New Message (aryan invasion)

[Das Menon]

At 08:15 PM 12/11/96 GMT, George Thompson wrote:
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>As a matter of fact Sanskrit "took hold" in the northern portion of the
>Indian sub-continent at some hard to determine time.  But it did in fact
>*take hold*, which is to say that it wasn't there "in the beginning" [the
>genetic relationship of Skt. with other IE languages makes for only two
>options: either "into India" or "out of India" -- and the latter has
>nothing to support it, except for crude nationalist fantasy].  So the fact
>that archaeologists can find "no trace" of the IE incursion into the Indian
>sub-continent is a function of the crudity of their instruments of measure.
>Linguists are, it seems to me, in a much better position than
>archaeologists to say, with confidence, that Sanskrit was brought into the
>Indian sub-continent, and "took hold" there, for better or worse.
>
I think that is wrong to say that Sanskrit took hold in the northern
portions of India. It is more appropriate to say that Sanskrit took hold in
the whole of India, even in Tamil Nadu, where an entiryly new script
'grantha' was created to represent Sanskrit.

Also no one "brough" Sanskrit into India. From the very name it implies that
Sanskrit is a language that was "created" for the specific purpose of
representing AND preserving the the philosophical and cultural wealth of the
ancient Indians, a task that would have been difficult if any of the
traditional languages like Tamil etc. were to be used, since it would have
identified this wealth with a community and thus would sysamatically have
been undermined by others. Time has proven this. No one in India has a
passionate objection to the Sanskrit language, but I am sure that one can
find a lot of people objecting to all other languages of India.

Regards...Das