01-13-2006, 01:57 AM
<b>Elam and Dravidian language connection:</b>
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...rasschaert.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->most <b>linguists believe that Dravidian entered India from southern Iran </b>(Elam/Makran), while the origins of Sino-Tibetan were in the middle basin of the Yellow River in China.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's best to be careful about this, as it is not a proven fact. Linguists believe the Dravidian languages came to India from the Mediterranean via South Iran. But according to genetics I thought the origin of Sino-Tibetan wasn't in China. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...d/urheimat.html<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This would fit in with David <b>McAlpin's Elamo-Dravidian theory, which puts Proto-Elamo-Dravidian on the coast of Iran</b>, spreading westwards to Mesopotamia (Elam) and eastwards to Sindh and along the Indian coast southward.28 This theory is supported by the similarities between the undeciphered early Elamite script and the Harappan script, and by the survival of the Brahui Dravidian speech pocket in Baluchistan. It would make the Harappan culture area bi- and possibly multi-lingual: a perfectly normal situation, comparable with multi-lingual Mesopotamia or with Latin-Greek bilinguism in the Roman Empire.
But in that case, Indo-Aryan influence on Dravidian may be much older than usually assumed, and date back well into the heyday of Harappan culture. However, the Dravidians influenced by Indo-Aryan in Gujarat and Maharashtra may have been a dead-end in the history of Dravidian, losing their language altogether. There is <b>no trace of Harappans migrating south</b>, whether to save their Dravidian language from Indo-Aryan contamination or for other, more likely reasons. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
However, <b>not all agree to the general belief that Brahui is a Dravidian language</b>. Eg. Bernard Sergent disputes it ( http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/sergent.html ):<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->At this point, it is customary to point to the Dravidian Brahui speakers of Baluchistan (living in the vicinity of Mehrgarh) as a remnant of the Dravidian Harappans. However, <b>Sergent proposes that the Brahui speakers</b>, far from being a native remnant of a pre-Harappan population of Baluchistan, <b>only immigrated into Baluchistan from inner India in the early Muslim period</b>. Given that Baluchi, a West-Iranian language, only established itself in Baluchistan in the 13th century ("for 2000 years, India has been retreating before Iran", p.29; indeed, both Baluchistan, including the Brahminical place of pilgrimage Hinglaj, and the Northwest Frontier Province, homeland of Panini, were partly Indo-Aryan-speaking before Baluchi and Pashtu moved in), and that the only Indo-Iranian loans in Brahui are from Baluchi and not from Pehlevi or Sindhi, Sergent deduces that Brahui was imported into its present habitat only that late. (p.130) We'll have to <b>leave that as just a proposal for now: a Central-Indian Dravidian population migrated to Baluchistan in perhaps the 14th century</b>.
...
Sergent is also skeptical of David MacAlpin's thesis of an "Elamo-Dravidian" language family: <b>what isoglosses there are between Elamite and Dravidian can be explained sufficiently through contact rather than common origin</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Regarding the <b>Baluchis </b>from West-Iran, http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch45.htm states:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the<b> Baluchis have immigrated into this area from Western Iran during the early Muslim period</b>. Before that, in most of the areas where Pashtu and Baluchi are now spoken, the language was Indo-Aryan Prakrit. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Various origins given for the "Dravidians".</b>
No one seems to agree or be certain about where the Dravidian language family comes from. (Or are they talking about Dravidian as people?) It seems there's little interest to research this language family, most are only interested in the "Indo-European" one, else why are there so many theories:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...ism/kamdar.html <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And the <b>Dravidians are traced back by various scholars to Elam, Central Asia or even Africa</b>, immigrating into India only in the early Harappan age. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Central Asia is most interesting. So the Dravidians are also geographically Central Asians? Dravidians are also geographically Iranians? The only difference with the AIT's scenario of marauding Indo-Europeans invading from Central Asia then is the linguistic family in question and the time of entry. (We all know humans are from Africa, so the last possibility is nothing clever.) What about the South Indian Kumari Kandam origins? Who do we believe? The ancient Tamil people or the motivated western scholars? Hmmm. I must bear in mind that none of the above has taken into account the recent genetics research.
<b>Dravidian and Finno-Ugric links:</b>
Others believe the Dravidian languages were the origin if not part of the origin of the Finno-Ugric languags (Finnish, Saami, Turkic, Hun, etc.). See http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch34.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The most important theory in this line of research is the <b>Nostratic superfamily theory, postulating a common origin for Eskimo-Aleut, Altaic, Uralic, IE, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and possibly South-Caucasian</b>. Some people make fun of this theory, and refer it jokingly to the ânostratosphereâ, yet its basic postulate makes perfect sense: differentiation of ancestor-languages, as attested in detail in the case of Latin and the Romance language family, must have happened at earlier stages of history as well. Whether the present superfamily theory and the methods actually used for reconstructing the supposed Nostratic vocabulary are at all acceptable, is a different matter.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And again, at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../keaitlin2.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A third partner in this relationÂship must also be taken into account, though its connection with Uralic looks older and deeper than that of PIE: Dravidian. <b>Witzel (1999/1:349) acknowledges the "linguiÂstic connections of Dravidian with Uralic". </b>Both are families of agglutiÂnative languages with flexive tendencies, abhorring consonant clusters and favouring the stress on the first syllable. Sergent (1997:65-72) maps out their relationship in some detail, again pointing to the northwest outside India as the origin of Dravidian. We may ignore Sergent's theory of an African origin of Dravidian for now, and limit our attention to his less eccentric position that a <b>Proto-Dravidian group at one point ended up in Central Asia</b>, there to leave substraÂtum traces discerniÂble even in the IE immigrant language Tocharian. <b>The most successful lineage of Dravidians outside India was the one which mixed its language with some Palaeo-Siberian tongue, yielding the Uralic languaÂge family.</b>
...
