan kaamayati iti aN)
kaamakaamaaH = desiring sense enjoyments
kaamakaamii = one who desires to fulfill desires
kaamakaarataH = acting whimsically in lust
kaamakaareNa = for enjoying the result of work
kaamadaam.h = (the hymn which) gives (grants) all desires
kaamadhuk.h = kaamadhenu : the cow who can milk out anything you wish
kaamabhogeshhu = to sense gratification
kaamamadhiite = desire, reads
kaamaye = (Vr.Pr.IP.S.AP)desire; wish for
kaamaruupaM = in the form of lust
kaamaruupeNa = in the form of lust
kaamavikaaraH = sensual/sexual attraction
kaamahaitukaM = it is due to lust only
kaamaaH = desires
kaamaat.h = from desire
kaamaatmaanaH = desirous of sense gratification
kaamaan.h = desiring
kaamita = something one has wished for
kaamepsunaa = by one with desires for fruitive results
kaamebhyaH = material sense gratification
kaameshvara = lord of desires
kaamaiH = by desires
kaamopabhoga = sense gratification
kaamyaanaaM = with desire
I think this should be enough to illustrate my point. Can you see how many words can be formed by adding together root words, and how each word is dependent on the other. You change a single sound, you change dozens, hundeeds, if not thousands of words.
In Sanskrit, new words are formed by adding to older words. So instead of creating Volcano, in Sanskrit you add agni(fire) and parvath(mountain) to make agniparvathi(volcano)
Similarily, instead of using several words to say something, such as “the soliders of the Pandavas” you could simply say paaNDavaaniikaM.
These features are absent in the other I.E languages, only some have been preserved, such suffix and prefix.
The etymology of a Sanskrit word is not something arbitrarily done. You can’t split every word how you like it. It has to be done according to precise rules set by Panini.
April 12, 2007 at 8:15 am
Where did this quote about Edgerton’s Law come from?
I don’t see how your list of words is relevant to your argument that Sanskrit is the root of IE languages. Many languages form new words by adding affixes. Some do so to a much greater extent than Sanskrit, for instance Inuktitut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_language_phonology_and_phonetics
But what does this have to do with Sanskrit being the source of IE languages? To demonstrate that, you need to formulate the rules of sound change that explain all the changes. This has not been done.
In order to demonstrate the PIE theory, you need to provide formulate the rules of sound change that explain all the changes. This has been done, using the comparative method.
The existence of Proto-Indo-European has been inferred by comparative linguistics. All these languages are so similar that is theorized that they have a common source. The existence of a hypothesized proto-language explains all the phonological differences between the languages. All of these rules have been written and rewritten over the past 150 years.
You say the burden of proof is on me. OK, read Lehmann’s “Theoretical Bases of Indo-European Linguistics.” Read Pokorny’s Indo - European Etymological Dictionary.
http://www.geocities.com/iliria1/
The PIE theory is the most widely accepted theory. If you think you disagree with it, try to understand it first. Then if you still disagree, the burden of proof is on you to formulate your own theory that can stand the test of the comparative method.
April 13, 2007 at 6:26 am
Raj Wrote:
as we know that Sanskrit is based on root-words(dhatu) and this is a feature unique to Sanskrit. Thus every word is dependent on another. If you change the sound of one word, you change not only its meaning, you change the sound of many words based on it, and thus the meaning.
This was the point I was illustrating above. I am aware that the suffix and prefix feature is present in other languages. But not to the extent it is present in Sanskrit. In Sanskrit it is based on scientific rules. Sanskrit is particularly known for it’s almost perfect morphology and phonology. It is not the same in other languages.
Again, to really appreciate this, you would need to study Sanskrit.
I am skeptical of Indo-European language rules. But I will read the on the material you provided anyway.
April 13, 2007 at 7:40 am
The Japanese for “volcano” is kazan: ka (fire) + san (mountain). Sanskrit is not unique in how it forms compound words.
If you change the sound of a word in any language, you change the meaning of the word and all the words based on it. That is what language is: arbitrary relationship between sound and meaning.
Sanskrit was not perfect; it did change, like all languages change. My reference work is “The World’s Major Languages” by Bernard Comrie. The Rigvedic nominative-accusative dual masculine of a-stems ends in -ā or -au in the early parts of the Rigveda, but -au eventually becomes the norm. For the nominative-accusative of a-stems, -ā predominates in the Rigveda, then later in the Atharvaveda, -āni is the norm. Early Vedic had pronomial forms not found in Classical Sanskrit. And so on. Pāṇini noted changes like this.
Sanskrit had a rich inflection: four kinds of compound words, 8 noun cases, and a rich verb system. I’ve been reading about it, and I appreciate how complicated and rich it is.
However, there is nothing special about it that makes it different from Latin, Greek, or other highly inflected languages. Don’t take my word for it, ask any linguist.
You cannot say “Sanskrit is scientific and perfect” and expect to be taken seriously by linguists. The only way you will convince me, and indeed the scientific community, of your theory is to use the comparative method and show exactly how the IE languages are descended from Sanskrit.
