Linguistics in Ancient India

[Guest guest]

Dear all,

 

Traditionally, Indians were better at Linguistics.

 

For eg., look at the way the alphabet is created in a systematic

way.Similar phonetic Letters are not only grouped together

according to the way they are pronounced, but in accordance with the

places of articulation. This is surprising since it was not

recognized by western scholars till 1800 or 1900's.

 

 

I quote:

 

" Indians scribes have consciously redesigned the Semitic writing

they 'borrowed' according to well-understood phono-logical

principles. The Indians were antiquity's finest linguistics; the West

did not begin to approach their level of linguistic sophistication

until the early 1800s- in some cases the early 1900s. Ancient Indian

scribes classified their letters according to places of articulation(

a surprisingly 'modern' practice); first vowels and diphthongs, then

consonants (with default /a/'(such as ka and not merely K-Kishore)),

in exact back to front order as in the human moth-gutturals,

palatals, cerebral palatals, dentals, labials, semi vowels and

spirants. Indians, possessing such linguistic insight, did not

abandon their 'cumbersome' system for a streamlined alphabet once

they encountered Greek writing (since, their system) best conveyed

the full repertoire of Indic sounds. The graphic syllables of their

abudiga system of system of consonant + diacritic seemed, at least to

Indian scribes, to yield more salient phonetic information than a

mere letter. So in all derivative scripts, Indic writing remained

consonantal alphabetic. "

From A History of Writing By Steven Roger Fischer

 

 

The borrowings from Sanskrit are often underplayed. For eg., if you

consider the evidence of Mitannis,(1500 bce) it is clear that they

are under the influence of purely Indic Sanskrit, bereft of Iranian

impressions.

 

Evidently, Sanskrit came into being prior to 1500 bce and what is

important to note that this kind of influence on Mitannis seem to be

running deeper than in mere language or science of chariots. You

would note that only the Kings were allowed to assume names in

Sanskrit and no one else. This goes on to show that Indo Aryans were

more of a sociological reference group to Mitannis rather than mere

influencers .

 

 

This would lead us to think that Sanskrit must have had a lofty and

rich heritage in order to grow to such an extent of being a

reference group towards 1600 or so.

 

Arguably, Iranian languages could not boast of such background,.

There is no proof to say that Iranian languages existed prior to 1000

bce.

 

In other words, IIr is a mere conjecture - or you have to equate IIr

with Sanskrit from which the Persian languages have grown.

 

Now,. my question is can you negate with certainty what I am talking

above from the view point of Linguistics?

 

For eg., it is only a statistical probability that the direction of

borrowings are determined. If you are clever enough, you can prove

that the Indian word Jagannath owes its origin to Juggernaut using

the same Linguistic principles.(which is obviously , leading to the

wrong direction of borrowings) In other words, the principles of

borrowings of Linguistics are not absolute in their conclusions.

 

This is what I am trying to say. I want to know in as simple words as

possible, the flaws in my conclusions.

 

best regards,

 

kishore patnaik

[Guest guest]

[i am posting here the private reply recieved from Harold Fleming,

anthropolist and 'who does some linguistics'. He is very active on

such linguistics groups as MTLR- Kishore patnaik. moderator]

>

> I quote:

>

> " Indians scribes have consciously redesigned the Semitic writing

> they 'borrowed' according to well-understood phono-logical

> principles. The Indians were antiquity's finest linguistics; the

West

> did not begin to approach their level of linguistic sophistication

> until the early 1800s- in some cases the early 1900s. Ancient

Indian

> scribes classified their letters according to places of articulation

(

> a surprisingly 'modern' practice); first vowels and diphthongs,

then

> consonants (with default /a/'(such as ka and not merely K-

Kishore)),

> in exact back to front order as in the human moth-gutturals,

> palatals, cerebral palatals, dentals, labials, semi vowels and

> spirants. Indians, possessing such linguistic insight, did not

> abandon their 'cumbersome' system for a streamlined alphabet once

> they encountered Greek writing (since, their system) best conveyed

> the full repertoire of Indic sounds. The graphic syllables of their

> abudiga system of system of consonant + diacritic seemed, at least

to

> Indian scribes, to yield more salient phonetic information than a

> mere letter. So in all derivative scripts, Indic writing remained

> consonantal alphabetic. "

> From A History of Writing By Steven Roger Fischer

>

>

 

 

 

Dear Kishore,

That is a well-argued point. While I am not an Indologist, and I

cannot read Sanskrit, I do have an interesting story of a night I

spent arguing with an Indian friend. He was making your argument that

Indian phonology was so good that it could write any utterance made

by a human being.

So I tried him on a series of African languages. And he got them,

i.e., he could write their sounds down. But with some trouble. But

finally I got to the Khoisan languages with all those clicks and

glottalized consonants.

He could not do the Khoisan clicks and admitted that his system, his

Sanskritic system, was not able to write ALL the sounds in human

language. But I was very impressed with what he could do!

Cheers,

Hal