Dear George,
This brings to mind a question. In the Tamil Sangam texts, the fast gait (gallop, canter?) of a horse is called ādi (Tamil āti), always in the context of pulling a chariot. It would appear that people had some familiarity with Sanskrit texts on horse training. It would be interesting (though, of course, unlikely) if the Hittite equivalent of that term appears in Kikkuli’s treatise, as that would suggest origins way back in PIE. Does anyone have any idea whether ādi is used in Sanskrit texts on horses and if so where? I’m not sure when horses first appeared in the Tamil area. Thanks, George
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
George Thompson <gthomgt@gmail.com>Date: Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fun media piece about the Mitanni: Sanskrit in Ancient Syria
To: Nagaraj Paturi <
nagarajpaturi@gmail.com>
Dear Prof. Paturi,
These 'ancient pastoral nomads' were pre-literate. They didn't write any horse-training books. The horse-training book was written by someone named Kikkuli, and he wrote it in Hittite, not Vedic. In his Hittite horse-training manual there are some clearly pre-Vedic words that refer to horse-training and certain Vedic gods. Kikkuli was transcribing into Hittite the words of these pre-Vedic nomads who taught the Hittites about horse-training.
The article that Dominik refers to is a a rather teasing critique of Modi, et al. It is not scholarly, but it gets the facts right for the most part. Its main point is that the OIT theory is not supported by any good evidence. It cites reliable sources like Anthony and the encyclopedia of IE by Mallory and Adams. If you want to consider what Vedicists think about this, see Mayrhofer and Thieme, just as a start.
Best wishes, as always,
George
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