April 13, 2007 at 8:54 am
Here’s some interesting data I’ve just found. Here are some pairs of words, first the Sanskrit, then the Doric Greek.
asti
esti
“is”
pati-
posis
“master”
ajati
agei
“leads”
dadhāti
tithēsi
“puts”
dadāti
didōsi
“gives”
mātṝ
mātēr
“mother”
How to explain the fact that Greek has e, o and a, when Sanskrit just has a? The PIE theory says that both languages derived from a language that had the vowels e, o and a, and these vowels were preserved in Greek, but fell together into one vowel “a” in Sanskrit.
OTOH If you believe that Greek is derived from Sanskrit, you have to explain how the one vowel “a” became three vowels in Greek. I’m not saying that it’s impossible to prove this. But you’ll have a lot of work ahead of you.
April 14, 2007 at 7:55 am
John, I am not the type that would argue from ignorance. I am reading on PIE and the Comparative method to gain a better understanding of it.
I know that many languages have simialr features to Sanskrit. However, from my research, none of our natural languages are as refined as Sanskrit(which incidentally means perfectly refined)
You say that Sanskrit is not anymore special than Greek or Latin or any other highly inflected languages and assert that any linguist would be able to tell us this. The irony of your statement is the inventor of PIE differs with you:
“Sanskrit is more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitively refined than either”(Sir William Jones, 1834)
What do you have to say about this?
In fact when the theory of PIE was initially proposed, it was believed that Sanskrit was the closest to the hypothetical PIE than any other IE language. In fact it was so close, they may as well have been the same.
You do not seem convinced that Sanskrit is a scientific language and therefore is nothing like any of the other IE languages. That is fine if you don’t have knowledge on it. So it is my duty to provide you with some knowledge on this.
It is actually scientists that have arrived at the conclusion that Sanskrit is a scientific language. The NASA space research center published a paper in 1985 on using Sanskrit as machine code for knowledge representation to program AI. You may view this paper here:
http://www.gosai.com/science/sanskrit-nasa.html
The paper concludes that Sanskrit is an unambigious language, like machine code. It likens its creators to computer scientists. It also illuminates how the word-order in Sanskrit does not change the meaning of a sentence. The word order is merely a stylistic concern.
(Please Note: The article is only hosted on this web site, but has no affilitation with it)
NASA is not the only scientific organization to have accorded Sanskrit this status. The structure of grammar is likened to Bakus Normal Form and is said to have the computational power of a Turing Machine(a theoretical computer)
Reading about it or hearing about it is probably not enough. Why don’t you learn it yourself. The following site provides online lessons on Sanskrit:
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/why_sans.php
You can find more here and whole lot of other stuff: http://sanskritdocuments.org/
I think you will find yourself that this language is very much a coded language. In as few words as possible so much information can be encoded into a single sentence. We have already seen above how so much can be conveyed in a single word.
Greek, Latin or any other known language in the world do not have these features. That is why they are not Samskritam(refined)
If Sanskrit, Latin and Greek are from the same source, why is Sanskrit much more refined than both of them? Why does it contain so many features that are absent in both of them?
Again, I will continue to read on PIE, as I need to understand it. But common sense is telling me there is no way Sanskrit is in the same category as Greek and Latin, or is as old as them.
Also don’t get too focussed on linguistic evidence. Linguistics is not an exact science; it is theoretical. You cannot say with 100% certainity what the sounds or words of a lost and hypotheitical language would have been. I cannot take that seriously.
I think you should look at other types of evidence. Such as: archaelogical, astronomical and textual. They all seem to confirm the antiquity of Sanskrit to be anterior to Greek and Latin by more than a millenia. They put Sanskrit in a pre-Harappa period.
There is overwhelming evidence that ancient cultures have borrowed from India. Seidenberg was convinced that the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians got their mathematics from the Vedic Sulbasutras.
We know today that the Harappa were seafaring people and had trade with the Sumerians and Egyptians(and many other parts of the world) it is not far fetched that their culture(languages, religion, sciences) was diffused throughout the world, what we now know as Aryan.
You may also find it interesting that the Egyptians claimed to have descended from, what some scholars believe is unmistably India.
April 14, 2007 at 8:05 am
Just a small correction to the above post:
The quote from Sir William Jones is not 1834. I simply put that there to change it later, and then forgot by the time I posted(lol) The correct date is 1786.
