Fwd: Indo-European migration from Urals to South Asia

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Arsalan Khan <arsalanalikhan2...

Jun 5 2003, 9:02 am

Indo-European migration from Urals to South Asia

sci.lang, soc.culture.pakistan

 

 

The Indic languages

 

The oldest Indic language is ironically enough not found in India, but

in Eastern Anatolia, where the Mitanni ruled over a Hurrian-speaking

people around the 15th century B.C. They have the same gods as the

Indo-Aryans, e.g. Indra and Mitra, and they were famous for training

horses (cf. the Mitanni word aikavartanna 'one round', which is nearly

the same as Skt. eka-vartanin- 'one-wheeled'; both are compounds of

eka- 'one' and vart- 'to turn').

In the South Asia itself, the oldest language found is Vedic

(sometimes called VedicSanskrit), which is the language of the oldest

Hindu religious texts, the Vedas (from veda- 'knowledge'). It is based

on a north-western dialect. The oldest of these Vedas is the Rigveda,

which probably dates from around 1000 B.C. We do not know the exact

date, because the hymns in this book were orally transmitted for

hundreds of years before being written down.

From around 800 B.C. we findSanskrit(from sa.msk.rtá- 'litt. put

together, well-formed, perfected'), which is based on a dialect of

Western Central India (eastern Panjab, western Ganges Valley). Around

400 B.C., Pa.nini codified the grammar of ClassicalSanskrit, so that

when it ceased to be spoken as a first language shortly afterwards,

his grammar was used when writing texts. The most famous

ClassicalSanskrittexts are the epics Mahabharata and Ramayana.

ClassicalSanskritcontinues to be used today in the Hindu ritual.

Vedic and ClassicalSanskritare together called Old Indo-Aryan.

From around 400 B.C. to around 1000 A.D. Middle Indo-Aryan languages

(also called Prakrits) were spoken. These can be subdivived into three

stages. Early Middle Indo-Aryan consists of Pali, the language of the

oldest Buddhist texts and probably based on an north-central dialect

from the fourth century B.C. (the time of the Buddha); and the Ashokan

Prakrits, the languages of the inscriptions of emperor Ashoka

scattered around northern India, dating from the third century B.C.

Later we find Prakrit proper, with several regional variants: Niya

Prakrit (from Chinese Turkestan, attested in the third century A.D.),

Ardhamagadhi (probably from north-eastern India, the language of the

Jain religious texts and also found in some Buddhist dramas), later

inscriptional Prakrits (from the second century B.C. to the fifth

century A.D), Magadhi (from Bihar, attested inSanskritplays as the

language of lower-class characters), Shauraseni (developed regularly

from Pali; the standard Prakrit in dramas), Maharashtri (a southestern

dialect in which lyric poetry was written), Sinhala Prakrit (from Sri

Lanka, attested in inscriptions from the first century B.C.). An

outsider is Buddhist HybridSanskrit: this is ClassicalSanskritin

appearance, but with a barely concealed Prakrit substrate. It is used

in later Buddhist literature.

Finally, there is Late Middle Indo-Aryan in the form of Apabhra.msha

(from theSanskritword meaning 'corrupt, deteriorated'), attested

from around 500 to around 1000 A.D.

From around a 1000 A.D. the modern Indo-Aryan languages begin to be

attested. These are: Hindi-Urdu (and the many Hindi dialects), Nepali,

Assamese, Bengali, Marathi, Konkani, Rajasthani, Gujarati, Sindhi,

" Lahnda " , Kashmiri, Panjabi, Singhalese and Romany (the language of

the Gypsies). The Dardic group of languages in the mountains of the

northwestern Himalayas are definitely Indo-Aryan, but because of their

isolation in the mountains they are quite different from the other

modern Indo-Aryan languages. The Dardic languages include Shina,

Khowar, Kalasha and Pashai.

It is uncertain whether the Nuristani (formerly Kafir) languages in

the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan are Indo-Aryan, or whether they are a

separate branch of the Indo-Iranian languages. There are a few

indications which seem to point in that direction, but unfortunately

not enough is known about the development of these languages, since

they are only attested in the 20th century.

