Rajaram unrepentent!

[Swaminathan Madhuresan]

Prof. Witzel writes:
>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...

 D. Frawley echoes the same views on this "original Prakrit":
 "The idea that the same culture cannot produce two different
 language systems may itself be questionable. It may have been
 the very power of Vedic culture and its sages, with their
 mastery of the word, that they could have produced not only
 Indo-European like languages but also Dravidian."
 (1994, page 43, The myth of the Aryan invasion of India)

>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.

See the S. Kak on "Sanskrit-Tamil-Telugu" language family in
http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/nov/18inter.htm
<<<
You have argued that the Aryan-Dravidian divide simply doesn't
exist, and that the superficial differences between North and South
India are overlaid on a unified cultural foundation.

S. Kak's reply:
The concept of an Aryan-Dravidian divide is a by-product of the racist
discourse of the 19th century. It was this racism that postulated a single
language from which all modern languages were derived. Linguists now
acknowledge that there must have existed very many language families in
the past and what has survived represents complex interactions between
different peoples and languages, many of which have left no trace. It is also
being recognized that while by one reckoning Sanskrit, Greek and Latin
belong to a family; by another, Sanskrit and Tamil and Telugu belong to
another. Linguists are now talking of the concept of a linguistic area and
the whole of India is one such area.
>>>


>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.

Thanks and kind regards,
SM



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