Non-IE loans

[Michael Witzel]

<I am resending this as this morning's mail was refused by INDOLOGY, due to
the 24 h restriction on sending more than 3 messages; thus, some answers
will come with delay as from now>

At 20:01 +0200 9/6/99, Koenraad Elst wrote:

> that there are "hundreds" of loans in the RV.
>That is how many Kuiper lists (Aryans in the RV), but he exaggerates,

Kuiper intentionally included all  words he regarded as *possible*
candidates for nonIE, non-IA
etymologies but he is always open to revision when IE etymology can be
demonstrated.

Apparently the principles of producing proper IE (Drav., Munda etc.)
etymologies are not well known (for a check list see K. Hoffmann, Aufsatze
zur Indoiranistik, vol.3, Wiesbaden 1991),
 as can be seen from the following sentence:

>including terms with known IE etymologies (though such may of course have
>been borrowed by PIE: anything borrowed before the fragmentation of PIE,
>hence pan-IE, is not recognizable as ultimately non-IE).

this is *not*  correct :
e.g., IE *pelek'u- (Greek peleku-, Ved. parazu-)   would be good PIE
according to Elst,
but the word structure betrays it as an early IE *loan* from an unknown
language (not Sumerian, it seems, as the word in question means 'spindle'
not 'ax'  (see Mayerhofer's etym. dict. for details).

As soon as linguistic arguments are introduced into the "Aryan"  (=
Indo-Aryan) debate, we see this kind of naivite' or misinformation...

> I don't recollect any
>of them being specifically an astronomical term.  Nor a specifically
>religious or metaphysical term.

Already in 1955, Kuiper has pointed out a number of religious terms (Fs.
Kirfel, Bonn 1955), (reprinted in  IJDL, v.21, no.2,)  such as:

zambara,  pizaci, kimiidin, nicumpuNa,
puNya, mangala,
the religious connnections of the trees udumbara, azvattha, pippala,
the kumbha myths,
the EmuSa myth (also in a separate paper, 1950)
and the possible Drav. connection of the sage/star Agastya/Agatti

(astronomy only: ulkaa 'meteor')

much of this repeated/summarized  in his 1991 book Aryans in the RV.

So why this misinformation?


>Kuiper's list looks more like the
>vocabulary exchanged in the process of economic interaction

That is the point: interaction is on the level of VILLAGE life, not of big
traders and great cities... which does not bode well for an overlap of
speakers of Vedic with the Indus civilization...

Rather, this fits interaction of IA with local language(s ) *after* the
relapse of the Indus civ....
(why not before? --  see in older /other msgs)

<For details see my forthc. paper in EJVS -address below-  sometine in
September (I hope).>



 ==========================================================================
Michael Witzel                          Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies
Harvard University                  www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs
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