The Aryans in the Indus Valley

[ajay0]

What I do find ironic that while we have no record of Aryans every claiming a homeland out of India, or ever migrating into India West to East, we have clear Aryan records of migrations into West Asia and Europe, East to West. The early Indo-European tribes are mentioned by name, names that we can trace such as the "Danavas" the children of the Danube, who are described as a red-haired race.

There has been migrations to India from all over the world at that time, just as most people all over the world are interested in migrating to the U.S.A or Canada now. India was a sort of cultural and economic superpower at those times also known to be hospitable and tolerant. The Greeks, Syrian Christians, Jews in Mumbai and Cochin, Zoroastrians, Bahais are instances of such people who have migrating to India with the Bahais being the latest. Many immigrants had been accepted into the hindu fold as well after accepting Hindu culture and religion. So this is why there is a lot of diversity racially speaking in northern India. There are many descendants of Portuguese, French and British settlers also in India known as Anglo-Indians. So all these racial elements through intermarriage and stuff has created a multi-racial mixture in India , which is welcome, as I believe it is better to be an outbred than an inbred as it results in better physical health and lesser diseases genetically speaking.

My understanding is also that the Indian Rishis and people may have migrated to other regions during ancient times and this resulted in the creation of languages similar to Sanskrit. Languages similar to Sanskrit is all what the west have, without any ancient Hindu temples or Hindu religious practices/rituals or even the Shivalingam, which has been found in Mohenjodaro and Harrapa excavations.

Even despite the invasion now being shown disproven by all current research, the basic attitude still remains that Aryans have to be somewhere in Europe.

The issue probably is that most of the historians are western, who are anxious to prove that they too have an ancient heritage and civilization as well, due to a sense of civilizational competition with the Jews, imho. They have an inferiority complex in this regard, and this could be a reason why they are interested in proving that the Aryans are of European origin.

But it is a fact that all the recent european nations, other than the Greek and the Romans , are of recent civilizational origin. The Germans, French and Britishers were of a tribal barbaric state when Caesar invaded them , though they advanced rapidly later on, through contact with Greco-Roman culture and civilization.

 

[Kirran]

I don't know of any scholars who really claim a European origin for Proto-Indo-European. The consensus is that it's around the border region of Asia and Europe.

Certainly, speaking as a resident of the UK, British civilisation's the new kid on the block! We were squatting in hovels before the Romans showed up. And for quite a while afterwards, too.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

I think one thing has clearly been established in this thread: AIT/AMT is controversial, not proven and not based on a strong empirical ground.

Regarding Avesta/Zoroastrianism , the close similarities between the Indians and Persians can be explained by the fact that they were right next to each other and the boundaries that demarcate India from Persia were probably not as well defined as they are today and there could have been considerable cross fertilisation. It is also to be noted that India's boundaries have changed historically, and it has been much larger at times, covering most of the Indian subcontinent, modern day Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and also parts of Northen India was a part of Persia in 500BCE.

Linguistics is the main source of evidence that is offered for this so-called migration, but actually if you look at other linguistic features it actually gives the opposite conclusion. Consider the number of cases in Indo-European languages:

PIE: 8 cases
Vedic Sanskrit: 8 cases:
Avesta: 8 cases
Old Slavic: 7 cases
Latin 6 cases
Ancient Greek: 5 cases
Common Germanic 4 cases
Old English - Middle English: 2-3 cases

Notice how the number of cases and other grammatical features are lost the further you move way from India and further in time you go along. This phenomena is witnessed in languages from ancient to modern, over time languages become less complex and lose their grammatical features. It is sort of like a law of language entropy. If suppose tribes moved out from India westwards though central Asia and into Europe we would expect over time that languages would begin to lose their features and become less complex. We would expect that by the time we get to England the most number of cases are lost It is confirmed here that Sanskrit has retained all the original features of PIE:

Thus, Proto-Indo-European had eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive and locative, distinguishing three numbers (singular, dual, plural) and three genders (masculine, neuter, feminine). None of the languages of the family, with the single exception of Sanskrit, preserves this complex system, though Old Church Slavonic and Ancient Armenian had seven cases, Latin had six, Ancient Greek five and Hittite four. Several modern Slavic and Baltic languages have six or seven cases, modern Armenian has five and German four.

