Indian Fauna: Elephants, Foxes and the AIT-OIT Debate.

 

Indian Fauna: Elephants, Foxes and the AIT-OIT Debate.

Shrikant G. Talageri.

 

In my last blog, I had  written about the "peer-reviewed" western academics and their cheering Indian camp-followers, with particular reference to the claims, of one such camp-follower, that the non-presence of common names for "Indian" plants and animals in the languages of the non-Indian IE branches was a clinching argument against the OIT. This person, whose name is Sameer, has now posted the following article on his blog, titled: "Shattering S. Talageri’s “The Elephant and the Proto-Indo-European Homeland”":

https://lingetc.wordpress.com/2022/07/30/shattering-s-talageris/

I must concede after reading this article that he is not a pedestrian in this debate, and seems to have considerable knowledge about many things, which was definitely not apparent from the perfectly untenable argument he had made earlier, which he seems to have wisely decided not to continue to reiterate. But having considerable knowledge is not the same thing as being able to analyze that knowledge, much less the same thing as being right. And while this present article is quite a strong one — in spite of some dogmatic linguistic ideas about the exact phonetic changes which should take place in IE etymology, some tricky escape routes (when not able to explain something from known or available data) like resorting to "wanderwörter" arguments from unknown and unattested languages, some vicious sarcasm (about which I should not complain, since perhaps I also can be accused of this), and some standard Witzellian tactics like constant references to my failure to "mention" something (his earlier claims about the non-Indian IE branches not having taken Indian geographical terms with them also did not mention that the gypsies also did not do so) — it totally fails to achieve what he claims in his Epilogue: "It is safe to say that Mr. Talageri’s version of OIT (Out-of-India Theory) has no merit (while most other versions tend to be even more inane). A careful study of comparative and historical linguistics comfortably rules out India as the Indo-European homeland as far as discernible. The deep history of the Proto-Indo-Europeans themselves remains out of sight." I am sorry to say, he has totally failed to "shatter" my article on "The Elephant and the Proto-Indo-European Homeland", whatever his fans may think, in spite of pointing out some weak points which however do not pertain to the main subject of the elephant. He has not dealt with all the massive textual evidence of different kinds given by me from the Rigveda, nor with the archaeological evidence, and, even in the field of linguistics, he only deals with the subject of Linguistic Paleontology (the attempt to locate, or dislocate, the PIE Homeland on the basis of common flora and fauna) with particular reference to one article of mine, and he only repeats old standard arguments based on the derivations not being based on the rules of PIE etymological derivation.

He continues: "Once upon a time I had some respect for Mr. Talageri, due to his painstaking compilation of data and statistics from the R̥gveda. But that seems to be the limit of his credible work (assuming it is credible). It’s impossible for a reader that understands Indo-European linguistics to a sufficient degree to come out of this article of his (and other ones too, for that matter) with any faith in Mr. Talageri’s methods and hypotheses." Obviously, no one can like to read this kind of thing about himself, but it is one of the hazards of writing on controversial subjects that one has to accept with a shrug. And it is clearly based on a failure to understand what I have written, because this is preceded by the following: "It cannot be stressed enough that Mr. Talageri’s approach and methodology suffers from numerous inaccuracies, omissions, and contradictions. Perhaps the best illustration of this is the rejection of the words for beaver (*bʰébʰrus) and snow (*sneygʷʰ- and its derivatives) as belonging to PIE. This is despite the fact that both sets are attested widely and follow all sound laws, and borrowing is ruled out by the presence of such divergent forms as Old Norse bjórr and Latin fiber/feber, both meaning “beaver”, and Greek νίφα nípʰa and Lithuanian sniẽgas, both meaning “snow”. The only explanation for these is PIE."

 

1. Beaver and Snow.

If this above is the "best illustration" of my wrong approach and methodology, it speaks poorly of his understanding. I do not know where I have "rejected" "the words for beaver (*bʰébʰrus) and snow (*sneygʷʰ- and its derivatives) as belonging to PIE."! In fact, speaking of the first word, I have only pointed out the original PIE meaning was not "beaver" but the particular brown color, which is used in both the Rigveda and the Mitanni documents to refer to the color of horses, and which is only later applied in post-Rigvedic times further east to the mongoose. Even Gamkrelidze accepts this as the original PIE meaning “It is notable that the Indo-Iranian languages are split by this isogloss: Sanskrit shows the more archaic situation, while Avestan displays the innovation” (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:448).].

 

To further illustrate his lack of powers of comprehension, Sameer quotes me as follows: "And there is no case for any movement of the name into India: the word babhru occurs in the Rigveda, and in Mitanni IA, but as a name for a particular horse-colour. In the east, the colour word (in much later Sanskrit) was separately used as a name for the mongoose, but this cannot be as part of an Aryan movement into India in an AIT scenario, because in that case, the Aryans would have remembered the Rigvedic word babhru (which, seeing that it is also found in the Mitanni IA language, supposed, in the AIT scenario, to have separated from Vedic in Central Asia itself before the separation of the proto-Iranians, makes the meaning quite old and consistent) rather than a long-forgotten non-Indian use of the word in a distant land before an immigration already forgotten even in the Rigveda", and calls this a "meaningless sentence". His logic: "This is a non-argument. The meaning “beaver” was never resurrected by the Indo-Aryans, so what “long-forgotten non-Indian use” is Mr. Talageri talking about? In the AMT/AIT scenario, the word बभ्रु babhru would first have lost association with the “beaver” and been applied merely to the color “brown”. Much later, the mongoose was called by this name, not unlike how we assign names to pet dogs/cats based on color: Cinnamon, Ginger, and Chestnut.

I think the beaver is one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have in favor of PIE-not-in-India, by a straightforward application of ᴘʀɪɴᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴏɴᴇ."

