Indo-Aryan invasion

[Paul (Kekai) Manansala]

On Sat, 28 Feb 1998, George Thompson wrote:

> Just to show that I am prepared to hold myself to the standards that I
> recommended a few days ago: I am prepared to discuss a relevant article:
>
> H.H. Hock: "Pre-Rgvedic Convergence Between Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) and
 > Dravidian? A Survey of the Issues and Controversies", in _Ideology and
> Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language_,
> ed. by J. Houben, Leiden 1996.
>
> Anyone else? Or other recommendations?

I'm game but this book is not readily available except through interlibrary
loan (which can take some time).  Could you summarize its main points?

>
> To be even more specific, would anyone like to talk about the origins of
> retroflexion in Sanskrit? I'm especially interested in an "Indigenous
> Aryan" view of retroflexion. I'd also like to know how the "out of India"
> model deals with the relationship between Old Indic and Old Iranian.
>

There was a recent article suggesting that retroflexion in Sanskrit was
of IE origin.  Not very convincing though when you consider there is such
a close phonemic correspondence between this phenomenon in Dravidian
aqnd Indic.

I'm not an OoIer or an AITer, but from what I understand the OoI theorists
simply claim the relationship is due to "Aryans" migrating out of India
into Iran.  One bit of evidence they use is an Avestan tradition of
"homeland" somewhere to the east.