Double truths etc.
Swaminathan Madhuresan
smadhuresan at YAHOO.COM
Thu Dec 28 15:29:22 UTC 2000
Mr. Narayan Joshi wrote:
>What is the result of this preoccupation of 2500 years of known history? We
>got stuck on"Shabda" and "Shabda-pramA.NA" when others reached the Moon.For
>the past 150 years,the alien scholarship has created a new amusement game
>for us called Sanskrit-Dravidian EtymA-rAmA. My suggestion is this-Perform
>Yajnya, recite Vedic Mantras, kill a goat and produce a mouse out of the
>Yajnya Fire. Efficiency = mouse/goat < 1. It is better than dry discussions
>of 2500 years. If it is magic(science of magi-Maghavan-Indra), so be it!
The main problem is non-willingness to accept the existence of Dravidian
and Munda families independent of IA. Let me give 2 quotes from Prof. Witzel,
(the entire message forwarded is attached).
<<<
In ultimate reduction and analysis, these guys just cannot stomach it, --as
you compared about la douce France--, that one (accidental/incidental
political) entity like present (France or China or the USA or) India might
comprise several language families. What is the big loss? What about the
Swiss who thrive on it?
>>>
<<<
Hindutva proponents generally cannot stomach that a country as large as
India (not to speak of the whole subcontinent) should have languages that
do not belong to the "Sanskrit group".
>>>
------------------------------
Guillaume,
Honestly, I think you waste your valuable time arguing with (most of) these
guys. As you have seen some month(s) ago, many/most of them have no idea
about [comparative] linguistics -- or even of several non_Indian languages
as such!
I pointed out the relevant linguistic literature --Beekes, Szemerenyi
etc.-- politely and privately to (dr.!) Kalyanaraman, -- who, a year later,
still writes nonsense like this :
>>The basic methodological problem
>> with linguistics as it has evolved is this: excessive reliance upon
>> phonetics and some intimations of morphology and grammatical
>> structures. It would appear, that this discpline is flawed because
>> adequate methodologies have not been evolved to delineate or
>measure,
>> 'semantic structures and semantic distances' between languages.
The man either does not read these basic introductions or does not
understand them. He simply is not to be 'taught': we (Archaeology & Skt.)
had invited him, on his insistence, to Harvard some 2-3 years ago. Meadow
and I then still had the (vain) hope that we might be able to tell him
about thorough and solid methods and that he could/would use his time &
computer, not just for aberrant fantasies about Soma = electrum but for
some real archaeological or linguistic work on the Indus period -- even if
this would be just a website like the very useful(!) and well-organized
harappa.com, which is run by an arch. amateur/afficionado as well.
Well, K. came, plus followers, and talked to us, in baseball cap and
all.... and I have never heard a more *confused* presentation, jumping
from one topic to the next, and backwards. With no inherent logic,
conclusions, results (a mess, just like the web site). In fact, I do not
remember ONE single *useful* item from that talk.
Of course, as always, we were polite, we had a long discussion, and we
still *tried* to talk about methodologies... He readily "agreed", but you
now see his 'results' all over the list/Sarasvati website! One of my
colleagues left in a huff, and I got 'scolded' for inviting such a hopeless
fellow... Well, hope springs eternal...
Repetition of prejudice does not make up for inside knowledge. So, you are
right:
>No, you really don't get the point.
(In addition he now is 'pissed' -- to speak American -- that Farmer & I
included him in a list of revisionists & Hindutva people ... he should feel
honored instead, from his point of view! At any rate, I am amused to see
that in every other message he now refers to our "yellow journalism" in
"glossy magazines" (Le renard et les raisins?) and that even the widely
used Kyoto-Harvard transcription (used even for Tamil with a few additional
signs...) is 'bad'. Who cares? The users decide as long as the
America-centric lower ASCII survives. )
Again: these guys still do no get it AT ALL about comp.ling.:
first, human speech organs-based sound correspondences/laws and language
family-typical grammatical formantia, only then syntax, and finally, even
less of [single word] semantics (which is, with Kalyanaraman, an excuse to
correlate anything with anything, in Indian languages, that looks vaguely
similar: Kratylos, Nirukta, Pseudo-Voltaire revived... just to get his
Pan-Indian "Prakrt" of 3000 BCE).
Perhaps, you could tell them that an Indian horse ain't related to an
Indian cow - only because both exist in India and graze on the same
meadow... The zebu being a local breed, the horse (Equus caballus), NOT
(you'll be killed for that example!) And, they do not talk to each other in
a proto-Indianese animal language (a Mammal Prakrt) but just roam the same
pasture.
In ultimate reduction and analysis, these guys just cannot stomach it, --as
you compared about la douce France--, that one (accidental/incidental
political) entity like present (France or China or the USA or) India might
comprise several language families. What is the big loss? What about the
Swiss who thrive on it?
In short, labour lost... unless you want to preach to the deaf: 1 or 2 may
listen...
(Ceterum censeo equum sivalensem esse delendum.)
