bones and flesh

[Stephen Hodge]

Hi, Naga Ganesan

> For the formative input on tantras from Dravidian side, pl. consult
> R. Nagaswamy, Tantric cult of South India, Delhi, 1982, 250 p.

Thank's again for the reference.

>
> Any ideas when Dravidians entered India ?

I cannot pretend to be a expert in this matter at all but Prof.
Witzel's hypothesis in his Substrates in OIA seems to have merit.  I
have a philologist friend who compiled the first Tamil_russian
dictionary a while back.  He is of the opinion that i) Dravidian is
not the language of the Indus Culture and ii) that the Dravidians
originally migrated from somewhere in Central Asia (I have not had the
benefit of his detailed reasoning for this view)

> Looking at Tikkanen's retroflexion map, the retroflexion is
> in the direction of Northwest to the South, and NOT from
> Northwest to the East. If originally Indus language had
> retroflexes, does Tikkanen's findings give a clue to
> the original (northern) Indus language?

The short answer is, I don't know.  However I suspect that the Indus
language has strong links to Sumerian and also Austronesian.  Have you
also seen Malati Shendge's recent book "The Language of the
Harrapans".  She has the interesting theory that there was also a
strong Akkadian influence on this language which was taken over into
the language of the Rg Veda.  In particular she draws attention to the
names of the various Asuras which she links to Akkadian names.  She
also believes that Asura is linked via Asur to the Assyrians.
Probably very contentious but still worth a look.

Best wishes,
Stephen Hodge