Talk:Out of India theory/Archive 4

Place Names and Hydronomy
I have left some Fact tags in the article. The first 2 show disagreement with Witzel's statement. The last one is interesting since you are saying that IA renamed a river Saraswati that had disappeared about 2000 years before entry of IA because of religious feelings. Think of the logic of this statement.Sbhushan 01:45, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
 * how about you read a statement before you think of its "logic". Why should we consider the logic of your strawmen instead of that of the actual arguments? I am afraid that if you do not wisen up and begin editing honestly, you will have no joy here. dab (&#5839;) 11:37, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dab, can you please provide academic references for the statements. The Saraswati river was in its prime in 4th to 3rd millinium time period (Bryant 2001, p. 167), long before IA came to India as per mainstream (1900 to 1500 BC). Sbhushan 14:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dab, are you planning to add ref for the cites or should those statement be removed. You also removed one Fact tag without providing any ref. Please do not remove tags.Sbhushan 15:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dab, you removed the statement "OIT proponents argue that this suggest that Indo-Europeans are indigenous to India." Can you please clarify your reason for removal of this. This is OIT argument based on preservation of River names. You have right to disagree and provide counter argument based on published documents. Please do not forget to provide proper ref.Sbhushan 15:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dab, are you OK with adding the above statement back?Sbhushan 15:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dravidian substratum influences in Rigvedic Sanskrit
This section is POV and does not present OIT argument at all. OIT is saying that the Substrata argument is inconclusive.


 * 1: This statement, made by Bryant, has been removed from the section. Why? As you all have mentioned quite some time Bryant is not a supporter of OIT, so his view can be taken as objective neutral statement.


 * 2. By adding all kind of arguments you are already displaying the inconclusive nature of the discussion.


 * 3. Witzel's comments are stated as evidence, those are his speculation. Please note that He is using the same 1991 Kuiper’s list that has been rejected by P. Thieme and Rahul Peter Das in (1994).  Witzel also agrees that these are not Dravidian words, but might be Proto-Munda or Language X.


 * 4. Witzel also states that Dravidian came to scene after IA were already settled in IVC area for some time. He is implying that IVC was not Dravidian.


 * 5. Bryant wrote in 1996 and 2001 and was aware of Thomason & Kaufman 1988, but choose to disregard their input regarding this issue.

So we need to take it back to the discussion we had earlier, since already the inconclusive nature of the substrata is clear. Also, if PIE left India about 1000 years before RV, how is small amount of substrata that could have been introduced by trading or other contact with other language be relevent to OIT discussion? Bryant and Witzel discuss the nature of substrata words and these are mostly loan words (plant names, etc) that could have been introduced by trading or small contact.Sbhushan 02:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * It is not POV and it does present the OIT argument in the frst secton it says that Hock, Bryant and other linguists find the evidence for any contaact induced changes in INdic languages to be inconclusive. The quote by Bryant is also still there but it is in a note because it is not particularly interesting (it only says what is alread said in the text - that evidence is inconclusive). We can change the statement about evidence for proto munda into saying that witzel argues that there may havee been early influence from munda.
 * I don't know why you meention that Bryant disregarded Thomason and Kaufman - it can only be because he is not a very strong linguist. Any way his argumeent is simply wrong the evidence it not inconclusive it is in fact very much in favour of contact induced change, but some scholars (such as Hock) have a reflex of arguing against proposals of contact change (this is my POV of course). Also substrate influence cannot come through trading - loanwords may come through trading and eeveryone agrees that there are practically no dravidian loans in early indic. Substrate influence of the kind found in early indic comes from shift.Maunus 09:25, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, let us try address one thing at a time, Do you believe that Substrata has been conclusively proven? Relate this to discussion about Place names also. You are saying that Vedic had extensive substrata from existing languages (absorbed number of syntactical and morphological features, plant names, etc.) but at same time changed place name and river name (something which they should have adopted). Again the argument is not coherent or logical. Bryant spends 31 pages of his book discussing this issue and list all kind of scholars who have had input for this discussion spread over 150 years. Sbhushan 14:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no such thing as proof - but I do believe that it has been shown to be probable beyond reasonable doubt that early Indic was influenced by Dravidian and or Munda. As for the placenames your way of weighing the logics is faulty. Thomason and Kaufman finds evidence that looks like the result of a process of language shift - that is that a large groups of Dravidians switched to Indic but retained their Dravidian accent, they did not bring (m)any loans from dravidian into Indic - in this context it doesn't seem weird at all that the Dravidian speakers also started using Indic placenames, or that the Indic placeenamees which were incorporateed into the religion that thee dravidians also adopted pushed out earlier placenames in the long run.


