Pointless Discussions on the Nature of the Mitanni Data

Pointless Discussions on the Nature of the Mitanni Data

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a tweet by Koenraad Elst:

Twenty years ago this discussion was unthinkable, for most of the anti-AIT camp pulled up their noses for a "pseudo-science" like linguistics & a "ghost language" like PIE. Today they can't be ignored anymore & their knowledge of Indo-Iranian is proving superior.

2:38 AM· Mar 20, 2025

I wondered what it was all about, and it was followed up by a twitter thread of a current discussion on Twitter on the identity of the Mitanni and the nature of the Mitanni data. The participants in the debate seemed to be:

https://x.com/Heg70412Hegde 

https://x.com/JLingPystynen

https://x.com/yajnadevam

And it seems to be a resumption of an earlier discussion a year ago in March 2024, in which the participants, apart from these three, were:

https://x.com/OsoDanes

https://x.com/jugram51036

https://x.com/RahulKrish91858

https://x.com/giac77

 

As I went through the thread, I found myself nonplussed by the thrust of the debate, which seemed to be all about whether the Mitanni data represented Indo-Iranian, Iranian or Indo-Aryan, and about “Prakritisms” in general or particularly in relation to the Mitanni data.

Agreed these are interesting points of discussion and debate, and, although it is almost a settled fact that the Mitanni data represents specifically Indo-Aryan, trying to show that there are Iranian elements as opposed to Indo-Aryan elements in the Mitanni data is a perfectly legitimate exercise. Giacomo Benedetti even gave the URL of an article written by him on 24 May 2017, titled “Were the Mitanni Aryans really Indo-Aryans”, where he attempted to show that the Mitanni data represented Iranian rather than Indo-Aryan:

https://new-indology.blogspot.com/2017/05/were-mitanni-really-indo-aryans.html 

All very interesting, but already much discussed in detail (in my articles on the subject as well by countless western academicians including Michael Witzel, who agrees that it is Indo-Aryan), and, in fact, Benedetti begins his above article with the admission that “The most common theory is that they were more precisely Indo-Aryans, and it is repeated everywhere” before beginning to dispute it.

Apart from the exact identity (Indo-Iranian, Iranian or Indo-Aryan) of the Mitanni, another peripheral issue deeply discussed on this thread is the question of “Prakristisms” in the Mitanni data. Of course there have always been Prakritisms at every stage of the Sanskrit language, whether the Vedic stage or the Classical stage, and this has also been much discussed by eminent Indologists and Sanskritists. I do not have (and have no right to have) objections to these discussions, but they are misleading if they are carried on under the impression that they are the key to the main issue. And the way in which one tangential discussion leads to another, all leading to confusion can be seen from the fact that among the “Prakritisms” mentioned in (what I saw of) the thread are the following: “Royal names ending in -sena are a late classical Sanskrit invention. virya > biriya has two different Prakritisms etc. Too many Prakritisms in Mittani”.

I have written and been writing on this subject since my book in 2008, and in internet debates from 2002, and have repeated it in many articles, notably the following:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-finality-of-mitanni-evidence.html

Royal names ending in –sena are certainly a late invention, but not a “late classical Sanskrit invention”: they are a late invention in the latest part of the period of the New Rigveda, where we already have one important name ending in –sena: in X.98.5,6,8, we have Ṛṣṭiṣeṇa, the father of Devāpī (and therefore of his brother Śantanū).

And “virya > biriya” is a wrong and now rejected speculation. It is now accepted that the correct equivalence is “priya > biriya”, and we have the direct counterpart of the Mitanni name Biriamasda in the Rigvedic name Priyamedha.

As Yajnadevam points out in the discussion: “Skt > Prkt laws as a set are not seen in other languages. Sound laws are due to random changes that occur when children acquire language. If laws were universal instead of random, then languages would change in lockstep and the tree model of language families would be impossible.” Kṛṣṇa, in Konkani is krūṣṇu, but has also become (and among my acquaintances alone) ki:sanu and ki:ṭṭɑ (and in baby-talk, even kū:ṭṇu). Precise historical conclusions cannot be derived from such “phonetic changes”.   

