Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit was an ancient language of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature compiled over the period of the mid- 2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE. It was orally preser ...
has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
. Prominent examples include:
phonologically
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, the introduction of
retroflex
A retroflex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal (Help:IPA/English, /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated betw ...
es, which alternate with
dentals, and
morphologically, the formation of
gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable ...
s.
Some philologists attribute such features, as well as the presence of non-Indo-European vocabulary, to a local
substratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
of languages encountered by
Indo-Aryan peoples
Indo-Aryan peoples are a diverse collection of Indo-European peoples speaking Indo-Aryan languages in the Indian subcontinent. Historically, Aryan were the Indo-European pastoralists who migrated from Central Asia into South Asia and intr ...
in Central Asia (
Bactria-Marghiana) and within the Indian subcontinent, including the
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
.
Scholars have claimed to identify a substantial body of loanwords in the earliest Indian texts, including evidence of Non-Indo-Aryan elements (such as -s- following -u- in Rigvedic ''busa''). While some postulated loanwords are from
Dravidian, and other forms are traceable to
Munda[ or Proto-]Burushaski
Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people in ...
, the bulk have no proven basis in any of the known families, suggesting a source in one or more lost languages. The discovery that some words taken to be loans from one of these lost sources had also been preserved in the earliest Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
ian texts, and also in Tocharian, convinced Michael Witzel
Michael Witzel (born July 18, 1943) is a German-American philologist, comparative mythologist and Indologist. Witzel is the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and the editor of the Harvard Oriental Series (volumes 50–80).
Witze ...
and Alexander Lubotsky
Alexander "Sasha" Lubotsky (russian: Александр Маркович Лубоцкий; born 16 April 1956) is a Russian linguist and Indologist who specializes in the study of Indo-Iranian languages. He is the editor-in-chief of the Leiden ''I ...
that the source lay in Central Asia and could be associated with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (short BMAC) or Oxus Civilization, recently dated to c. 2250–1700 BC,Lyonnet, Bertille, and Nadezhda A. Dubova, (2020b)"Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria- Margiana Archaeological Cultu ...
(BMAC). Another lost language is that of the Indus Valley civilization
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...
, which Witzel initially labelled Para-Munda, but later the Kubhā-Vipāś substrate.
Phonology
Retroflex phonemes are now found throughout the Burushaski
Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people in ...
, Nuristani, Dravidian and Munda families. They are reconstructed for Proto-Burushaski, Proto-Dravidian and (to a minimal extent) for Proto-Munda, and are thus clearly an areal feature
In geolinguistics, areal features are elements shared by languages or dialects in a geographic area, particularly when such features are not descended from a proto-language, or, common ancestor language. That is, an areal feature is contrasted to ...
of the Indian subcontinent. They are not reconstructible for either Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
or Proto-Indo-Iranian, and they are also not found in Mitanni
Mitanni (; Hittite cuneiform ; ''Mittani'' '), c. 1550–1260 BC, earlier called Ḫabigalbat in old Babylonian texts, c. 1600 BC; Hanigalbat or Hani-Rabbat (''Hanikalbat'', ''Khanigalbat'', cuneiform ') in Assyrian records, or ''Naharin'' in ...
–Indo-Aryan loanwords.
The acquisition of the phonological trait by early Indo-Aryan is thus unsurprising, but it does not immediately permit identification of the donor language. Since the adoption of a retroflex series does not affect poetic meter
In poetry, metre ( Commonwealth spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of ...
, it is impossible to say if it predates the early portions of the Rigveda or was a part of Indo-Aryan when the Rigvedic verses were being composed; however, it is certain that at the time of the redaction of the Rigveda (ca. 500 BC), the retroflex series had become part of Sanskrit phonology. There is a clear predominance of retroflexion in the Northwest ( Nuristani, Dardic, Khotanese Saka, Burushaski
Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people in ...
), involving affricates, sibilants and even vowels
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
(in Kalasha
A kalasha, also spelled kalash or kalasa, also called ghat or ghot ( sa, कलश , Telugu: కలశము Kannada: ಕಳಶ literally "pitcher, pot"), is a metal (brass, copper, silver or gold) pot with a large base and small mouth, large eno ...
