Linguistics and acts of faith: Bharat of 3rd millennium BCE as a linguisti

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Srinivasan Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@g...> wrote:

Linguistics and acts of faith: Bharat of 3rd millennium BCE as a

linguistic area

 

Emeneau said: "[vocabulary loans from Dravidian into Indo-Aryan] are

in fact all merely 'suggestions.' Unfortunately, all areal etymologies

are in the last analysis unprovable, are 'acts of faith', ...It is

always possible, e.g. to counter a suggestion of borrowing from one of

the indenous language families by suggesting that there has been

borrowing in the other direction." (Emeneau, MB, 1980, Language and

Linguistic Area, Stanford, Stanford University Press, p. 177).

 

Linguistic studies governed by such 'acts of faith', will continue

speculating.. Kuiper, for example, found that 'the vast majority of

the R.gvedc loan words belong to the spheres of domestic and

agricultural life. They belong not only to the popular speech... but

to the specific language of an agrarian population.' (Kuiper, FBJ,

1955, p. 185). Kuiper says that there are 380 loans in the R.gveda;

Thieme says that there are no loans at all.

 

These 'acts of faith' operating in linguistics, leads Edwin Bryant to

conclude: "The hypothesis of a pre-Indo-Aryan linguistic substratum

remains a perfectly acceptable way of explaining the existence of the

non-Indo-European features in Sanskrit. Particularly significant in

this regard is the non-Indo-Aryan nature of the terms for the flor of

the Northwest. But this is not the only model. As I have attempted to

outline, the possibility of spontaneous development for many of the

innovated syntactical features, coupled with the possibility of an

adstratum relationship between Draidian and Sanskrit for features that

are undoubtedly borrowings, are the most obvious alternative

possibilities. In conclusion, in my opinion, the theory of Indo-Aryan

migrations into the Indian subcontinent must be primarily established

without doubt ON OTHER GOUNDS (emphasis in original) to be fully

conclusive. The apparent 'evidence' of a linguistic substratum in

Indo-Aryan, in and of itself, cannot be used as a decisive arbitrator

in the debate over Indo-Aryan origins." (Bryant, Edwin F., 1999,

Linguistic substrata and the indigenous Aryan debate, in: Johannes

Bronkhorst and Madhav M. Deshpande, Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia,

Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 3, Cambridge, p. 80).

 

Fine to talk of substrata, adstrata and borrowings in linguistics.

But, for the Aryan question, linguistic analyses are not necessary and

sufficient condition.

 

Let us take a look at what the ancient writers in Bharat had to say

about the language situation in various parts of the country. Manu

notes (10.45):

 

mukhaba_hu_rupajja_na_m ya_ loke ja_tayo bahih

mlecchava_cas' ca_ryava_cas te sarve dasyuvah smr.ta_h

 

This shows a two-fold division of dialects: arya speech and mleccha

speech. The language spoken was an indicator of social identity.

Hence, Manu says that everyone is a barbarian dasyu, whether he spoe

arya or mleccha tongues. Maha_bha_s.ya (Vol. i, p.2) of Patanjali

however, notes that learning Sanskrit grammar was necessary for one

not to become a mleccha: tasma_d bra_hman.ena na mlecchitavai..

mleccha_ ma_ bhu_mety adhyeyam vya_karan.am.

 

Hence, it is natural for Vidura to convey a message to Yudhishthira in

mleccha tongue while describing the technicalities involved in the

la_ks.a_gr.ha (the palace of lac): kincic ca viduren.okto

mlechava_ca_si pa_n.d.ava (0011350061, electronic text of Muneo

Tokunaga based on BORI critical edition).

 

Thus, we have two language groups mentioned: a_rya and mleccha, the

former is grammatically correct Sanskrit, the other is the des'i or

lingua franca (not unlike the words glossed in Hemacandra's

Des'i_na_mama_la_).

 

The existence of the two categories of speech finds support in the

Jaina tract, Pan.n.avan.a_sutta (Pt. I, pp. 35 ff; cf. Deshpande,

Madhav M., 1979, Sociolinguistic attitudes in India. An historical

reconstruction, Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers, inc. pp. 43 ff.). After

providing a long list of mleccha peoples, mostly living outside of

a_rya_varta in the region of northern Bharat sretching from Gujarat to

Assam, the text identifies two categories: ariya and

milakkhu/an.a_riya. In su_tra 56 of Aupapa_tikasu_tra (=

Ovava_iyasutta, p.53), Mahavira speaks about dhamma in ardhama_gadhi_

language: addhama_gaha_e bha_sa_e bha_sai ariha_ dhammam parikahei.

