saraswati civilisation

[Vishal Agarwal]

----Original Message Follows----
From: George Thompson <GthomGt at CS.COM>
Subject: Re: saraswati civilisation
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 20:14:54 EST



GT: As a matter of fact, the Vedic Sarasvati resided neither in Afghanistan
nor
in India but in heaven, and Vedic Sarasvati is a goddess. No satellite has
been invented which can tell us where such goddesses live.
VA: I would like to know what Dr. H H Hock and Dr M Witzel would like to say
on this matter since some of their publications do link Sarasvati to
specific river(s). And, Dr. M Witzel has been very forceful in stating that
no firm date is available for the drying up of Sarasvati (contradicting a
statement in Dr. Hock's article in D and B, 1999)from Satellite Imagery. So
it will be interesting to know their views here.

GT: As for the Vedic word, *sa'rasvatI*, it is identical with the Avestan
word
*harahvaiti* and the Old Persian word *harahuvati*
VA: And do the rule of linguistics warrant a transformation from Sarasvati
to Harahuvati or vice versa? I ask because Dr. Hock quotes a  journal
article by Dr. Erdosy on Sarasvati (Journal of South Asian Studies No. 5 if
I remember correctly) and when I looked at that article, Dr. Erdosy seems to
confess that although the change should be from S-->H, in this case it
implies that the IE speakers first settled down on the banks of Sarasvati in
N W India and then some of them must have gone over to Afghanistan giving
the name Harahuvati to a local river there!

What a pity that entire tribes of people are lifted and placed left and
right to satisfy some linguistic theories.

Vishal

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