Sanskrit dance and drama

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 5/6/99 6:10:23 AM Central Daylight Time,
Steiner at MAILER.UNI-MARBURG.DE writes:

<< If, however, there are
 specific (mostly linguistic) indications pointing to that conclusion,
 there is obviously no point in ignoring their existence, our task
 then being to try to understand what the role of the influence can
 have been in the whole context of Indian culture." >>

Kuiper seems to have pursued this further in his book "Aryans in the
Rigveda", p. 19. In a section dealing with music and dancing, he lists
AghATi' - sound of cymbals; karkarI' - a kind of lute; ga'rgara - a lute or
drum?; dundubhi' - drum; nALI' - flute, pipe; pi'Gga - a musical instrument;
ba'kura - wind instrument, vANa'-, vA'NI - music, voice; sasarpari' - war
trumpet; and AGgUSa' - song of praise. He also says that the "list of
Bharata's sons who acted in the mythical first dramatic performance
(bhAratIya nATyazAstra 1.26-39) consists for the greater part of names of
indigenous tribes. He also says there are non-Aryan names/words for actors
and singers in the Vedas.

Among the words listed by Kuiper, I am intrigued by the word nALI. In his
book, Kuiper mentions it twice as being non-Aryan. For him, one of the main
reasons to consider it non-Aryan is the inter-vocalic retroflex. But,
Mayrhorfer  relates it to words in Nuristani, Parthian/Middle Persian,
Hittite, and Armenian and reconstructs an IE *ne/od-o-/-i-. Can IE experts
say who is right?  Kuiper or Mayrhorfer? Given the close proximity of these
IE branches, how certain is this etymology compared to a word  such as Skt.
pitR? Thanks in advance.

Regards
S. Palaniappan