The explanation of dhamma is made to ariya and an.a_riya (tesim

savvesim a_riyaman.la_riya_n.am... dhammam a_ikkhai. Clearly, both

ariya and milakkhu could comprehend ardhama_gadhi language use by

Mahavira. The text notes that the words spoken by Mahavira got

transformed for ariya and mleccha into their own mother-tongues:

 

sa_ vi ya n.am addhama_gaha_ bha_sa tesim savvesim

a_riyaman.a_riya_n.am appan.o sabha_sa_e parin.a_men.am parin.amai.

 

Deshpande cites from LB Gandhi, a similar version of tranformation

contained in Aupapa_tikasu_tra, in another su_tra called

Samava_ya_ngasu_tra, where the audience includes bipeds, quadrupeds,

beasts, animals, birds and serpents apart rom ariya and mleccha:

 

sa_ vi ya n.am addhama_gahi_ bha_sa_ bha_sijjama_n.i_ tesim savvesim

a_riyaman.a_riya_n.am duppaya cauppaya miya pasu pakkhi sari_siva_n.am

appappan.o hiyasiva suha da_ya bha_satta_e parin.amai.

(A_gamoddha_rasamiti edition, p. 60, quoted in L.B. Gandhi, ed., 1927,

Apabhrams'aka_vyatrayi_, by Jinadattasu_ri, Gaekwad's Oriental Series

No. 37, Reprinted in 1967, Baroda). This automatic transformation of

ardhama_gadhi speech into the languages of the listeners is a way of

affirming the nature of the lingua franca, Prakrit, when Mahavira

communites Jaina dhamma as ariya dhamma. There is explicit permission

to use Prakrit, as a non-ariya language, that is non-use of

grammatically correct Samskr.tam, to communicate to all people: This

is categorically stated in Kundakunda's Samayasa_ra, verse 8:

 

yatha n.a vi sakkam an.ajjo an.ajjabha_sam vin.a_ du ga_hedum

taha vavaha_ren.a vin.a_ paramatthuvadesan.am asakkam

 

This is a crucial phrase, vyavaha_ra or vavaha_ra, the spoken tongue

in vogue, or the lingua franca, or what french linguists call, parole.

The use of vyava_hara bha_sa, that is mleccha tongue, was crucial for

effectively communicating Mahavira's message on ariya dhamma.

 

The clarity with which two dialect streams are identified in the

region traversed by Mahavira, is also explicit in the statement

contained in S'atapatha Bra_hman.a (3.2.1.23).

 

he 'lavo he 'lavah

 

is said to be the expression of exclamation by asura. Paul Thieme

takes this to be ma_gadhi_ equivalent:

 

he 'layo he 'layah (so cited by grammarian Patanjali)

 

which in turn, corresponds to Samskr.tam: he 'rayo he 'rayah 'hail

friends!' (Paul Thieme, 1938, Der Fremdling im R.gveda, Eine Studie

uber die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und a_rya. Leipzig:

Brockhaus. Reprint in: Paul Thieme, Opera Maiora, Band I. Ed. Werner

Knobl and Nobuhiko Kobayashi, Kyoto: Hozokan Publishing Co. 1995, pp.

1-184, p. 4 (10).

 

This passage and other evidence leads David Carpenter to conclude:

(vedic society) as a hybrid culture forged out of Indo-Aryan and

indigenous ...elements under the aegis of the cultural norm

represented by the sacrifice and its language.' (Carpenter, David,

1994, The mastery of speech: canonicity and control in the Vedas, in:

Authority, anciety and canon. Essays in Vedic interpretations, ed.

Laurie L. Patton, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp.

10-34, p. 30).

 

Heinz-Jurgen Pinnow's "Versuch einer Historischen Lautlehre der

Kharia-Sprache" published in 1959 was a pioneering work which sought

to identify etymologies of austroasiatic family of languages. Pinnow

included Nahali (a language spoken on the River Tapati in a region

northwest of Ellichpur in Madhya Pradesh, not far from the Bhimbhetka

caves, a language which is said to have 24% with no cognates in India

(hence, a language isolate or language Y?), 36% Kurku munda glosses

and 9% dravidian glosses â€" cf. Kuipe43r, FBJ, 1966, The sources of

Nahali vocabulary, in H. Zide, ed., Studies in comparative

Austroasiatic linguistics, The Hague, pp. 96-192), in his list making

comparisons of vocabularies betwen Nahali and Mundarica. (Pinnow,

Heinz-Jürgen. 1959. Versuch Einer Historischen Lautlehre Der

Kharia-Sprache. Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz.) IE linguistics is

divided on the issue of classifying Nahali; is it a language isolate?

