(Fwd) Rajaram on Sanskrit and regional languages

[Guest guest]

indictraditions, Michael Witzel <witzel@f...> wrote:

"MR N S RAJARAM" <nsrajaram@v...> wrote on Fri, 8 Jun 2001 07:59:05

+0530

 

>>>... Also, people are wrong about the origins of Sanskrit and its

>>>origins. It was actually created ('Samskrita') by borrowing

features from languages of all parts of India. The artificial Aryan-

Dravidian divide is a British colonial and missionary concoction.

<<

 

wrong on both counts:

 

1.

 

Skt., in its Rgvedic form, was there 'from the beginning', i.e. as

soon as someone started to speak this form of Old Indo-Aryan inside

the subcontinent.

 

It existed long before Panini's grammar and before the name Samskrta

(which has other etymologies than 'created', as per NSR) was

attached to it.

 

A late Vedic text (and the Persian King Darius) call their respective

languages "aaryaa vaak/ ariya."

 

>From the beginning Skt. borrowed words from all sorts of languages,

including later on, Greek,Middle Iranian, Turkish, Persian and even

English.

 

But its grammar and structure remained the Skt. one. There is some

regional influence on its structure, both from the local languages

into Skt. as well as from Skt. into these languages. For these

features and questions, see the linguistic sections of:

 

http://nautilus.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ejvs0703/ejvs0703article.pdf

 

 

2.

>>The artificial Aryan-Dravidian divide is a British colonial and

>>missionary concoction<<

 

This is pure nonsense. And worse, present political nonsense.

 

Rajaram can go to any linguistic department anywhere, from Tokyo to

Durban (S.A.) and Dublin (Eire), and from Vancouver (B.C.) to Buenos

Aires, and he will hear the same story: there are some 5000

languages on the planet which can be classified into a number of

language families, minimally 12. -- Dravidian and Indo-European are

two of them.

 

(They can only be made close relatives if one accepts the Nostratic

super-family, which includes IE, Uralic, Altaic, part of Caucasian,

Afro-asiatic = Hamito-Semitic, and Dravidian. But that would be

outside India -- before any Drav. speaker set foot on Indian soil --

and long ago, minimally 10,000 BCE, on the way from 'Out of Africa'

at 50,000 BCE into Eurasia -- and India)

 

All of which still leaves other unrelated language families on

Indian/S.Asian soil: Tibeto-Burmese, Burushaski, Andamanese,

Kusunda, -- not to speak of the original langagues still visible in

various substrates,

see: http://nautilus.shore.net/~india/ejvs/ (Sept 1999).

 

Some of them may belong to the original immigration of Homo sapiens

sapiens into the subcontinent c. 35,000 BCE -- LONG before any Skt.

and Dravidian...

 

Statements like the ones on language made by Rajaram are uneducated

speculation (here, of a mathematician/engineer). If I need to get my

teeth fixed, I do not go to an electrician or a philosopher.

Rajaram, however, writes on any topic under the sun that catches his

fancy.

 

But, he does not even know enough Sanskrit to make such statements,

see my discussion in Frontline of Oct. 2000. Not to speak of his

knowledge of linguistics, which is zero, as seen in statements as the

one above and in his multi-farious writings on the internet and in

the Organiser.

 

(( I concentrate here on linguistics and gladly leave his politics

aside:

>> Note that even today, the strongest opponents of the revision of

ancient history, including the Vedic-Harappan connection, is coming

from Christian organizations. ... <<

 

In which world does he live? I have seen even a recent article in

Japanese language which makes fun of his 'position'. Not written by

a Christian, by any stretch ...))

 

 

Motto: you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

 

 

Cheers, MW>

 

========================================================

Michael Witzel

Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University

2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

 

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)

home page: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

 

Elect. Journ. of Vedic Studies: http://nautilus.shore.net/~india/ejvs/

--- End forwarded message ---