It is not meaningless: according to the AIT/AMT, the proto-Mitanni, the proto-Indo-Aryans and the proto-Iranians were together in the beaver areas of Central Asia before they separated from each other, but the Mitanni and the Rigvedic people, moving in two opposite directions, after "losing association with the beaver", both used the word only in reference to horse colors while the Iranians alone retained the "beaver" meaning. And while Sameer claims the application of the word for the mongoose was a separate event, Witzel is on record that it was applied to the mongoose because it was a rodent-like animal which reminded the by then long resident "Aryans" of the beaver for whom the word was first used (the name for the large and distinctly different bear/bhālū, though from the same root, does not bear the reduplicated form). So yes, in the AIT/AMT scenario, the word is indeed supposed to have been "resurrected" by the later post-Rigvedic Indo-Aryans from a "long-forgotten non-Indian use" in Central Asia. This certainly calls for what Sameer repeatedly calls leaps of faith.

 

And now it appears (in discussions between Sameer and his fans) that two scholarly articles (I have not yet read them) indicate that the beaver was present in Kashmir in 2000 BCE, leading him to modify his last statement above ("I think the beaver is one of the strongest pieces of evidence we have in favor of PIE-not-in-India, by a straightforward application of ᴘʀɪɴᴄɪᴘʟᴇ ᴏɴᴇ.").

https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/c46b5213-4451-4cd3-9fb4-9e84c2603636/content 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02704749

If the beaver was present in Kashmir in 2000 BCE (at this point, it must be noted that in the very faulty and grossly misleading map of the historical distribution of beavers that he shows in the article, beavers are not found even in Central Asia, let alone Kashmir: they are found to the north of a latitude in the northern parts of Kazakhstan and Mongolia, north of the borders of even China) — and as per our OIT case, Kashmir and areas west were the earliest home of the Anus or proto-Iranians — it fits in with our OIT case where all the Anu and Druhyu branches have this common innovation of the word *bʰébʰrus for "beaver", missing only in the Pūru branch which alone was located outside the beaver areas and therefore continued to retain the original meaning. In post-Rigvedic times, as the Pūrus expanded northwestwards into former Anu-Druhyu territories, they became acquainted with the Anu-Druhyu meaning of the word.

In his above article, Sameer rejects the idea that PIE words or meanings developed jointly by the non-Indo-Aryan Anu-Druhyu branches could have been adopted into Indo-Aryan after the Pūrus expanded westwards, and treats my postulation of this phenomenon as my refusal to accept these words as PIE at all: "Since in Mr. Talageri’s theory the IE branches were already separated out in India, it’s impossible for a PIE word to be “a new word”. Either it’s an old word or it’s not a PIE word." The facts however show, and show repeatedly, that words can be PIE in the IE family as a whole (see section V B. PIE Flora and Fauna of the North-west and Beyond in my above article on the elephant), and, at the same time, they can be new words in the Indo-Aryan vocabulary which appear only in the New Rigveda or even later.

Like it or not, and however much AIT proponents may scoff at it, this is what we see in the case of numerous PIE words which appear only in the New Rigveda or in post-Rigvedic texts. I have repeatedly given examples of such words. Here, the same is the case also with the word "snow (*sneygʷʰ- and its derivatives)". The root √snih is totally missing in the Old Rigveda, and first appears only in the New Rigveda.

 

2. Tiger, Leopard, Lion and Monkey.

His article has different sections on the tiger, leopard, lion, monkey, elephant, the word "Druhyu", the *táwros (bull, aurochs), on milk and cattle, the beech tree, the beaver, and on snow, apart from some general comment sections. I will deal mainly with the elephant, because it is the central part of my earlier article as well as his "shattering" criticism of it.

About his criticism of my citing the common words for tiger, lion, monkey and leopard in my earlier article. It is not I who have discovered them to be common words, it is Gamkrelidze and Ivanov who have cited them (whether as original PIE words or "wanderwörter") in order to suggest that animals well to the south of the temperate regions have common names and that the Homeland may lie well to the south of the Steppes: they suggest Anatolia. Many other western scholars, who cannot be accused of pro-OIT intentions, have also accepted these correspondences without necessarily taking them into consideration for locating the Homeland outside the Steppes. And, when citing these words, I pointed out that:

"many arguments are made against these reconstructed names. We will first note the arguments made against the first four names:

1. The words vyāghra, kapi and pṛdāku are not found in the Rigveda and are therefore post-Vedic words (although one of the composers of the Rigvedic hymn IX.97 bears the name Vyāghra-pāda "tiger-foot", a person named many times in X.86 bears the name Vrṣā-kapi, and a person named in VIII.17.15 bears the name Pṛdāku-sānu!).

2. The word for tiger may have been borrowed by Old Persian and Old Armenian from India in historical times.

3. Lions, leopards, and even tigers, were found in parts of Iran, West Asia and the Caucasus region in early historical times. Likewise monkeys were found as far as West Asia in earlier historical times. Names for these animals may therefore have been known to the PIE language speakers in their steppe homeland.

4. There may be no connection between Indo-Aryan kapí- and Greek kēpos, which may have evolved separately, and the identification of the Germanic and Slavic words as related to the above forms with k- may also be wrong.

5. These names may be "wanderwörter" (i.e. "migratory words": words of indeterminate origins which spread over large areas and were borrowed by different originally unrelated languages) from West Asia into the Steppe areas: e.g. Egyptian gjf, Aramaic kōpā, Sumerian ukupu, "monkey".

All these arguments can be argued against, but here we will deal only with the word for "elephant", since it is the most important and significant".

Sameer even objects to my not giving my arguments against the above arguments. Since I was writing about the flora and fauna, I mentioned them in my article to complete the picture. But, as they are not found only in India, and could be claimed to be words encountered by the PIE speakers in the vicinity of more western parts of Asia, they do not specifically point to India, so I did not want to (and will not) waste my time arguing about them or trying to "prove" anything from them. [For that matter, Sameer is not wrong in saying that citing the common words for tiger and lion in only two or three easternmost branches (whether borrowed from each other or of common PIE origin) to prove any PIE homeland hypothesis would be in the same unacceptable category, as evidence, as the citation of the common words for beech only in the westernmost (European) branches].