Or, is it part of an Indo-Aryan family? Even the set of languages

which were in use in Bharat in ancient times has not been drawn up,

"common objections are that we cannot even identify most of hose

non-IA languages, now died out, or that we have no Dravidian or Munda

documents from that time." (Kuiper, FBJ, 1991, Aryans in the Rigveda,

Amsteram-Atlanta: Rodopi, Page i). This is the sorry state of affairs

about linguistic studies related to the 'I' in the IE family. The

sorry state is exemplified by the postulate of 'language X' by Masica

to explain 30% of the words used in Hindi for agricultural plants.

(Masica, Colin, 1979, Aryan and non-Aryan elements in North Indian

Agriculture', in M. Deshpande, PE Hook, eds., Aryan and non-Aryan in

India, Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studie,

University of Michigan, p. 55-151. Add to this, the observation of

Kuiper: '...it should be reognized that (Vedic) Sanskrit had long been

AN INDIAN LANGUAGE (emphasis Kuiper's), when it made its appearance in

history. The adaptations to foreign linguistic patterns cannot be

dismissed.' (Kuiper, FBJ, 1991, opcit, p. 94). Thus, we have a

situation where the Vedic dialect itself is a composite of substratum

and adstratum, yet an 'Indian language'. Is it necessary or possible,

through linguistic methods, to isolate the munda, dravidian and

indo-aryan elements in Vedic? In my view, it is not necessary. It is

enough to start with an agreed consensus that Vedic is an 'Indian

language,' as categorised by Kuiper.

 

If Vedic contained a significant munda presence (substratum or

adstratum or borrowing), the tacit, underlying hypothesis is that

munda was present in the saptasindhu region, a region closely

identified as the locus of the vedic language. The presence of munda

is emphatic, not merely in terms of glosses but also in terms of

traditions such as those related to e_mu_s.a and dhrumbhu_li.

 

How could the presence of munda (it is irrelevant if it was deemed to

be substrate or adstrate) in saptasindhu region be explained? Are

words such as is.t.aka (brick), pin.d.a (lump), khad.ga (rhino),

kan.d. (furnace) of munda origin? Are words with â€"n.d.- of indigenous

origin, say of language X? (cf. Hoffman, K., 1941, Die

alt-indoarischen worter mit â€"n.d.- besonders im R.gveda, PhD

dissertation, Munchen)

 

Did the munda of the Ganga basin move into the Sarasvati-Sindhu river

basins in search of new mineral resources, such as the minerals

available in Khetri mines and Badakshan Afghanistan mines? If so, the

roots of mineral-metal-furnace related words have to be traced into

munda metallurgical traditions.

 

Since linguistics studies related to comparative etyma are based on

articles of faith, they are of limited help in establishing the

direction of borrowing. We have to seek for munda presence in

saptasindhu region based on munda cultural traditions. One remarkable

cultural tradition of exchange of betel leaves and betel nuts to

settle contracts â€" referred to as ta_mbu_la exchanges between

contracting parties â€" is a living cultural presence in all parts of

Bharat. The word ta_mbu_la is of munda origin, relatable to the word

ba_ru 'betel', a word which is retained in Bengali language, not far

from the Santal Paraganas region east of Vindhya mountain ranges and

not far from the area of iron ore mines of Bailadilla in

Dan.d.aka_ran.ya-Bolangir-Kiriburu railway. linking the mine sources

with the port town of Vis'a_khapat.t.an.am. Pat.t.an.a is a word which

occurs also in Gujarat (e.g., Patan on the banks of palaeochannels of

River Sarasvati) to denote a port town. Kot.d.a (Dholavira) is likely

to have been such a port town servicing the trade between Meluhha

across Magan and Dilmun with Mesopotamia on the Tigris-Euphrates river

doab. If dak 'water' is embedded in the name of a river, Gan.d.aki_,

the word udaka in Samskr.tam is likely to be a good example of an

autochthonous, indigenous word from Indian languages. Even, assuming

for the sake of maintaining the linguistic doctrine, that Aryan was an

arrival in the saptasindhu region, if R.gveda is seen to contain a

significant munda presence, the conclusion becomes inescapable that a

long period of contact had been established between vedic and munda,

i.e. 'between the arrival of the Aryans... and the formation of the

oldest hymns of the R.gveda a much longer period must have elapsed

than normally thought.' (Kuiper, 1967, The genesis of a linguistic

area, Indo-Iranian Journal, 10: 81-102; 1997, Selected writings on

Indian linguistics and philology, in: A. Lubotsky, MS Oort and M.