April 14, 2007 at 8:52 pm
John, please try and turn your debate switch to OFF and really read what Raj has to say. He absolutely conveyed thoughts I always had but couldn’t articulate. Call me an ABCD (that actually derives from the urban desi ghetto language which will be published soon). No. But, honestly, c’mon John. Theories schmeries….not everything is a question/answer to life. You are aware of REALITY? What are you questioning? PIE? Well, Pluto also use to be a planet until last year! Invalid arguement. Facts are always changing because it’s about preserving the white race. It IS black and white. RACIAL NONESENSE! We had a damn constiution that declared africans (as they were rightfully at that declaration) 2/3 of a human and it’s PROVEN they were (a FACT) property. Well, now they’re not. FACT! Want me to link that for you just in case you may not know that? Point is, think outside the BOX! Books were burned, old carvings were destroyed, noses were cut off! Why?Aryan doesn’t even factor in (sorry Raj….only thing I do disagree with you about - http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/aryan-invasion-history.html)Not one damn person knows the REAL TRUTH. No one! No religion, no theory based on white people and no game of ‘telephone’ (google it if ya never played it as a kid) means anything. Yet, to a great degree it has worked. Why? Through bloodshed, rape, theft and false ‘inventors’ and ‘discoveries’! Yeah, right. How does one ‘discovery’ things that are already there?? Seriously, what happened to COMMON SENSE? How can you debate about shit when you can be and ARE wrong/inncorrect? You use all these values/rules/laws taught for ages in colleges and in society that we just accept. WHY? DO YOU QUESTION COMMON SENSE? Common sense would tell you Africans were human but ‘different’….yet, until this damn CENTURY they were treated like shit and still are. C’mon Johnny, tell me about ancient culture and what you’ve been taught to make it the END ALL BE ALL. Listen, I’ve had it with the whole: latin/greek bullshit and that everything came from basically WHITE/CAUCASIONS. ARYAN crap is a huge debate today! THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX Johnboy. Linguist? Right….how mad do you think us third world cultures are for being raped of our culture and purity and now our language! You lost, my dear JOHN which has been clearly shown by reading all this. John is derived from Hewbew, right? Or is it now justified to call it a biblical name? I mean, John the baptist and all, no?How is it that Euro - anything is significant when the FACT shows that DARK PEOPLE came before all that? Africa anyone? Someone must have been talkin’ back then. Oh, maybe they were insignificant until EURO-anything came through and ‘DISCOVERED’, wrote and published that truth, right? Dumbass. I bet you have links and facts from a solid 2000 years ago to prove me wrong. Cause, ya know Johnny….there’s “LIFE BEFORE JESUS AND THERE’S ABSOLUTE SCIENTIFIC FACTS AFTER JESUS. Then there’s basic common sense. Duh! Small minded, insecure white preserving, IGNORANT a$$hole! Raj, I respect and truly appreciate your responses, tact, knowledge and patience. Sorry I don’t have the same. Maybe John has an answer to why that is. Even though we’re both South Indian. Oh, wait, wait…maybe it’s cause I speak Telugu and you are Tamil. See, thank you!!
April 14, 2007 at 9:30 pm
[quote]“Sanskrit is more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitively refined than either”(Sir William Jones, 1834)
What do you have to say about this?[/quote]
Linguistics of the 1700s and 1800s was quite different than the linguistics of today. Many people believed that Latin was a perfect language as well.
But nowadays we know better. Notions about a language being “perfect” or “refined” are misinformed opinions. Don’t take my word for it, ask any *modern* linguist.
[quote]Also don’t get too focussed on linguistic evidence. Linguistics is not an exact science; it is theoretical. You cannot say with 100% certainity what the sounds or words of a lost and hypotheitical language would have been. I cannot take that seriously.[/quote]
There is some truth to this. The comparative method is not perfect. However, the comparative method is the best method we have. Frankly, if you don’t formulate your theory using the comparative method, no one is going to take you seriously.
[quote]The paper concludes that Sanskrit is an unambigious language, like machine code. It likens its creators to computer scientists. It also illuminates how the word-order in Sanskrit does not change the meaning of a sentence. The word order is merely a stylistic concern.[/quote]
I could say the same thing about Latin. Also, I don’t see the author of this paper saying that Sanskrit is perfect or refined. AIUI he is just using Sanskrit as a model because it has a well-defined formal grammar.
And anyway, I still don’t see what this has to do with Sanskrit being the root of IE languages, because in order to demonstrate that you need to use the COMPARATIVE METHOD.
April 14, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Thanks, Raj, for the link to the online Sanskrit lessons. धन्यवाद।
April 15, 2007 at 4:00 am
John,
We have a tendency to root ourselves in our area of study. When I studied Psychology at college I was often quite amused how reductionist the various approaches were. If it was the psychodynamic approach, it was all about your early years of your life; if it was the learning approach — it was all about what you learnt etc etc
I have seen this rooting yourself in your area to consistent in almost all of the disciplines. The historians are adamant that the history they have learnt is correct; the scientists are adamant that their theories are correct.
As a philosopher myself, I can distance myself from a theory, no matter how compelling, and analyse it to its particles. If the theory can withstand this intense scrutiny, I hold it to be self-evident. In a way my thinking is very Sanskrit like(structured, scientific)
I am getting the impression you can’t do that(nor am I surprised) As you continue to reiterate the only evidence you will accept is from the Comparative Method.
You have certain assumptions built into you, which you no doubt have learned whilst studying linguistics. Have you even questioned these assumptions, until perhaps now?
I do not doubt you that Comparative Linguistics is the best method you may have. But that does not mean it is the best evidence. To make factual statements, such as so and so Sanskrit, Greek and Latin word, comes x PIE word, you need proof(not evidence, but proof) to qualify as a scientific theory, it must be falsifiable.
You accept yourself that it is not 100% certain.
The problem with theories that are not falsifiable or scientific, is that the are often based on circular reasoning. You usually begin with an unproven assumption, then try and prove that unproven assumption with your assumption.
Postulating a hypothetical and lost language. Then devising rules to make up this language exemplifies this type of circular reasoning fallacy.
This type of reasoning is invalid. It cannot be accepted by scientific standards. So to repay you back your statement that nobody is going to us seriously if we do not use the CM. Nobody is going to take the CM seriously as proof of anything.
What we can accept by scientific standards is the paper by NASA on the scientific structure of Sanskrit. The author proves his thesis statement using scientific reasoning and comparing Sanskrit to semantic nets. It is not based on any assumptions.
