Aryan vs Dravidians - A Myth by Dr. Dr. Subramanian Swamy

[parasar]

While Pali and Prakrits were not used by Brahmins, both Pali and Prakrits were IndoAryan languages and ultimately derived from Vedic Sanskrit, which seems to have been brought by MLBA-rich people from Central Asia.

I would say that both Sanskrit and Pali are refined/structured/canonized versions of the prakrits prevalent in their region of development. In that sense Pali would be a form of Magadhi prakrit and Sanskrit would be a refined form of Gandhari or perhaps Paishachi prakrit.

Of course that could make the prakrits anterior to both Pali and Sanskrit. One example would be the word for cotton - kapas. It is attested in this form earlier - kapazum - than the Sanskrit karpas, but interestingly it is the latter that has an Indo-European spread!

Cotton:
Vedic *karpāsa
Mesopotamian kapazum
Greek karposos
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/h...pdf?sequence=1

[anthroin]

Sorry, that sentence is very badly worded,
I meant that was no evidence for the 'pAr' in #208 with the meaning (boundary, other side, distant) being originally associated with Dravidian, but it has been found in both Indo-Aryan and Iranian regardless of ultimate origin(which is what parasar was talking about).
The seer etymology does seem likely to me, but it does nothing to tell us how the term came to be widespread among long-diverged groups

Sorry! I could not be bothered very much yesterday and thus did not read through all the posts very carefully. My idea was that the word with the etymological 'seer' meaning may have existed from a common stage (Proto-South-Dravidian perhaps) but then later on the all individual languages independently added the 'Brahmin' meaning to it. Highly unlikely maybe, but there is also the possibility of borrowing from Tamil/Kannada into all the other languages. But all this is in jeopardy because, as you also noted in one of your other posts, even the Central Dravidian Naiki has the 'Brahmin' meaning.

[anthroin]

...
Anyway those Satavahana inscriptions aren't even in Proto-Dravidian, that's simply Old Tamil, even I can make sense of it.

They were issued in Tamil in a Telugu-speaking region(yes, Telugu had "evolved" by then and had long split from what was to become Tamil) because Telugu had yet to gain official prominence.

ARaHaN and MaKaN aren't words in Telugu to my knowledge, but are present in Tamil. Ironically the first one is from Indo-Aryan.


Sources calling the inscriptions Prakrit and Tamil:
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...0tamil&f=false

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...0tamil&f=false

...

Yes, I also believe this. (And did they actually find any Prakrit-Old Tamil bilingual coins from Andhra territories of the Satavahanas too, as opposed to from Maharashtra and other places?) It is rather interesting that Satavahanas used those Prakrit-Old Tamil bilingual coins in more northwesterly areas too, as opposed to just in their recently conquered Tamil territories (according to the understanding of this brilliant guy at https://qr.ae/TcGrgZ). These things may have been majorly for sea ports used for oceanic trade and Satavahanas were asserting their control over both the grand regions of India (far south and the non-far-south) by minting their coinage in the lingua francas of both the far south (Old Tamil) and the non-far-south (Prakrits). Is there a way I could be right? Do these coins majorly tend to be found from ports in Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc.?

[client]

Perhaps they were issued as victory coins for the capture of Saka regions? And Tamil was included to showcase the extent of their control.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...=tamil&f=false


The analysis here is good, but the conclusions drawn are amusing.

[tipirneni]

While Pali and Prakrits were not used by Brahmins, both Pali and Prakrits were IndoAryan languages and ultimately derived from Vedic Sanskrit, which seems to have been brought by MLBA-rich people from Central Asia.

How do you know if the the Pali & Prakrit had Sanskrit from only source post MLBA migration. The Indo-European words may not be from Sanskrit only if that previous language already evolved. Some Prakrits were already using Aramaic as the script if you can see the Mauryan inscriptions.


There might have been some older Indo-Iranian words too in these early prakrits. We don't know if there was an Mittani like language assimilated into early Indo-Aryans from previous migrations. These are all not addressed due to lack of archaeological records and time/money from govt.

[tipirneni]

Perhaps they were issued as victory coins for the capture of Saka regions? And Tamil was included to showcase the extent of their control.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...=tamil&f=false

They are early Telugu or Paisachi which is a northern version of it. There is no written Sanskrit evidence before evidence of aramaic script used for Pali.

If you look at people, the names like Reddi/Raddi, Kamma are all clearly Andhra ones not present in early Tamil kingdoms. Using your logic that Sanskrit is related or was originating language for to some PIE languages, I can argue that these words derived from an archiac Aramaic language spoken by some of the early charioteers working for the Magadhan kingdoms that had vast contacts with early EEF and some migrations in Steppe/Central Asia/even South East and Japan. These Aramaic root words are widely present in Europe, Steppe and some part of Asia.