), compared to other parts of the subcontinent. It has been suggested that this points to the regional, northwestern origin of the phenomenon in Rigvedic Sanskrit. Bertil Tikkanen is open to the idea that various syntactical
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
developments in Indo-Aryan could have been the result of adstratum
In linguistics, a stratum (Latin for "layer") or strate is a language that influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or sup ...
rather than the result of substrate influences.[ However Tikkanen states that "in view of the strictly areal implications of retroflexion and the occurrence of retroflexes in many early loanwords, it is hardly likely that Indo-Aryan retroflexion arose in a region that did not have a substratum with retroflexes."
Not only the typological development of Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, but already the phonological development from Pre-Vedic to Vedic (including even the oldest attested form in the Rig-Veda) has been seen as suggestive of Dravidian influence. However, ]Hock
Hock may refer to:
Common meanings:
* Hock (wine), a type of wine
* Hock (anatomy), part of an animal's leg
* To leave an item with a pawnbroker
People:
* Hock (surname)
* Richard "Hock" Walsh (1948-1999), Canadian blues singer
Other uses:
* A t ...
argues that Dravidian should not be considered as significant, but that retroflexion is, rather, the outcome of areal features cutting across language boundaries in the Northwest of the Indian subcontinent, and extending into Central Asia.
Vocabulary
In 1955 Burrow
An Eastern chipmunk at the entrance of its burrow
A burrow is a hole or tunnel excavated into the ground by an animal to construct a space suitable for habitation or temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of sh ...
listed some 500 words in Sanskrit that he considered to be loans from non-Indo-European languages. He noted that in the earliest form of the language such words are comparatively few, but they progressively become more numerous. Though mentioning the likelihood that one source was lost Indian languages extinguished by the advance of Indo-Aryan, he concentrated on finding loans from Dravidian. Kuiper
Kuiper is a Dutch occupational surname meaning cooper. Common spelling variants include Kuyper, Kuipers, Kuijper, Kuijpers, Kuypers, and De Kuyper. Notable people with the name include:
Kuiper
*Adrian Kuiper (born 1959), South African cricket ...
identified 383 specifically Rigvedic words as non-Indo-Aryan – roughly 4% of its vocabulary. Oberlies prefers to consider 344–358 "secure" non-Indo-European words in the Rigveda. Even if all local non-Indo-Aryan names of persons and places are subtracted from Kuiper's list, that still leaves some 211–250 "foreign" words, around 2% of the total vocabulary of the Rigveda.
These loanwords cover local flora and fauna, agriculture and artisanship, terms of toilette, clothing and household. Dancing and music are particularly prominent, and there are some items of religion and beliefs.[ They only reflect village life, and not the intricate civilization of the Indus cities, befitting a post-Harappan time frame.][ In particular, Indo-Aryan words for plants stem in large part from other language families, especially from the now-lost substrate languages.][
Mayrhofer identified a "prefixing" language as the source of many non-Indo-European words in the Rigveda, based on recurring prefixes like ''ka-'' or ''ki-'', that have been compared by Michael Witzel to the Munda prefix ''k-'' for designation of persons, and the plural prefix ''ki'' seen in Khasi, though he notes that in Vedic, ''k-'' also applies to items merely connected with humans and animals.][ Examples include:
* ''kākambīra'' a certain tree
* ''kakardu'' "wooden stick"
* ''kapardin'' "with a hair-knot"
* ''karpāsa'' "cotton"
* ''kavandha'' "barrel"
* ''kavaṣa'' "straddle-legged"
* ''kilāsa'' "spotted, leprous"
* ''kimīda'' "a demon", cf. ''śimidā'' "a demoness"
* ''kīnāśa'' "ploughman"
* ''kiyāmbu'' a water plant
* ''kulāya'' "nest"
* ''kuliśa'' "axe"
* ''kumāra'' "boy"
* ''kuluṅga'' "antelope"
* ''Kuruṅga'' name of a chieftain of the Turvaśa.