Indoeuropean

Hence, the origins of PIE would have to be closer to India where Sanskrit was spoken. Makes sense to me.

 

[Jainarayan]

None of the languages of the family, with the single exception of Sanskrit, preserves this complex system

Lithuanian does. It has 14 cases and is the closest living language to what PIE is hypothesized to be.

There are many more factors for why languages change. It's too simplistic, if not downright wrong to think of them like peanut butter, getting thinner as you spread.

Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, are modern dialects of Latin. They simplified over time, not distance. Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, Church Latin are artificially preserved.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Lithuanian does. It has 14 cases and is the closest living language to what PIE is hypothesized to be.

This is confusing. The article I cited above says Lithuanian has 7 cases not 14, and it says that PIE had 8 cases and Sanskrit is the only IE language to retain all the cases and grammatical features of PIE.

 

[Jainarayan]

This is confusing. The article I cited above says Lithuanian has 7 cases not 14, and it says that PIE had 8 cases and Sanskrit is the only IE language to retain all the cases and grammatical features of PIE.

My bad. I think the Finno-Ugric (Finnish, Hungarian) have upwards of 12-14 cases. I was thinking of this quote:

Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant.

— Antoine Meillet

and

it is one of the most important sources in the reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European language despite its late attestation

Wiki article
Lithuanian language

The Lithuanian Grammar Wiki article (I can't link it) has 10-12 cases, depending how you look at it.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

The Lithuanian Grammar Wiki article (I can't link it) has 10-12 cases, depending how you look at it.

It says this:

Nouns and other parts of nominal morphology are declined in seven cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. In older Lithuanian texts three additional varieties of the locative case are found: illative, adessive and allative.

So I maintain my argument of language complexity of the IE languages, the further you move away from India the less complex they become, and by the time you go to Europe they are least complex. Also, the further closer you move to India, the closer to PIE it becomes grammatically.

 

[Kirran]

The complexity of Sanskrit is akin to that of Old Irish, Ancient Greek etc - just because it's better-preserved than these others doesn't mean that the languages of the area haven't been going through the same processes of simplification as other IE languages. Sanskrit is a very old language which has been preserved, if you want to look at the contemporary linguistic processes look at Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi and Sinhalese.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

The complexity of Sanskrit is akin to that of Old Irish, Ancient Greek etc - just because it's better-preserved than these others doesn't mean that the languages of the area haven't been going through the same processes of simplification as other IE languages. Sanskrit is a very old language which has been preserved, if you want to look at the contemporary linguistic processes look at Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi and Sinhalese.

It isn't actually, Old Irish and Ancient Greek have respectively 5 and 4-5 cases each

Old Irish:

Old Irish also preserves most aspects of the complicated Proto-Indo-European (PIE) system of morphology. Nouns and adjectives are declined in three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); three numbers (singular, dual, plural); and five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, dative and genitive).

Old Greek:


The four principal cases are called the nominative (Subject), accusative (direct object), genitive (of), and dative (to, for, with).

In addition, some nouns also have a separate vocative case, used for addressing a person:

Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi and Sinhalese have lost most of the cases and grammatical features, with around 3 cases, only 2 numbers and 2 genders consistent with how languages simplify over time.

Thus I still maintain that we can see over distance and with India as our origin point that language begins as most complex then becomes least complex the further you go away. This is consistent with OIT of IE tribes leaving from India and then over several generations because they are dispersing throughout IE, they lose complexity. This also explains why most of the IE languages are found throughout Central Asia and Europe, because the original tribes that left from India, would have split and dispersed in various directions, hence the number of languages multiplying.

 

[Kirran]

It isn't actually, Old Irish and Ancient Greek have respectively 5 and 4-5 cases each

Old Irish:

Old Irish also preserves most aspects of the complicated Proto-Indo-European (PIE) system of morphology. Nouns and adjectives are declined in three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter); three numbers (singular, dual, plural); and five cases (nominative, vocative, accusative, dative and genitive).

Old Greek:


The four principal cases are called the nominative (Subject), accusative (direct object), genitive (of), and dative (to, for, with).