 

But all these are peripheral discussions about the Mitanni: peripheral to the main issue. The main issue is that − regardless of whether the Mitanni data is purely representative of Indo-Aryan or Iranian (or, as someone suggested, Nuristani!) elements or contained mixed elements from these groups, and regardless of whether their language contained specific “Prakritisms” or not (a very speculative exercise given the somewhat clumsy or ambiguous nature of the exact phonetic symbols used in the Cuneiform script in which the Mitanni words and names are found written) – the geographical location and chronological point of time at which the ancestors of the Mitanni parted from their eastern brethren is very clear and unambiguous from the data.

As Witzel makes very clear, the final redactions resulted in changes in the sounds in the original hymns, but not changes in the words. (as in “an ancient inscription”, the words of the RV “have not changed since the composition of these hymns c.1500 BCE, as the RV has been transmitted almost without any change”, but in certain “limited cases certain sounds — but not words, tonal accents, sentences — have changed”. WITZEL 2000a:§1). So any comparison of the Vedic and Mitanni IA data should be on the basis of words and not sounds.

1. The ancestors of the Mitanni very definitely parted from their eastern brethren from the area of composition of the hymns of the New Rigveda (i.e. the area stretching from easternmost U.P and Haryana in the east to Afghanistan in the west), since all the names and name-types, and the few other common words (maṇi, for example), are very definitely innovations of this new period.

2. They very definitely parted from their eastern brethren after the period of composition of the hymns of the Old Rigveda, these hymns of the Old Rigveda being completely lacking in all these new words (the Mitanni elements being, in fact, just a drop in the total huge new vocabulary which separates the New Rigveda from the Old Rigveda):

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/final-version-of-chronological-gulf.html 

3. The geographical area of the Old Rigveda, in a period far earlier to the period during which the ancestors of the Mitanni parted from their eastern brethren, is originally to the east of the Sarasvati river flowing through Haryana; and the narration of the expansion of the ancestors of all these people from there, westwards into the area of composition of the New Rigveda (right up to Afghanistan), is also recorded in the hymns of the Old Rigveda.

4. Since the Mitanni kingdom flourished in Syria-Iraq from at least 1500 BCE, and their presence there is known from at least three centuries before that, their ancestors must have left the area of composition of the hymns of the New Rigveda (i.e. the area stretching from easternmost U.P and Haryana in the east to Afghanistan in the west) well before 2000 BCE, and this places the Old Rigveda (located to the east of this area) many centuries before that. I leave open the problem of deciding how many centuries earlier.

5. And, in this period, many centuries before 2000 BCE, the Old Rigveda was being composed in and around Haryana, and this area in this period had rivers and local animals with full-fledged Indo-Aryan names, was regarded by the composers of the hymns composed in this period as their beloved ancient homeland, and the hymns give no indication of any non-Indo-Aryans in the vicinity then or earlier.

 

No discussions about the exact linguistic identity (within the “Indo-Iranian” spectrum) of the Mitanni data, or about the presence or absence of “Prakritisms” in that data, can make any alteration in the above facts.               

 

 

  

Hilarious Comic Strip by Sameer’s Fans

 

Hilarious Comic Strip by Sameer’s Fans

Shrikant G. Talageri

  

Two of my last articles were about this super-etymologist named “Sameer” on Twitter, who regularly issues pronouncements from his Twitter pulpit about my ignorance in the field of etymology.

In replies to comments to one of these articles, written in response to his most recent tweets about the “suspicious” nature of my etymologies, I wrote: “everything happens to the good. Because of this more people are becoming aware of Sameer's false claims about "mixed Indian-African words", and his utter inability to corroborate his illogical claims. And at the same time, as he and his fans continue to escalate this with further twitter hooliganism, the more they are exposing themselves as indeed representing the "jeering crowd of cowardly hecklers who make up the internet gang of liars" that I called them. I don't have to say a single word more in this respect, they are proving me right with every new tweet.”

And so it is: his fans continue to make a wide variety of jeering comments, exposing their level, and leaving me no need to say a single word more in this respect.

But, one comment, with an accompanying picture, was so hilarious that I want to share it:

 

https://x.com/DevarajaIndra

I cant believe how much Talageri is still seething about

@dxrsam_0

who is actually a sweetheart IRL lol. Just pure seethe.

