The Aryans (again); 19th century discourse.

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 1/1/99 4:27:03 AM Central Standard Time,
yavass at YV1041.SPB.EDU writes:

> Dear Ashish, thank you for so clear and honest formulation of the
>  concept which is really basic for your favourite Out-of-India "theory". But
>  can not you see yourself that the concept which helds that ALL Europeans
are
>  scoundrels and politically (or otherwise?) biased falsifiers of facts, is
>  racist? And it can not be a base for any scientific theory, but only for
>  the racist, nationalistic propaganda.

In September 1998, Dr. Subhash Kak participated  in a seminar at Southern
Methodist University along with Madhav Deshpande, Gregory Possehl, Andre’
Sjoberg, and Michael Witzel. After the conference he wrote a paper and
solicited my comments. I sent him detailed comments on many points in his
paper. I am presenting below my comments with respect to just one point.

Dr. Kak had written the following:
<<Indian texts do not use the term Arya or Aryan in a linguistic sense, only
in terms
 of culture.>>

I thought Kak wrote this because he did not have the information about Tamil
texts, and I thought when I give him the facts, he will take them into
account. So, Iwrote the following.

<<This is absolutely not true. There is ample evidence that Arya was a name
for Sanskrit and its derivates. Consider the following  tEvAram line (6th or
7th century AD) from a hymn by Saint Appar.

Ariyam tamizOTu icai An2anan2 (tEv.5.18.3.1)

Here Ziva is praised as one who became music with Arya, and Tamil.

The author of Kambaramayanam says,

Ariyam mutaliya patin2eN pATaiyil  (kam.4.1.13.1)

This is translated as "in the eighteen languages such as Arya, etc.">>


But to my disappoint, I find that in his final version of the article, "Is the
Aryan/Dravidian Binary Valid?" at the web site
http://www.ee.lsu.edu/kak/index.html, Subhash Kak still continues to say the
following.

"Indian texts do not use the term Arya or Aryan in a linguistic sense, only in
terms of culture."

Although the references I have given could have been easily checked, I do not
see any change in Kak's statement before I gave him the facts and after.
(When he did not use the references given to him in response to his
solicitation of comments, one cannot complain that he did not consult a
detailed discussion of the concept of Aryan by M. M. Deshpande in Sanskrit &
Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues, pp.9-14) Facts seem to be irrelevant to the
formation of "good scientific" models/theories in the Hindutva/Indigenous
Aryan worldview.

But, then, of course Kak says the following in his article:
"Bad intent should not turn anyone away from good science. Why isn't PIE good
science? It looks reasonable enough: If there are biological origins then
there should be linguistic origins as well. And why don't we believe that the
nature of language tells us something about culture? If Europeans have been
dominant in recent history, then why don't we accept it as a characteristic of
the European? If Europe was dominant in ancient times then the origin of the
PIE must be in the European sphere from where the energy of its early speakers
carried them to the far corners of Asia and allowed them to impose their
language on the native speakers.

There are several problems with the idea of PIE. First, it is based on the
hypothesis that languages are defined as fixed entities and they evolve in a
biological sense. In reality, a language area is a complex, graded system of
several languages and dialects of a family. The degree of homogeneity in a
language area is a reflection of the linkages, or interaction within the area.
For a language distributed widely in the ancient world, one would expect
several dialects. There would be no standard proto-language."

Now consider what a reputed Dravidian linguist M. Andronov has said on the
issue more than 30 years ago.

In his preface to the publication, "Two Lectures on the Historicity of
Language Families", (Department of Linguistics Publication No. 15, Annamalai
University, 1968), Dr. M. Andronov said, "The notion of the genetic
relationship of languages has been introduced by comparative linguistics. At
first, when language was regarded as a biological organism, the genetic
relationship was understood in its literal sense. Later the naturalistic
conception of language was discarded, and this expression has got to be used
figuratively to denote the common origin of linguistic forms. In the course of
time, as suspicion was growing that the Proto-language and the treelike scheme
of the development of language families were nothing more than a scholarly
construction which probably never had a real correlate in actual history, the
notion of gentic <sic> relationship of languages started losing much of its
concrete meaning. The situation was aggravated by the discovery of the fact
that language is a system. The new approach to the understanding of the nature
of language compelled linguists to look at the problem of genetic relationship
from a new point of view. Now it had to be treated not in terms of common
origin of isolated linguistic forms but in terms of the common origin of
language systems as  a whole.

As the latter include elements of heterogenous origin, the modern linguistic
theory, strictly speaking, rules out the possibility of tracing a language or
a group of languages to one parent language. In practice, however, the
tradition is followed and linguistic relationship (probably for the simplicity
of treatment) is generally reduced to the likeness of a small number of the
most stable and conservative elements of the language structure. The latter,
however stable they may seem within the limits of time open for investigation,
do not differ in principle from the rest of language elements and similarly
are liable to erosion and substitution in thecourse of the evolution of the
whole system. In any case the historicity of linguistic relationship is a
matter of fact, and one may be expected to raise a question of how language
families are formed, develop and disintegrate."

Andronov began his first lecture, "Dravidian and Aryan: From the Typological
Similarity to the Similarity of Forms" by saying,  "It is generally accepted
at present that Dravidian languages served as a substratum, underlying the Old
Indo-Aryan language, when the latter appeared on the Indian soil in the first
half of the second millennium B.C., and that the whole course of the
subsequent development of both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian was largely influenced
and predetermined by this circumstance. Their mutual influence on each other,
most probably, took shape of bilingualism of a great portion of themingling
peoples. The numerical superiority was, obviously, on the side of the
indigenous population, which is testified by the rapid change and complete
dissolution of the the ethnic type of the newcomers. One can suggest also that
in the first period of contact  bilinguals were recruited chiefly from the
native population."

It is clear that linguists  have addressed the issue of the nature of the
proto-language in relation to the South Asian situation more than 30 years
ago. In the SMU seminar Dr. Sjoberg cited Dr. Andronov’s views on the issue.
But still the Hindutva protogonists continue to blame Max Muller and
linguistics.

I had the pleasure of meeting Subhash Kak at the Seminar. As a person he is
very nice and courteous. But, his theory and methodology, are neither
innocuous nor "good science" as they seem to be.

Regards
S. Palaniappan