Indo-Aryan im/e-migration (scholarly debate)

[N. Ganesan]

Read this in Dr. Linguistics assn. news (Univ. of Kerala)
from March 1998.
N. Ganesan

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Vishvanath Khaire, Pune writes:
"The horse was not native in the American continent.
The first horses were taken there by Columbus on his second voyage
in the last decade of the 15th century. The American Indians who
naturally did not have a word for horse in their languages, coined
a new term for it, meaning 'the great dog'. The similarity of gait and
speed of the two obviously influenzed their choice of name for
the new animal. In due course, the plains Indians used for horses,
not only for riding, but also for dragging their household effects
and scantlings, works which their dogs had been doing for ages.

The semantic similarity between 'horse' and 'dog'
can be observed in our Indian languages also.
Ta. kutirai, Ka. kudare 'horse' are obviously
related to kuti 'to jump, leap, frolic, escape from',
Marathi kutre (which is almost same as Ta. kutirai)
means 'dog'. Te. guRRamu, Nk. ghurram 'horse',
again similar with Marathi ghoDama (rural form),
ghoDa 'horse'. Various other languages have cognate
words, for which, Turner notes: non-aryan, prob. drav.

Sanskrit azva and vedic hari mean 'horse'. The semantics
of both are worth considering in relation to the following:
Ta. acai 'to move, stir, go away), acaivu 'shaking, moving
about, swing'; Ka. asavasa, 'haste'.

Ta. pari 'run, escape; n. motion, a horse'; Tu. hariyuni 'to run'"