The only thing is, while he identified two of the characters in the picture (the others of course being Sameer’s fans) he forgot to give the “speech bubbles” or “speech balloons” to tell us what they are saying. I thought I would fill in the speech bubbles below:

Sameer (balloon 1): “I assure you Talageri only gives suspicious etymologies. I give full fledged authentic ones”

Sameer (balloon 2): “The four IE words for the elephant are derived from mixtures of certain pre-AIT Indian words and certain African words. I will not reveal these words, and the Indian-African languages they came from, and the routes they took before getting mixed, and the exact etymological phonetic rules which produced the four IE words, and the reason why these words only infiltrated into these four IE languages but not in other non-IE languages around them now. I will reveal all this in a new path-breaking PhD thesis on the subject”.

Fan 1: “Oh Sameer-kins, how clever you are!”

Fan 2: “Sameer, we love you!”

Fan 3: “Sameer, you will get the Nobel Prize for this!”

Fan 4: “Oooooh! You are the bestest, Sammy!”

Fan 5: “Attaboy! Get 'em, cowboy!”

Fan 6: (speechless. Just sighs ecstatically).

Talageri (i.e. the female one in the comic): (equally speechless. Can only grind her teeth, glare grouchily and ferociously at Sameer, and seethe with helpless fury and jealousy).

Enjoy yourselves, fans! I enjoyed it. It's easier to create comic strips and to jeer and make personal hate-comments and to evade issues, than to clarify lies, isn't it?   

p.s. The comic strip was not created by

https://x.com/DevarajaIndra

but by

https://x.com/vicayana

A Tale of Two Films: From Kashmir to Kerala

 

A Tale of Two Films: From Kashmir to Kerala

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a facebook post, admittedly dated 22 March 2022 and now three years old:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16AowfeEfz/ 

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=7559374320746946&id=483908701626912&post_id=483908701626912_7559374320746946&rdid=8xky2uDUfpxqhE6O#

“The Kashmir Files movie will be made tax free in Goa. The movie shows how then Congress Govt in 1990 inflicted torture on Kashmiri people. This history should be known to everyone. Youth should watch this movie”.

 

I have already written a review of the film The Kashmir Files:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/03/a-review-of-film-kashmir-files-by-vivek.html

 

But I have also written a review of another film 1921: Nadī Se Nadī Tak:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-kerala-files-1921-nadi-se-nadi-tak.html

 

Both these films are absolutely superb. The first is particularly superb because it heralded a new and absolutely revolutionary element of TRUTH in a film Industry (Bollywood) which has been rotting for decades in the throes of the cancer of anti-Hindu ideologies and false narratives.

The second film, as I pointed out in my review, is better even than the first one.

However, why the blatantly glaring difference in the way political pseudo-Hindutva governments, and their followers, have treated the two films? The first is honored, promoted and propagated by every BJP government, while the second has been completely stonewalled and obliterated by those very same BJP governments, to the extent that everyone knows about (and millions are likely to have seen) the first film, but hardly anyone will be likely to have seen, or even know about, or even have heard about, the second film?

I have written many times about this. I wonder if any real or political Hindutvite will be able to enlighten me about the real reasons behind the bitter animus against that second film and the determination to stonewall and obliterate it?

 

Russia, Ukraine and NATO

 

Russia, Ukraine and NATO

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

It may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India, and which may seem to be basically none of India’s business, or, to put it more mildly, it may be seen to be an issue on which India should remain neutral since both Russia and Ukraine are friends of India. 

But I do not think so. To me India always comes first. And there are some countries which have more or less always stood by India. Three of them are Israel, Russia and erstwhile (Saddam Hussein’s) Iraq. Indians and Hindus (including, and particularly, those who claim to speak for Hindus) generally seem to have no sense of loyalty even to India and Hindus, so it is not to be wondered if they should see no reason to have any loyalties or particularly friendly feelings and sympathies towards those countries which have always generally stood by India (to the extent possible for them). Many vocal Hindus and “Hindutvavādī” people, in fact, have fallen prey to woke propaganda in matters concerning Israel and Russia, and express themselves like woke activists in the matter of these two countries.

[Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had indeed long ago been abandoned to the dogs by “Hindutvavādī” politicians, and it is believed that the Vajpayee government was actively mulling the idea of allowing U.S. war-planes to take off from Indian soil at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq based on false claims of Saddam Hussein possessing or developing chemical, biological and nuclear WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

Indeed, “Hindutvavādī” politicians have always been fickle in their foreign policies. In my article “Hindus, Hindutva, the BJP and TINA”, I wrote the following:

“An example of the BJP's brainlessness as well as unprincipled attitude was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech at Shivaji Park in Mumbai during the campaigning for the 1980 elections. One of his criticisms was that Charan Singh had apparently said (in an election speech) that India should establish diplomatic relations with Israel and cooperate with that nation in developing our agriculture and dairying industries. Vajpayee's grouse was "Why had he never spoken about establishing relations with Israel before? He must explain his newfound love for Israel", thereby implying that it was in some way an election stunt. Although during that particular election, we were pro-Janata party and anti-Charan Singh, I found this extremely disgusting: Charan Singh had never, to my knowledge criticized Israel before, or opposed relations with that nation, so what was wrong if he now spoke of this? On the other hand, the Jana Sangh had always claimed to stand for friendly relations with Israel, but after merging into the Janata Party, the erstwhile Jana Sangh leaders had suddenly become critics of Israel. It was Vajpayee who had to explain his change of attitude, and not Charan Singh!

A few days later, I also attended Charan Singh's rally at the same venue. It became a case of "I went to boo, and stayed to cheer": to my utter surprise, Charan Singh's speech contained not a single derogatory reference to his foes, and was in fact a long and frankly boring speech on rural and agricultural issues. The sincerity of the man shone through, and although we continued to be against him, I felt a genuine respect for Charan Singh, especially in contrast to the playing-to-the-gallery Vajpayee.”

Ultimately, it was under the leadership of Congress PM Narasimha Rao that India established diplomatic relations with Israel].

Now, Russia (along with Israel, of course) has become the special target of woke activists who control large sections of the media in both India as well as the west. Indian media groups seems to be trying to outdo each other in their blatantly woke reports on Russia, Israel (and also on Trump). And, at the moment, when there is immediate talk about a likely ceasefire which could put an end to the continuous slaughter of soldiers and civilians and continuous destruction of cities, towns and infrastructure, these woke media are busy propagating the accusation (against Russia) that while Zelenskyy is ready for (and has already practically agreed to) a ceasefire, Putin is imposing “a series of conditions that could delay or derail any agreement”.

And the conditions that Putin is insisting on (on the ground that a ceasefire has no meaning unless it should lead to "an enduring peace and remove the root causes of this crisis") are as follows, according to the Guardian: “These demands could include the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a commitment to keeping Kyiv out of NATO. Moscow may also push for a ban on foreign troop deployments in Ukraine and international recognition of Putin’s claims to Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022.

Putin could also revisit some of his broader demands from 2021, which go beyond Ukraine, including a call for NATO to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began expanding into former communist countries.

Many in Europe fear these conditions for peace could weaken the west’s ability to increase its military presence and could allow Putin to expand his influence across the continent”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/13/russia-wary-of-proposed-ukraine-ceasefire-plan-as-us-talks-begin

 

Are these conditions unwarranted or unfair?

 

It must be remembered that the world was divided into two main powerful mutually antagonistic blocs called the Eastern Bloc (led by the USSR) and the Western Bloc (led by western European countries and the USA) after the second world war, with a third neutral or near-neutral (if often seen to be closer to the Eastern Bloc) bloc of countries called the Non-Aligned Bloc (led by India and Yugoslavia). The heyday period of these warring blocs, 1947-1991, is called the Cold War period.

 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Association) was the main militant grouping in the Western Bloc, consisting initially, in 1949, of twelve members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two more, Greece and Turkey, joined in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.

 

This Cold War period started crumbling with Perestroika, a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (who came to power in 1985) and his glasnost (meaning "transparency") policy reform.

