A Dravidian
Element in a Mitanni Name?
Shrikant G. Talageri
I wrote my last article to expose people who use textbookworm interpretations of the rules of PIE-to-IE phonetic changes to debunk connections between strikingly similar (in form as well as meaning) words in two different branches or contexts.
In the process, I was contacted by the particular tweeter I referred to in that article, Rudrāḥ Tanūnapāt@Heg70412Hegde, and he brought to my notice a startling fact which I had never noticed.
In my three articles on the Mitanni evidence (evidence elsewhere included in my third book and subsequent articles), I have pointed out that the Mitanni personal names show that the ancestors of the Mitanni had migrated out from India during or after the period of composition of the hymns of the New Rigveda (Books 5,1,8,9,10), and very definitely after the period of composition of the hymns of the Old Rigveda (Books 6,3,7,4,2 in that chronological order, or simply Books 2-4,6-7), and that this conclusively proved that the Old Rigveda was composed well before 2500 BCE in an area in Haryana and east, in which area there was complete absence of any non-IE speakers and all the rivers had purely IA/IE names:
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2016/05/two-papers-by-renowned-indologist.html
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/evidence-for-oit-beyond-mitanni.html
https://talageri.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-finality-of-mitanni-evidence.html
Now this tweeter has brought to my notice certain points that I myself had never noticed before. According to him, the Mitanni names even include two names which have, respectively, a Dravidian element and an Austro-Asiatic (Austric or Munda) element: the names Su-māla and Wam-badura.
He points out that the first name has been cited as a Mitanni name by P.E.Dumont, and that the element -māla in the name has been identified by Mayrhofer as a Dravidian word borrowed into Vedic:
I have referred to P.E.Dumont’s paper on the Mitanni names in the first of my three above articles, but, (as I was concentrating on the compound names with new prefixes and suffixes common to the Mitanni and the New Rigveda, and su- is not a new prefix) I missed out on this name Su-māla. But if the prefix is not new, the word māla/mālā is definitely new: it is not found in the Samhitas, and first appears as mālya in the Brahmana texts (I have not checked out if the meaning is the same).
If this is true, here we have the possibility of the Mitanni leaving India with a Dravidian element in one of their names! As I have pointed out many times, Dravidian words started seeping into the Rigvedic language in the period of the New Rigveda. This is very much incremental evidence for the migration of the ancestors of the Mitanni from the Rigvedic area during the period of composition of the New Rigveda.
About the second word presented by Rudrāḥ Tanūnapāt@Heg70412Hegde, i.e. Wam-badura, I find it a bit dubious (perhaps after seeing Witzel going berserk in discovering “Munda” words in the Rigveda). There is no reason for me to reject it, because after all it would only constitute even more incremental evidence for the migration of the ancestors of the Mitanni from the Rigvedic area during the period of composition of the New Rigveda. However, it would not be honest of me to fully accept it only on that count. So I leave a more detailed analysis of that particular name to more competent authorities in that field.
So I have to express my thanks to Rudrāḥ Tanūnapāt@Heg70412Hegde for bringing this evidence to my notice.
Talageri ji, this is very good. Even Paul thieme also written that nasatya of mitanni is very similar to kanva book in 1960 article.
ReplyDeleteSir, what are your thought on Ilija Casule work on burushaski and IE. he showed that burushaski have some similarity to North West IE language. Completely in line with your proposed OIT. of course he is not OIT supporter but he also have some thing to say about gatekeepers here https://www.academia.edu/115568461/On_the_verification_of_Ilija_Casules_work_on_the_Indo_European_Origin_of_Burushaski_docx
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Is this one more evidence of OIT. IE language interaction in ancient times with burushaski while going out of India?
On an unrelated note, can you please talk about supreme court judgement on Urdu as the issue pertains to your domain? Should we treat it as a language of this soil??
ReplyDeleteThere is no debate about that - Urdu IS an Indo-Aryan language. Instead of stupidly pushing it away, why not co-opt it? Nobody has prevented us Hindus from using Urdu as a medium to effectively further our Hindutva agenda - be it in history, politics, culture, ecology, industry, economy, etc. In fact, I would argue that given the massive presence and common use of Bollywood-ised version of Hindi (which is a de facto "lite" Urdu), we should use it to spread our agenda. I mean, even English is the language of the White Christian Anglo-Saxon tyrants and missionaries, but that didn't stop us from using it to further the Hindutva agenda, so what's so special about Urdu one way or the other, to make the same inapplicable in this context? This is not to say that we shouldn't support the "shuddha" (Benares-influenced) Sanskritised Hindi and other Indic languages and rejuvenate them the way Shivaji Maharaj supported Marathi, but that's a long-term project, and Urdu is perfectly okay as a short-term option. Remember, those who win battles and wars also are those who use weapons well-suited to the battle, in ways that guarantee victory; they don't bother about nonsense like "should I use this weapon because it was developed by the enemy". Only idiots indulge in this nonsense.
DeleteWhat's so special about Urdu anyway?
DeleteMost Indians do not speak or understand Urdu anyway, so why try to promote Hindutva through it when our own Indian languages have been doing it already. Like it or not, Urdu is Urdu because of its foreign vocabulary.
Shrikantmaam, this is an off-topic comment, but it's related to linguistics, especially those of Konkani, hence I'm asking: what's your take on the use of mathematical models, esp. deterministic PDEs (Partial Differential Equations) models, which describe spatio-temporal dynamics, in research pertaining to the evolution of Konkani over time? I'm asking as there's a popular type of models in applied mathematics called "language competition" models, and these are essentially sets of coupled equations (PDEs, to be more specific), that are used to describe how languages compete with each other, as well as borrow from each other. In this regard, given the way Konkani-Marathi-Kannada and Konkani-Kannada-Tulu have evolved over time, sometimes by competing against each other, and at other times by exchanging words with each other, I think this would be an interesting tool to use; that said, I'd like to hear your views on this. I am especially interested in these as mathematics is a good deal less amenable to "interpretations" and "looking at things from multiple points of view", to name just a few examples of academic obfuscations, and is thus perfectly compatible with the kind of historiography you and Dr. Elst have repeatedly advocated for (if I'm not mistaken, Dr. Elst once mentioned that it was pioneered by Leopold von Ranke); and thus firmly closes the door in the faces of frauds like Witzel, Hock and Farmer, as well as cranks like N N Oak.
ReplyDeleteI don't know anything whatsoever about PDEs, and therefore have absolutely no opinions to put forward about them. When others do put forward and use such models, their results can be checked with datable data (inscriptions, etc.) to see if it is correct.
Delete