You said that you could say the same about Latin. Well, I await your paper on it. It has to be of the same scientific standard as the NASA one.
Again, Sanskrit is not just accorded this “perfect” status by NASA, but by several scholars, especially those who have studied it. Hence, why I’m directing you to lessons online to study it at least on a basic level to appreciate the nature of the language.
You cannot separate the grammar of Sanskrit from the language of Sanskrit. The grammar and phonology is in-built into the language. It is like a computer that generates Sanskrit sentences according to precise rules.
Again, the irony is, even your inventor of PIE - which you swear by - admits that Sanskrit is more refined than Latin and Greek.
It is his theory, upon which further theories on PIE and CM has been created. So if you don’t agree with the foundation, how can you support the rest?
Anyway I want to take on a bit more on your contention that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek have evolved from the same source. Earlier you asked me that Sanskrit only has an a, not an e or an o.
Ancient Greek has 10 vowels and 17 consonants. There are 5 short vowels and 5 longer vowels(basically extension of the original vowel sounds) which it lost on the way to Modern Greek(note this point, because we are going to revisit it)
Ancient Latin has 10 vowels and 16 consonants.
Now moving onto Sanskrit. It has 15 vowels and 33 consonants. There are 5 short vowels(2 of which have no equivalent in Roman) 8 long vowels(2 of which, which have no short form) and 2 support vowels(no equivalent in Latin or Greek)
Most of the Sanskrit consonants do not occur in Latin or Greek. They are divided into five groups based on how they are produced.
Sanskrit as a true phonetic language is spoken just as it is read and written.
Where did all these sounds, especially the consonants disappear to, if they all have emerged from PIE?
The explanation is the same as why Modern Greek lost its longer vowels. They lost these sounds from Sanskrit over the years.
You keep ignoring all other types of evidence I’m bringing up. Why is that? Perhaps you don’t understand that now that we know the Harappa and Vedics were the same. It makes Sanskrit as old as 3000-4000 BCE. Which make it the oldest language of the IE family. This eliminates the need for a PIE.
April 15, 2007 at 6:57 am
No scientific theory is 100% certain. But the comparative method is the method that works the best. It’s the method accepted by the mainstream linguistic community. You’re not going to convince me it’s wrong in a blog discussion. More importantly, if you want the linguistic community to accept your theory, you have to use the comparative method.
We determine how languages are related to each other by comparing lists of cognate terms. We establish regular sound correspondences, and hypothesize a series of regular sound changes. Sometimes there is an attested language that we determine to be the ancestor. In the case of IE languages, we could not find one, so we hypothesized a proto-language.
For PIE, we hypothesized three laryngeal consonsants that explained the vowel changes in the daughter languages. These laryngeals were later found to exist in Hittite.
You want to know where the sounds have disappeared to. Read about PIE sound changes. I’ve already given the link but here it is again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_sound_laws
I’m ignoring your other evidence because it’s irrelevant. It doesn’t explain how the sounds of Sanskrit changed into the sounds of the daughter languages. And if you can’t explain that, you won’t convince anyone who matters.
But I’ll entertain your suggestion… if Sanskrit dates to 4000 BCE, then it would not have been Sanskrit, it would have been Proto-Indo-European. But you seem to believe that Sanskrit remained unchanged from 4000 BCE to 500 BCE, when it was first written down. This is absurd. Phonological and semantic change are facts of all languages.
April 15, 2007 at 7:37 am
[quote]if you want the linguistic community to accept your theory, you have to use the comparative method.[/quote]
You make it almost sound like a religion. I am not going to run circles with you. I don’t believe in your religion. The CM is pseudoscience to me.
Yes no scientific theory is 100% proven, but it makes predictions, that produce replicable results, under the same conditions We know for example that if two similar objects of different size are dropped off a building, they will both fall at the same speed according to the rate of gravity. If this did not happen, it would falsify the theory.
Linguistics is like many of the Arts and Social sciences, such as Sociology, Psychology(parts of it). It is based on speculative theories. It is not a true science. Therefore it does not produce facts.
Also, who said I am trying to convince linguists? I am not grounding myself in any single area. I am looking at all kinds of evidence. No evidence is irrelavant.
You keep asking me for rules on how the sounds change. That’s irrelevant. It is based on an shaky assumption that there is an exact science behind the sounds of a languages changing over time. If there are such laws, if I were to point out a single instance where the law is not being obeyed, it would falisfy that law.
April 15, 2007 at 7:47 am
A language does not change in a vacuum. There are too many variables to ennumerate that would affect a language over a period of time. Take for example Modern Greek and Latin losing their longer vowels out of disuse.
Another example I mentioned earlier is when a language is taken out of its natural environment and evolved in a foreign environment e.g., English in Japan is spoken much more differently than English in England.
Can you imagine future linguists studying the various variants of English in the future and concluding they all stemmed from a Proto source? We might be having this debate again in a future life
April 15, 2007 at 10:37 am
Raj! WILL YOU MARRY ME? haha. You’re knowledge and vibe are absolutely appreciated. Thank you. John, honesty, if this was a ‘right/wrong’ debate……sorry, you’re WRONG. Linguistics and your basis of argument has been validated over and over by Raj. Yet, you keep coming back to “lingustic theories” and also I truly believe enjoy the debate. It’s you and Raj and you are starting to post redundance. You can’t prove what he is logically and FACTUALLY stating. You aren’t going to get anywhere. Linguists are only assuming with no SOLID, ABSOLUTE PROOF. Re-read that negative, long rant in the comments again. They aren’t that off. Sorry. So Raj, are you single? heh…
April 15, 2007 at 10:46 am
Abusive comments will not be tolerated. Attack the ideas not the person.