 

In 1986 itself, Gorbachev announced his new policies of Perestroika and Glasnost, and shortly after this, the first big event was the merger of East Bloc country East Germany and West Bloc country West Germany on October 3 1990, preceded by the fall of the Berlin Wall which separated the two Germanies on November 9 1989.

 

At the time of the unification of Germany, in 1990, in the talks held between the leaders of the Western Bloc and the USSR, the USSR was repeatedly assured by the Western Bloc leaders that NATO (basically seen as an anti-USSR alliance) would not be expanded further eastwards into eastern Europe to include former members of the Eastern Bloc, and on the basis of this repeated assurance, the USSR allowed Unified Germany to choose whether or not it would be a part of NATO  (which it chose to be):

 

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

 

 

On December 25-26 1991, the Soviet Union (USSR) itself officially broke up into fifteen sovereign countries. Of these fifteen (not counting the eight Asiatic and Transcaucasian erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which were well to the east of Europe), there were, apart from Russia itself, six erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics in Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova. And, after the formation of united Germany (which joined NATO) there were, apart from Russia itself, six Central and East European countries left in the Eastern Bloc: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.

 

In spite of the original assurance that NATO would not be expanded eastwards, the following eight among these twelve former SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries were gradually inducted into NATO:

Hungary and Poland in 1999.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania in 2004.

Albania in 2009.

 

Of the remaining four, one country Czechosovakia split into many smaller countries of which the two main ones, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, joined NATO in 1999 and 2004 respectively.

 

Yugoslavia, a former Communist country, which had not been a part of the Eastern Bloc, but one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Bloc, also split into smaller countries, of which four, Slovenia (2004),  Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020) became members of NATO.

 

Only three of the twelve erstwhile SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries (and the three easternmost of them within Europe) are not a part of NATO yet. Of these, Moldova is committed to a neutral position by its Constitution, but, since 1992, has co-operated indirectly with NATO by becoming a member of the NACC (North Atlantic Cooperation Council). So, basically, only two former SSRs are still out of the NATO circle: Ukraine and Belarus, both being the closest to Russia in their languages and culture, and therefore whose absorption into the anti-Russian NATO is most vehemently opposed by Russia. As per the Wikipedia article on Russia-Ukraine Relations:  “Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus claim their heritage from Kievan Rus' (Kyivan Rus'), a polity that united most of the East Slavic and some Finnic tribes and adopted Byzantine Orthodoxy in the ninth to eleventh centuries. According to old Rus chronicles, Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the Mother of Rus Cities, as it was the capital of the powerful late medieval state of Rus”.^[

 

Of all its earlier European SSRs and East Bloc allies, Belarus is the only country still aligned with Russia. That leaves the strategically important Ukraine. NATO attempts to completely encircle and isolate Russia, and to station NATO forces on almost every inch of Russia’s European borders have been concentrating on Ukraine since decades: Ukraine  first joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1994 and the NATO-Ukraine Commission in 1997, then agreed to the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan in 2002 and entered into NATO's Intensified Dialogue program in 2005.

 

In view of this background of treachery and trickery, there is nothing more hypocritical than supporters of Ukraine (or rather, haters of Russia) pretending to take the high moral ground in matters concerning Russia and Ukraine, by treating Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as a hapless victim, and wanting the Russia-Ukraine war to go on and on till it manages to spark off World War III. Russia (like Israel in another context) has the full moral right to refuse to allow itself to be wiped out by its enemies, and to take every possible step necessary to prevent such an eventuality from taking place. And of all hypocritical critics, Indians and Hindus who take this anti-Russian stance are the most hypocritical of all.

 

I will stop at this point. As I wrote at the very beginning of the article, it may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India or Hindus. But it does concern India and Hindus. And most particularly Hindus, who have always been the target of similar hypocritical pseudo-moral attacks by powerful forces who deny Hindus the moral right to refuse to allow themselves to be wiped out by their enemies.  And for those Hindus who wax high moral indignation about the Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine (or about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere), how much such moral indignation have they ever actively felt the need to express about the parts of India annexed by China and Pakistan (or about the plight of Hindus in Kashmir and Manipur)?

My readers may or may not agree with all the above. But I felt the need to express my views on this subject.