 * If Bryant spends 31 pages discussing it theen it is all the more a sign that he is not well informed if he leaves out about the only linguists who have researched language contact phenomena systematically - it tells me that he is severely out of touch with linguistics. But it is true that not all scholars believe that contact with Dravidian is shown to be probable the section as it is now says so, and it says that there are alternative explanations such as the phenomena being the results of internal developments such as Hock states. Maunus 19:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, OIT argument is that ‘evidence’ of a linguistic substratum in Indo-Aryan is inconclusive based on a paper by Edwin F. Bryant, Linguistic Substrata and the Indigenous Aryan Debate (1996) and Bryant (2001), where he is studying the claims by linguistic related to this topic. Also that this should not have any impact on homeland discussion as PIE left India at least 1,000 years before Vedic. During that 1,000 years Vedic could have been in contact with other language source. Would you have any concern with starting the section with this argument? We can provide claims and counter claims by each linguist. As counter argument, you can quote Thomason and Kaufman. So OIT provides argument and mainstream provides counter argument. Would this structure be accpetable?Sbhushan 19:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

It would. When Hock says that the phenomena might be the result of internal development, that is the same as saying that the evidence for external influence is inconclusive - it just explans why said authors find it inconclusive: because there are other ways of explaning those changes in indic than contact wth dravidian namely. It is a good idea mentioning the OIT idea of chornology even if it looks counterntuitive - it makes one more mgration necessary - a migration of a huge group of dravidians moving into contact with indic after the other pie branches left india (to explain why they don't have influence from dravidian). Bascally with every step towards arguing for OIT there comes more questions to be answered, such as where were the dravidians before and why didn't they leave any traces of migrations, why don't the Vedas mention a horde of dravdians moving into indic territory?Maunus 10:49, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, Does "it would" mean that the OIT argument can be added to the top of the section. Sbhushan 14:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes is does. Please add the arguments and I'll look at the wording afterwards.Maunus 22:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, Hock states "Swedish and Norwegian, have developed the feature completely independent of any substratum" (Bryant 2001 p81). Also, Hamp (1996) "series of sound changes from purely inherited Indo-European material that arrive “by perfectly orderly Lautgesetze” to the distinctive feature of retroflexion (721; see also Vine 1987)." (Bryant's words)In other words, retroflexion can be explained purely as the result of spontaneous linguistic sound processes inherent in Indo-Aryan itself: it need not be seen as the result of a linguistic imposition from a foreign language. (Bryant 2001, p 81-82). Bryant also mentions that the exchange could be adstratum, substratum or superstratum. Witzel is arguing that the Dravidian came in the area already populated by IA. And the borrowing might be from IA to Dravidian. How can we even conclusively say who was influencing whom, if we don’t even know which language as in IVC (candidates are Dravidian, Munda, Language X as per mainstream or IA as per OIT). So this whole discussion is getting more complex and it might be too early to draw any conclusions. Again from point of view of OIT page, we can identify the ongoing debate and provide ref for readers to do more research.Sbhushan 14:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I understand Hocks argument but I don't find it to be convincing - the fact that it can be explained by internal development doesn't mean that this is the most likely conclusion. The same argument is used by linguistis all over the place to argue against all kinds of contact influence phenomena. The borrowing cannot be the other way round - proto dravidian and proto munda are both reconstructed with retroflexes - proto indic is not. But all of this is beside the point. Maunus 22:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Retroflex can be found in Russian and Polish which are IE languages. See Russian Phonology and Polish phonology. WIN 05:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Cotton was or was not mentioned in Rigveda
The article Cotton#History says there are several references to cotton in Rigveda ; where as details at Items_not_in_the_Rigveda this article says no mention of cotton in Rigveda.This difference needs to be explained in both the articles. Mahitgar 10:07, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
 * no explanation is necessary, the statement on the Cotton article was simply mistaken, and I have removed it as unreferenced. dab (&#5839;) 11:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Linguistics
I would like to add some details regarding Proto-Bangani, that shows presence of Kentum language in India, thus supporting India homeland scenario. The text (Elst section 2.2 ) I would like to add is:

