chariots

[Rajarshi Banerjee]

 MW> I invite Messrs. Wani, Subrahmanya, Agarwal, et al., to stand still and
hold their position in front of quickly approaching (modern) horse race
'chariots', or in front of a line of police on horseback (even without Lathi
charge), and then report back to the list ... if they are able to do so
after this little experiment.

What will that prove? Will the observers spontaneously learn sanskrit after
seeing horse riders. Some of the observers might want to aqquire horses and
breed them though.

The symbolism of the cross and christianity is now universal but not the
aramaic language spoken by christ. Similarly the importance of the horse or
its religious symbolism need not be associated with one language.

We ofcourse imagine that north india at this time was mostly rural with no
centralized entity like the church which was responsible for the spread of
latin. In any case latin was never a commoners language like pali. Also
vedic supposedly did not have a script or a literate target population to
aid its spread. IE languages remained as elite minority languages in west
asia for a brief period and never made it as a peoples language.

> From a commoners point of view what was the payoff for learning an IE
language? protection from cattle thiefs? rather elaborate I think.

regards R Banerjee