APPENDIX ADDED 16-3-2025:

 

Concurrence today from an unexpected independent source in Bollywood for my view expressed in the article yesterday as to the basic cause of the conflict:

 

https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/john-abraham-chooses-a-side-in-the-russia-ukraine-war-the-diplomat-101742094947868.html

 

Yajnadevam on the Elephant

 

Yajnadevam on the Elephant

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Someone just sent me a tweet by Yajnadevam which confirmed that I had been right in not sticking out my neck (or rather, in retracting my wrongly-stuck-out neck) in seeming to endorse his decipherment. 

As I have already said in my articles, I do not know whether his decipherment is correct or not. But one thing I do know now is that he does not seem to have any compunction in making bold statements on matters on which he knows nothing. Whether this is in endorsing Nilesh Oak’s ridiculous datings, or in making statements as in the following tweet:

https://x.com/yajnadevam

https://x.com/yajnadevam/status/1900209437522133127

“Monkey and elephant have been reconstructed in pielexicon. This is a neutral work. Talageri deriving it incorrectly only speaks to his ignorance of the PIE hierarchy, which itself has no universal form. It is not clear if he just picked examples or made his own etymology, it wouldn’t matter, he could have just pointed to pielexicon. It wouldn’t matter be OK to say that his linguistics is subpar, but where is the alleged dishonesty?

9:06 PM · Mar 13, 2025”

 

Thank you, Yajnadevam ji, for expressing your faith in my honesty, although I do not require certificates from you. But have you read my article on the Elephant? 

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-elephant-and-proto-indo-european.html

I am willing to bet anything that you have not, and I feel sure that your willingness to express critical comments on something which you have not read at all does not say much for your honesty. 

I honestly do not think that you have the intellectual capacity to say things like “Talageri deriving it incorrectly only speaks to his ignorance” and “his linguistics is subpar”, because I have a definite feeling you do not even know what I have written on the subject of the PIE word for “elephant”.

If you have, why don’t you write a detailed article fully disproving what I have written in that article about the PIE word for the elephant? One person named “Sameer” already claimed he did it, and only ended up with egg on his face after babbling about unspecified and imaginary “mixed” Indian-African etymological origins for the common word for “elephant/ivory” found in four distinct Indo-European branches (Vedic, Greek, Latin and Hittite).

But of course, it is easy to make pompous pronouncements on things you do not know anything about, without going into details and specifics. Hence I hereby challenge you to go into details and specifics if you have any sense of honesty. Or else, learn to keep quiet about things you know nothing about.

Appendix added a few hours later:

Apparently, my strong reaction to Yajnadevam’s inadvertent or seeming support for the Shatterer’s criticism of the etymology of the PIE word for “elephant” has predictably given the jeering crowd of cowardly hecklers who make up the internet gang of liars the wrong impression that it releases “Sameer” from the onus of having to try to prove his dishonest lies about the “mixed” Indian-African etymological origins for the common word for “elephant/ivory” found in four distinct Indo-European branches (Vedic, Greek, Latin and Hittite). A drowning man will clutch at any straw, but straws do not save anyone from drowning. The fact still remains that the Shatterer stands completely shattered and defeated on this matter, and if he and his friends want to pretend to be satisfied with seeing Yajnadevam and myself “quarrel”, it speaks volumes for their degree of awareness of their own complete rout on the subject and their desperation to escape accountability for their dishonesty and lies. I am not holding my breath on the possibility of Sameer ever attempting to present his full “etymological” case for his false claims.

[Please also read the two comments below by "Cadaver" and my replies to them]

“Sameer” – The Most Dishonest “Scholar” on the Internet

 

“Sameer” – The Most Dishonest “Scholar” on the Internet

 Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Those who are acquainted with my blogs will be acquainted with the Shatterer, (https://x.com/dxrsam_0 )  the internet clown who claimed that he had “shattered” my article on the Elephant. I had dealt with the rantings and ravings of this pompous, and apparently completely lost-to-shame, fool in my following articles:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/indian-fauna-elephants-foxes-and-ait.html

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-shatterer-again-on-leopards-rather.html

I have been told that, after getting completely shattered by my above articles, he had been lying low for a long time and trying to avoid coming on my radar. But, in the last few weeks, perhaps egged on by fans, he has again been trying for some troll comments about my “etymologies” on Twitter. However, since I do not believe in kicking a fallen and wounded foe, I did not react.