Swetha Iyer
April 15, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Personal attacks, flame posts or name calling will not be tolerated. If you are offended by theories, ideologies or opinions that differ from your own - I urge you not to be part of this forum anymore.
April 20, 2007 at 8:23 pm
All I want is for someone to provide a theory that explains how the IE languages are descended from Sanskrit. Why does Sanskrit have 1 vowel where Doric Greek has 3? Exactly how did the sounds of all the IE languages develop out of Sanskrit?
Why can no one explain this?
April 21, 2007 at 9:13 am
John, I don’t really understand linguistics enough to make any argument. As far as I am concerned it is not a proper science.
However, there is someone who has thoroughly debunked PIE from a linguistic perspective:
http://voiceofdharma.com/books/ait/ch31.htm
You should also read the other sections of his book, which goes about systematically debunking every part of AIT. I am sure any rationalist after reading his book, will come to the same conclusion that India is the home of the Aryans and Sanskrit the mother of all IE languages.
April 23, 2007 at 8:34 pm
This page seems to be saying that instead of trying to understand the mainstream linguistic theory, and formulate an alternative theory, some people just try to discredit linguistics altogether. I’d agree with that.
April 24, 2007 at 12:48 am
Yes, the author is actually taking the linguistics seriously, and working within the framework of linguistics to argue against PIE. He concludes that although the linguistics point to India as the origin of “PIE” it is not conclusive evidence.
However, I am not really interested in linguistics. It makes too many unfounded assumptions e.g., Vedic Sanskrit is an earlier form of Sanskrit. How do we know that? Vedic Sanskrit could have been contemporous with Classical Sanskrit. Indeed, even Panini, has a special section for Vedic Sanskrit in his treatise.
Vedic Sanskrit is a special language created to devise Mantras for the Vedas. It is not unlike Classical Sanskrit, only it is much more difficult and has its own special grammar. The meaning of these Mantras is open to interpretation, and the meaning is so fluidic, you can literally support any case with it.
The early Indologists tried to use their interpretations to support AIT(Aryans as a nomadic, polytheistic, primitive people) by interpreting the Devas as chiefs of the Aryan tribes. Then the Arya Samaj, tried to interpret it as discussing technology, from aeroplanes, steam engines to telephones. Recently, we’ve had people interpret them as discussing particle physics to data encryption.
Interestingly, this confusion is not new, but even in ancient Indian times, there was debate on how to interpret Vedic Sanskrit. Krishna tells us in the Bhagvad Gita for instance, that there is a hidden meaning behind the Vedas.
That said, the Vedas are not nonsensical. They do create meaning, words are identifiable, sentences are properly constructed, and there is plenty of explantory texts on them. To understand them however, you need to study them very intensely. It could literally take a life-time to decypher them.
April 25, 2007 at 10:25 pm
This author does not “argue against PIE”. In fact, it seems to me that he accepts it. He’s arguing against the theory that the Aryans invaded India, which is a very different issue.
Also see
http://www.safarmer.com/frontline/
April 26, 2007 at 7:22 pm
John,
The author is arguing against AIT, of which PIE is the main theory and evidence provided for it. They are not different issues. Maybe you should read it again. The author argues that the origin of PIE, if it even existed, was likely in India. He also argues that PIE and Sanskrit are virtually identicial.
He then concludes that the linguistic evidence is insufficient to make a a case either way. He accepts PIE, only to deconstruct it, and then invalidate it.
If you read the rest of his book, it is clear he is arguing that Aryans and Sanskrit were based in India, and later the Aryans migrated around the world and took with them their language and culture and estabished civilisations. This may have included the original Greeks and Egyptians.
Basically it’s AIT in reverse. Thus Sanskrit as the mother of all IE languages holds true.
May 21, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I don’t understand why South Indians are arguing about this. Or Thai’s. Tamil, Kannada or Thai have nothing to do with Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali or Sanskrit. I think there is a relation between Europe and North India. I don’t think it is necessarily the way most Europeans put it. A lot of evidence makes it appear as if Europeans are descendants of North Indians.
May 30, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Hey guys…
just passing and glad to see the indians taking pride in their culture & history….
people like john are Hitler fans who are so deluded that they honestly hold onto the belief that a NON-EXISTING language to be the mother of SANSKRIT because…
The AIT has fallen flat on its face and silly little boys like him want to believe that the Europeans are the Gods and masters of the Bud-bud-ding-dings of Aryavartha….
a little clue…
in the chapter in the Bible known as the Tower of Babylon - it mentions a global universal language…
this language was NOT Hebrew or ANY of the middle Eastern languages….
why is there a stonehenge in Sri Lanka in the ancietn city of Yakkha? Exact same structure just different dimension sizes…
Gene Matlock along with Stephen Knapp have & are still writing books proving that SANSKRIT and the VEDIC culture was global..
