Sanskrit and PIE

[N. Ganesan]

<<<
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.
>>>

It appears that the RV people had exceptionally strong protection of
language in their culture. Itinerant priests reciting the RV
"tape recordings" at public ceremonies. The brahmins from other
places would correct any mistakes creeping in. This oral transmission
mechanism through generations across vast India. Even more
remarkable, because very few variants in the RV orally transmitted
for 1500-2000 years before being committed to writing. Vedic
culture has little to do with the origins of writing in India.

Regarding your question of why only 5% are non-IE in the RV,
refer Indologists like Prof. Witzel's writings in the archives.

"Moreover, even if it could be established that the percentage of
foreign words in the Rgveda was considerably less than that of
later texts, the explanation could well be a cultural one. Many
scholars such as Thieme have drawn attention to the linguistic
puritanism of the Vedic texts. These are sacerdotal hymns which
were preserved by a culturally distinct group
of specialists who, like any elite, took pains to isolate their
speech from common vulgarisms." (p. 79, E.F.Bryant, Lingusitic
substrata and the Indigenous Aryan debate, in Aryan and Non-Aryan
in India, 1999).

This "linguistic puritanism" of the RV Aryans is what probably
prevented them to include many Dravidian words encountered by them.

Regards,
N. Ganesan



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