Witzel remarks that these words span all of local village life. He considers that they were drawn from the lost language of the northern Indus Civilization and its Neolithic predecessors. As they abound in Austroasiatic-like prefixes, he initially chose to call it Para-Munda, but later the Kubhā-Vipāś substrate.][
The Indo-Europeanist and Indologist Thieme has questioned Dravidian etymologies proposed for Vedic words, for most of which he gives Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit etymologies, and has condemned what he characterizes as a misplaced "zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". Das, while not discounting the possibility of foreign elements in Vedic, contended that there nevertheless is "not a single case" in which a has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rigvedic word". Kuiper answered that charge, on which Das then commented. Burrow in turn has criticized the "resort to tortuous reconstructions in order to find, by hook or by crook, Indo-European explanations for Sanskrit words". Kuiper reasons that given the abundance of Indo-European comparative material – and the scarcity of Dravidian or Munda – the inability to clearly confirm whether the etymology of a Vedic word is Indo-European implies that it is not.][
]
Lost donor languages
Colin Masica
Colin Paul Masica (June 13, 1931 – February 23, 2022) was an American linguist who was professor emeritus in thDepartment of South Asian Languages and Civilizationsand the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Besides being a s ...
could not find etymologies from Indo-European or Dravidian or Munda or as loans from Persian for 31 percent of agricultural and flora terms of Hindi. He proposed an origin in an unknown language "X". Southworth also notes that the flora terms did not come from either Dravidian or Munda. Southworth found only five terms which are shared with Munda, leading to his suggestion that "the presence of other ethnic groups, speaking other languages, must be assumed for the period in question".
Language of the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC)
Terms borrowed from an otherwise unknown language include those relating to cereal
A cereal is any Poaceae, grass cultivated for the edible components of its grain (botanically, a type of fruit called a caryopsis), composed of the endosperm, Cereal germ, germ, and bran. Cereal Grain, grain crops are grown in greater quantit ...
-growing and breadmaking (bread
Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour (usually wheat) and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cultures' diet. It is one of the oldest human-made f ...
, ploughshare
In agriculture, a plowshare ( US) or ploughshare ( UK; ) is a component of a plow (or plough). It is the cutting or leading edge of a moldboard which closely follows the coulter (one or more ground-breaking spikes) when plowing.
The plowshar ...
, seed
A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering, along with a food reserve. The formation of the seed is a part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, the spermatophytes, including the gymnosperm and angiospe ...
, sheaf
Sheaf may refer to:
* Sheaf (agriculture), a bundle of harvested cereal stems
* Sheaf (mathematics), a mathematical tool
* Sheaf toss, a Scottish sport
* River Sheaf, a tributary of River Don in England
* ''The Sheaf'', a student-run newspaper se ...
, yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constitut ...
), waterworks
Water supply is the provision of water by public utilities, commercial organisations, community endeavors or by individuals, usually via a system of pumps and pipes. Public water supply systems are crucial to properly functioning societies. Thes ...
(canal
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...
, well
A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...
), architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...
(brick, house, pillar, wooden peg), tools or weapons (axe
An axe ( sometimes ax in American English; see spelling differences) is an implement that has been used for millennia to shape, split and cut wood, to harvest timber, as a weapon, and as a ceremonial or heraldic symbol. The axe has ma ...
, club), textile
Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...
s and garment
Clothing (also known as clothes, apparel, and attire) are items worn on the human body, body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin sheets of materials ...
s (cloak, cloth, coarse garment, hem
A hem in sewing is a garment finishing method, where the edge of a piece of cloth is folded and sewn to prevent unravelling of the fabric and to adjust the length of the piece in garments, such as at the end of the sleeve or the bottom of the ga ...
, needle) and plants (hemp
Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a botanical class of ''Cannabis sativa'' cultivars grown specifically for industrial or medicinal use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest growing plants o ...
, mustard
Mustard may refer to:
Food and plants
* Mustard (condiment), a paste or sauce made from mustard seeds used as a condiment
* Mustard plant, one of several plants, having seeds that are used for the condiment
** Mustard seed, seeds of the mustard p ...
, soma
Soma may refer to:
Businesses and brands
* SOMA (architects), a New York–based firm of architects
* Soma (company), a company that designs eco-friendly water filtration systems
* SOMA Fabrications, a builder of bicycle frames and other bicycle ...
