Sarasvati (texts & arch.III)

[Michael Witzel]

On Tue, 26 May 1998, Erik Seldeslachts wrote:

> Michael Witzel wrote:
> > We do not now, it is likely Pre_Indo_Aryan, precisely because of
> > aika(-vartana)  = Pre-Vedic aika > Ved. eka. In Pre-Old-Iranian it would
> > have been *aiva as in the old Iran. languages. Seems to be an old dialect
> > difference. But a slim one.
> > At any rate, the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr
> > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda ::  Ved. priyamedha :: Avest.
> > -mazda... But I suppose you are well aware of all of this...


> This is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation we are
> swamped with on this list.
> aika- : long e and o have always considered to be diphthongs by the
> Sanskrit grammarians and it is likely that they still were real diphthongs
> in Vedic and even later times.(On the other hand there is also Old-Iranian
> *aivaka- 'one' preserved in Persian yek).


This -again- is a typical example of the kind of selective argumentation
we are swamped with on this list. The facts are:

In Old Iranian we only have aiva (O.Pers.) and aEuua, Oiuua  (Avestan)

In Middle Persian we have Ev, Evak ( < *aivaka, NOT *aika!!!) and

and thus, in  New Persian we have yak.

-ka suffixes are about the most common in Middle Persian (and Skt.) and
added virtually everywhere.

(Actually, even Avestan has something like the preform: aEuuAkam 'at the
same time", from *aeuuAka-)


One look into Bartholomae's Altiranisches Woerterbuch would have helped to
avoid this kind of selective argumentation.

Rather, the dialect difference between Pre-vedic *aika "1" and Pre-Iranian
*aiva"1" (and, maybe, reinforced by *aiva-ka!) is old; note that Vedic has
specialized a presumable IIr *aiva > adverb eva "only".

        (and did I not say: " Seems to be an old dialect
        difference. But a slim one." ???)

It seems to me that the my main point was completely missed: Iranian used
-va, IA used -ka (and other IE *-no) for "1".
Philology = "slow reading".

The question of Vedic diphtongs is quite separate from all of this. I also
think that we might prove -inner Vedic- that the RV people still
pronounced ai, au , not yet e, o. But you did not say *how* to show it
INSIDE the Vedic texts.

> Near-Eastern documents .... also there is no
> conclusive evidence to state it is pre-Vedic.

But what about above:
> > the form of the IIr language in Mitanni is pre-Vedic : IIr
> > sounds are preserved, *zdh, in Priyamazda ::  Ved. priyamedha :: Avest.
> > -mazda...

As every 1st year student of hist. lingustics knows, IIr is characterized
by *azd,azdh,  retained in Iranian -azd-, while Vedic has got rid of such
combinations > ed, edh.

(best example perhaps is: the perfect of sad : *sa-zdai > Ved. sede but
retained as Young Avestan haz-de)  Typical innovations in RV follow suit:
perfects such as man: mene, nam: neme etc.  etc..

Thus, in sum: "Mitanni-Aryan" has the pre-Vedic stage Also characterized
by aika (not aiva, aivaka!). -az- is not found in Ved. any more. And that
development has been used to build a whole new class of perfects. A wide
gap separates the Mitanni and RV forms of IA.  (implications for
dating??)

All of this has been well known since Kammenhuber's Habil. thesis on
Kikkuli's horse treatise, Mayrhofer's "Mythos", etc. etc. As Prof.
Krishnamurti once wrote: do we have to give intro-s to linguistics here?

> One could as well argue that
> this language conserves some archaic features but on the whole presents a
> transitional phase between Old-Indo-Aryan and Middle-Indo-Aryan: e.g.
> satta(-vartanna) : MIA satta- 'seven', with assimilation of the consonant
> cluster in OIA sapta-; Indara, with typical MIA vowel-epenthesis to resolve
> the consonant cluster in OIA Indra-; Bardashva : Skt VRdhAZva-, with
> evolution of initial v- to b-; etc.

This merely repeats S.S. Misra, The Aryan problem 1992, who is "famous"
for his his IE. *a = Greek e,o,a;  no laryngeals; IE.  z (as in Ved.
azva-s = IE *azvas!!!) instead of *k', etc. etc.  ----  And already
answered by Prof. Vassilkov.

Perhaps it is better to select other types of "selective argumentation".

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Michael Witzel                       witzel at fas.harvard.edu
                                     www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm
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