---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 10:47 AM
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Fun media piece about the Mitanni: Sanskrit in Ancient Syria
To: George Thompson <gthomgt@gmail.com>

Dear Prof. Thompson,

I was trying to see the 'fun' in the title of the thread inside the article. I brought out what I found.

Its really fun.

Whether modern Indians are celebrating Sanskrit or not, the author of the piece is celebrating his knowledge that the language was that of some pastoral nomads living outside the place where the people who have been attached to that language as their own, have been living for millennia, nurturing and nourishing it.

Even if this is looked at as a fixation of a tendency originating during the early enlightenment period, the tendency of getting excited at and celebrating every discovery contradicting the traditional beliefs, it is fun that the tendency continues for so long after those days of its origin.

Warm regards as ever,

Nagaraj

On Wed, Jul 1, 2015 at 12:46 AM, George Thompson <gthomgt@gmail.com> wrote:

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

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 2:05 PM, Nagaraj Paturi <nagarajpaturi@gmail.com> wrote:
The article has this sentence:

So much so that 3,500 years later, modern Indians would celebrate the language of these ancient pastoral nomads all the way out in Bangkok city.

The sentence matches with the earlier part of the article, if 'ancient pastoral nomads' is improved as 'ancient pastoral charioteer horse-trainer-book-writing mercenary hymn-singing hymn-documenting nomads'

--
Prof.Nagaraj Paturi
Hyderabad-500044

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Prof.Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad-500044

Prof.Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad-500044