Hence the Swastikas being found globally along with Hindu deities…
a realm with 330 billion deities with their own unique thread of iconology leading to the gates of a kingdom of wisdom to be revealed….
please John you cannot TAKE the branches of tree, stick them in the ground NEXT to the tree you pulled them off….
and then audaciously claim they are the roots of the very TREE you ripped them off from…
in the same way you would be laughed if you suggested the English marched to Rome and gave the Romans Latin…
the only DIFFERENCE is that the PIE theory is taking no branches from a tree and claiming whatever HITLER minions manifest AS the PIE languages is the roots of SANSKRIT….
Sieg Heil….
Kal-k
The 3rd Side of a Coin..
The Beginning & The End…
ps - the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0 only arrived in the west in modern history in the 8th century??? How could the A.I.T have happened?
you my dear squire are like a man turning upto a cricket match in rugby uniform…
June 26, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Proto-European never existed and never will. Santskrit is oldest and most pure Indo-Aryan language. There is no reason for English to be relatated to it. Unfortunately, English, and the whole other group of western languages are. Racist colonists invented the idea that the Aryans came from the North West to India. No proof exists, and the Vedas call the holiest place in the world to be be Kurukshetra. Even if Proto-Indo-European existed it would have been in India not anywhere else. As why would the Vedas be India and the origin somewhere else. These mythical blondes blue eyed people would have then had the oldest proof of PIE. Instead brown India does, what a terrible problem for the West land of the setting sun. So PIE was made up. Lets just say Santskrit is Proto-Indo-European, it is close enough to the original Indian language it may have come from.
July 21, 2007 at 7:53 am
My website has some articles on languages and science. It might interest you. Please send your email-ID. Thanks — MNG
July 26, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Sanskrit - Mother of European Languages says Prof Dean Brown
Sanskrit gets a new spokesperson in Professor Dean Brown, an eminent Theoretical Physicist, cosmologist, philosopher and Sanskrit scholar, whose translation of the Upanishads was published by the Philosophical Research Society. The following is a very …
July 28, 2007 at 12:33 am
Hey All You Sanskrit enthusiast here is a something that I think is nesccesary to share over in this discussion that ” Sanskrit is not formed Or developed by any body it is something that is found from within & from the nature & later incorprated.” This is the core reason why it is the Mother Language of all & this also means that its belongs to the nature we live in first & then anybody/community later on…
but it’s also true that its stemmed from India which has a history over lakhs of years & had many Saints & Sages whome in search of finding “Truth” went inside into themselves and nature and in the way found these sounds coming out from nature & which later has the Sankrit language.
(do forgive some mistakes as my enlgish is not perfect)
kunal
July 31, 2007 at 2:37 am
Sanskrit is one of the oldest language in the world. (history tells it)
It is possible that latin derived some grammer / words from sanskrit (since sanskrit is the
oldest), But we cannot 100% say that latin is 100% derivative of sanskrit…but we can 20%
say that 20% is derived.
Now the problem is about this 20%..who will prove that this 20% sanskrit has taken from latin
or latin has taken from sanskrit. For this we have to see history and historical records (Eg:
epics, old books, old monuments, religion etc) shows that sanskrit seems to be older.
Also oldest university in the world was in india..(u must be knowing about taxsilla and
nalanda)……where sanskrit was widely spoken… and thousands of people around the world
took training from there….. may be from here the foreigners took the grammer and better
things from sanskrit …. its possible!!..
Also sanskrit is very much influential language….there are currently around 18 official
(thousands of dialects) languages in india….hindi, bengali, gujarati, etc.. in fact
language such as telegu (dravidian descendant) has sanskrit influence… This shows that
sanskrit was influential…. (during that period) … ( now in the 21st century i think
english is the most influential language in the world … thx to british rule in the past )
Also sanskrit is very very very very scientific language…its tooo tooo too much structured
language…why why why why because its just perfect!!.. The sound/words/word
breakups/sentence breakups/ (grammer) everything is so much structured.. Its highly
optimized…and refined with the passage of time… Everyone should agree that computer
languages are structured….and sanskrit is structured too (very well optimized and
refined).. there are very few languages as structured as sanskrit ..In other languges the
sequence goes wrong..there is no proper sequence(Structure).. the head goes somewhere and
tale goes somewhere else. …… so we have to muggg up without any structure (in programming
its like learning cobol and learing C++.. C++ is highly structured as compared to cobol… so
other languages are like cobol)…. thats why coder prefer C++ (and languages similar to c++)
over others cobol like languages..also C++ is easy to manage/understand/readable and
maintain.. ) …………. that’s why its said sanskrit is more preferred…if u write a very
very very complex program, if u write that complex program in sanskrit then it would be
better)
….image a computer program being written as a novel!!!!…instead of looping around
everywhere…
Also sanskrit has refined a lot with the passage of time…but!!.. every good thing has a bad
end.. pre sanskrit->sanskrit->prakrit got in -> pali language along with all indian language
(current languages in india) developed (descendants of sanskrit) … Why the language lost i
don’t know….but still in india for each and every rituals (birth, marriage, death) sanskrit
is used…… and also in schools sanskrit is tought (very very basic)…… also there are
text in sanskrit in 1000’s of topics including medicine (aryuveda), science, maths (the digit
0), cultures, novels, music, sex(kamasutra), songs, dance forms, painting, idol creation ..
etc.. so it has the contribution of the most learned people on earth. and all these things
are written in sanskrit… hence intelligent people have participated in developing such as
language (with the passage of time) so its has to be one of the most
structured!!………………
if u have to choose the best language then its the oldest popular extinct langugage which is
sanskrit.