The interacÂtion of the three may perhaps be illustrated by the word *kota/koTa, "tent, house" in Uralic and in Dravidian, and also in Sanskrit and Avestan but not in any other branch of IE: perhaps Dravidian gave it to Uralic as a birth gift, and later imparted it to those IE languages it could still reach when in India. <b>If this part of the evidence leaves it as conjectural that India was the habitat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, it does at least argue strongly for some Central-Asian population centre, most likely Bactria-Sogdia, as the meeting-place of Proto-Uralic, Proto-Dravidian and PIE</b>, before IE and Uralic would start their duet of continuous (one-way) linguistic interaction on their parallel migrations westward.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
About the<b> theory of âElamo-Dravidianâ, originating in southern Iran</b>, once again:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch9.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This theory, as well as the âevidenceâ for Western origins of Dravidian constituted by a Dravidian (Brahui) speech pocket in Baluchistan, is rejected by Bernard Sergent (Genèse de lâInde, p.45-84), but he offers other indications for a non-Indian origin of Dravidian, linking it with Uralic and even some African languages (though, if correct, <b>the-se data could equally support a scenario of Dravidian expansion from India</b>). <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It would make sense insofar as according to genetics India was populated before other Non-African countries.
In conclusion, if there is any relation between the Aila clan and Elam (Elamites), it would be interesting to find out conclusively if Elam is related to the Dravidian language family and if Aila is referring to Elam. I'm not sure of the Aila-Elam link, nor even of the more popular belief in the Dravidian-Elam link - but if true, it would connect Dravidian and Indo-Aryan linguistic groups as well as Indian tribal affiliations. But I don't know. And what's with the many Dravidian-Urheimat scenarios anyway?
Does anyone here know Tamil? "Liberation Tigers of Tamil <b>Eelam</b>" (LTTE of Sri Lanka). What does Eelam mean?
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...rasschaert.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->most <b>linguists believe that Dravidian entered India from southern Iran </b>(Elam/Makran), while the origins of Sino-Tibetan were in the middle basin of the Yellow River in China.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's best to be careful about this, as it is not a proven fact. Linguists believe the Dravidian languages came to India from the Mediterranean via South Iran. But according to genetics I thought the origin of Sino-Tibetan wasn't in China. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...d/urheimat.html<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This would fit in with David <b>McAlpin's Elamo-Dravidian theory, which puts Proto-Elamo-Dravidian on the coast of Iran</b>, spreading westwards to Mesopotamia (Elam) and eastwards to Sindh and along the Indian coast southward.28 This theory is supported by the similarities between the undeciphered early Elamite script and the Harappan script, and by the survival of the Brahui Dravidian speech pocket in Baluchistan. It would make the Harappan culture area bi- and possibly multi-lingual: a perfectly normal situation, comparable with multi-lingual Mesopotamia or with Latin-Greek bilinguism in the Roman Empire.
But in that case, Indo-Aryan influence on Dravidian may be much older than usually assumed, and date back well into the heyday of Harappan culture. However, the Dravidians influenced by Indo-Aryan in Gujarat and Maharashtra may have been a dead-end in the history of Dravidian, losing their language altogether. There is <b>no trace of Harappans migrating south</b>, whether to save their Dravidian language from Indo-Aryan contamination or for other, more likely reasons. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
However, <b>not all agree to the general belief that Brahui is a Dravidian language</b>. Eg. Bernard Sergent disputes it ( http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/sergent.html ):<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->At this point, it is customary to point to the Dravidian Brahui speakers of Baluchistan (living in the vicinity of Mehrgarh) as a remnant of the Dravidian Harappans. However, <b>Sergent proposes that the Brahui speakers</b>, far from being a native remnant of a pre-Harappan population of Baluchistan, <b>only immigrated into Baluchistan from inner India in the early Muslim period</b>. Given that Baluchi, a West-Iranian language, only established itself in Baluchistan in the 13th century ("for 2000 years, India has been retreating before Iran", p.29; indeed, both Baluchistan, including the Brahminical place of pilgrimage Hinglaj, and the Northwest Frontier Province, homeland of Panini, were partly Indo-Aryan-speaking before Baluchi and Pashtu moved in), and that the only Indo-Iranian loans in Brahui are from Baluchi and not from Pehlevi or Sindhi, Sergent deduces that Brahui was imported into its present habitat only that late. (p.130) We'll have to <b>leave that as just a proposal for now: a Central-Indian Dravidian population migrated to Baluchistan in perhaps the 14th century</b>.