Below is given a diagram of the development of the Indo-Aryan

languages:

 FPRIVATE " TYPE=PICT;ALT=the Indic family tree "

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Geographical location

Please visit prof. Gippert's very detailed language distribution map

of the South Asia.

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(Pre)history

It seems that the Proto-Indo-Iranians (i.e. the people before the

split between Indic and Iranian) originally occupied an area south of

the Urals, because of the nature of the later migrations and of the

quite numerous Proto-Indo-Aryan loans into the Uralic languages.

Before 2000 B.C. they started to move south on the East side of the

Caspian Sea. They presumably came into contact with the city culture

of Central Asia (the BMAC = Bactrian-Margiana Archeological Complex

dating from 2000-1750 B.C.), from which they borrowed several cultural

and technological terms.

Around 1600 B.C. the Indo-Iranian unity started to fall apart, as the

people later known as Mitanni moved towards Eastern Anatolia, as is

shown in the archeological record by West-Iranian Grey Ware pottery.

From 1500 B.C. to 1100 B.C. this type of pottery is also associated

with the ancestors of the West Iranians. The Avestans, the earliest

known East Iranians, are found in the Yaz I culture (1500-1100 B.C.)

in Northeastern Afghanistan, the exact place where we expect them to

be from a linguistic point of view.

After the split between Iranian and Indo-Aryan speakers, the latter

moved south to Afghanistan and Bactria. A small group also migrated

into northwestern Iran. This group was probably the ancestor of the

Mitanni and of the daeva-worshippers in Iran, which were combated by

Zoroaster.

Around 1500 B.C. the main body of the Proto-Indo-Aryans moved

south(east) towards the northwestern part of the South Asia (i.e.

modern Pakistan). It may be that the Nuristani-speakers were separated

from the main body of Indo-Aryan at that time.

In the first centuries following the arrival in the South Asia, the

Indo-Aryans stayed in the relatively small area at the northwestern

fringe, where the Rigveda was (at least for the most part) composed.

It may be that the Swat culture in Northern Pakistan, dating from

1800/1700-400 B.C., is evidence of the earliest Indo-Aryans in the

South Asia. Unfortunately, however, there is no firm evidence linking

the Swat culture to later cultures in Northwestern India, therefore

the Swat people could also have been the ancestors of just the

Nuristani (and/or Dardic) people.

Later they slowly started to move further into India down the Ganges

valley. Bihar was Aryanized by the time of the Buddha, i.e. before the

sixth century B.C., but Bengal was not reached before the fourth

century A.D. Assam and Orissa were Aryanized even later, around the

seventh century A.D.

Around the eighth century B.C. there seems to have been a movement

towards the south, on the west side of India. This is associated with

the spread of Northern Black Polished Ware, the ceramics of the Aryans

in the Ganges basin, into the Western Deccan. These people were

probably also the ancestors of the Singhalese, who arrived in Sri

Lanka in the fifth century B.C.

During their spread into the South Asia, the Indo-Aryans came into

contact with several other language families, which influenced their

phonology and grammar and from which loanwords were borrowed. They

are:Burushaski

An isolated language in two valleys in northern Pakistan. This

language has an ergative construction, which also developed in Middle

Indo-Aryan.

Dravidian

This is the name of a language group whose languages are found mainly

in southern India (e.g. the literary languages Tamil, Malayalam,

Telugu and Kannada), but also in eastern India (Kurukh, Malto) and in

Baluchistan (Brahui). There are a great number of Dravidian loanwords

in Indo-Aryan, and already in the Vedic period. Moreover, the

retroflex consonants of Indo-Aryan are probably due to a Dravidian

substrate.

Munda

This group of languages belongs to the Austro-Asiatic family. They

were found in the northeast of the Indian peninsula, i.e. Bihar,

Orissa, West Bengal and northern Andhra Pradesh, but their area is

limited to small pockets within this region now. Munda gave a

considerable number of loanwords to Indo-Aryan.