plant).[ Lubotsky pointed out that the phonological and morphological similarity of 55 loanwords in Iranian and in Sanskrit indicate that both share a common substratum, or perhaps two dialects of the same substratum. He concludes that the BMAC language of the population of the towns of Central Asia (where Indo-Iranians must have arrived in the 2nd millennium BC) and the language spoken in ]Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
(see Harappan below) were intimately related.[ However, the prevailing interpretation is that Harappan is not related, and the 55 loanwords entered Proto-Indo-Iranian during its development in the ]Sintashta culture
The Sintashta culture (russian: Синташтинская культура, Sintashtinskaya kul'tura), around 2050–1900 BCE, is the first phase of the Sintashta–Petrovka culture. or Sintashta–Arkaim culture,. and is a late Middle Bronze Ag ...
in distant contact with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex
The Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (short BMAC) or Oxus Civilization, recently dated to c. 2250–1700 BC,Lyonnet, Bertille, and Nadezhda A. Dubova, (2020b)"Questioning the Oxus Civilization or Bactria- Margiana Archaeological Cultu ...
, and then many more words with the same origin enriched Old Indic as it developed among pastoralists who integrated with and perhaps ruled over the declining BMAC.
Examples:
* BMAC * 'soma plant (ephedra)’ → Skt. ; Av.
* BMAC *''atʰr̥'' → Skt. '' átharvan'' 'priest', Av. ''āθrauuan''-/''aθaurun''- 'id.', Pehlevi ''āsrōn''; Toch. A ''atär'', B ''etre'' 'hero'
* BMAC *''bʰiš-'' 'to heal' → Skt. ''bhiṣáj''- m. 'physician'; LAv. ''bišaziia''- 'to cure'
* BMAC *''dr̥ća'' → Skt. ''dūrśa''- 'coarse garment'; Wakhi ''δirs'' 'goat or yak wool', Shughni ''δox̆c'' 'body hair; coarse cloth'
* BMAC *''gandʰ/t''- → Skt. ''gandhá''-; LAv. ''gaiṇti''- 'odor'
* BMAC *''gandʰ(a)rw''- 'mythical beast' → Skt. '' gandharvá''-; LAv. ''gaṇdərəβa''-
* BMAC *''indra'' theonym → Skt. '' Índra''; LAv. ''Iṇdra'' daeva's name
* BMAC *''išt(i)'' 'brick' → Skt. ''íṣṭakā''- f. (VS+); LAv. ''ištiia''- n., OP ''išti''- f., Pers. ''xešt''; Toch. B ''iścem'' 'clay'
* BMAC *''ǰaǰʰa/uka'' 'hedgehog' → Skt. ''jáhakā''; LAv. ''dužuka''-, Bal. ''ǰaǰuk'', Pers. ''žūža''
* BMAC *''jawījā'' 'canal, irrigation channel' → Skt. ''yavīyā''-; OP ''yauwiyā''-, Pers. ''ju(y)''
* BMAC *''k/ćan''- 'hemp' → Skt. ''śaṇa''; MP ''šan'', Khot. ''kaṃha'', Oss. ''gæn(æ)''
* BMAC *''majūkʰa'' 'wooden peg' → Skt. ''mayūkha''-; OP ''mayūxa''- 'doorknob', Pers. ''mix'' 'peg, nail'
* BMAC *''nagna'' → Skt. ''nagnáhu''- (AVP+) m. 'yeast'; Sogd. ''nɣny'', Pashto ''naɣan'', Pers. ''nān'' 'bread'
* BMAC *''sćāga'' ~ ''sćaga'' 'billy-goat' → Skt. ''chāga''-; Oss. ''sæǧ(æ)'', Wakhi ''čəɣ'' 'kid'
* BMAC *''sikatā'' 'sand, gravel' → Skt. ''sikatā''-; OP ''θikā'' 'sand', Khot. ''siyatā'', Buddh. Sogd. ''šykth''
* BMAC *''sinšap''- 'mustard' → Skt. ''sarṣapa''; Khot. ''śśaśvāna'', Parth. ''šyfš-d'n'', Sodg. ''šywšp-δn'', Pers. ''sipan-dān'' 'mustard seed'
* BMAC *''(s)pʰāra'' 'ploughshare' → Skt. ''phāla''-; Pers. ''supār''
* BMAC *''sūčī'' 'needle' → Skt. ''sūćī''; LAv. ''sūkā''-, MP ''sozan'', Oss. ''sūʒīn'' ~ ''soʒīnæ''
* BMAC *''šwaipa'' 'tail' → Skt. ''śépa''-, Prākrit ''cheppā''-; LAv. ''xšuuaēpā''-
* BMAC *''(H)uštra'' 'camel' → Skt. ''úṣṭra''-; Av. ''uštra''-, Pers. ''šotor''
Harappan
Witzel initially used the term "Para-Munda" to denote a hypothetical language related but not ancestral to modern Munda languages
The Munda languages are a group of closely related languages spoken by about nine million people in India and Bangladesh. Historically, they have been called the Kolarian languages. They constitute a branch of the Austroasiatic language famil ...