"OIT proponent argue that the discovery of a small and extinct kentum language inside India (Proto‑Bangani, 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, 1993). 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). She has almost entirely confirmed Zoller's list of kentum substratum words in Bangani. This issue is still being debated, please see the details at Bangani"

Please let me know if you have any objections or suggestions for improvement. Does this fit in Linguistics top section or Comparative linguistics? Sbhushan 15:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * another one of your hacks. Sbhushan, you pretended to be interested in evolving this article, but now you have shown that you have no interest but to heap up rhetorics in favour of OIT no matter how far-fetched or shaky. This is not good faith editing. If you were editing in good faith, you would bother to look up argument and counter-argument yourself, not present some broken representation and leave it to us to restore the actual argument. As such, unless you begin editing in good faith, I am not prepared to let you disfigure this article any further. If you can get Maunus to fix your points and introduce them, that's fine, but I am not prepare to clean up after you any more. To anybody prepared to fix this: the Bangani-Centum claim is completely discredited. Those (fringy few) who do claim centum elements wouldn't dream of postulating that it has anything to do with OIT, but rather suggest Indo-Greek remnants. This is a non-issue that isn't even relevant to this topic. dab (&#5839;) 17:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Bangani or Garhwali is spoken in Garhwal region of that Himalaya where Greek invasion never reached. WIN 06:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

please see Bangani, to check who has been discredited. The statement clearly states that the claim is being debated and provides ref for readers to check for themselves. So do you have ref for your POV.Sbhushan 17:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Please also see Hock's statement on same page Bangani, I am quoting Hock from his statement

"A related question is the nature of the western centum influence. Words like _gOsti_ seem to rule out Greek influence (and thus the possibility that we are dealing with linguistic echoes of Alexander's army); _lOktO_ would eliminate Germanic and Celtic; and _kOtrO_ would eliminate Greek and Latin. That is, no known western centum language could be the source for all of the relevant words. At the same time, the fact that *a and *o exhibit the same outcome (O, no doubt via *a, see below) suggests possible affiliation with the Balto-Slavo-Germanic group (or possibly with Antalolian?)."

Again Dab do you have any reference for your POV.Sbhushan 17:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

You are twisting the arguments Sbushan, I tend to agree with dabs statement above - I don't have the time to dig up the counter arguments for all of your twisted arguments anymore - you are definitely trying to give this article the spin you like best and you don't care if it represents the consensus of the scholarly community. I also have about stretched my assumptions of good faith as long as I can go. Either you start working to improve the article so it reflects thee actual scholarly consensus instead of making it reflect good on the theory or I give up trying to work on this article. How can we keep finding references for obscure arguments that nobody has argued against because they are obviously non sequiturs? The standard view point is that thee theory is not probable and this is what th article should say - it is not supposed to say that mainstearm scholarship are a bunch of morons that got it all backwards.Maunus 17:36, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, Witzel, Hock or Bryant all say that this issue is controversial and debate is not settled yet. The link provided is based on Witzel's Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan (Rgvedic, Middle and Late Vedic) EJVS VOL. 5 (1999), ISSUE 1 page 47. I saw the claim in Elst article about a month back, but could not find anything against it so I did not bring it up. Now based on Witzel article I found a website that is keeping up with the debate, if anyone is aware of any other argument against this please provide. The words are exact copy from Elst article. Also please note that I am not adding the text in the section, but trying to get a consensus.Sbhushan 17:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The link provided is on University of Michigan-Dearborn, MI USA website and it also has Kevin Tuite collection of responses in addition to comments by HH Hock related to this controversy.Sbhushan 18:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

These are Bryants words (2001 page 142)"At the time of writing, there is still no consensus on proto-Bangani, which Zoller has claimed to be an Indo-European language in India itself that contains very archaic Proto-Indo-European features that would significantly demarcate it from Indo-Aryan."Sbhushan 18:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, Proto Bangani is not an obscure argument; mainstream scholars have been talking about this since 1987; also mainstream scholars are creating more confusion;


 * Hock argues against OIT as it “border on the improbable and certainly would violate basic principles of simplicity” (Bryant 2001 p145-146), then he says this for Bangani, which would be very supportive of OIT.