...
Sergent is also skeptical of David MacAlpin's thesis of an "Elamo-Dravidian" language family: <b>what isoglosses there are between Elamite and Dravidian can be explained sufficiently through contact rather than common origin</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Regarding the <b>Baluchis </b>from West-Iran, http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch45.htm states:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the<b> Baluchis have immigrated into this area from Western Iran during the early Muslim period</b>. Before that, in most of the areas where Pashtu and Baluchi are now spoken, the language was Indo-Aryan Prakrit. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Various origins given for the "Dravidians".</b>
No one seems to agree or be certain about where the Dravidian language family comes from. (Or are they talking about Dravidian as people?) It seems there's little interest to research this language family, most are only interested in the "Indo-European" one, else why are there so many theories:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...ism/kamdar.html <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And the <b>Dravidians are traced back by various scholars to Elam, Central Asia or even Africa</b>, immigrating into India only in the early Harappan age. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Central Asia is most interesting. So the Dravidians are also geographically Central Asians? Dravidians are also geographically Iranians? The only difference with the AIT's scenario of marauding Indo-Europeans invading from Central Asia then is the linguistic family in question and the time of entry. (We all know humans are from Africa, so the last possibility is nothing clever.) What about the South Indian Kumari Kandam origins? Who do we believe? The ancient Tamil people or the motivated western scholars? Hmmm. I must bear in mind that none of the above has taken into account the recent genetics research.
<b>Dravidian and Finno-Ugric links:</b>
Others believe the Dravidian languages were the origin if not part of the origin of the Finno-Ugric languags (Finnish, Saami, Turkic, Hun, etc.). See http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch34.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The most important theory in this line of research is the <b>Nostratic superfamily theory, postulating a common origin for Eskimo-Aleut, Altaic, Uralic, IE, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and possibly South-Caucasian</b>. Some people make fun of this theory, and refer it jokingly to the ânostratosphereâ, yet its basic postulate makes perfect sense: differentiation of ancestor-languages, as attested in detail in the case of Latin and the Romance language family, must have happened at earlier stages of history as well. Whether the present superfamily theory and the methods actually used for reconstructing the supposed Nostratic vocabulary are at all acceptable, is a different matter.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And again, at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../keaitlin2.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A third partner in this relationÂship must also be taken into account, though its connection with Uralic looks older and deeper than that of PIE: Dravidian. <b>Witzel (1999/1:349) acknowledges the "linguiÂstic connections of Dravidian with Uralic". </b>Both are families of agglutiÂnative languages with flexive tendencies, abhorring consonant clusters and favouring the stress on the first syllable. Sergent (1997:65-72) maps out their relationship in some detail, again pointing to the northwest outside India as the origin of Dravidian. We may ignore Sergent's theory of an African origin of Dravidian for now, and limit our attention to his less eccentric position that a <b>Proto-Dravidian group at one point ended up in Central Asia</b>, there to leave substraÂtum traces discerniÂble even in the IE immigrant language Tocharian. <b>The most successful lineage of Dravidians outside India was the one which mixed its language with some Palaeo-Siberian tongue, yielding the Uralic languaÂge family.</b>
...
The interacÂtion of the three may perhaps be illustrated by the word *kota/koTa, "tent, house" in Uralic and in Dravidian, and also in Sanskrit and Avestan but not in any other branch of IE: perhaps Dravidian gave it to Uralic as a birth gift, and later imparted it to those IE languages it could still reach when in India. <b>If this part of the evidence leaves it as conjectural that India was the habitat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, it does at least argue strongly for some Central-Asian population centre, most likely Bactria-Sogdia, as the meeting-place of Proto-Uralic, Proto-Dravidian and PIE</b>, before IE and Uralic would start their duet of continuous (one-way) linguistic interaction on their parallel migrations westward.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
About the<b> theory of âElamo-Dravidianâ, originating in southern Iran</b>, once again:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch9.htm <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This theory, as well as the âevidenceâ for Western origins of Dravidian constituted by a Dravidian (Brahui) speech pocket in Baluchistan, is rejected by Bernard Sergent (Genèse de lâInde, p.45-84), but he offers other indications for a non-Indian origin of Dravidian, linking it with Uralic and even some African languages (though, if correct, <b>the-se data could equally support a scenario of Dravidian expansion from India</b>). <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It would make sense insofar as according to genetics India was populated before other Non-African countries.
In conclusion, if there is any relation between the Aila clan and Elam (Elamites), it would be interesting to find out conclusively if Elam is related to the Dravidian language family and if Aila is referring to Elam. I'm not sure of the Aila-Elam link, nor even of the more popular belief in the Dravidian-Elam link - but if true, it would connect Dravidian and Indo-Aryan linguistic groups as well as Indian tribal affiliations. But I don't know. And what's with the many Dravidian-Urheimat scenarios anyway?
Does anyone here know Tamil? "Liberation Tigers of Tamil <b>Eelam</b>" (LTTE of Sri Lanka). What does Eelam mean?