, which he identified as " Harappan", the language of the Indus Valley civilization
The Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), also known as the Indus Civilisation was a Bronze Age civilisation in the northwestern regions of South Asia, lasting from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE, and in its mature form 2600 BCE to 1900&n ...
.[ To avoid confusion with Munda, he later opted for the term "Kubhā-Vipāś substrate".][ He argues that the Rigveda shows signs of this hypothetical Harappan influence in the earliest level and Dravidian only in later levels, suggesting that speakers of Harappan were the original inhabitants of ]Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
and that the Indo-Aryans encountered speakers of Dravidian not before middle Rigvedic times.[ ]Krishnamurti
is a South Indian name. It has several spelling variants.
Variants
The following is a non-exhaustive list. Some spellings separate the name elements , e.g. .
Etymology and usage
Derived from the Hindu deity Krishna and the Sanskrit term murt ...
deems the evidence too meagre for this proposal. Regarding Witzel's methodology in claiming Para-Munda origins, Krishnamurti
is a South Indian name. It has several spelling variants.
Variants
The following is a non-exhaustive list. Some spellings separate the name elements , e.g. .
Etymology and usage
Derived from the Hindu deity Krishna and the Sanskrit term murt ...
states: "The main flaw in Witzel's argument is his inability to show a large number of complete, unanalyzed words from Munda borrowed into the first phase of the ''Ṛgveda''... It would have been better if itzelsaid we did not know the true source of 300 or so early borrowings into the ''Ṛgveda''." This statement, however, confuses Proto-Munda and Para-Munda and neglects the several hundred "complete, unanalyzed words" from a prefixing language, adduced by Kuiper[ and Witzel.][
]
Living donor languages
A concern raised in the identification of the substrate is that there is a large time gap between the comparative materials, which can be seen as a serious methodological drawback. One issue is the early geographical distribution of the South Asian languages. It should not be assumed that the present-day northern location of Brahui, Kurukh, and Malto reflects the position of their ancestor languages at the time of Indo-Aryan development. Another problem is that modern literary languages may present a misleading picture of their prehistoric ancestors. The first completely intelligible, datable, and sufficiently long and complete epigraphs that might be of some use in linguistic comparison are the Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
inscriptions of the Pallava dynasty
The Pallava dynasty existed from 275 CE to 897 CE, ruling a significant portion of the Deccan, also known as Tondaimandalam. The dynasty rose to prominence after the downfall of the Satavahana dynasty, with whom they had formerly served as fe ...
of about 550, and the early Tamil Brahmi inscriptions starting in the 2nd century BC. Similarly there is much less material available for comparative Munda and the interval in their case is at least three millennia. However reconstructions of Proto-Dravidian[ and Proto-Munda][ now help in distinguishing the traits of these languages from those of Indo-European in the evaluation of substrate and loan words.
]
Dravidian
There are an estimated thirty to forty Dravidian loanwords in Vedic. Those for which Dravidian etymologies are proposed by Zvelebil include ''kulāya'' "nest", ''kulpha'' "ankle", ' "stick", ''kūla'' "slope", ''bila'' "hollow", ''khala'' "threshing floor".[ However Witzel finds Dravidian loans only from the middle Rigvedic period, suggesting that linguistic contact between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian speakers only occurred as the Indo-Aryans expanded well into and beyond the ]Punjab
Punjab (; Punjabi: پنجاب ; ਪੰਜਾਬ ; ; also romanised as ''Panjāb'' or ''Panj-Āb'') is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising ...
.[
While ]Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
are primarily confined to the South of India today, there is a striking exception: Brahui (which is spoken in parts of Baluchistan
Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...
). It has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict
A relict is a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon.
Biology
A relict (or relic) is an organism that at an earlier time was abundant in a large area but now occurs at only one or a few small areas.