 * Witzel is most vocal against OIT, then he says “The intriguing question of Bangani has not been entirely resolved.” (page 47


 * Bryant says he supports AMT, but the arguments in his book are supportive of OIT.

Before I came to this discussion, everyone was complaining how “crackpots arguments” are being presented for OIT. Now I provide scholarly material, with ref to mainstream scholars opinion and then again everyone is complaining. Mainstream scholars themselves have provided most evidence in favour of OIT, but still call it marginal.Sbhushan 20:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Maunus, would this wording be OK

"OIT proponent argue that the discovery of a small and extinct kentum language inside India (Proto‑Bangani, 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, 1993). This was challenged by George van Driem and Suhnu R. Sharma (1996). Anvita Abbi (1998) supported Zoller's claim. This issue is still being debated, please see the details at Bangani"Sbhushan 17:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I will not add this text to the section right now. It is time to take a step back and for all to cool down.Sbhushan 20:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The Bangani debate has been stale for eight years now. Zoller stuck by his claim, nobody believed him, that's where it's at. I am interested in the case, and I invite you to contribute to Bangani, but this has really zilch to do with "OIT". The notable discovery of Zoller's would be a linguistic remnant of Indo-Greek or Kushan influence, persisting for almost 2,000 years, this has nothing to do with "original presence" at all. For this reason, I would have no motivation to downplay the credibility of Bangani-centum, even if I was out to deconstruct "OIT": I would happily embrace Bangani-centum (if there was any real evidence) without the slightest implication that this has anything to do with even a BCE presence of centum elements, not to mention 3,000 BCE. dab (𒁳) 11:24, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dab, few points regarding relevance to OIT discussion:
 * Hock specifically excludes Indo-Greek influence and few more, he states "suggests possible affiliation with the Balto-Slavo-Germanic group (or possibly with Antalolian?). Bangani"
 * if (a big one) this language is related to the above mentioned groups, you can appreciate the support it provides to OIT scenario. But the discussion is not conclusive yet and that is the mainstream argument.
 * Zoller’s claim was substantiated by a second independent field study by Anvita Abbi (1998), this field work was reviewed by Hock and his comments are on the website (same website)
 * lot of data is presented against Driem and Sharma challenge. There are statements of their host to show that they never even went in the area and also how they invented some of the evidence
 * Witzel, Bryant, Hock agree that there is no scholarly consensus regarding this claim, but agree on the importance of this evidence.
 * I am trying to contact Zoller himself to see if more recent work is available regarding this issue. Will provide update on response.Sbhushan 14:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Abbi's article mentioned something about V2 PIE language. What is V2 language?Sbhushan 17:00, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I heard back from Dr. Zoller. The last article was published by him on this topic ''In search of excellence in the Himalayas. In: Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik, 22, 1999: 251-310''. Atleast 2 more articles are going to be published soon (might be by some other authors). The other relevent material is

in favor

Zoller, Claus Peter. 1988. Bericht Uber bsondere Archaismen im Bangani, einer Western Pahari-Sprache. Munchener S'tudien zur Sprachwissenschaft. 49 Pp 173-200.

Zoller, Claus Peter, 1989. Bericht Uber grammatische Archaismen im Bangani Muchener ,S'tudien, zur ,Sprachwissenschaft.. 50. Pp 159-218.

Zoller, Claus Peter. 1993. A Note on Bangani. Indian Linguistics. Col. 54, Nos 1-4. Pp 112-14.

Patyal, Hukum Chand 1995. Archaic Words in Some Western Pahari Dialects A Historical Perspective. Indian Linguistics. Vol. 56, Nos. 1 -4. Pp 129-34.

Abbi, Anvita 1997. Redundancies and Restructuring in Bangani Syntax: A Case of Language Contact in Western Himalaya Paper read in the 7hird Himalayan language Conterence, Santa Barbara. USA.

Against

Beekes, Robert S P. 1990. Indo European, Linguistics.