August 2, 2007 at 8:05 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Adamic_language/archive1
As Catherine Emmerich wrote:
“Upon Heber who, as we have said, took no part in the work, God cast His eyes; and amid the general disorder and corruption, He set him and his posterity apart as a holy nation. God gave him also a new and holy language possessed by no other nation, that thereby his race should be cut off from communication with all others. This language was the pure Hebrew, or Chaldaic.”
Hebrew cannot be Adamic Language, and because to that, Catherine Emmerich explains below true nature of Adamic language:
“The first tongue, the mother tongue, spoken by Adam, Sem, and Noe, was different, and it is now extant only in isolated dialects. Its first pure offshoots are the Zend, the sacred tongue of India, and the language of the Bactrians. In those languages, words may be found exactly similar to the Low German of my native place. The book that I see in modern Ctesiphon, on the Tigris, is written in that language.”
Because Sanskrit is one of sister Indo-European languages that are daughters of Adamic language, Adamic language can be only Proto-Indo-European.
August 9, 2007 at 9:03 am
I completely agree what John says. His arguments are truly valid and not biased.
August 9, 2007 at 9:49 am
As John says, there is no such thing as a perfect language, or a language that produces objective meaning. I would think Telugu is as much perfect/older language as Sanskrit, if not more sweeter.
August 14, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Let us also consider the ancient Dravidian languages which many scholars argue to be older than Sanskrit. Take Tamil for example: a perfectly self-contained language that is highly poetic with an intricate grammatical structure. Tamil is unique in its multi-facetednes; it enables the writer and or speaker to use metaphorical language to the utmost, with phrases and imagery that have produced some of the richest poetry in the world. By the same token, Tamil is a very logical language, in that it has contributed to a culture that is second to none in mathematics (and I emphasize mathematics) and science. Thus Tamils have no hang ups about wanting to be linked with any European ancestry. That whole indo-european, hypothetical headache is irrelevant to their consciousness.
August 24, 2007 at 3:24 pm
Indian culture has to be substantially old. And even languages such as Tamil, while differing in form from Sanskit, must have been greatly influenced by it in view of their proximity of development. See https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html the many year long project that National Geographic has been pursuing to use genetics to study human origins and migration. In the south there are the M20 “Dravidian” Haplogroup. My personal tests revealed the M52 Haplogroup. Being from a South Indian brahmin background, and followers of the Rig Veda, I see this greatly strengthen the arguement that Sanskrit was developed in the Indus valley region (where the Genographic project believes the M52 Haplogroup originated 25,000 years ago)! Just as a note, the Dravidian gene M20 is closer linked to the European male lineage than the M52. But both originated in India about 25-30,0000 years ago! The other genetic link that may be interesting to the topic at hand may be Haplogroup M17, which is found in about 35% of some north Indian populations. The site above postualtes the theory that they may have been responsible for the IE languages. However, their rarer percentages in the route in between India and Europe (in Iran and the ME) does not prove that they brought the common language down to India given that Farsi etc. are also of the IE language family and do not have much of the M17 lineage in them. The more likely explanation is that the knowledge went the other way around (since they would have maintained some tie back to where they came from). The other issue is that languages (especially grammer)typically develops much more stong in agrarian or urbanized populations over migratory nomadic people. Archeological evidence has no proof that these early Europeans were anything but nomadic 10,000 years ago.
August 26, 2007 at 10:20 am
BTW, an FYI for non Indian people (or people who do not have much insight into Hinduism), the Rig Veda is the earliest of the Vedas. The Rig Veda has no mention of the Ganges, which subsequent Vedas do. Instead the Rig Veda is all about the river Saraswati. One theory is that due to cataclysmic events at the origin of the river Saraswathi (that flowed in the same region as the Indus), the river dried up or changed course. That resulted in the demise of the old civilizations in the area of the Indus region. Later Vedas mention the Saraswathi is an underground river that originates near the source of the Indus but joins the Ganges at Prayag. This could be explained as (a) people from the old Saraswathi-Indus civilization moved east to re-establish themselves in the Ganges area (b) part of the old Saraswathi changed path and joined the Ganges (one of the theories is that the Yamuna might have been that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarasvati).
The basic argument here is that historical / religious text provide information about the earlier period of the Hindu civilization. The information provided there greatly supports recent archeological evidence and now even genetic evidence, that effectively debunks a lot of the earlier grossly speculative claims (especially of an aryan invasion).
Another, interesting commonality between middle eastern, European and Indian history is the deluge. Western history talks about Noah, ME talks about Nuh and Indian about Manu. It is possible that there was a common root to all three, where the person may have been someone called Manuh (that changes in emphasis of the name resulted in three different people). It would be interesting if future science could eventually link the Saraswathi river change to this historical deluge (huge rains at the river sources could have predated massive floods and subsequent geographical changes that caused the river to change course). Obviously the linking of the deluge to the Saraswathi changing course is pure speculation on my part :-). But it is a possibility that could provide one logical link to a common past.