I will only comment on some points in Sameer's article regarding these animal names:

a) Sameer writes about the word pṛdāku: "Sanskrit पृदाकु pr̥ḍāku itself does not only mean “leopard”. The traditional meaning (e.g. Amarakośa) is “snake”, and this is the interpretation taken for occurrences of the word in Atharvaveda, the Brāhmaṇa literature, and Mahābhārata [See EWA, Band 2, p. 163]. If the “leopard” word is the same, the connection between the two might be a spotted appearance.". But again (as in the case of the historical distribution of the beaver), Sameer is a bit outdated. See the following article by Lubotsky which argues that the word in the Vedic texts meant the leopard:

https://www.academia.edu/2068512/Vedic_pr_d%C4%81kus%C4%81nu

b) Contradictory logic: when criticizing my perfectly valid rejection of the beech argument, he writes: "Armenian ինձ inj doesn’t mean “lion”, but is a generic name for several feline animals such as leopard, panther, etc […]  Back to Proto-Slavic*bazъ: I see it as not much worse than Armenian ինձ inj “leopard, panther” being connected with Sanskrit सिंह siṁha “lion”. […] at one point Sanskrit सिंह siṁha and Armenian ինձ inj, the latter of which doesn’t even mean “lion”, were enough for him to accept PIE *sinǵʰos without question, but here, in the case of the beech, unquestionable presence in two branches (Italic, Germanic), marginal in one (Celtic: Gaulish *bāgos in certain place names in France), and with a semantic shift in another (Greek φηγός pʰēgós “oak”) is insufficient!"

Here he first misrepresents the fact that I reject beech as "insufficient" not because of the reasons he cites regarding the Celtic and Greek words, but because all the beech words are restricted only to Europe.

Then, after finding my shift of the meaning from lion (a feline panther) to leopard (another feline panther) dubious, he, at another point traces the Persian-Arabic word babr for "tiger" to an older Sumerian word, meaning "wolf" : "All these appear to derive from Sumerian urbarak (used as a Sumerogram in Akkadian) meaning “wolf”. It has a transparent etymology, as /ur/ “dog; beast of prey” +‎ /barak/ “of outside”, hence “outside-dog”. Thus, at some point the same word must have variously gotten adapted for “tiger”, “panther”, and “wolf”". Here, the original Sumerian word barak means "outside", and only in combination with ur (dog) it means "wolf" (a canine carnivore), but he finds this "sufficient" to cite this word as the origin of the Persian word babr for "tiger" (a feline carnivore) through the Semitic Arabic word babr "tiger" (although Arabia never had tigers and must logically have borrowed the word from Persian).

c) In discussing the words for monkey, he writes: "He states: “The monkey, with a proto-form *qhe/oph, is found in four branches: with the initial *qhe in Indo-Aryan kapí- and Greek kēpos, and without it in Germanic (e.g. Old Icelandic) api and Slavic (e.g. Old Russian) opica.”

What the follies is PIE *q (or *qh) or *ph? He should tell us what version of PIE he’s using, as these symbols are not in any standard version."

He should have addressed this question to Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, It is they who write: "Widely distributed cognate words for 'monkey, ape' in the ancient Indo-European dialects make it possible to posit a well-defined protoform at the Proto-Indo-European time depth […] the protoform can be reconstructed as *qhe/oph, with a variant *qhe/op" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:442). But then he would not have posed such a question. Incidentally, he does quote Gamkrelidze on the same page later, to cite it as a "wanderwort", but he does not "mention" earlier that the "PIE *q (or *qh) or *ph" are from the version of PIE (or at least "proto-form" reconstruction) that Gamkrelidze is using. [Like Witzel, Sameer's critique is dotted with references to things I do not "mention". I could not resist giving this one example of countless things he himself does not "mention", although in general I find this kind of remark pointless. Likewise, earlier, when he had written a series of tweets stating that the absence of "Indian" flora and fauna words in the non-Indian IE branches ruled out their emigration from India, he had not "mentioned" that such words were absent in Romany also].

Incidentally, this reminded me of a book by Enid Blyton, a school story, where a girl exposes a teacher who has a bias against her by pretending to have written a poem to be presented in the class. The teacher predictably makes fun of the poem in the full class, and subjects it to caustic criticism, after which the girl reveals that the poem is not written by herself but by a famous poet. Sameer's article is full of repeated criticism of "my" etymologies, but he either does not know, or prefers to turn a blind eye to the fact, that I very rarely (though not never) make identifications and in most cases I rely on other well-known scholars.

 

3. Druhyu.

He does however, take up an etymology suggested by me elsewhere: "he slides in a new etymology of द्रुह्यु druhyu without mention. Mr. Talageri proposes the first element dru- “tree, wood” (as in dru-ṣad- “sitting on a tree”)". He rejects this on the ground that I do not "explain what the second element **-hyu- might mean. There is no such suffix available in Sanskrit! If it’s a root, he should illuminate us about it. To support this etymology, other occurrences of this mysterious **-hyu- should be shown and discussed.", and concludes "This is important because Mr. Talageri uses this word to associate the Druhyu mentioned in Vedic literature with the Celtic Druids. This would favor his hypothesis of the non-Indo-Aryan IE-speaking peoples (specifically Celts, in this case) originating in India. Alas, it’s not to be.".

Now, this question of druhyu being the name of a class of priests of the westernmost group of Aiḷas (therefore also collectively called by the same name) in Indian tradition (and the ones who carried the earliest migrating branches of IE dialects into Central Asia and Europe), one of the three oldest categories of priests (the other two categories being the Aṅgiras, priests of the Pūrus, and the Bhṛgus, priests of the Anus), has been dealt with in great detail in my books and articles. I have shown how this is supported by both Rigvedic and Avestan references. I will not repeat all that here, because Sameer's objection here at least is primarily about the etymology. The Celtic drui, as also and Greek dryad for tree nymph, are certainly derived from the element "tree", and his claim is that the Vedic druhyu is not.

