If Sanskrit was not discovered… (original) (raw)
Related papers
FOURTEEN INDO-EUROPEAN ETYMOLOGIES IN HONOUR OF KLAUS KARTTUNEN
Pūrvāparaprajñābhinandanam. East and West, Past and Present. Indological and Other Essays in Honour of Klaus Karttunen, 2010
My academic career in comparative Indo-European linguistics began with Classical Philology (Greek and Latin) and Indo-Iranian languages (Sanskrit and Avestan). In this regard I have much common in with Klaus Karttunen, my former teacher and a supervisor of my dissertation, now celebrating his 60th birthday. It is my utmost pleasure to contribute to this volume a paper on Indo-European etymologies, related in various ways to Italo-Greek and Indo-Iranian, and dedicate it to Klaus Karttunen. 1
The Opaque History of Indo-European Languages
This paper is about the early history of the Indo-European language family: about its probable 'Homeland', break-up, and branching. There are many different models and theories that claim to trace this process and many more variations of these models. But none of these have managed to build a respectable consensus in favor of it. The history of a language or the pattern of movements of its past speakers can be 'proved' only if we have direct evidence or clear attestation of it from the relevant period. The earliest available texts in IE languages are all from periods millennia after the breakup of its proto form. These archaic forms are mostly incomprehensible and are more mythological than historical. If there are any relevant historical content in these, we have not found the means to identify them. Thus, any theory on these processes can only be based on indirect evidence and subjective inferences.
This succinct article envisages depicting the study of the origin of languages since antiquity till the 18th and mid 19th centuries. Numerous papers have been written on the subject of the history of linguistics or topics related to linguistics, especially so after oriental scholars deciphered the starting point of European languages by the middle of the 19th century, with the discovery of Sanskrit and Old Persian languages, thus coinciding with the unearthing of the family tree of Indo-European languages. From an historical perspective, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophers who first questioned the nature of languages; to the Romans who divulged Latin throughout the Empire; to the study of Hebrew during the early Middle Ages; to the preliminary comparison of Sanskrit during the Renaissance; and finally ending with various European scholars who intellectually linked East and West throughout the Oriental Renaissance in the late18th century, this article will highlight the most significant traits of this discovery. To sum up, who and what led to this breakthrough. Lastly, wherever relevant it may be, this expose will also bring to light, European travelers to the Indian continent who may have willingly or unwillingly contributed to the decipherment of the Indo-European languages. Keywords: Indo-European, oriental scholars, discovery, languages.
Linguistics in Premodern India
Published in "Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics". Ed. Mark Aronoff, New York, Oxford University Press, 2018
Indian linguistic thought begins around the 8 th-6 th centuries BC with the composition of Padapāṭhas (word-for-word recitation of Vedic texts where phonological rules are not applied). It took various forms over these twenty-six centuries and involved different languages (Ancient, Middle and Modern Indo-Aryan as well as Dravidian languages). The greater part of documented thought is related to Sanskrit (Ancient Indo-Aryan). Very early, the oral transmission of sacred texts-the Vedas, composed in Vedic Sanskrit-made it necessary to develop techniques based on a subtle analysis of language. The Vedas also-but presumably later-gave birth to bodies of knowledge dealing with language, which are traditionally called Vedāṅgas: phonetics (śikṣā), metrics (chandas), grammar (vyākaraṇa) and semantic explanation (nirvacana, nirukta). Later on, Vedic exegesis (mīmāṃsā), new dialectics (navya-nyāya), lexicography (nighaṇṭu and later, kośa) as well as poetics (alaṃkāra) also contributed to linguistic thought. Though languages other than Sanskrit were described in premodern India, the grammatical description of Sanskrit-given in Sanskrit-dominated and influenced them more or less strongly. Sanskrit grammar (vyākaraṇa) has a long history marked by several major steps (Padapāṭha versions of Vedic texts, Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, Bhartṛhari's works, Siddhāntakaumudī of Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita, Nāgeśa's works) and the main topics it addresses (minimal meaning-bearer units, classes of words, relation between word and meaning/referent, the primary meaning/referent of nouns) are still central issues for contemporary Linguistics.
Filip Vesdin and the comparison of Sanskrit with Iranian and Germanic languages
Language & History 62 (3): 195-226, 2019
Filip Vesdin, known by his monastic name Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo (1748–1806), was a Carmelite missionary stationed from 1776 to 1789 in Southwestern India. Vesdin authored an impressive opus of 32 books and smaller treatises on Brahmanic religion and customs, oriental manuscripts and antiques collections, language comparison and missionary history. This article focuses on the field of language comparison, principally on Vesdin’s book De antiquitate et affinitate linguae Zendicae, Samscrdamicae, et Germanicae dissertatio (= Dissertation on the Antiquity and the Affinity of the Zend, Sanskrit, and Germanic Languages), published in Rome in 1798. In this rather short treatise (56 pages), the most important part consists of three word-lists where a large number of words from Avestan, Sanskrit and Germanic languages are compared in order to prove that these languages are related. The paper presents Vesdin’s three word-lists together with a description and evaluation of his views on the relationships between these languages in order to highlight his significance in the history of comparative and historical linguistics. The paper also provides new insights into the relationship of De antiquitate to Vesdin’s later proto-linguistic treatise, De Latini sermonis origine (1802).
Among the overwhelming majority of linguists, the accepted model for the genetic affiliation of the Indic languages (Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Bengali, etc.) is what can be called the Indo-European model. According to the Indo-European model, Indic languages are all descended from a single language that no longer exists (sometimes referred to as Proto-Indo-European), which is also the ancestor of the languages of Iran and most of the languages of Europe. In this paper I will offer a brief presentation of the assumptions underlying the Indo-European model and I examine two separate critical appraisals of it by the linguists Angela Marcantonio and Nikolay Trubetzkoy. I show that neither of their criticisms succeed in casting sufficient doubt on the Indo-European hypothesis, and neither offers an adequate explanation of the existing linguistic data. In the second half of the paper I shall draw a distinction between the hypothesis of a reconstructed Indo-European parent language, and the reconstruction of the culture and homeland of its original speakers. Acceptance of the hypothesis of the Indo-European model of language relationship need not entail acceptance of any single hypothesis about the prehistoric migrations of speakers of Indo-European languages or about their original culture.
Selected writings on Indian linguistics and philology
1997
Introduction (by M. Witzel). A. PAN-INDIAN. DRAVIDIAN AND MUNDA STUDIES. B. VEDIC AND IRANIAN STUDIES. C. NOTES ON VEDIC NOUN-INFLEXION. Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, 5/4, pp. 161-256. Word index (by A. Lubotsky and M.S. Oort). Errata.