In addition, some nouns also have a separate vocative case, used for addressing a person:

Hindustani, Bengali, Marathi and Sinhalese have lost most of the cases and grammatical features, with around 3 cases, only 2 numbers and 2 genders consistent with how languages simplify over time.

Thus I still maintain that we can see over distance and with India as our origin point that language begins as most complex then becomes least complex the further you go away. This is consistent with OIT of IE tribes leaving from India and then over several generations because they are dispersing throughout IE, they lose complexity. This also explains why most of the IE languages are found throughout Central Asia and Europe, because the original tribes that left from India, would have split and dispersed in various directions.

My point was about the reduction in complexity over time (cases are one aspect of this) - your model does seem to struggle to integrate the complexity of languages like Lithuanian as has been mentioned.

Also, comparisons of vocabulary divergence and movement of loanwords doesn't really map to an Indian origin for the language family.

 

[Vinayaka]

My understanding is that all the more recent research (last couple of years recent) is based on DNA, not language at all.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

My point was about the reduction in complexity over time (cases are one aspect of this) - your model does seem to struggle to integrate the complexity of languages like Lithuanian as has been mentioned.

Also, comparisons of vocabulary divergence and movement of loanwords doesn't really map to an Indian origin for the language family.

I think we are looking at two variables here time and distance. The Slavic languages have maintained many of the cases of PIE over time, however still they have 7 cases, whereas Sanskrit retains an extra one case. The further you move from India(8) into Persia(8) then into Central Asia(7) and then towards Europe(6, 5, 4) the more cases you see being dropped.

As you can see this linguistic evidence, depending on which aspect you look at, can give contradictory conclusions.
However, to me it makes complete sense, that an original tribe of people moving away from their motherland, would eventually drop the numbers of cases and the language would simplify.

The problem is looking at linguistic evidence in isolation and ignoring all other evidence e.g. MtDNA studies show(op.cit) that Europeans have their ancestry in India but the divergence from India is not recent but happened 35,000-50,000 years ago.

 

[Kirran]

My understanding is that all the more recent research (last couple of years recent) is based on DNA, not language at all.

It factors in well, but language and culture often spreads quite irrespectively of ancestry so it isn't a great measure. For example, the Celtic languages reached the British Isles without any sizable migration of peoples, many Arabic-speaking areas of the Middle East don't have much ancestry from Arabia etc.

 

[Kirran]

I think we are looking at two variables here time and distance. The Slavic languages have maintained many of the cases of PIE over time, however still they have 7 cases, whereas Sanskrit retains an extra one case. The further you move from India(8) into Persia(8) then into Central Asia(7) and then towards Europe(6, 5, 4) the more cases you see being dropped.

As you can see this linguistic evidence, depending on which aspect you look at, can give contradictory conclusions.
However, to me it makes complete sense, that an original tribe of people moving away from their motherland, would eventually drop the numbers of cases and the language would simplify.

The problem is looking at linguistic evidence in isolation and ignoring all other evidence e.g. MtDNA studies show(op.cit) that Europeans have their ancestry in India but the divergence from India is not recent but happened 35,000-50,000 years ago.

But the problem is you are maintaining Sanskrit on the same level as modern Slavic and European languages, when a fairer comparison would be between current languages of both India and these areas, or between Sanskrit and other languages of 3000YBP.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

But the problem is you are maintaining Sanskrit on the same level as modern Slavic and European languages, when a fairer comparison would be between current languages of both India and these areas, or between Sanskrit and other languages of 3000YBP.

No, I am comparing all the old versions of the IE languages not modern. The oldest Slavic language, which is reconstructed Proto-Slavic also had 7 cases:

Proto-Slavic retained several of the grammatical categories inherited from Proto-Indo-European, especially in nominals (nouns and adjectives). Seven of the eight Indo-European cases had been retained (nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, instrumental, vocative). The ablative had merged with the genitive. It also retained full use of the singular, dual and plural numbers, and still maintained a distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter gender. Verbs had become much more simplified, however, but displayed their own unique innovations.

As I have already cited earlier, Sanskrit is the only IE language that has retained every grammatical feature, including case of PIE. Hence, to me the obvious inference the origins of PIE would have to be closer to India.