But the Vedic druhyu refers to the drui, the priests of the westernmost Aiḷa groups. The suffix -yu is clearly added to the original word druh/drui/druj (Rigvedic, Celtic, Iranian respectively), to emphasize that they are enemy priests for the priests of the Rigvedic Pūru: the word for enemy priests in the Rigveda is das-yu (while dāsa signifies non-Pūru tribes: this difference between dāsa and dasyu is also given in detail in my books and articles). It may be noted that the Avestan version is merely the original druj without the added suffix -yu., although in the case of other words with -yu (dasyu, manyu) the Avesta retains the suffix.

That there were other similar-sounding roots, as Sameer points out, "The word द्रुह्यु druhyu is rather seen as a possible derivative of the verb root √द्रुह् druh < PIE *dʰrewgʰ- “to deceive” [EWA, 1992, Band 1, pp. 760-761] or to a second root homophonous to this [LIV, 2001, p. 157], having the sense of “troop; friend”." is clear, except that Rigvedic druhyu is not derived from that root, which also gives us numerous words in both Sanskrit and Iranian pertaining to "enmity". And, as I pointed out in my book, this alternate meaning is punned on by the composer of the dāśarājña hymn by referring to both the enemy bhṛgu and druhyu priests (of the Anus and Druhyus, enemies in that hymn) as sakhā "friend" in VII.18.6.

So, if Sameer thinks his etymological argument spikes the gun of the druhyu-druid connection, "Alas, it’s not to be".

 

4. Tauros: "Bull, aurochs" and Wine.

About the reconstructed word for bull/aurochs, *t^hauro- (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:439): This word, writes Mr. Talageri, is “a distinct case of the Semitic influence being found only in the western branches: this Semitic loan for “bull” or “aurochs” is completely missing in the three eastern branches Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Tocharian.”

There are three issues with this, in increasing order of salience".

The first "issue" is: "The direction of borrowing cannot be ascertained independently. Only on assuming OIT might it appear likely that it was IE that borrowed this word from Semitic, or else that IE and Semitic both got it from a third, unknown language."

Well, the word is given by Mallory and  Adams as among the few words representing the early correspondence between PIE and Semitic, and they write "The correspondence between Indo-European and Semitic are generally explained as flowing from Semitic into Indo-European at the level of the Indo-European proto-language itself" (MALLORY-ADAMS 2006:83), and I at least am sure Mallory, Adams, and the "general" scholars they are referring to, are not "assuming OIT". In any case, whatever the direction, it is clearly found only in the western branches and not the eastern ones, demonstrating an east-to-west IE movement.

The second "issue" is "The Iranian branch does have this word, with s-mobile (also seen in Germanic — Old Norse stjórr “steer, young bull”): Ossetian стор stor “cow, bull”, and other Iranian languages have generalized the sense to any large animal: Khotanese stūrä “large cattle, horse”, Avestan 𐬯𐬙𐬀𐬊𐬭𐬀 staora “large cattle”, Classical Persian sutōr “beast of burden”."

But it is not the same word, it is a separate later (possibly derived) borrowed form which is found only in two branches, Germanic (which has both the forms) and Iranian (after it expanded westwards). Gamkrelidze gives two separate reconstructed forms: the first being *t^hauro- (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:439) which he points out, in the footnote, can only be directly connected with the second form *st^heuro- with the proviso: "If we admit such root-initial phonetic changes and root vowel changes". The second form represents a different later event after the Iranians had spread out west and the other branches were still on the way west.

1. 

T  The third "issue" is "Since Germanic *þeuraz (Old Norse þjórr “bull”) already has the Germanic-specific sound changes in its evolution from PIE (Grimm’s law, to be specific), the word *táwros must be PIE. That is, it cannot be a later borrowing.

Mr. Talageri’s blatant disregard for the transparent conclusion that *táwros was already present in PIE is disappointing. He might try to weasel around, saying point #3 isn’t valid here since the date of Grimm’s Law might be quite late, and the date of borrowing from Semitic preceded it. This requires an unnatural amount of special pleading: In his timeline Vedic had already taken shape in 3000 BC in India but its speakers’ brethren, the speakers of Proto-Germanic, were apparently speaking a language far closer to PIE. The relative chronology would be absurd."

To begin with, since the oldest books of the Rigveda (at least as per my OIT case) go back beyond 3000 BCE, Vedic had indeed already separated as a separate dialect by that time though not necessarily "already taken shape" in the completed form we see in its final version around 1500 BCE. The speakers of the west-migrating branches (not just Proto-Germanic but all of them) were not necessarily still speaking the exact forms they were speaking before the separation of Vedic, so the question of whether or not they still "were apparently speaking a language far closer to PIE" can only be a matter of idle and pointless speculation. The only relevant point is that all the west-migrating branches adopted one common word from Semitic which later underwent all the "specific sound changes" in those branches: again, the exact date of this borrowing also being a matter of speculation. A PIE word need not necessarily have been formed or borrowed only when all the twelve branches were undifferentiated and together.

The only relevant facts are that the word (as per Sameer's own criterion) has "similar sounding words" with a "sensible etymology" in Semitic, and that the word is found in all the eight western branches and missing in the three eastern branches.

 

In respect of the second word cited by me, "wine", Samneer writes: "Other words (e.g. for wine) that are limited to the Western IE branches need no specific explanation. They neither favor nor disfavor AIT or OIT. After all, the Western branches do indeed form a loose Sprachbund. There could be, and are, loanwords common to them that are missing in the Eastern IE branches."

Here, the evidence of the words for "wine" is even stronger, and it does actually specifically "favor" the OIT. As I pointed out: "In fact, this particular word, borrowed from Semitic, is found in three grades, according to Gamkrelidze, which, in fact fit in with the migrations from India: the word is not found in Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Tocharian, which remained in the east; it is found in Anatolian (Hittite), the Early Dialect emigrating westwards, from “PIE *wi(o)no-, with zero grade”; in the European Dialects (Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic) from “PIE *weino- with e-grade vocalism”; and, in the Late Dialects migrating westwards (Greek, Albanian, Armenian), from “PIE *woino- with o grade” (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:557-558)." (TALAGERI 2008:306).

