[Re: Comparative linguistics]

[Rahul Oka]

"the current north-south divide [which already existed for a very long time
prior to the British period]."

Really? There was a North India and a South India before the British came?  I
would really like to see some sources on this one. All my reading history in
pre-British India was that the scene on the sub-continent was geo-political
negotiation between various ethnic (not linguistic) groups who did not align
themselves according to North-South. Did the Southern Kingdoms and peoples
regard themselves as a block, (and same for the north), based on local and
temporal socio-economics and cultural movements or based on ideas that "they
are the medevial Madrasi's and the North Indian equivalent?" If there were any
cultural alliances between areas, I think that it exists in a continuum,
notwithstanding mutually unitelligible languages. Pigdinization, trade forms
of communication do exist.
I don't doubt that differences exist, (or that there is a radical difference
between North and South Indian architecture) but the centre is where you will
see the continuity.  There might be severe differences among members of the
same species but on either side of the normal curve but there is also the
continuity. The extent of trade in ancient and historical India suggests that
people were not the culturally isolated parochial people, divided strictly in
groups that once was assumed (still is).

I would really like to see some evidence that the Indian ethos was divided
into North and South well before the British came. 





____________________________________________________________________
Get free email and a permanent address at http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1