01-13-2006, 02:02 AM
<b>Bangani, a Kentum language in India: </b>http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../keaitlin1.html <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Moreover, the discovery of a small and extinct kentum language inside India (ProtoâBangani, with koto as its word for "hundred"), surviving as a sizable substratum in the Himalayan language Bangani, tends to support the hypothesis that the older kentum form was originally present in India as well. This discovery was made by the German linguist Claus Peter Zoller (1987, 1988, 1989). The attempt by George van Driem and Suhnu R. Sharma (1996) to discredit Zoller has been overruled by the findings made on the spot by Anvita Abbi (1998) and her students. She has almost entirely confirmed Zoller's list of kentum substratum words in Bangani. But as the trite phrase goes: this calls for more reseaÂrch.
Zoller does not explain the presence of a kentum language in India through an Indian Homeland Theory but as a left-over of a pre-Vedic Indo-European immigration into India. He claims that the local people have a tradition of their immigration from Afghanistan. If they really lived in Afghanistan originalÂly, their case (and their nuisance value for the AIT) isn't too different from that of the Tocharians, another kentum people showing up in unexÂpected quarters. But if even the Vedic poets could not recall the invasion of their grandfathers into India (Vedic literature doesn't mention it anywhere, vide Elst 1999:164-171), what value should we attach to a tradition of this mountain tribe about its own immigration many centuries ago? Could it not rather be that they have interiorized what the school-going ones among them picked up in standard textbooks of history, viz. the AIT model? Their presence in Afghanistan or in Garhwal itself is at any rate highly compatible with the OIT.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And an interesting piece of information in footnote #90 at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch54.htm
The famous <b>placename "Susa" was Elamite</b>. I never knew: <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->90Remark that the Iranian name Hindu for âIndusâ, hence also for âIndiaâ, indicates that the Iranians have lived near the Indus. If they had not, then Sindhu would have been a foreign term which they would have left intact, just as they kept the <b>Elamite city name Susa </b>intact (rather than evolving it to Huha or something like that). But because Sindhu was part of their own vocabulary, it followed the evolution of Iranian phonetics to become Hindu.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Zoller does not explain the presence of a kentum language in India through an Indian Homeland Theory but as a left-over of a pre-Vedic Indo-European immigration into India. He claims that the local people have a tradition of their immigration from Afghanistan. If they really lived in Afghanistan originalÂly, their case (and their nuisance value for the AIT) isn't too different from that of the Tocharians, another kentum people showing up in unexÂpected quarters. But if even the Vedic poets could not recall the invasion of their grandfathers into India (Vedic literature doesn't mention it anywhere, vide Elst 1999:164-171), what value should we attach to a tradition of this mountain tribe about its own immigration many centuries ago? Could it not rather be that they have interiorized what the school-going ones among them picked up in standard textbooks of history, viz. the AIT model? Their presence in Afghanistan or in Garhwal itself is at any rate highly compatible with the OIT.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And an interesting piece of information in footnote #90 at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch54.htm
The famous <b>placename "Susa" was Elamite</b>. I never knew: <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->90Remark that the Iranian name Hindu for âIndusâ, hence also for âIndiaâ, indicates that the Iranians have lived near the Indus. If they had not, then Sindhu would have been a foreign term which they would have left intact, just as they kept the <b>Elamite city name Susa </b>intact (rather than evolving it to Huha or something like that). But because Sindhu was part of their own vocabulary, it followed the evolution of Iranian phonetics to become Hindu.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->