There is not much funding for the study of these archaic languages influence in early Iron age in South Asia also on presence of autosome or mtDNA of these people. I am getting vast number of hits at small percent on these early migrations in Mediterranean area and some part of Europe. There are lakhs of people like me in South that are getting these hits but not much research being done due to apathy of few people.

[tipirneni]

Aramaic was the official language of the Achaemenid Empire and there was fusion of populations like Hurrians & Gutians Mittanis with Median & Scythian tribes who were slowly started working for the new masters. Some of these might have settled in South Asia bringing the new language and script which later became Brahmi script that evolved into widely used Devanagri script today. There was stable empire and language for these people at-least few thousand years before and also rich trade relations with emerging European powers and Eurasia. There was some settlements in India before Indo-greeks and during Parthians and Kambojas before but not properly explored. Even Magadh artifacts like punch marked coins are derived from early Asia minor/Achaemenid ones. There is no archealogical record of MLBA migrations bringing in new technologies or script/writing or trading etc. There are huge number of these relations that are not properly explored from the archaeological view points before due to lack of funding.

[anthroin]

Perhaps they were issued as victory coins for the capture of Saka regions? And Tamil was included to showcase the extent of their control.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=...=tamil&f=false


The analysis here is good, but the conclusions drawn are amusing.

Haha, indeed! People liked to be somewhat politically correct in those days, or had limited knowledge of Dravidian linguistics, or both, perhaps.

[parasar]

Aramaic was the official language of the Achaemenid Empire and there was fusion of populations like Hurrians & Gutians Mittanis with Median & Scythian tribes who were slowly started working for the new masters. Some of these might have settled in South Asia bringing the new language and script which later became Brahmi script that evolved into widely used Devanagri script today. There was stable empire and language for these people at-least few thousand years before and also rich trade relations with emerging European powers and Eurasia. There was some settlements in India before Indo-greeks and during Parthians and Kambojas before but not properly explored. Even Magadh artifacts like punch marked coins are derived from early Asia minor/Achaemenid ones. There is no archealogical record of MLBA migrations bringing in new technologies or script/writing or trading etc. There are huge number of these relations that are not properly explored from the archaeological view points before due to lack of funding.

Yes that Aramaic is very interesting.

BŠNT 10 | ḤZY | PRYDRŠ MLK' | RQ DḤ'
MH MṢD BRYWT KWRY
MN ŠRYRYN DWDY MH 'BD RYQ QŠTN
200 ZNH TMH TDMR ŠMH ZNH 'RH' KNPTY SHTY
GNT' YTRY 120 TRT' TNH 100 'L' 80
'M W'ŠW DYN'

The Aramaic inscriptions have the 'Sanskrit' form of Asok's name - priyadarshi - while the Greek version has the 'Prakrit' piyadasi form - piodases. It is almost as if it was the Aramaics who were responsible for 'sanskritization.'
The inscription also shows the long distance connection of the Moriyas as the town of Tadmar* is mentioned. تَدْمُر https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadmur_District

Asok says in another inscription that his boundary to the west was 600 yojans (or about 4200 miles) from Magadh, again pointing to Syria where Antiochos was ruling, as the border with the Yon kings.
"on the borders, even six hundred yojanas away, where the Yona king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule"


*
"Records of the name "Tadmor" date from the early second millennium BC;[1] eighteenth century BC tablets from Mari written in cuneiform record the name as "Ta-ad-mi-ir", while Assyrian inscriptions of the eleventh century BC record it as "Ta-ad-mar".[2] Aramaic Palmyrene inscriptions themselves showed two variants of the name; TDMR (i.e. Tadmar) and TDMWR (i.e. Tadmor).[3][4] The etymology of the name is unclear; the standard interpretation, supported by Albert Schultens, connects it to the Semitic word for "date palm", tamar (תמר),[note 1][7][8] thus referring to the palm trees that surrounded the city.[8]

The Greek name Παλμύρα (Latinized Palmyra) was first recorded by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD.[9] It was used throughout the Greco-Roman world.[7] It is generally believed that "Palmyra" derives from "Tadmor""

[discreetmaverick]

I would say that both Sanskrit and Pali are refined/structured/canonized versions of the prakrits prevalent in their region of development. In that sense Pali would be a form of Magadhi prakrit and Sanskrit would be a refined form of Gandhari or perhaps Paishachi prakrit.

Of course that could make the prakrits anterior to both Pali and Sanskrit. One example would be the word for cotton - kapas. It is attested in this form earlier - kapazum - than the Sanskrit karpas, but interestingly it is the latter that has an Indo-European spread!

Cotton:
Vedic *karpāsa
Mesopotamian kapazum
Greek karposos
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/h...pdf?sequence=1

Took the discussion to here

https://anthrogenica.com/showthread....scussion/page7