spiritualhitchhiker
neti, neti, neti
There is no proof that it is of Indo-European origin. Yes, it must have traces of it in Europe for Aryan Migration Theory to be valid.
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Where does Sanskrit come from?
- Thread starter Kirran
- Start date
There is no proof that it is of Indo-European origin. Yes, it must have traces of it in Europe for Aryan Migration Theory to be valid.
The German spoken spoken during the time of Old English is not the modern high German spoken today. So actually, no. Languages are made by gradual change, they don't come down from on high in cemented forms. Sanskrit is no different, it's a product of gradual evolution from PIE.
There are huge amounts of proof. It is scholarly accepted fact.
That's incorrect. My claim that Welsh is a Celtic language doesn't necessitate the presence of Welsh in the Central European Celtic Urheimat. Sanskrit arose in northwestern India as a branch of proto-Indo-Iranian.
Ah! Makes perfect sense. Thanks. I have come across that view here once or twice before, and to be honest I don't understand it (it's similar to the idea that the Syriac gospels were written in the Aramaic of Jesus). Ironically, there is a connection between The White Goddess and one theory of the origins of the "Indo-Europeans" in that Graves' text was highly influential for certain strands of thoughts as well as the development of Wiccan traditions and Goddess spiritualties, and the Kurgan hypothesis which is still accepted by many was proposed and defended by Marija Gimbutas in the 70s, before she abandoned reputable scholarship for a (pretty much baseless) theory of matriarchal prehistory.
Theories tend to fall into two categories (although there are no shortage of minority views that are still reasonable, compared to the "Sanskrit primacy" idea). Put more simply than I could:
"Currently, there are two types of models that enjoy significant international currency.
There is the Neolithic model that involves a wave of advance from Anatolia c. 7000 bc and, at least for south-eastern and central Europe, argues primarily for the importation of a new language by an ever growing population of farmers. This part of the model has reasonable archaeological support in that there is a fair amount of archaeologically informed consensus that derives the earliest farming communities in the Balkans from somewhat earlier farming communities in Anatolia. For the periphery of Europe the means of explanation become less clear, and rather than a language expansion driven primarily by Early Neolithic population expansion, this model now seems to admit of later (Late Neolithic, Bronze, or Iron Age) movements into Mediterranean, Atlantic, and northern Europe. For the steppelands, it envisages the spread of an agricultural economy from the Balkans to the steppes where it was then carried, in the Bronze Age, beyond the Urals and then south into the territories of the historic Indo-Iranians and Tocharians. Some opponents of this solution admit that the initial archaeological scenario may be true but suggest that the Early Neolithic farmers spoke an unknown non-Indo-European language, possibly related to the historically attested non-Indo-European languages of Anatolia (e.g. Hattic, or possibly one of the Caucasian languages).
Alternatively, there is the steppe or kurgan model which sees the Proto-Indo-Europeans emerging out of local communities in the forest-steppe of the Ukraine and south Russia. Expansion westwards is initiated c. 4000 bc by the spread from the forest-steppe of mobile communities who employed the horse and, within the same millennium, wheeled vehicles. These intruded into southeastern Europe at a time when there was major restructuring of local societies (variously attributed to climatic change, local social evolution, or intrusive steppe populations or a combination of the three). The hard archaeological evidence, i.e. the recurrence of the classic steppe burial type in the Balkans, is reasonably solid as far as the river Tisza. Beyond Hungary, this model relies on far less stringent archaeological evidence. A central component is that it requires some form of genetic derivation of the Corded Ware culture of the north European plain from the steppe cultures (one can talk either of direct derivation or the spread of a symbolic and social system that was initiated in the steppe). As for the Asiatic Indo-Europeans, it offers the model that was adopted later by those who support the Neolithic model. Opponents of this theory would tend to see the steppe cultures as the ancestors of the Indo-Iranians and possibly the Tocharians but not of the entire Indo-European family."
Mallory, J. P., & Adams, D. Q. (2006). The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Oxford University Press.
I wasn't aware that proponents of such claims were aware of Dravidian languages. That's an improvement!
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German and English descended from the same ancestor, not each other. That ancestor goes back to Proto-Germanic, which ultimately goes back to PIE. Consequently, when we look an English and German, we see so many similarities that it's obvious to anyone that these two languages are related. There's no traces of English in German because English and German are different independent developments within West Germanic.
Likewise, we look at Sanskrit, and we notice that's its structure, declensions, verb forms and vocabulary are very typical of an indo-European language. Indo-European does not mean from Europe. When they coined that term they had yet to realise that the family goes far beyond it. No one is saying that Sanskrit came from Europe, but that Sanskrit developed from an ancestral language in common with the languages in the Indo-European family, such as Greek, Latin, Persian, Slavonic and so on.
If you want to believe that Sanskrit was handed down as is by the Devas and that it has no connection to any other language ever spoken, you're entitled to that, but such a belief has no basis in what we can demonstrate to be true.
Some inconsequential additions I make because I can't help myself:
Language change is usually pretty gradual, exactly as you say. However, you actually mention an exception to the rule. It's easier for those who speak German to learn Old English than it is native English speakers, and even in Middle English we find that the modern first-person singular pronoun "Ich" is the same as that of modern German. That's because after the Norman conquest and in particular after the population wasn't divided into aristocratic Old French speakers and peasant/underclass (quasi)-Old English speakers, there was a massive influx of words from Old French as well as a dramatic change to the structure of English syntax, which continued as word order in English became increasingly cemented while morphology (declensions, verbal paradigms, etc.) decreased. Thus there is FAR greater similarity between Old French and modern French than there is between Old English and modern English (and between early Middle English and modern English and Old French and modern French).