Witzel, eds., Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, XXIV). An alternative

linguistic doctrine can be that vedic and munda speakers were present

in the saptasindhu region during the days of the Sarasvati

civilization (circa 3300 to 1500 BCE). This presence is further

archaeologically attessted by the presence of iron-smelters of munda

metallurgical tradition, in the Ganga river basin circa 1800 BCE,

overlapping with the so-called chalcolithic period of Sarasvati

civilization. Metal workers of Sarasvati-Sindhu-Ganga basins defined

the metals age in Bharat during almost two millennia between ca. 3300

and 1500 BCE â€" metal-workers dealing with gold, silver, copper, tin,

arsenic and iron with ability to produce hardened alloys to make hard

tools and weapons such as axes, adzes, swords, knives, spearheads and

arrowheads.

 

Arya and ana_rya were not distinct and isolated categories of

languages or speakers of distinct languages. As Kuiper noted, 'those

who believe that a definite ethnic barrier separated the 'aryans' from

the surrounding non-aryan peoples disregarded some well known

facts...' (Kuiper, 1991, opcit., p. 6). Some well known facts such as

the continuity of the tradition of a pus.karin.i in front of a

mandiram, of performance of yajn~a in a yajn~a kun.d.a, svastika as a

cultural glyph, of s'iva linga as a murti of veneration, of s'ankha as

an industry to produce s'ankha bangles and s'ankha trumpets, an

industry which is continuous from 6500 BCE to the present-day. (cf.

the presence of s'ankha wide bangle in a woman's

burial in Mehergarh reported by Jarrige), presence of terracotta

images with sindhur (red colour paint) on the parting of the black

hair, veneration of mother as devi, use of binary gradation of weights

for weighing precious metals such as gold and silver.

 

If the aryans were there in the saptasindhu region and if the munda

were there in the saptasindhu region, the presence of munda words in

vedic can be explained without having to use a false or mythical

linguistic doctrine of aryan arrivals into the region. A simple,

straightforward understanding can be that they both belonged to the

region from prehistoric times and continued to interact for an

extended period of time, say, for nearly two millennia. This may

explain why some scholars consider munda (Ho or Kole of eastern

Bharat) to be the source for many austroasiatic languages across the

rim of the hindumahasagar or the Indian Ocean. The people who created

the Sarasvati civilization, were, after all, people who created a

riverine, maritime civilization in a remarkale domain stretching from

the himalayas to the Tigris-Euphrates doab across the himalayan river

streams of Sarasvati and Sindhu and across Kacch and Persian gulfs,

people who could move into the Ganga river basin and go beyond this

river basin into the other himalayan rivers such as Irawady, Salween

(Burma) and Mekong (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). In this perspective, the

location of present-day Nahali speakers not far from the sindhusagara

(Arabian Sea) gains significance. A reconstruction of the mleccha

bha_s.a (spoken idiom) based on Nahali, Munda and proto-versions of

present-day languages of the Sindhu, Sarasvati and Ganga river basins

is likely to yield a clue to the problem of understanding the glyphs

created by the people of the Sarasvati civilization, on the hypothesis

that these people were the ancestors of present-day Bharatiya-s and

bharatiya languages and roots of bharatiya culture can be identified

as a web of interactions among the agrarian, metal-woring, trading

groups of people of the boundaries of Bharat as they existed in

pre-historic times. One definition of such a boundary is provided by

the term, 'sindhu' used in R.gveda. This, according to Thieme, means

'a natural ocean frontier'. This definition is not unlike the one used

in the days of Manu when the region called brahma_varta as a region

lying between rivers Sarasvati and Dr.s.advati. This may explain the

continuity of the vedic or hindu culture in a region called Bharat, a

region referred to as bha_ratam janam by Vis'vamitra Gathina in the

R.gveda.

 

This leads us to examine further the munda traditions which trace

their roots to the saptasindhu region. These studies need not

necessarily be linguistic, but can extend into sociology as defined by

the Frenh sociologist, Louis Dumont (Dumont, L., 1975, La civilisation

indienne et nous, Paris, Armand Colin) to distinguish between a

renouncer and a worldly-wise person, between philosophical

explorations and material cultures exemplified by archaeological finds

in the river basins of Bharat. Maybe, munda metal-workers were the

purve yajn~ika identified in the R.gveda, since both peoples, the

asura and the deva alike, keep the fire, agni going? Despite Sergent's

valiant efforts to seek IE roots in Greek medicine and Ayurveda, is it

possible that Ayurveda itself had indigenous roots in Bharat with a

coalescing of munda and vedic traditions? (Sergent, Bernard, 1997,

Genese de l'inde, Paris, Payot and Rivages, pp. 355 ff.) So, too, are

the metallurgical traditions exemplified by the iron pillar in Delhi

traceable to the roots found in Sarasvati civilization and metallurgy

of 2nd millennium BCE in Ganga basin?

 

Further researches will tell the grand narrative of bharatiya culture

with ancient, prehistoric, roots traced to the banks of Rivers

Sarasvati and Ganga.

 

Kalyanaraman

29 July 2004

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