Geology and geomorphology
In geology, a r ...
population
Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...
, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant ...
were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages. Certainly some Dravidian place-names are found in now Indo-Aryan regions of central India,[ and possibly even as far northwest as ]Sindh
Sindh (; ; ur, , ; historically romanized as Sind) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan. Located in the southeastern region of the country, Sindh is the third-largest province of Pakistan by land area and the second-largest province ...
.[ However, it is now argued by Elfenbein that the Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from ]central India
Central India is a loosely defined geographical region of India. There is no clear official definition and various ones may be used. One common definition consists of the states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, which are included in alm ...
after 1000, because of the lack of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language
The Iranian languages or Iranic languages are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples, predominantly in the Iranian Plateau.
The Iranian languages are grouped ...
like Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000.
As noted above, retroflex phonemes in early Indo-Aryan cannot identify the donor language as specifically Dravidian. Krishnamurti argues the Dravidian case for other features: "Besides, the Veda has used the gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable ...
, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a nonfinite verb
A nonfinite verb is a derivative form of a verb unlike finite verbs. Accordingly, nonfinite verb forms are inflected for neither number nor person, and they cannot perform action as the root of an independent clause. In English, nonfinite verbs inc ...
for 'incomplete' action. Vedic language also attests the use of ''iti'' as a quotative
A quotative (abbreviated ) is a grammatical device to mark quoted speech in some languages, and as such it preserves the grammatical person and tense of the original utterance rather than adjusting it as would be the case with reported speech. I ...
clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
complementizer." However, such features are also found in the indigenous Burushaski language
Burushaski (; ) is a language isolate spoken by Burusho people, who reside almost entirely in northern Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, with a few hundred speakers in northern Jammu and Kashmir, India. In Pakistan, Burushaski is spoken by people in ...
of the Pamirs
The Pamir Mountains are a mountain range between Central Asia and Pakistan. It is located at a junction with other notable mountains, namely the Tian Shan, Karakoram, Kunlun, Hindu Kush and the Himalaya mountain ranges. They are among the world' ...
and cannot be attributed only to Dravidian influence on the early Rigveda. A quotative ''uiti'' is also seen in Avestan.
Munda
Kuiper identified one of the donor languages to Indo-Aryan as Proto-Munda.[ Munda linguist Gregory D. Anderson states: "It is surprising that nothing in the way of quotations from a Munda language turned up in (the hundreds and hundreds of) Sanskrit and middle-Indic texts. There is also a surprising lack of borrowings of names of plants/animal/bird, etc. into Sanskrit (Zide and Zide 1976). Much of what has been proposed for Munda words in older Indic (e.g. Kuiper 1948) has been rejected by careful analysis. Some possible Munda names have been proposed, for example, ''Savara'' (Sora) or ''Khara'', but ethnonymy is notoriously messy for the identification of language groups, and a single ethnonym may be adopted and used for linguistically rather different or entirely unrelated groups".][
]
See also
*Harappan language
The Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age () Harappan civilization (Indus Valley civilization, or IVC). The language being unattested in any readable contemporary source, hypotheses regarding its nature are re ...
*Pre-Greek substrate
The Pre-Greek substrate (or Pre-Greek substratum) consists of the unknown pre-Indo-European language(s) spoken in prehistoric Greece before the coming of the Proto-Greek language in the Greek peninsula during the Bronze Age. It is possible that ...
*Vedda language
Vedda is an endangered language that is used by the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka. Additionally, communities such as Coast Veddas and Anuradhapura Veddas who do not strictly identify as Veddas also use words from the Vedda language in par ...
*Indo-Aryan loanwords in Tamil
The Tamil language has absorbed many Indo-Aryan, Prakrit, Pali and Sanskrit loanwords ever since the early 1st millennium CE, when the Sangam period Chola kingdoms became influenced by spread of Jainism, Buddhism and early Hinduism.
Many of ...
*Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni
Some loanwords in the variant of the Hurrian language spoken in the Mitanni kingdom, during the 2nd millennium BCE, are identifiable as originating in an Indo-Aryan language; these are considered to constitute an Indo-Aryan superstrate in Mitanni ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Substratum In Vedic Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Linguistic history of India
Pre-Indo-Europeans
Language contact
Linguistic strata