harappans and vedic people

[Guest guest]

Before we ask if a particular Vedic practice was borrowed from the

Harappans, we should check if it figures in Avesta. If it does, it could

not have been derived from the Harappans

 

The view that agnichayana is a borrowing by 'Vedic Aryans'

from 'Dravidian Harappans' (suggested in H. S. Converse,

The agnicayana rite:indigenous origin?, History of Religions XIV:81-

95, 1974) is contradicted by C. G. Kashikar in an article (I will

have to search for the paper at home in case you are interested in

the reference), which argues (pace. Converse, whose views he

controverts) that the rite was a natural internal development within

the tradition of Vedic karmakanda. I find the latter view more

acceptable.

 

 

 

It is not that the Aryans did not know the potter's wheel.It is that

they still made by hand ritualistically mre important pots.

 

Sanskrit has retroflex sounds (like sh as in pushpa , flower ).These

sounds are missing in Avesta. The hypothesis is that they were

inadvertently introduced when the Harappan priesthood merged with the

Vedic. Is there an alternative hypothesis?

 

Rajesh Kochhar

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Rajesh Kochhar <rkk@N...> wrote:

> Before we ask if a particular Vedic practice was borrowed from the

> Harappans, we should check if it figures in Avesta. If it does, it

could

> not have been derived from the Harappans

 

VA: I do not know if this is a foolproof methodology. After all,

there is evidence for cross-cultural exchanges between people of

Central Asia and Harappans. Items from Turkmenistan are found even at

levels dated to 4000 BC in Mehrgarh, and the Harappans themselves had

a colony on the banks of a tributary of the Oxus in the Mature

Harappan phase.

 

The converse of your suggestion, (iz. if a Vedic practice is not

attested in RV and Avesta, it must have been borrowed from Harappans)

need not be true either. In addition to being an argument from

silence, it is estimated that only about 1/4 of the Avesta survives.

 

The preference of non wheel-spun pottery for their rites by the Vedic

ritualists might stem from the love for archaic things by

conservative priests.

 

Sincerely,

 

Vishal

[Guest guest]

> Sanskrit has retroflex sounds (like sh as in pushpa ,

>flower ).These sounds are missing in Avesta.

 

It is to be noted that there's no "sha" as in pushpa, in Tamil itself!

 

Does American English has retroflexive sounds that are missing in

British English?

 

>The hypothesis is that they were inadvertently introduced when the

>Harappan priesthood merged with the Vedic. Is there an alternative

>hypothesis?

 

Is there any rule that one people can develop only one particular set

of standards? Can not new environments give rise to diverse

developments?

[Guest guest]

If we assume that things like Agnicayana and retroflex sounds in

their language were taken by the Aryans from the Harappans, we have

to wonder why the Aryans did not take the script or the concept of

script from the Harappans.

 

One of the toughest stages in development of script is

standardization of sounds and pronunciation. By Rgvedic times, the

Aryans had a very high level of such standardization. But they had

to wait another one thousand or more years for a writing system.

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "vpcnk" <vpcnk@H...> wrote:

> > Sanskrit has retroflex sounds (like sh as in pushpa ,

> >flower ).These sounds are missing in Avesta.

>

> It is to be noted that there's no "sha" as in pushpa, in Tamil

itself!

>

> Does American English has retroflexive sounds that are missing in

> British English?

 

 

How about "good ol'Texas"

 

 

Using retroflexion as an indication of presence/absence

of indo-aryan is totally useless.

 

S.Subrahmanya

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, Rajesh Kochhar <rkk@N...> wrote:

>Sanskrit has retroflex sounds (like sh as in pushpa , flower ).These

>sounds are missing in Avesta. The hypothesis is that they were

>inadvertently introduced when the Harappan priesthood merged with the

>Vedic.

 

Bertil Tikkanen's South Asia retroflex map,

attached as JPG file. It can be downloaded at

CTamil/message/449

 

Asko Parpola, "Deciphering the Indus script:

Methods and select interpretations", Keynote

address delivered at the 25th Annual South Asia

conference, Univeristy of Wisconsin, 18-20 October 1996.

Published by Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin,

Madison, WI 53706

 

On p. 6, prof. Parpola writes:

" The only remaining alternative is the Dravidian language

family, now mainly spoken in South India (fig. 15). One

Dravidian language, Brahui, has been spoken in Baluchistan

for at least a thousand years, as far as the historical

sources go. Kurukh-Malto, mainly spoken in the

Chota-Nagpur plateau, forms the only other member of the

North Dravidian group. Their split seems to have

taken place during the first millennium AD, as recently

suggested by Josef Elfenbein (1987) (fig. 16), but

Proto-North Dravidian must have branched off from the

rest of the family much earlier. Even the areal linguistics

of South Asia supports the hypothesis that the Indus

language belonged to the Dravidian family (see now

Tikkanen, in press). The retroflex consonants, which

constitute the most diagnostic feature of the South Asian

linguistic area, can be divided into two distinct

groups, and one of the groups is distributed over the

Indus valley as well as the Dravidian-speaking areas

(fig. 17)."

 

Bertil Tikkanen, 1997. Archaeological-linguistic correlations

in the formation of retroflex typologies and correlating

areal features in South Asia. In: Roger Blench and Matthew

Spriggs (eds.), Language and Archaeology, vol. 3: Combining

archaeological and linguistic aspects of the past.

London: Rotledge.

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

[Guest guest]

When I tried to download the file, a message appeared:

"The document you requested is temporarily unavailable because this

group has exceeded its download limit. Please try again later."

 

It looks many are trying to get Prof. B. Tikkanen's Indian

subcontinent retroflex map.

 

N. Ganesan

 

> INDOLOGY, Rajesh Kochhar <rkk@N...> wrote:

> >Sanskrit has retroflex sounds (like sh as in pushpa , flower

).These

> >sounds are missing in Avesta. The hypothesis is that they were

> >inadvertently introduced when the Harappan priesthood merged with

the

> >Vedic.

>

> Bertil Tikkanen's South Asia retroflex map,

> attached as JPG file. It can be downloaded at

> CTamil/message/449