Sanskrit and PIE

[Arun Gupta]

If it is true that 95% of the Rig Vedic (RV) vocabulary is of Indo-European
origin ( please note that this is different from "not foreign"), then

Either the RV people did not encounter any significant number of
non-Indo-Europeans for any significant period of time before composition of
the RV, or the RV people had some exceptionally strong protection of
language in their culture that kept them from borrowing from
non-Indo-European languages after such encounters.

For the latter option, there are three possibilities :

1. It could be that the RV was composed and frozen in an extremely short
period of time AFTER the First Significant Encounters with
non-Indo-Europeans (abbr. FSE)).  But this seems unlikely.

2. If the RV was composed over a few centuries after FSE, then any
hypothetical mechanism of maintaining purity of a living language over a few
centuries has to be demonstrated.  Seems unlikely to me.

3. It could also be that the RV was composed after FSE in what was then
already a dead (and hence frozen) language.  The dead language was still in
use by elite presumably because of earlier, now-lost sacred material.

For the former option (RV composed before FSE) the possibilities are :

4. North India was the scene of FSE (remnants of the Harappan culture), and
RV was composed before entry into India.  However, RV does seem to have
Indian geography. Seems unlikely.

5. North India was already Indo-European speaking so FSE was much later, by
which time RV was more or less frozen ( e.g., encounter with Dravidian
languages in the south).  Moreover the North Indian I-E itself would have
very few borrowed words from non-IE.

Other Indo-European language incursions into much more urbanized and smaller
non-IE areas (e.g. Hittite) show the influence of non-IE.  It seems
incredible that Indo-Aryans could have effected a total language replacement
over a much wider area, much less urban area, much larger population without
any effect on their language unless possibility 3. or possibility 5.
applies.

But if possibility 5. applies, I-E language must have been in India for a
very long time before the RV period -- the Indus Valley civilization must
have had as dominant language an I-E language, say from 3000 BC.  Then the
original IE homeland moves closer to India -- not exactly OIT, but the OIT
folks will be satisfied if IVC was I-E.

That is why it is hard to believe that 95% or more of the RV Sanskrit
vocabulary is demonstrably I-E in origin. Of course, possibility 3. remains,
and I have no idea either way.

-arun gupta