Driem, George van and Suhnu R. Sharma. 1996 In Search of Indo-Europeans in Himalayas Indogermanische Forschungen 10 l. Pp 107.-46.

So this issue is not stale, but is still inconclusive. If proven this would provide strong support to OIT scenario. Please see Hock's comment earlier regarding this being one of the older child of PIE.Sbhushan 17:14, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Brahui language in Baluchistan which is thought to be remnant of formal widespread Dravidian languages in North India. But now its presence has now been explained by a late immigration that took place within this millennium (Elfenbein 1987). Even this point in Linguistics section should find some mention. This is confirmed by Witzel in his Feb. 2000 paper `The Languages of Harappa' Page 1. WIN 06:04, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

comparision to PCT
Dab, OIT is not same as "Proto Vedic Continuity" theory (PVC) or PCT. PVC is related to PCT. OIT is not comparable to PCT. OIT is not supported by, but being discussed by Hock or Bryant. Same can not be said for PCT or PVC. So to compare OIT to marginal PCT is your POV and I strongly disagree with it. For all controversial additions, please talk first before adding text. I have been very patient and have tried to discuss things with you before making any changes, but I am finding that you are not reciprocating. Please, please, please be reasonable.Sbhushan 17:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * If OIT and PVC is not the same thing why does the latter redirect to the former?Maunus 17:39, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I had identified the same issue earlier, when we started changing the article. The redirect should be changed. OIT is not PVC.Sbhushan 17:52, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I never even mentioned "PVC". The redirect is here for historical reasons, I don't think I've seen any quotable source even addressing "PVC", and I have no opinion whether it is worth discussing. PCT otoh is simply the Eurocentric version of OIT: assuming a pre-6000 BC Urheimat in Europe, and later expansion to India, just like OIT (Elst's) assumes pre-6000 BC PIE at the Indus and later expansion to Europe. The scenarios are mirror-images of one another, and the arguments of why it is "impossible" that IE should be intrusive to either Europe or India are very similar. dab (𒁳) 11:10, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dab, both PVC and PCT reject linguistic evidence, OIT doesn't. OIT doesn't claim that Sanskrit is PIE. It accepts PIE was before Sanskrit, but places PIE in India (please see history section). Antolian hypothesis is more comparable to PCT as it is proposing 9000 BC date. PCT and PVC take the dates to before last ice age (15,000BC??). OIT proposed date is closer to scholarly consensus regarding PIE date. The disagreement is re: where the homeland is. The redirect should be changed.Sbhushan 14:44, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Dab, please don't add back controversial comments, where clearly there is strong disagreement.Sbhushan 14:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Dab, I strongly agree with Sbhushan here. It's enough to say that it is not mainstream...you don't need to brand it Indocentric in comparison with the idea of a Nordic Urheimat, especially since this opinion is your POV and thus does not belong in this article. It is especially bad to mention this in the lead. At best, you could find a source and say that Portions of the linguistic community compare this theory as the Indocentric version of the Eurocentric PCT. I can't help but feel you are POV pushing.  Noble eagle  [TALK] [C] 04:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
 * what "Nordic urheimat"? I didn't compare it to Nazi ideas, is that what you understood? I really don't see which part of the statement is problematic. I agree it doesn't need to be in the intro, but you seem to reject it outright. Why? The PCT is at least as "respectable", it was proposed by Italian archaeologist, not by a motley crew of teachers and spiritual leaders. PCT contains the exact same arguments regarding "recent arrival is impossible". What do you dispute about this? Did you even look at the PCT article? Your "Nordic" comment does not seem to indicate that. Do you dispute the PCT is Eurocentric? Or that the OIT is Indocentric? The almost total failure of this article to address any of the "out of" part of "out of India" is symptomatic for the proponent's total lack of interest in anything beyond the Hindukush. I can understand that "OIT" ideas can make sense if you look only at Indian evidence, and ignore the other branches (that's 11 12ths of the available evidence), but that is precisely what I mean by "Indocentric". dab (𒁳)

Dab, it would make it very easy, if you could supply full citations for the PCT comment. If you can supply citations, I won't have any problem with the harshest words.Sbhushan 16:54, 7 December 2006 (UTC)