 

5: Milk and Cattle.

In his section on milk and cattle, Sameer concentrates only on quibbling on the etymologies of the words for "milk" on the basis of rules created by the high priests of Indology, to the exclusion of all other evidence.

He writes: "On the topic of the root *h₂melǵ- for “milk” (as a noun as well as a verb), Talageri says: “[…] PIE *melk’- is a new word developed among the PIEs in their secondary Homeland in and around Central Asia after they migrated out from the northwest.”. This is problematic in many ways:". His first problem has already been dealt with earlier above. In his own words: "the Western branches do indeed form a loose Sprachbund. There could be, and are, loanwords common to them that are missing in the Eastern IE branches". My point is that the IE branches migrating from India formed a "loose sprachbund" in the northwest outside India in respect of both loanwords and new PIE formations which excluded only Indo-Aryan (such as the common word for "ear") or both Indo-Aryan and Iranian (such as the common word for "milk").  

His second problem with my classification of *h₂melǵ- for “milk” as a new word developed in the NW is that "The descendants of *h₂melǵ- are spread wide and many" and he gives a list of varied words derived from this root in all the other IE branches to show the ubiquity of the word in all the branches. But this would be the case anyway if the word *h₂melǵ- had replaced an original word *dʰewgʰ- for "milk" in the northwest.

[If this seems a "leap of faith", it is no more a leap of faith than believing that the Indo-Aryans and Iranians so completely banished from very existence an original root *h₂melǵ- for "milk" to the extent that it is not found even in any other context (the other branches do have the root *dʰewgʰ- in other contexts, as Sameer himself points out) when the Indo-Aryan branch in fact preserves the greatest number of IE roots, and, as I have pointed out in the article that Sameer is "shattering", also the greatest number of PIE words connected with milk, dairying and cattle. He does try to preempt this point by citing "the "Sanskrit √मृज् mr̥j “to wipe, clean” (present मार्ष्टि) [EWA, Band 2, pp. 324-325]" but himself admits that "the semantic gap is truly wide" for this to be effective].

 

In the process, to repeat, he concentrates only on quibbling on the etymologies of the words for "milk" on the basis of rules created by the high priests of Indology, to the exclusion of all other evidence:  mainly the evidence that I have already given in detail in my article that he is "shattering". I will repeat it here:

"The Rigveda is an extremely cow-centered text. Not only is the cow mentioned many more times than any other animal (including the horse), but the word go-/gau- in the Rigveda is replete with many naturalistic and mystic meanings (where it represents the rays of the sun, the earth, the stars, and many other more mystic things not within the scope of this article) showing it to be a central feature of the Rigvedic religion and socio-economic environment. But even more linguistically important is that the Sanskrit language contains every single common IE word associated with cows and cattle, except, significantly, the "Near Eastern migratory term" referred to by Gamkrelidze (the implications of the absence of which, in the three eastern branches, definitely shows that "the speakers of these dialects were not acquainted with the wild cows found specifically in the Near East" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:491 paraphrased) as already discussed earlier). Mallory tells us there are three different words for "cow" in the IE languages, *g^wṓus, *h1eĝh, and *wokéh_a-. The first, as we saw, is found in all the twelve branches. As for the other words for cow, bull, cattle, they are found in Indo-Aryan  +  different other branches:

a. *h1eĝh "cow": Skt. ahī-, Armenian ezn, Celtic (Old Irish) ag.

b. *wokéh_a- "cow": Skt. vaśā-, Italic (Latin) vacca.

c. *phekhu- "livestock": Skt. paśu-, Iranian (Avestan) pasu-, Italic (Latin) pecū, Germanic (Old English) feoh, Baltic (Lithuanian) pēkus.

d. *uk^(w)sēn "ox": Skt. ukṣan-, Iranian (Avestan) uxšan, Tocharian okso, Germanic (English) ox, Celtic (Old Irish) oss.

e. *wṛs-en "bull": Skt. vṛṣṇí-, Iranian (Avestan) varəšna-.

f. *usr- "cow/bull": Skt. usra/usrā, Germanic ūro (from ūrochso).

g. *domh_oyos "young bull":  Skt. damya-, Celtic (Old Irish) dam, Albanian dem, Greek damálēs.

This last is particularly significant. Gamkrelidze points out the following: "that speakers of Proto-Indo-European were among those who domesticated wild cattle is also shown by the presence in Indo-European of another term for 'bull', derived from the verb *t'emH- 'tame, subdue: bridle: force': OIr dam 'bull', Ved. damya- 'young bull to be tamed', Alb. dem 'young bull', (Mayrhofer 1963:II.35), Gr. damálēs, 'young bull to be tamed', damálē 'heifer'" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:491). The weight of the evidence, however, shows that this "taming" took place in the area of the Vedic people, and not in West Asia as Gamkrelidze tries to suggest.

Further, the following two words also illustrate the developed role of dairying in the PIE world: a) Skt. goṣṭhá- and Celtiberian (an extinct Celtic language spoken in Spain) boustom, "cattle-shed"; and b) a common PIE word for "udder": Skt. ūdhar-, Greek oŭthar, Latin ūber, Germanic (English) udder. Again, Indo-Aryan is the common factor".

 

How does all this disprove the etymological argument of Sameer about an original root *h₂melǵ- for "milk"? In the two following ways:

1. When Vedic Sanskrit preserves so completely such a massive original PIE vocabulary pertaining to milk, dairying and cows, why would it (and not only Vedic Sanskrit but also Iranian) so completely exterminate even the very root for an original root *h₂melǵ- for "milk"?