And, many thanks for keeping up your list, all of which I have read,
especially the VERY interesting and informative discussions about Koguryo,
-- but I was too busy to participate this year -- and of course, I am not
specialized when it comes to O.Ch./TB consonants/vowels, etc. And I do not
want to run off my mouth about such E.A. ling. topics, like the
Kalyanaramans, Manansalas and Agarwals (not even to begin with Fraudley et
comp.ie) of this world do about India, without providing a shred of hard
evidence ... that would stand up to peer review.
Enough said / alam araNyarodanena/ Genug des Guten / Cela suffit!
Joyeux Fe^tes:
Good Holidays & success and all the best for the new millennium, 2001 !
Yrs Michael
--------------
NB: see what I sent off months ago, of course, to no avail:
-------------
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2000 18:30:31 -0400
Reply-To: Indology INDOLOGY at L...
From: Michael Witzel witzel at F...
Swaminathan Madhuresan writes:
>> At the same time, why is he [Rajaram] denying with authority about the
>>Dravidian
>> language family altogether? N. S. Rajaram writes, "empirical data
>>provides no
>> support for the existence of Dravidian languages independent of
Sanskrit."
>> ...... With this mindset, will he allow for Dravidian to exist in
>>the Indus age?
...the linguistic authority of a former engineer and computer specialist...
Hindutva proponents generally cannot stomach that a country as large as
India (not to speak of the whole subcontinent) should have languages that
do not belong to the "Sanskrit group".
Instead, (non-linguist) writers from S. Kalyanaraman (web site) to Subhash
Kak (in print, at Poona, BORI) speak of an original Prakrit (all the while
misusing the technical term, used for certain Middle Indo-Aryan languages,
spoken AFTER Vedic Sanskrit); their kind of Pkt. would include pre-Pali,
pre-Hindi as well as pre-(ancient)-Tamil...
They also misappropriate the studies, made over the past fifty years or so,
of a 'lingustic area' such as the Sprachbund of the Balkans, where
languages have increasingly influenced each other and have evolved certain
common grammatical categories (e.g., the postposited article in Bulgarian
and Rumanian). Archaic India would have had such an ancient "sprachbund",
speaking various sorts of "Prakrits". (Sometimes, Sanskrit is viewed as
having been 'artificially' created, by Panini!] -- Even nowadays,
however, Greek, Bulgarian, Rumanian, Albanian, (etc.) -- each of them from
a different Indo-European sub-family: Greek, Slavic, Romanic, etc. --
*still* differ from each other in basic vocabulary and grammar and are NOT
mutually understandable.
Just as e.g., Marathi, Tamil, and Santali.
To compare the similar situation, in size and antiquity, of Europe: nobody
there is bothered that Finnish, Esthonian, Hungarian (etc.) do not belong
to the Indo-European but to the Uralic language family. And, that Basque
descends from an old European language that is much older than both. And,
that we also have Turkish languages (in Turkey, European Russia), and even
the (Buddhist) Mongolian Kalmyks (west of the Volga, near former
Stalingrad)...
(Not to speak of a number of smaller Uralic languages in N. Scandinavia
and N. Russia, and all the various Caucasian etc. languages in southernmost
Russia, and beyond).
Nobody thinks a Basque or Finn to be less "European" than a Portuguese or a
Swede.
Nor -- obviously-- do the various Balkan peoples think they form an ethnic
unit.
If linguistic diversity and several language families can be tolerated in a
large sub-continent of Asia such as Europe (and in nation states with
several official languages such as Finland (2-3), Belgium (3), Switzerland
(4) etc.,) why not in India? (The constiutution mandates it anyhow!)
The "primordial Prakrit" slogan and the denial of a Dravidian language
family (stretching from from Brahui in Baluchistan and Kurukh, Gondi in
teh Vindhyas to Tamil) is just another political ruse, intended at "nation
building" and promoting "national unity." It has nothing to do with
linguistic reality.
I suggest to submit Indian language materials to any *disinterested*
linguist of *any* national background, such as to specialists of
sub-Saharan African, Amerindian, Australian or Papua languages, and see
what they come up with: it will be the same language families that all
other linguists, Indo-European or Drav., will enumerate to you:
We have at least 7 major language families in South Asia: Indo-European,
Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic (Munda, Khasi in Meghalaya), Tibeto-Burmese
(Himalayan belt, Arunachal, Nagaland, Manipur etc.), Thai-Kadai-etc.
(Khamti in Assam = Ahom), Burushaski (in Hunza, etc.), Andamanese (part of
Indo-Pacific?), and many small remnant groups, unrelated to any larger
families, such as Kusunda (C. Nepal), the substrates of Nahali (on the
Tapti-- the "oldest" Indians), Tharu, Vedda, etc.
-- plus, the unknown language(s) of the Indus civilization.
For details about the ancient period, see: EJVS, Sept. 1999:
http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/
under: http://www1.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0501/ejvs0501a.txt etc.
----------
========================================================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA
ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm
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