 

[Kirran]

No, I am comparing all the old versions of the IE languages not modern. The oldest Slavic language, which is reconstructed Proto-Slavic also had 7 cases:

Proto-Slavic retained several of the grammatical categories inherited from Proto-Indo-European, especially in nominals (nouns and adjectives). Seven of the eight Indo-European cases had been retained (nominative, accusative, locative, genitive, dative, instrumental, vocative). The ablative had merged with the genitive. It also retained full use of the singular, dual and plural numbers, and still maintained a distinction between masculine, feminine and neuter gender. Verbs had become much more simplified, however, but displayed their own unique innovations.

As I have already cited earlier, Sanskrit is the only IE language that has retained every grammatical feature, including case of PIE. Hence, to me the obvious inference the origins of PIE would have to be closer to India.

Remember also that when a reconstruction is made, it is likely to represent colloquial form of the language, which is often simpler. If we had no record of Latin, but reconstructed it based on the Romance languages, we would be learning about Vulgar rather than Classical Latin. Similarly, if we had no record of Sanskrit we wouldn't reconstruct it from Hindustani and Bengali, we'd reconstruct Prakrits. Prakrits were much simpler than the Sanskrit which was their formalised register for use in philosophy/science etc.

So keep that in mind when comparing Sanskrit to a reconstructed language.

 

[Spirit_Warrior]

Remember also that when a reconstruction is made, it is likely to represent colloquial form of the language, which is often simpler. If we had no record of Latin, but reconstructed it based on the Romance languages, we would be learning about Vulgar rather than Classical Latin. Similarly, if we had no record of Sanskrit we wouldn't reconstruct it from Hindustani and Bengali, we'd reconstruct Prakrits. Prakrits were much simpler than the Sanskrit which was their formalised register for use in philosophy/science etc.

So keep that in mind when comparing Sanskrit to a reconstructed language.

I am just using the accepted linguistic evidence. Even PIE is a reconstruction. The fact remains that we can see that as you travel from India towards Europe(Indo-Europe) the cases are dropped gradually, with the most beginning in India and the least ending at Europe. It is sort of like a countdown: 8 --7 ---6----5---4---3. To falsify this rule we would have to find a few exceptions to rule like find an 8 in Europe like 8 7 6 5 4 3 8 6 3. However, the general pattern seems to be gradually decrease over distance.

 

[Aupmanyav]

British civilization's the new kid on the block! We were squatting in hovels before the Romans showed up. And for quite a while afterwards, too.

Don't feel disheartened. We do that now. But the Germanic civilization also has impact of the Indo-Europeans just as it has here.

 

[Kirran]

I am just using the accepted linguistic evidence. Even PIE is a reconstruction. The fact remains that we can see that as you travel from India towards Europe(Indo-Europe) the cases are dropped gradually, with the most beginning in India and the least ending at Europe. It is sort of like a countdown: 8 --7 ---6----5---4---3. To falsify this rule we would have to find a few exceptions to rule like find an 8 in Europe like 8 7 6 5 4 3 8 6 3. However, the general pattern seems to be gradually decrease over distance.

You've made this point a number of times. But a lot of this drop is about time rather than distance. I don't think you've entirely digested the point I made in the post you replied to.

Don't feel disheartened. We do that now. But the Germanic civilization also has impact of the Indo-Europeans just as it has here.

Haha, don't worry, the UK is of no particular importance to me! True, these are all civilisations stemming from the PIE Urheimat.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I think one thing has clearly been established in this thread: AIT/AMT is controversial, not proven and not based on a strong empirical ground.

Notice how the number of cases and other grammatical features are lost the further you move way from India and further in time you go along. Hence, the origins of PIE would have to be closer to India where Sanskrit was spoken. Makes sense to me.

Nice post. But AMT has much stronger support in Academic circles whereas that for 'Out of India' theory is minimal.

PIE origins were nowhere near India, but perhaps we were good at preserving the chants (Zoroaster changed it wholesale). We were fortunate to have a long list of gramatists (Niruktikaras) including Aupamanyava (prior to 700 BC), a predecessor of Yaska, then Yaska, Panini, Sayanacharya and many more. We worked on ideas and language, which those who went west did not do at that time, except for the Greeks.