Re: The falsehood of linguistic evidence of Aryan invasion
- From: "harmony" <aka@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 11:57:12 -0500
what's thapad's background? i bet she had a troubled childhood, felt
unwanted, and hence is secretly hoping to destroy the country.
<imemind@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1149467219.447100.288940@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The falsehood of linguistic evidence of Aryan invasion
By D.A. Ramachandra
It is necessary to refute the theory of Aryan Invasion/Aryan Migration
(a more sophisticated yet highly dubious version now being propagated
by people like Ms. Romila Thapar). It is just a mischief of
missionaries/Leftists and other westernised people.
Since these theories have been proved to be incorrect by archeological
and other evidences, they are now coming up with an idea of Aryan
Migration sighting linguistic evidence. Thapar and others go to great
extent saying that linguistic evidence is beyond doubt. She also says
that it is an advanced discipline and lot of work has been carried out
in this area and the other side lacks scholarship. Shri Rajaram refers
to this branch as pseudo science. However there is also need to refute
this evidence to give final burial to theories of invasion and
migration. Unfortunately in our country this has not happened. It is
time to start to dissect the linguistic evidence, since it is one main
hiding point of these historians. The linguistic evidence goes as
follows
There are many similarities in Sanskrit and European languages. These
languages are grouped as Indo-European (IE) family languages. The
argument is that these languages belong to one family and as such must
have evolved from a common language. So the people speaking these
languages (referred to as Indo European by Ms. Romila Thapar) are the
people migrated to Bharat and imposed Sanskrit on others.
This branch i.e. Indo European Language, is widely studied and hence
the above hypothesis must be true. The linguistic evidence is very
strong.
There are people like Shri S. Kak who have argued against it but it has
been dismissed as not academic, being politically motivated, etc. by
these historians. Due to this I had myself gone through many articles
on IE family and linguistic evidence. As I see it the linguistic
evidence is at the best a possible scenario with very low probability
of occurrence. I have some questions with no satisfactory answers. The
linguistic evidence fails on following counts.
All the studies accept basic assumption of similarity and work on that
hypothesis. So most of the work merely explores similarity, rather than
critically examine it. On other hand, there are very significant
differences, which have not been touched into. These differences cast
doubts on grouping of Sanskrit with other languages.
One can see that number of alphabets in Sanskrit and Prakrit varies
from 48-52. On other hand in all other languages of IE family it is
24-26 or half of that. Further the sounds of alphabets differ from
European languages significantly. If alphabets are considered as basis
of any language, this itself raises doubt about grouping, since
Sanskrit family is the only family in IE, which has these differences.
It can be seen that the number of alphabets, do not differ
significantly in other languages of the family.
A major reason for this difference is in Sanskrit family, 'kh',
'ch' and 'th' etc. are different alphabets. On the other hand
in other European languages, it is a combination of two alphabets
'k' and 'h'. In this respect, it can be seen that Sanskrit
family is similar to Dravidian family. The languages have same set
numbers and sounds of alphabets. In the same way 'ke' ,'ka'
etc. (i.e. matras) are examples of differences and in this respect
Sanskrit family is similar to Dravidian family. It is pertinent to note
here that these deviations have been dismissed as merely borrowing from
other languages by the Jawahar Lal Nehru University (JNU) historians.
However these differences raise doubts about grouping of Sanskrit
family with other European language.
In case of similarity, it is being said that many words are similar and
their common roots are worked out. However, on close examination, I
found that a set of similar words in Sanskrit and other European
languages is not very large. I could come across fewer than 100 such
words from different sources. However I understand that there is one
English Sanskrit dictionary compilation by an English author, where
more words are listed. So it may be accepted here that the list I had
is not yet complete. Even in that one it can be seen that very close
words are quite few. I could not get more than couple of dozens words
for mother, father, feet, teeth etc.. This means that there are large
numbers of words which are not similar. If one work out numeric
measure, I am afraid, it may come out that very small number of words
in these languages are similar. This feature is taken to be point of
common origin of these languages. The hypothesis is that these words
are similar and can be derived form common root. The problem with this
assumption is that, in Sanskrit (or its family), there are words which
are used interchangeably with these words. These words are not remotely
similar to European word. One can take the example of janani, which is
used for mother. There is no similar or related word in English or
European languages. It is also sighted that "Bhrata" and
"Brother" are similar. However another word used in Sanskrit for
"Brother" is "Anuj". This is not similar to any European
languages. This happens with almost all words listed as words with
common roots.
So how can one say that they have common origin? At the best one can
say that these words in Greek or Latin are borrowed from Sanskrit.
Later on these words were borrowed in English. This is significant if
one sees number of similar words in related languages like Hindi and
Sanskrit or English and French. Further how does one explain the fact
that all European languages share many more words with Hebrew. On other
hands number of similar words in Sanskrit and Dravidian languages is
also significantly high. This also strengthens the assumption that
Sanskrit family developed independently on its own and European
languages borrowed from Sanskrit, rather than they originating from the
same language.
The script of Sanskrit and other European languages differ
significantly whereas, the scripts of European languages are quite
similar.
However there many words common (far more than European languages)
between Sanskrit and Telugu or Malayalam. Similar is case with Kannada
though common words may be smaller.
In Sanskrit, one does not find any European word, but it is other way
round. Words resembling Sanskrit words can be found in European
languages.
If one goes carefully, then one can see that it is wrong to classify
Sanskrit as language of IE family. The concept of Indo European family
is questionable. It is clear that based on few similarities Sanskrit
family has been treated as part of IE family. This has been done
purposely for creating linguistic evidence supporting
Invasion/Migration theories. One can say that Sanskrit family evolved
on its own and others like European languages borrowed from it.
.
- References:
- The falsehood of linguistic evidence of Aryan invasion
- From: imemind
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