But yesterday I posted a short article to highlight a funny exchange of tweets on Twitter, titled “Twitter (X) Trolls, Nilesh Oak and Myself”, in which I wrote: “now, I have stopped reacting to troll tweets of the second type, since I realize that when people have nothing concrete to say, they descend to vulgar personal abuse, and resorting to personal abuse without having anything concrete to say is the surest sign of the troll having accepted that he stands defeated [...] Rather than reacting indignantly to tweets abusing or criticizing me, nowadays I find myself amused even by the most abusive of them.”

Rather like Jayadratha in the Mahabharata who thought it was now safe to come out from hiding when he thought the sun had set, this coward thought it was now safe for him to come out of hiding and to tweet lies about me without any fear of retaliation or any other consequences. Yes, I will generally stick to my inclinations to not waste time on trolls, but just this once, and since this troll has been constantly raising points about my “etymologizing”, let me talk about etymologies.

 

Apparently, in the last few weeks, he has been trying to give what in Mumbai slang is called “हूल देना” (to give tentative provocative shoves to test the ground to see if it is safe to attack). But today, he has apparently been emboldened to write as follows:

https://x.com/dxrsam_0

https://x.com/dxrsam_0/status/1900147466076373023

“Talageri claimed that Hindi yār comes from Sanskrit jārá, neglecting the phonetic development of native words and the dynamics of Persian influence on Hindi. An indefensible etymology. Talageri does this so often that all etymologies given by him are automatically suspicious.”

5:00 PM· Mar 13 2025

Mr. Clown, I fully understand the “dynamics of Persian influence on Hindi”, but you do not understand the “dynamics of Sanskrit-Iranian connections”. After searching through all my writings, if this is the only “wrong etymology” that you could discover, then you are really a pathetic object to be pitied. There is a direct connection between Sanskrit and (through Avestan) Persian. Thus Sanskrit yajña = Avestan yašna = Persian jashan, Vedic Mitra = Avestan Miθra = Middle Persian Mihr = Later Persian Mehr (and indeed the Sanskrit name Mihir is a borrowing from the Persian form of an ancient Vedic word), and countless other common words can be cited. Even the Muslim word namāz is derived from the Persian root nam- cognate to Vedic root nam- (which is why fundamentalist Muslims object to the word and insist on using the Arabic word salāt).

In the medieval period, there was plenty of “Sanskrit-Iranian” dynamics flowing around in North India, and in the Hindi-Urdu-Hindustani speech of the common people, so that Sanskrit-origin words were alternately used in their Sanskrit-derived forms or their Persian-influenced forms. Thus, although we know that the original Sanskrit word for “week” is saptāha, and that the Avestan/Persian form derived from it is haftā, both the words are alternately used in common Hindi speech, and in fact, in many cases (including this one), the Persian-influenced form is used more frequently. That does not mean that the word is not related to the Vedic word, and that connecting it to the Vedic word represents wrong etymology.

It is exactly the same with the word yār, which is the Iranian form of the Vedic word jāra. As this word has not played any important role in my OIT theory, it is pathetic that he could have found nothing better to fall back on in his desperate attempts to show that I indulge in wrong “etymologyzing”.

 

Which is not to say that I have never made any mistakes at all in the matter of etymologies. But, whenever any such mistake has been brought to my notice, I have accepted it, and there has been no such mistake which has ever affected the validity of my OIT thesis.

On the other hand, this fraudulent textbook-worm who regularly spouts etymological jargon in his writings and tweets, has indulged in the most ridiculously flawed etymological reasoning in debating AIT-OIT interpretations with me in the past. Before he dares to set himself up as an expert in etymology-spouting, let him confess to his extremely foolish etymological claims in his earlier debates with me, which genuinely lead to the conclusion that “all etymologies given by him are automatically suspicious.”