2. How did Vedic Sanskrit preserve so completely such a massive original PIE vocabulary pertaining to milk, dairying and cows, all the way from the Steppes to India, when the archaeological and genetic evidence (genetic evidence cannot show the movement of languages, but it very definitely can show the presence of specific animal species or sub-species) makes it crystal clear that the western, non-Indian or non-zebu variety of domestic cattle is completely missing in India till very modern times? Did the migrating Indo-Aryans enter a cattle-full India, themselves cattle-less, and revive long-lost memories of cattle and dairying vocabulary which they had left far behind in the Steppes?

To quote again from my "shattered" article:

"There are indeed "two centers of domestication" of the cow (i.e. of domestic cattle), and they are not the subject of any controversy. The wikipedia article on "Cattle" unambiguously tells us: "Archeozoological and genetic data indicate that cattle were first domesticated from wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) approximately 10,500 years ago. There were two major areas of domestication: one in the area that is now Turkey, giving rise to the taurine line, and a second in the area that is now Pakistan, resulting in the indicine line [….] European cattle are largely descended from the taurine lineage". All other academic sources regularly point out that "the Indus Valley Civilization" was one of the two centers of domestication of cattle. [So much for the glaring difference between the "urban Harappans" and "pastoral Aryans"].

 […] Inspite of the persistent AIT stand that "pastoral" migrants from the Steppes brought the Indo-Aryan languages into the "urbanite" Harappan areas,  no-one has been able to show the presence of the western cattle, bos taurus, which would necessarily have been the species of domesticated cattle that "pastoralists" from the Steppes would have brought into India. The Indian cattle in the area before and since Harappan times have been the Indian zebu humped cattle native to that area itself. On the contrary, very recent scientific studies have confirmed that the Indian humped zebu cattle, domesticated in the Harappan area since thousands of years, suddenly started appearing in West Asia around 2200 BCE, and by 2000 BCE there was largescale mixing of the Indian zebu cattle, bos indicus, with the genetically distinct western species of cattle, bos taurus, in West Asia. Thus we have three very distinct animal species native to India - the elephant, the peacock and the domesticated Indian zebu cattle - appearing in West Asia exactly coinciding with the presence and activities of the Mitanni in West Asia at the time, thus confirming that the Mitanni people were migrants from India to West Asia around 2200 BCE".

 

6. Foxes and Elephants.

It is interesting to see the double standards adopted by the advocates of strict adherence to etymological derivations as per strict rules of IE sound changes.

In my earlier "shattered" article, I had written as follows:

"This argument, about "lack of proper sound correspondences" is a demonstrably fake one: the PIE elephant is sought to be denied by Witzel on the grounds of "lack of proper sound correspondences", but, when it comes to animals of the temperate region, this same "lack of proper sound correspondences" apparently enhances the value of the evidence: "the major carnivores [...] are well represented although often showing substantial independent re-formation. This is the case with *wl(o)p- 'fox' (e.g. Lat vulpēs, Lith lãpė, Grk alṓpēks ~ alōpos, Arm aluēs, Hit ulip(pa)na- 'wolf', Av urupis 'dog', raopi- 'fox, jackal', Skt lopāsá- 'jackal, fox'), for example, which boasts at least six different potential proto-forms" (MALLORY-ADAMS 2006:138)!"

 

Sameer quotes this, and then merely dismisses it with a lot of "hand-wavy" (his own phrase), verbose, and pompous comments combined with a  very liberal way of treating the origins of common words when strict adherence to rules and dogmas is inconvenient:

"Well, discard the fox! Most linguists agree that the wide variety of words for it cannot be reconciled into one PIE word; at most, they may consider a subset of that to be cognate via descent. For example (highlights in bold mine),

·         Derksen, 2015 (p. 274): This etymon [Lithuanian lapė], must probably be separated from →vilpišys ‘wild cat’, Lat. vulpės ‘fox’ (cf. Schrijver 1998). The Latvian forms seem to derive from an s-stem, which according to Blažek (1998a: 29) may have meant ‘brightness’.

·         Martirosyan, 2009 (p. 42): I conclude that Arm. aɫuēs, obl. -es- ‘fox’, Gr. ἀλώπηξ, -εκος ‘fox’, and Indo-Iran. *Raupāća- ‘fox’, prob. also ‘jackal’ are related; they are probably of non-IE origin; the appurtenance of the other forms is possible but uncertain.

·         Beekes, 2010 (p. 79): De Vaan IIJ 43 (2000): 279-293, disassociates the suffix from the Indo-Ir. one (as above the words were disassociated) and doubts that Skt. -āśa- etc. are of IE origin. He follows Chantraine 1933: 376 in assuming that the Greek (and Armenian) suffix -ek- was taken from a non-IE language;

·         Beekes, 2010 (p.79): The inflection ἀλώπηξ, -εκος is unique in Greek. There is no support for the paradigm -ōk-s, -ek-os assumed by Rix 1976: 143. In the Armenian form, the ē presents difficulties and is probably secondary, the word rather showing old short e; see Clackson 1994: 95.

·         De Vaan, 2008 (p. 688): […] MP rōpās, Oss. ruvas/robas ‘fox’ < Ilr. *laupā̆ća- (< *h₂lou̯p-ē̆k-?). Probably unrelated: Gr. ἀλώπηξ, -εκος [f.] ‘fox’, Arm. alowēs, gen. -esow ‘fox’, […]

·         And perhaps in no clearer words than in EWA, 1992-2001, Band 2 (pp. 482-483): Wörter wie lat. volpēs, lit. lãpė, lett. lapsa ‘Fuchs’ bleiben eher fern (s. Fraenkel 340af. und die Lit. bei Karulis I 501). Aus Abweichungen des Typus lop° ~ grk. /alōp°/ ~ lat. volp° hat man auf ein Kulturwort aus verschiedenartigen Entlehnungsquellen oder auf einen affektisch umgestalteten Tiernamen geschlossen (z. B. Frisk I 83 bzw. Joki 308);

Thus there is no doubt that the words for fox across the IE languages are believed to not come from a single PIE source. The above extracts make it abundantly clear that at least some of the words are borrowed; overall one may speak of a “Kulturwort aus verschiedenartigen Entlehnungsquellen”, as Mayrhofer (EWA) opines.

And even if somebody else considers the words for the fox to be related, that does not give Mr. Talageri license to rampantly apply incongruous and disproportionate (even plain incorrect) logic to come up with etymologies that require scores of leaps of faith in semantics as well as in phonetics (especially see इभ íbha above), as a माद्यन्निभः, if you will. His etymologies are unfounded and cannot be supported on any grounds."

 

Alas, we cannot "discard the fox" so easily, just on the words of selectively strict Sameer. [In the case of the Ayodhya dispute also, the Babri-Masjid side had presented a wide variety of mutually conflicting motley "scholarly" opinions as "evidence", which is what he seems to be doing here]. Ignoring all the above apologetics, circumlocutions, circular arguments and obfuscatory tactics, the evidence of the words for fox can only indicate one of two things:

1. Either (as per his repeatedly stated logic) the fox was not a part of PIE Homeland, which is why we cannot reconstruct a single proto-form from which all the various words are derived, and the word could be of non-IE origin.

2. Or else, it is possible that (for the different reasons cited above by Sameer in his above quotations from different scholars with respect to the fox) a common PIE animal or word from the PIE Homeland could yield derivatives in its branches which show more than one proto-form.

But the first alternative above is clearly wrong: the fox is found in every historical IE area and every suggested PIE Homeland.

 

Contrast his liberal treatment of the fox with his dogmatic attitude towards the elephant: as I pointed out, there are four basic words 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 these word words individually bears a distinct resemblance to the word *ṛbha/ ḷbha (and I have elaborated this in my article)

 

He tries his hand at ridicule: "There’s a seeming suffix -bha in several animal names: गर्दभ gardabha and रासभ rāsabha “ass”, वृषभ vr̥ṣabha and ऋषभ r̥ṣabha “bull”, शरभ śarabha “fabulous eight-legged animal” (AV) [Macdonell, 1910, p. 139]. As such, the etymology from √labh seems all the more distant and facetious, unless Mr. Talageri wants to separate out the **śa- in śarabha, assigning it some whimsical meaning, and leaving **-rabha to be derived from √rabh = √labh",  and also resorts once more to the Witzellian thrust: "Interestingly, the Atharvaveda also has the adjective स्थूलभ sthūlabha which seems to be synonymous to स्थूल sthūla “big”. All this points to an innovated or borrowed suffix -bha. It’s suspicious that Mr. Talageri didn’t consider this worthy of mention; how could an analysis be complete without these? This is even more suspicious in the light of the fact that he does mention गर्दभ gardabha elsewhere in the same article!"

Before going to the main issue, let me deal with this juvenile childishness: I have nowhere "separated out the **i- in i-bha, assigning it some whimsical meaning, and leaving **-rabha to be derived from √rabh = √labh". I have posited that ibha as a whole is a Prakritization of the original ṛbha, so this comedy rather falls flat. And as I was not discussing Vedic words ending in -bha anyway (there are very many of them: skambha, tapurjambha, tastambha, rebha, śubha, karambha, etc), the question of my "mentioning" Rigvedic animal names ending in -bha, much less an Atharvavedic word ending in -bha, just simply does not arise. But this is the level of Sameer's arguments.

 

In fact, in the case of the Rigvedic word ibha, not only is it a Prakritized form of an earlier *ṛbha — whose etymology, as I pointed out, follows the same semantic pattern as the etymology of the other Rigvedic word hastin from hasta "hand", and whose derivation is akin to the derivation of the word ṛbhu- which, as per Macdonell, comes "from the root rabh, to grasp, thus means 'handy', 'dexterous'" (MACDONELL 1897:133) — but there is a very large network of words in the Rigveda which collectively buttress this connection between the elephant, the hand/arm, ivory trade and wealth, (i.e. ṛbhu, tugrya, tugryā-vṛdh, taugrya, bhujyu, ibhya and later associations of words derived from √rabh and √labh" with elephants) which I have detailed in my "shattered" elephant article. He could have tried the same "hand-wavy" tactics of dismissing the collective force of all that evidence, item by item, but he simply chooses to ignore it (as he ignores the genetic evidence of Indian cattle).

Sameer only concentrates on quibbling about the etymology of these four IE words as per his rules of sound change in IE languages: I will not go off at a tangent here on the words for "camel" purportedly related to these words, although I did include them in my earlier article, since they represent a secondary and less important matter. I will only deal with these four.

[Incidentally, note how liberally he explains other aberrations from the strict phonetic rules he claims to uphold: he does not bother to explain the exact divine rule by which Hittite p=Luwian (another Anatolian language) m: "Luwian laḫma- “ivory” and Hittite laḫpa-", but freely explains away an inexplicable initial l- in a latin word: "PIE *udrós “otter”, which is a straightforward derivative of *wed-|*ud- “water” […] In Latin the word for “otter” is lutra, where the initial l- may have come in under influence from the verb lavō “to wash” or lūdō “to play” [de Vaan, 2008:255]. Overall it’s a decently solid PIE word", although elsewhere he quotes Witzel as follows: "change in initial consonant is typical for transmissions of loan words from an unknown source, and cannot be used as proof of an original PIE word". Note also how the initial h- in the Greek word for horse (híppos) is explained away by various scholars. Countless such examples abound. The only criterion seems to be that some western Indo-Europeanist or the other should have sanctioned the aberration].

Actually, this is where I started out on my elephant article, in response to Blažek's 2004 article "Two Greek words of a Foreign Origin", where Blažek had done precisely what Sameer does in this "shattering" article. So there is little new that I can say in response to his article, except mostly repeat certain points that he is determinedly ignoring.

 

Sameer's single point is simply that the Hittite form has a "PIE laryngeal *h₂ (or possibly h₃. But a laryngeal (rather its effect on neighboring vowels) is absolutely missing in Greek as well as Sanskrit. This is unsurmountable". On this basis, he concludes that "the connection of Sanskrit इभ íbha to any of these cannot be clarified, and requires multiple leaps of faith. Safe to say, this proposed relation cannot be supported".

