From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Fri Jan 11 2002 - 15:46:25 MST
In a message dated 1/11/02 2:11:26 PM, samantha@objectent.com writes:
>Since early Sanskrit was a oral only it is not at all convincing
> re the opinion that the language was derived from Western
>roots to bring up where its written alphabetic characters were
>derived from. It is more convoluted to provide proof of such a
>contention. One thing that has been tried to date some orally
>transmit Hindu Vedas (Rig Veda especially iirc) is to use
>atronomical evidence from astronomical references in the text.
>Some of these place the Rig Veda as early as 6000 BC. If this
>is accurate and given that it was transmitted orally in Sanskrit
>for that many millenia, it would he impossible that Sanskrit
>derived from the sources stated.
Oh, there's no question Sanskrit is just another Indo-European
language. Scads of isoglosses and cognates; people even used
to learn Lithuanian to help with Sanskrit. Either they borrowed the
astronomical observations from older sources, or somebody
just got the astronomy wrong. I'll bet different observations
put the Rig Veda in markedly different times, reflecting an accretional
or erroneous origin for the text. Language and geography put it
2000-1000 BC.
Anyway, wasn't Mike discussing the origin of *writing*? Use
of a middle eastern alphabet is very strong evidence that hindu
*writing* was borrowed, regardless of the origin of the language.
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