I will only take up the most blatantly foolish claim made by him in his debate with me about the etymology of the IE words for elephant. During the debate, I had asked him these questions which this Jayadratha hiding in the shadows has never dared to answer. At the end of the first above article, I wrote:

“In fact, the logic seems to be: "anything goes" or "anything but a PIE word in India". There is no need for specific rules of phonetic change to show the changes from the non-IE sources to the IE languages, and no need to even specify the particular non-IE source words or even the non-IE source languages. Sameer goes so far as to breezily tell us: "words for “elephant; ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be India, or a mixture of both". Earlier, about the "wanderwort" for the ape/monkey, also, he tells us: "The ultimate source could be Afroasiatic; India cannot be ruled out either". Here, everywhere, he means "pre-Aryan" India when proto-Indo-Aryan was supposedly still in the Steppes or somewhere on the way! The fact that there is no non-IE Indian language which has any word for the elephant which could even remotely be suggested as the origin of these alleged "wanderwörter" is not important: it is all a matter of "multiple leaps of faith".

Most astounding is his claim that the "wanderwörter" could be "a mixture of both": i.e. of both African and Indian origin! It would be extremely interesting to see how he shows the sound changes which combine to jointly produce multi-origin "wanderwörter" originating in a mixture of originally African and Indian words (especially seeing that he sees no need to even specify the African and Indian origin words themselves, or the languages which produced them, and the exact path by which they jointly reached the PIE area from two different directions)!”

 

At the end of the second article, when he was still jumping around, I wrote:

“He refuses to accept that the four Indo-European words are derived from *ṛbha/ḷbha (ivory, elephant), from an original root (I am giving the Vedic form of the root rather than reconstructing a "PIE" one) *rabh/*labh: Vedic ibha, Latin ebur, Greek erepa/elepha, Hittite laḫpa, each of the four words individually bearing a distinct resemblance to the word *ṛbha/ ḷbha.

But his pretence to be a textbook citer gets completely shattered when he is not able to explain how these four Indo-European languages happen to have such similar words for ivory/elephant when the elephant was not found either in the Steppes or in the historical areas of any of the branches other than Indo-Aryan. Then, without bothering to cite a single scholar, without giving a single protoform (or even a group of different protoforms) from Africa or "pre-Aryan" India, and without showing how and by which rules of phonetic derivation these words were derived from any such protoforms, he very breezily informs us that "words for “elephant; ivory” were getting borrowed around in the area in antiquity. The ultimate origin might be an Afroasiatic (or another African) language, or it might be India, or a mixture of both".

For someone who so very pompously and superciliously rejects the derivation from *ṛbha/ḷbha, in spite of (a) the very close resemblance of the four Indo-European words to *ṛbha/ḷbha, (b) the parallel semantic example of hastin, and (c) the connected etymology of the Vedic ṛbhu from *ṛbha/ḷbha, in a show of being a stickler for strict phonetic rules of derivation, Sameer does not find it necessary to be equally circumspect when suggesting alternate derivations.

So, I again put it as follows: the discussion can only proceed further (although I can sense many people yawning already and wondering when this quibbling will end), and/or Sameer can only save his face, by providing textbook quotations from other scholars of such words which are "mixtures" of "both" African and Indian words, and giving the specific African and (non-IE) Indian words which got "mixed" together to produce these four Indo-European words for ivory/elephant, and naming the specific African and (non-IE) Indian languages from which those words arose. A short description of the way in which those diverse words met together before getting "mixed" and the phonetic rules explaining these "mixtures" would also help.

It is not my call to "reconstruct PIE". It is his call to reconstruct the "mixtures" of "non-Aryan" Indian words and African words, to point out which Indian and African languages they came from, how they managed to join together and get "borrowed" only by four IE languages (but not by the Caucasian, Uralic, Altaic, Sumerian, etc. languages), and so on. While going about it, he could also reconstruct one common PIE word for "fox", explaining all the anomalies.”

So this modern Jayadratha does not have to keep searching out innocuous words (not having to do with the AIT-OIT debate) in my writings to try desperately to show that he is the King if Etymology (and my etymologies are suspicious).

All he has to do is produce the correct etymologies for the IE words for the elephant as per his atrocious and absurd claims. Or else, go back in hiding. The sun has not yet set. But then avoiding answering those questions and trying to raise lame new ones is all he can do.