September 8, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Grand-Pianos.org
Good piano performance. Thanks heaps for this!… if anyone else has anything it would be much appreciated. Great website HOT Klavier Links! Enjoy!
September 19, 2007 at 10:32 am
I have read view points of John and Raj and strange as it may sound, I find meaningful thoughts in both the approaches. There is nothing wrong in using comparative approach (method) to understand relationship (if any) between different languages and if you can find a conclusive evidence that there is a relationship thats great. We all are human beings and our objective should be to find truth. Its true as a matter of common sense that different groups of human beings have had to travel from one part of the world to another due to natural,political, economical or romantical reasons. Some have traveled little and others have traveled a lot. As such there is bound to have some interaction even if everyone was speaking different languages. Over the course of few centuries even if only 10 words picked up (per year), it leads to multiple permutations and combinations. As such lets not kill the reasoning or thoughts just because you dont like it. And comparative method may be one of the approaches but cant be the only one. With the same token, it is true that Sanskrit is more refined. I understand Greek (modern) and Sanskrit (as taught today) and I do find some siginifant similarity and some striking differences. This makes me feel that work Sanskrit is more refined. But lets keep the discussion open. Calling arguments as burst of racism does not help.
September 25, 2007 at 12:15 pm
good
October 7, 2007 at 9:57 am
RE: “Sanksrit is more refined” Our tastes:preferences, dislikes etc..are the outcome of our social and cultural conditioning. The Greeks will say the same thing, namely that “Greek is more refined”. Human beings have an intense desire to expand the “self” through a particular culture, religion, race, history, etc…Because without it, we feel insignificant and powerless. All life is interdependent;an essentialist outlook on life only degrades the human experience.
No wonder Buddhism struck fear among facists in India.
October 29, 2007 at 3:24 pm
by the wasy, for those who simply blabber they sould know that few words (eg. for father) words in latin already existed in sanskrit long back
October 31, 2007 at 11:30 am
Im doing a hell lot of research on the origin of Sanskrit!
My opinion fully matches with Professor Dean Brown.Not because im a indian but because the history the archaelogical evidences and the circumstances all sum up to say that Sanskrit was the language of the earth(like English now) which was known as Bharat!
Bharat is just not India but the whole earth as one continent. If u all see the structure of the land mass in the ice age and just after the ice age..u will find that the earth was having only one huge mass of land. That was called bharat.
Bharat(India now) was the only civilised nation with people from all over the world flocking to learn language and Art(Vedic and War).
Sanskrit is older than 23000BC and speaks of 14 Adams and Eves. Sanskrit is far more harder language to speak than Hebrew or Latin. So Bharat had special Ashrams built to allow people learn the language as well as Arya(Noble)Dharma(Thinking).
Hinduism is not a religion but an art of living in peace and harmony with all cultures and respecting the divinity of GOD and seeing HIM in everyone…thus respecting everyone.
The word Matra-Mother in English
the word Naugata - Navigate now in English
The Bharat traders used to travel selling spices all over the world even before Bible, Koran was written. The letter Bha and Pa are missing in Arabic.
Hence spices are baharat in arabic.
The word eve emerges from the Sanskrit word
Hayavrutive and Adam comes from Adham(or first).
the word divine in English comes from Divya..the word Diva in Sanskrit and Latin mean same.
the word Maayaa is spoken as Mahaya in Arabic…just like they say Cinemaat for Cinema.
The Greek God idol is same as Lord Shiva.
The americans call the Ram Sethu
as the Adams bridge..and we followit blindly.
Where as Archaelogy proves that the bridge was built 10000 years ago and its the same time Ramayana was written by Valmiki. There are lots of evidences.
what else does it need to proove that we all belong to the same culture and the same GOD.
Revoking the vedas again will truly change the world into a peaceful place.
And im glad Sri Sathya Sai Baba is doing it!
SaiRam - Love All Hurt Never
November 12, 2007 at 9:31 am
Payday Loans No Fax
Knowing that secretarys who know about Orlando usually advocate personal loan
February 3, 2008 at 1:50 am
Hello Mr.Raj,
Could u plz give us ur contact details,b’coz
we r very impressed with ur knowledge,tact,patience n overall response.We r interested in contacting u coz our aim is to work on Vedas, n to begin with we r working on Ayurveda now,trying to establish scientifically the concepts of Ancient Ayurveda.We have done a preliminary work on action of various diets as prescribed in Ayurveda on the resting membrane potentials of cells.it establishes the credibility of concept of vata,pitta,kapha to the scientific world.in the future we want to work on Indology n prove the supremacy of Bharat’s Vedic Knowledge which is translated into Bharat’s culture thru the ages.
For this reason,we can work together.plz get back to us.
Dr.RaviShankar
sairavishankar@yahoo.com
February 19, 2008 at 11:52 am
dear men,
we are all discussing how ancient our languages are! and which is the perfect and refined one! it seems we are fighting to prove that somebody is more ancient and supreme than others. till now we dont know where else life exists apart from earth. this kind of discussion may enlighten our brains but i wonder where else it will lead..!
February 26, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Proto-Indo-Germanic (Proto-Indo-European) is Adamic, learn it here: http://www.koeblergerhard.de/idgwbhin.html (Grammar in Vorwort)
Because Anne Catherine Emmerich wrote and I cited and commented here: