Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit
Encyclopedia
Vedic Sanskrit
has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically
, the formation of gerund
s; and syntactically, the use of a quotative
marker
("iti"). Such features, as well as the presence of non-Indo-European vocabulary, are attributed to a local substratum
of languages encountered by Indo-Aryan peoples in Central Asia and within the Indian subcontinent.
A substantial body of loanwords has been identified in the earliest Indian texts. Non-Indo-Aryan elements (such as -s- following -u- in Rigvedic busa) are clearly in evidence. While some loanwords are from Dravidian
, and other forms are traceable to Munda
or Proto-Burushaski, the bulk have no sensible basis in any of these families, indicating a source in one or more lost languages. The discovery that some loan words from one of these lost sources had also been preserved in the earliest Iranian
texts, and also in Tocharian
convinced Michael Witzel and Alexander Lubotsky that the source lay in Central Asia and could be associated with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). Another lost language is that of the Indus Valley Civilization
, which Witzel initially labelled Para-Munda, but later the Kubhā-Vipāś substrate.
, 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 of the Indian subcontinent. They are not reconstructible for either Proto-Indo-European
or Proto-Indo-Iranian
, and they are also not found in Mitanni
-Indo-Aryan loan words.
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
, 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), involving affricates, sibilants and even vowels (in Kalasha), 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 developments in Indo-Aryan could have been the result of adstratum 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."
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
identified 383 specifically 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:
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, most of which he gives Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit etymologies, and condemned what he characterizes as a misplaced "zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". Das
even contended that there is "not a single case" in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rigvedic word". Kuiper answered that charge. 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.
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 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".
in distant contact with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, 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:
On the other hand the archaeological affilation of BMAC to indo-iranian culture is seriously dubious as archaeologists like B.B. Lal have shown the culture of BMAC to be an unique one with no such relation with the assumed indo-iranian cultures .
, which he identified as "Harappan", the language of the Indus Valley Civilization
. 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
and that the Indo-Aryans encountered speakers of Dravidian not before middle Rigvedic times. Krishnamurti
deems the evidence too meagre for this proposal. Regarding Witzel's methodology in claiming Para-Munda origins, Krishnamurti
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. 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.
inscriptions of the Pallava dynasty of about 550 C.E. and the early Tamil Brahmi inscriptions starting in the second millennium BCE. 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.
While Dravidian languages
are primarily confined to the South of India today, there is a striking exception: Brahui (which is spoken in parts of Baluchistan
). It has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict
population
, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages
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. However it has now been demonstrated that the Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 CE. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 CE.
As noted above, retroflex phonemes in early Indo-Aryan cannot identify the donor language as specifically Dravidian. Krishnamurti argues the Dravidian case other features: "Besides, the Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer." However, such features are also found in the indigenous Burushaski language of the Pamirs and cannot be attributed only to Dravidian influence on the early Rigveda.
Post-Vedic words such as "orange
" (first attested in the Sushruta Samhita
, ca. 4th century AD) are often taken to be straightforward loans from Dravidian into Sanskrit. Since they belong to a later period, they are unsuited to establish the origin of the loans in Rigvedic Sanskrit.
Vedic Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit is an old Indo-Aryan language. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to Avestan, the oldest preserved Iranian language...
has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, the formation of gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
s; and syntactically, the use of a quotative
Quotative
A quotative is grammatical device to mark reported speech in some languages. It can be equated with "spoken quotation marks". In the English sentence John said "Wow,"...
marker
Marker (linguistics)
In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word, phrase, or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not...
("iti"). Such features, as well as the presence of non-Indo-European vocabulary, are attributed to a local substratum
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
of languages encountered by Indo-Aryan peoples in Central Asia and within the Indian subcontinent.
A substantial body of loanwords has been identified in the earliest Indian texts. Non-Indo-Aryan elements (such as -s- following -u- in Rigvedic busa) are clearly in evidence. While some loanwords are from Dravidian
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
, and other forms are traceable to Munda
Munda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
or Proto-Burushaski, the bulk have no sensible basis in any of these families, indicating a source in one or more lost languages. The discovery that some loan words from one of these lost sources had also been preserved in the earliest Iranian
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
texts, and also in Tocharian
Tocharian
Tocharian may refer to:* Tocharians, an ancient people who inhabited the Tarim Basin in Central Asia* Tocharian languages, two Indo-European languages spoken by those people...
convinced Michael Witzel and Alexander Lubotsky that the source lay in Central Asia and could be associated with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC). Another lost language is that of the Indus Valley Civilization
Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India...
, which Witzel initially labelled Para-Munda, but later the Kubhā-Vipāś substrate.
Phonology
Retroflex phonemes are now found throughout the Burushaski, NuristaniNuristani languages
The Nuristani languages are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They are spoken primarily in eastern Afghanistan...
, Dravidian
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
and Munda
Munda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
families. They are reconstructed for proto-Burushaski, proto-Dravidian and (to a minimal extent) for proto-Munda, and are thus clearly an areal feature of the Indian subcontinent. They are not reconstructible for either Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
or Proto-Indo-Iranian
Proto-Indo-Iranian language
Proto-Indo-Iranian is the reconstructed proto-language of the Indo-Iranian branch of Indo-European. Its speakers, the hypothetical Proto-Indo-Iranians, are assumed to have lived in the late 3rd millennium BC, and are usually connected with the early Andronovo archaeological...
, and they are also not found in Mitanni
Mitanni
Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC...
-Indo-Aryan loan words.
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
Vedic meter
The verses of the Vedas have a variety of different meters. They are divided by number of padas in a verse, and by the number of syllables in a pada. Chandas , the study of Vedic meter, is one of the six Vedanga disciplines, or "organs of the vedas".*: 3 padas of 8 syllables-Principles:The main...
, 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
Nuristani languages
The Nuristani languages are one of the three groups within the Indo-Iranian language family, alongside the much larger Indo-Aryan and Iranian groups. They are spoken primarily in eastern Afghanistan...
, Dardic, Khotanese Saka, Burushaski), involving affricates, sibilants and even vowels (in Kalasha), 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 developments in Indo-Aryan could have been the result of adstratum rather than the result of substrate
Substratum
In linguistics, a stratum or strate is a language that influences, or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum is a language which has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and superstratum...
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."
Vocabulary
In 1955 BurrowThomas Burrow
Thomas Burrow was an Indologist and the Boden Professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford from 1944 to 1976. His work includes Dravidian Etymological Dictionary, The Problem of Shwa in Sanskrit and The Sanskrit Language....
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
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
. Kuiper
F B J Kuiper
Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper was a distinguished scholar in Indology, and "one of the last great Indologists of the past century .....
identified 383 specifically 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
Munda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
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", 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
Paul Thieme
Paul Thieme was a scholar of Vedic Sanskrit. He received his doctorate in Indology in 1928 in Göttingen, and habilitated there in 1932. From 1932 to 1935 he taught German and French at the University of Allahabad...
has questioned Dravidian etymologies proposed for Vedic words, most of which he gives Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit etymologies, and condemned what he characterizes as a misplaced "zeal for hunting up Dravidian loans in Sanskrit". Das
Rahul Peter Das
Rahul Peter Das is the professor of South Asian studies at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, where he is also the Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy I and erstwhile Director of the Centre for Languages of the University...
even contended that there is "not a single case" in which a communis opinio has been found confirming the foreign origin of a Rigvedic word". Kuiper answered that charge. 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 MasicaColin Masica
Colin P. Masica is professor emeritus in the and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago. Although ostensibly a specialist in Indo-Aryan languages, his real interest has been in the typological convergence of languages belonging to different linguistic stocks in the South...
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 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 BMAC
Terms borrowed from an otherwise unknown language include those relating to cereal-growing and bread-making (bread, ploughshare, seed, sheaf, yeast), water-works (canal, well), architecture (brick, house, pillar, wooden peg), tools or weapons (axe, club), textiles and garments (cloak, cloth, coarse garment, hem, needle) and plants (hemp, cannabis, mustard, Soma plant). Lubotsky pointed out that the phonological and morphological similarity of 55 loanwords in Proto-Indo-Iranian and in Sanskrit indicates that a substratum of Indo-Iranian and a substratum of Indo-Aryan represent the same language, or perhaps two dialects of the same language. He concludes that the language of the original population of the towns of Central Asia, where Indo-Iranians must have arrived in the second millennium BCE, and the language spoken in Punjab (see Harappan below) were intimately related. However an alternative interpretation is that 55 loanwords entered common Proto-Indo-Iranian during its development in the Sintashta cultureSintashta culture
The Sintashta culture, also known as the Sintashta-Petrovka culture or Sintashta-Arkaim culture, is a Bronze Age archaeological culture of the northern Eurasian steppe on the borders of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, dated to the period 2100–1800 BCE...