But other scholars have indeed suggested connections among  the four words (Vedic ibha, Latin ebur, Greek erepa/elepha, Hittite laḫpa) and suggested protoforms, even when they have refused to consider it as any kind of evidence for an Indian Homeland, and have instead suggested borrowings and "wanderwörter" to explain the words":

Gamkrelidze writes: "Despite the restricted dialect distribution of cognates, a word for 'elephant; ivory' can be reconstructed as *yebh- (or *Hebh-), going back to an early stage of dialect unity and reflected in a number of archaic words from only two dialects: Lat. ebur 'ivory; elephant', Skt. íbha-ḥ 'elephant' […] In the same semantic sphere, an ancient migratory term for 'ivory' is found in other Indo-European dialects: Myc. Gk. e-re-pa, gen. e-re-pa-to 'ivory', adj. e-re-pa-te-jo 'made of ivory', Hom. eléphas, gen. eléphantos 'ivory', eléphanteios 'made of ivory'. The word can be compared to Hitt. laḫpa-, in one text with Glossenkeil" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:443).

Mallory-Adams refer to the two reconstructed words as Indo-European fauna, although they include the two in the list with question marks: as "??*(y)ebh- ‘elephant’" and "??*lebh- ‘ivory’" (MALLORY-ADAMS 2006:135).", and later write: "Words associated with the elephant receive some attestation, i.e. *(y)ebh- ‘elephant’ (Lat ebur, Skt íbha-) and *lebh- ‘ivory’ (Myc e-re-pa, Grk eléphās and Hit lahpa-). There are those who would claim that they are both Proto-Indo-European (and indicate an Asian homeland), but the word for elephant is close enough to the Egyptian word (3bw) to suggest a Wanderwort and objects of ivory were widely traded in the eastern Aegean during the Bronze Age, and borrowing is usually, and surely correctly, suspected here as well." (MALLORY-ADAMS 2006:141)." [It may be noted that they do not seem to consider the "laryngeal" in the Hittite word important enough to rule out a common protoform with Greek, or even to clearly indicate the laryngeal phonetically in their reference or to "mention" that there is one here].

The unspoken logic seems to be: "the elephant is found only in India and cannot even remotely be associated with any other historical IE area, but India cannot be the Homeland, so the word must be a wanderwort". Interestingly, while Sameer hastens to show us a flawed and misleading map of the distribution of beavers to drive home his mistaken point that beavers were far, far away from India, he is careful not to show a map of the distribution of elephants, as it would illustrate very graphically my point that India is the only historical IE-language land which is plum spang inside elephant territory, while all other suggested Homelands and historically known IE speaking areas are far, far away from elephant territories!

 

There can be various explanations for the "laryngeal" in the Hittite word, which is Sameer's sole logic for rejecting the words as connected with each other and descended from *ṛbha. In respect of  the fox, after presenting the motley views of various scholars he writes: "The above extracts make it abundantly clear that at least some of the words are borrowed".  "At least some of the words"?!! In short, "some" of the words may be originally PIE and "some" borrowed, but all resembling each other though not reducible to a common protoform?!! By the same foxy logic, it could be that there were two words for elephant in the earliest PIE period, one with a laryngeal and one without it (the fact that the word is already Prakritized in the Rigveda indicates great antiquity). Or it may be that the representation of the laryngeal in this particular Hittite word is an oversight in writing down the word in the phonetically ambiguous cuneiform script, based on the laryngeals present in other neighboring non-IE languages in Anatolia and West Asia: it may even have been a reverse borrowing from a non-IE neighbor which had originally borrowed it from Hittite and added a laryngeal to it. There can be any number of explanations. If Sameer finds that this "requires multiple leaps of faith" this is no more than in the case of the words for the fox.

 

And certainly many more "multiple leaps of faith" are required to accept the word as a non-IE borrowing or a wanderwort:

1. It firstly requires us to ignore the fact they can all (the "laryngeal" in the Hittite word notwithstanding) be plausibly derived from an original PIE *ṛbha/ ḷbha.

2. It requires us to accept that these "wanderwörter" chose to wander all the way from Africa to the Steppe region where they entered only the PIE language, ignoring all the other proto-languages around the place (Caucasian, Uralic-Altaic, etc.), or, in the alternate, that they selectively chose to wander into four distinct IE branch languages in diverse areas leaving all other neighboring language families (e.g. Dravidian, Austric, Burushaski in India) totally unaffected or leaving no trace in them.

3. It requires us to ignore all strict rules of phonetic change, which Sameer demands from advocates of *ṛbha/ ḷbha, and indeed demands as a basic rule in general from others for any conclusions concerning linguistic paleontology, identity and reconstruction with which he is not in agreement. Thus, by this "hand-wavy" process, there is no need whatsoever to show exactly which non-IE "wanderwort" gave which IE word for "elephant", and by exactly which rules of phonetic change. Everything is a matter of "multiple leaps of faith". An examination of the extremely prolific attempts by scholars like Witzel (in various articles) to show "Munda" origins of Vedic words, or by Blažek, as shown in detail in my earlier "shattered" article, to locate African origins for the various IE elephant words, shows this same kucch bhi chalta hai "approach and methodology". 

 

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)!

So, however much Sameer may congratulate himself, and his fans cheer him on, his article totally fails to achieve its objective of "shattering" my elephant article.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

GAMKRELIDZE 1995: Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans: A Reconstruction and Historical Analysis of a Proto-Language and a Proto-Culture. Gamkrelidze, Thomas V. and Ivanov, V.V. Mouton de Gruyter, 1995, Berlin, New York.

MALLORY-ADAMS 2006: The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World. Mallory J.P. and Adams D.Q. Oxford University Press, 2006.

TALAGERI 2008: The Rigveda and the Avesta―The Final Evidence. Talageri, Shrikant G. Aditya Prakashan, New Delhi, 2008.