Actually it's worse than that. As the IE linguistics began with the Germans, the term "Indo-European" is an English version of a German term, and that term was Indogermanisch (Indo-Germanic). But that's what you get when you're dealing with one of the oldest areas of modern scholarship, and an area of linguistics that began ~200 years before modern linguistics. Jones and Bopp, founders of IE linguistics, pre-date Darwin. IE linguistics is one of the oldest scientific fields there is. And just like in modern physics, some of the terms that remain used don't mean what they did when they were introduced. As you point out, this is a pretty poor basis for an argument.
I know how that is.
One the flip side, English speakers have a very nice discount in vocabulary learning French.
I was under the impression that the de-emphasis on declension actually began way before the Normans but with our contact with Old Norse, Old English and Old Norse having similar roots but differing declension patters.
I understand that the Word (vak) comes from the Mind (citta), which is rooted upon Consciousness, which by vedic-vedantic understanding, is non local. Ascribing a physical place of origin to sanskrit, IMO, is wrong knowledge, just as all dual knowledge based on subject object division are infected with fatal error from birth.
He he.
Tell me about it. Not to mention Latin, Italian, and probably the languages I should have studied like Spanish and Portuguese!
It's true that "English" (Old, Middle, early modern, etc.) has always been characterized by rather extensive loanwords/borrowing and influences from other languages (including Celtic languages). And it's true that the declension patterns differ. However, Old Norse, even though everything you said about Old English and Old Norse above is true, the relationship between the two as Germanic languages and even more so the fact that Germanic languages in general have tended (but by no means always) had a 4-case system and similar verbal systems (even today, the German and English modal systems are surprisingly close!), so while the lexicon reflects the fairly significant changes you refer to, the linguistic structure (grammar/syntax) doesn't. Also, there's my least favorite aspect of linguistics: phonetics. The most comprehensive, exhaustive study I've read on the origins of Germanic languages (Ringe's From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic) was basically a few hundred pages of details about sound changes. Worse, it didn't even get to any actual language. So I'm using it here partly to justify having read it. There are few IE languages that have the "j" sound that French and English do. The Germanic languages don't (not those that I know of, anyway). Nor did Latin.
The reason this is even marginally important is because even though French has a highly developed verbal (conjugation) system, it's the only Romance language to require personal pronouns. This is because even though the various conjugations still differ when it comes to spelling and DO encode person, the pronunciation doesn't reflect these differences, so personal pronouns are required. As the structure of English changed, so to did it's phonology, and both combined to require an increasing need for word order to convey what was formerly encoded in morphology. Middle English still had a case system, while modern English doesn't (except for the subjective/objective cases for personal pronouns). What are now "auxiliary verbs" like "will" and "shall" were lexemes that eventually became grammatically bleached (or underwent grammaticalization).
Old English had a rich declension system, and this remained for a while (albeit increasingly less so) a primary feature of Middle English syntax. Now it remains basically only in distinctions like I/me.
I actually have a fairly strong grasp of French, studying it is what gave rise to my interest in linguistics. Although I'm just a humble hobbyist who has read a few books, I'm not formally educated in the subject so this has been a fascinating discussion for me.
In either case, I should stop derailing this thread and let people go back to discussing the OP.
Thanks for your time, I've learnt a few things today.
Ah, but this debate is about vyavaharika
In parmathika, there is none of this.In vyavaharika, it is the case that I speak English, and that the President of Turkey speaks Turkish. It is also the case that Sanskrit is a language in vyavaharika, and has, in vyavaharika, as much of a geographical origin as any other language.
That is true. Yet, in vyavarika, the paramarthika does not become untrue.Ah, but this debate is about vyavaharika
In vyavaharika, it is the case that I speak English, and that the President of Turkey speaks Turkish. It is also the case that Sanskrit is a language in vyavaharika, and has, in vyavaharika, as much of a geographical origin as any other language.
Irrespective of who migrated to where, from the nature of Sanskrit itself it can be said that it has certain unique features that are not shared in any other language.
I think that's true in every language. A unique feature of English is that it tolerates ellipsis in more constructions than any other language. It also has the largest vocabulary, and allows recursive expletive infixation.
Also, the word 'syzygy' is found in no other language.
It's a rare astronomical event
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I think that's true in every language. A unique feature of English is that it tolerates ellipsis in more constructions than any other language. It also has the largest vocabulary, and allows recursive expletive infixation.
Also, the word 'syzygy' is found in no other language.
It's a rare astronomical event
Ha ha. Maybe.
But most likely not. The unique features of Sanskrit are fundamental and actually nearly opposite of the examples you quote for English. Sanskrit will always be preserved in its pristine form due to its flawless and unambiguous grammar rules enunciated by Panini before at least 3500 BC.
Can you provide clear evidence for your statements?
You're really asking me to provide evidence for the evolution and creation of languages by gradual change? Or are you asking for evidence that Sanskrit is in the Indo-European family?
Interestingly, study has shown that Vedic Sanskrit, especially Rigvedic, is different to Classical Sanskrit as standardised by Panini.
It is a fine language, I don't dispute that. A lot of work has been done to standardise and perfect the grammar, and I look forward to the day I can understand it.
No. You said Sanskrit came about by gradual evolution of PIE. I am keen to learn as to what are the unequivocal evidences for this stated direction of evolution.
By way of Proto-Indo-Iranian, which also gave rise to Old Persian and Avestan.
Here's some source: http://www.ahandfulofleaves.org/documents/The Indo-Aryan Languages_Masica.pdf