in distant contact with the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, 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:
- Skt. amsu- `Soma plant'; Av. asu- 'Haoma plant'
- Skt. atharvan- : Av. aerauuan-/araurun- `priest'
- Skt. bhisaj- m. `physician'; Av. bi- `medicine', LAv. biaziia- 'to cure'
- Skt. chaga- : Oss. saeg / saegae `billy-goat'
- Skt. dursa- `coarse garment' : Wakhi dərs `wool of a goat or a yak'
- Skt. gandha- `smell' : LAv. gainti- `bad smell'
- Skt. gandharva- : LAv. ganedərəva- `a mythical being'
- Skt. Indra- name of a god; LAv. Indra- name of a daeva
- Skt. istaka- f. (VS+); LAv. istiia- n., OP isti- f., MiP xist 'brick'
- Skt. jahaka- : LAv. duzuka-, Bal. jajuk, duzux, MoP zuza `hedgehog'
- Skt. kesa- `hair' : LAv. gaesa- `curly hair'
- Skt. nagnahu- (AVP+) m. `yeast, ferment'; PIr. *nagna- `bread'
- Skt. phala- : MoP supar `ploughshare'
- Skt. seppa-, but Prkrit cheppa- : LAv. xsuuaepa- `tail'
- Skt. sikata- : OP sika- `sand'
- Skt. suco- : LAv. suka- `needle'
- Skt. ustra-; Av. ustra-, 'camel'
- Skt. yavya- /yaviya/ `stream, canal'; OP yauviya- `canal'.
On the other hand the archaeological affilation of BMAC to indo-iranian culture is seriously dubious as archaeologists like B.B. Lal have shown the culture of BMAC to be an unique one with no such relation with the assumed indo-iranian cultures .
Harappan
Witzel initially used the term "Para-Munda" to denote a hypothetical language related but not ancestral to modern Munda languagesMunda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
, which he identified as "Harappan", the language of the Indus Valley Civilization
Indus Valley Civilization
The Indus Valley Civilization was a Bronze Age civilization that was located in the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent, consisting of what is now mainly modern-day Pakistan and northwest India...
. 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
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
only in later levels, suggesting that speakers of Harappan were the original inhabitants of Punjab
Punjab region
The Punjab , also spelled Panjab |water]]s"), is a geographical region straddling the border between Pakistan and India which includes Punjab province in Pakistan and the states of the Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and some northern parts of the National Capital Territory of Delhi...
and that the Indo-Aryans encountered speakers of Dravidian not before middle Rigvedic times. Krishnamurti
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti ; IAST: ) is an eminent Dravidianist and the most respected Indian linguist of his generation. He was born in Ongole on June 19, 1928...
deems the evidence too meagre for this proposal. Regarding Witzel's methodology in claiming Para-Munda origins, Krishnamurti
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti
Bhadriraju Krishnamurti ; IAST: ) is an eminent Dravidianist and the most respected Indian linguist of his generation. He was born in Ongole on June 19, 1928...
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. 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 TamilTamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
inscriptions of the Pallava dynasty of about 550 C.E. and the early Tamil Brahmi inscriptions starting in the second millennium BCE. Similarly there is much less material available for comparative Munda
Munda languages
-Anderson :Gregory Anderson's 1999 proposal is as follows. Individual languages are highlighted in italics.*North Munda **Korku**Kherwarian***Santhali***Mundari*South Munda **Kharia–Juang***Juang***Kharia...
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 certain 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.While Dravidian languages
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
are primarily confined to the South of India today, there is a striking exception: Brahui (which is spoken in parts of Baluchistan
Balochistan (region)
Balochistan or Baluchistan is an arid, mountainous region in the Iranian plateau in Southwest Asia; it includes part of southeastern Iran, western Pakistan, and southwestern Afghanistan. The area is named after the numerous Baloch tribes, Iranian peoples who moved into the area from the west...
). It has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict
Relict
A relict is a surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon.* In biology a relict 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....
population
Population
A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages
Dravidian languages
The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and...
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. However it has now been demonstrated that the Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 CE. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 CE.
As noted above, retroflex phonemes in early Indo-Aryan cannot identify the donor language as specifically Dravidian. Krishnamurti argues the Dravidian case other features: "Besides, the Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer." However, such features are also found in the indigenous Burushaski language of the Pamirs and cannot be attributed only to Dravidian influence on the early Rigveda.
Post-Vedic words such as "orange
Orange (word)
The word orange is both a noun and an adjective in the English language. In both cases, it refers primarily to the orange fruit and the colour orange, but has many other derivative meanings....
" (first attested in the Sushruta Samhita
Sushruta Samhita
The Sushruta Samhita is a Sanskrit text, attributed to one Sushruta, foundational to Ayurvedic medicine , with innovative chapters on surgery....
, ca. 4th century AD) are often taken to be straightforward loans from Dravidian into Sanskrit. Since they belong to a later period, they are unsuited to establish the origin of the loans in Rigvedic Sanskrit.
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 languageHarappan languageThe Harappan language is the unknown language or languages of the Bronze Age Harappan civilization ....
- Pre-Greek substrate
- Vedda languageVedda languageThe Vedda language is the language of the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka. But communities, such as Coast Veddas and Anuradhapura Veddas, that do not strictly identify themselves as Veddas also use the Vedda language in part for communication during hunting and or for religious chants,...