bangani - non Indo-Aryan Indo-European?

[Jan E.M. Houben]

On Mon, 9 Mar 1998 09:22:33 -0600 "Sn. Subrahmanya" <sns at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:

> Are there any good references available for the Bangani language of
Himachal Pradesh ?

I cite from Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: an Introduction, by R.S.P.
Beekes, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995, p. 19-20 (which is a reworking from a
book which appeared earlier in Dutch):
"In 1987 it was announced at a congress held in Leiden that traces had been
found of an unknown Indo-European language in northern India to the north of
Delhi, in the foothills of the Himalayas. The language in question is a modern
Indian (Indo-Aryan) language called Bangani, which contains large numbers of
words, notably those found in old stories, which are not Indo-Aryan. The
remarkable fact is that this language belongs to the centum group (while the
Indo-Iranian languages are all satem languages . . . ). Compare koto 'hundred'
(PIE *kmtom, Skt s'atam) . . .
. . .
Add. [This addition appears not yet in the Dutch version, only in the new
English one:] My Leiden colleague George van Driem went to the Bangani area in
December 1994, and observed that these forms are incorrect and especially their
supposed meanings. Most words have good Indo-Aryan etymologies. Thus *koto is
kiti 'how much' . . .  This is the end of the Bangani story."

JH