[INDOLOGY] INDUS CIVILISATION.
George Thompson
gthomgt at gmail.com
Mon Jan 30 22:42:34 UTC 2017
Dear List,
This paper that Andrew has passed on to us has many flaws, and these flaws
are not just a matter of personal animosity. The paper certainly should
have included reference to Asko Parpola's book, and all of his previous
works on this topic. It should have included reference to other competent
philologists and linguists as well. Witzel is mentioned only in
association with Farmer and Sprout, but he has done much significant work
elsewhere on substrate languages in early Vedic [especially our oldest text
the RV, where we find many foreign, non-Indo-European words [see Kuiper's
famous list of some 380 foreign words in the RV ]. Because of these sorts
of studies, done by philologists and linguists, we have reasonably good
confidence to assert that Dravidian has a good chance of being the language
of IVC as Asko argues, because there is good evidence that it was there,
well before the RV]. There is also a reasonably good chance that a Munda
language was there as well, a language possibly spoken in IVC, because we
have good evidence that these two language families were present in the
area occupied by the IVC at the dates when it flourished. By the time
the Vedic clans arrived in this area the IVC was long dead. But some IVC
words and ideas may have survived, though rarely, in the Rgveda.
Among specialists in the RV , RV 10.106 is generally considered to be the
most difficult hymn in the RV [see , for example Geldner, Renou, and most
recently Jamison & Brereton). Kuiper has even suggested that this hymn was
composed by a bilingual Rgvedic poet; if he was bilingual, we need to find
out what his second language was]. Philologists with expertise in the
languages that are known or are likely to have been present in the IVC area
during its flourishing period need to examine these foreign words in the
RV.
Another factor not much discussed here is that IVC was a huge territory,
and therefore it is likely that it was a multilingual culture. It is
possible therefore that the IVC sign system was a non-linguistic
sign-system, as suggested by Farmer, Sprout, & Witzel, a long time ago,
that was meant to communicate to many linguistic communities through visual
rather than verbal signs .
Yes, this was a superficial article. But it's comparison of Farmer to
Trump is not entirely wrong. Those two do share so many character traits
that it is conceivable that they may be born twins, culturally speaking.
For those who wonder about Bryan Wells who claims to be an epigrapher: is
he really an epigrapher? It may well be that he doesn't actually claim to
be one, and that this poorly informed journalist didn't know what the term
actually means. Bryan Wells, as far as I know, has fruitfully studied the
IVC signs for a long time, but I have never seen any evidence that he has
significant knowledge of any of the languages that may have been or were in
play in IVC at the relevant time-period.
List members who are seriously interested in this question should read
Parpola, Kuiper, Witzel, et al. The computer models discussed in this
article need to be linked to relevant languages.
My two-cents.
George Thompson
On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 10:36 AM, Dermot Killingley via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
> I read the piece quickly, and found it interesting how Trump has made
> himself the absolute
> standard of mendacity. But I don't think anyone who, however mistakenly,
> has evidence to
> support their statements, should be compared to him.
>
> Dermot
>
> On 27 Jan 2017 at 8:07, Andrew Ollett via INDOLOGY wrote:
>
> I hesitate to pass this popular-science treatment of the question along,
> since it is tinged with
> some personal animosity, but this just appeared two days ago:
>
> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14371450/indus-valley-
> civilization-ancient-seals-symbols
> -language-algorithms-ai
>
> 2017-01-27 6:37 GMT-05:00 Asko Parpola via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info>:
> In my book "The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus
> Civilization",
> New York: Oxford University Press, 2015,
> I present manifold evidence for the Dravidian affinity of the Harappan
> language.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Asko Parpola
> Professor Emeritus of Indology,
> University of Helsinki, Finland
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 8:31 AM, Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY
> <indology at list.indology.info > wrote:
>
>
>
> There is no consensus about which language or languages the
> Harappan (Indus Valley Civilization) people spoke.
> The script is considered by most to be logo-syllabic, not
> heiroglyphic.
> Farmer, Witzel, Sproat consider it to be a sign system rather than a
> script associated with any particular language.
> Best,
> Dean
> Dr. Dean Michael Anderson
> East West Cultural Institute
> Austin, Texas, USA
> Pondicherry, India
>
> From: alakendu das via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info>
> To: indology at list.indology.info Sent: Friday, January 27, 2017
> 11:44 AM Subject: [INDOLOGY] INDUS CIVILISATION.
> To All, While going through some books on Indus valley civilisation
> , I failed to find out one answer. Though the Harappana & Mohenjo
> daro script has been inferred as more of a Hieroglyphic type, what
> dialect/language did they speak ? Would love to be enlightened on
> this point. ALAKEND DAS.
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee) http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your
> list options or unsubscribe)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options
> or
> unsubscribe)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options
> or unsubscribe)
>
>
> --
> Dermot Killingley
> 9, Rectory Drive,
> Gosforth,
> Newcastle upon Tyne NE3 1XT
> Phone (0191) 285 8053
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20170130/8be1144a/attachment.htm>
More information about the INDOLOGY
mailing list