From: selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar - Electrical Engineering)
Subject: On Indian civilization being the oldest...
Keywords: Sanskrit, Tamil vocabularies ..
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 02:52:12 GMT



In article <Bxo02t.9ED@cs.psu.edu>, narayana@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Kuram T Narayana) writes:
> In article <BxMB5u.47s@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar - Electrical Engineering) writes:
> >
> >In article <BxJ50y.GCM@cs.psu.edu>, narayana@psuvax1.cs.psu.edu (Kuram T Narayana) writes:
> >> In article <BxIxMG.8F1@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca> selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar - Electrical Engineering) writes:
> >> >
> >> >In article <92314.101858RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET>, <RIPBC@CUNYVM.BITNET> writes:
> >> >> In his `Genes, Peoples and Languages', (Sci. Am. Nov 91) Luigi Cavalli-Sforza
> >> >> classifies the following groups as caucasoid:
> >> >> 
> > Selvakumar writes: 
> >> > [2]  I don't understand why many are so concerned to show that Dravidians 
> >> >      ALSO moved into indian subcontinent ( cf. your 'If this is the case
> >> >     we are all foreigners !!'). Has there been any claims on this thread
> >> 
> >> No! Nobody was interested in that. We only pointed out this aspect when
> >> you started claiming (against all avaliable evidence at our disposal)
> >                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >     I have NOT seen any 'evidence' on the net contrary to what I have 
> >     been saying except some name calling such as 'tamil fanatic',
> >     'dravidian racist', 'insane arguement' etc.
> >
> 
> First what you have presented is neitherevidence nor valid hypothesis
> that has been scrutinized. Let me give you s simple way that scientists
                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> evaluate evidence. 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

      Thank you, Narayana. By God's Grace, I do know how 'scientists'
      evaluate evidence and I also know the problems even in well known
      "physical sciences". I am also aware of the methods used by historical
      and comparive linguists. In my opinion, these are NOT as 'rigourous'
      as in physical sciences I am aware of. This should not be
      construed to mean that I am making any general comment about social
      sciences. My comments are only about historical and comparative 
      linguistics ( other areas as phonetics are more rigorously scientific). 
      I have read several original articles written by
      authorities. I have a good feel for what I am saying and I am
      writing my ideas as objectively as possible but NOT as I would for a
      journal since this is an informal forum. Who knows, I might write
      some of my ideas in journals ! 
         
     
> 
> You have made a gross claim that Sanskrit has 50% of words from Tamil.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

        First, please quote me accurately ! I had said in an article that
        Devaneya Paavanar had estimated that 2/5 words in Sanskrit could be
        derived from Tamil. I had said that having seen the nature of
        borrowings, I think this figure could even be 50% . It is
        an estimate based on small samplings and other considerations 
        and NOT a gross claim. If i
        have FORMALLY derived at this figure, i would be presenting it
        at some appropriate scientific forum and not in sct or sci. 
        If you think SCI is some scientific forum, I strongly urge you
        to take a refreshing shower ! I will
        give you how i arrived at these estimates. 

             [1] First I have faith in Devaneya PaavaNar who had studied
                 Tamil, Sanskrit, Latin,Greek etc. from the linguists point
                 of view and was comfortable with 40 languages and he had
                 written numerous articles in Tamil journals and I've read
                 most of them ( since I've read many of the articles by
                 western authorities in this area I'm confident of my
                 appraisal that Devaneya PaavaNar's works were among
                the best). He had also
                 written histories of Sanskrit and Tamil written in Tamil. 
                 Dr. Sunithi Kumar Chatterji says of him 
                 " But for his efforts the purity
                 and antiquity of Tamil Language might have been a myth"
                 in 'The Cultural Heritage of India' vol.5.
                 Unfortunately, he died while in the process of compiling
                 the multi-volume encyclopaedic etymological dictionary.
                 In my opinion he was one of those rare experts.
                 Thus my first bet was based on his estimate which is
                 as high as 40%.
       
              [2] R.L Turner's comparative dictionary ( of sanskrit
                 and other indo-aryan language words) lists some 14,845
                 words. On an average, I came across 1 out of 2 or 3 words
                 of dravidian origin, especially words which are represented
                 in pan-indian languages. On a closer look it appeared 
                 to me that 1 out of 2 appeared like coming from dravidian. 
                 [ for this estimate, I picked up word lists 
                 in ka-varga, ca-varga, Ta-varga, ta-varga and 
                 pa-varga plus in words starting in vowels, v- etc.  
                 pseudo-randomly ]

             [3] In my mini-series of postings on 'Tamil, Sanskrit, and 
                 North indian languages' I was attempting to show how
                 many words with a starting combination like ka-varga + l- 
                 are derived from Tamil. Although I had shown some 10
                 words and another 4-6 words can be shown and that this is
                 a small sample, it is a POWERFUL illustration to show
                 nature of borrowings in Sanskrit considering the 
                 consonant pair. Even between two
                 highly related languages like English and French, one
                 might not find so many words like these ( I've not checked
                 extensively, but to the extent I scaned I didn't find any
                 such set; further if one does find, then it tells the nature of
                 extensive borrowing from Tamil/dravidian) 
                  

> Do the following for me. 
> 
>    What is the size of Sanskrit vocabulary today. What was the size
>    of the Sanskrit vocabulary in the prehistoric (Rg vedic) time. 
>    How did you compute the size of the vocabulary.

        It is difficult to arrive at word counts in a language like
        Sanskrit because of compound-word formations. The Sanskrit
        Dictionary by Sir Monier Monier-Williams ( greatly enlarged
        and improved) contains about 40 thousand words [ there are roughly
       1330 pages and each page has three columns and about 10 words
       per column can be counted on an average]

       Manfred Mayrhoffer's "A concise Etymological Sanskrit Dictionary
       lists about 14,000 entries [ there are about 2,000 pages and I
       estimated roughly 7 words/entries per page ] R.L. Turner's dictionary
       also gives about the same number. 

       I don't know about the number of words in the Rig Veda which 
       some one on the net might be able to supply.

       T. Burrow says in his book on "The Sanskrit Language" [ page 289]
       there are about 2,000 verbs but he says about 1000 are not used and
       some are reduplications and thus he considers about 800 root verbs.
       [ The opinion of K. Vidhyanath Rao about T.Burrow is unprofessional
         and biased and I'll write a reply to his posting soon] 

> 
>    Give me the size of Tamil vocabulary now. And in prehistory period.
>    Again give me the method that you have used for computing the size 
>    of the vocabulary. 

       The Tamil vocabulary based on 'Kazhagam Dictionary'
       would be about 44,000.  [ I arrived at this number 
       based on the fact that there are 880 pages and about 
       25 words per column and two columns per page ] 
       This is NOT Tamil lexicon but a one-volume dictionary for
       general use. Although, it contains literary words this dictionary
       does not contain words used in medical and other practical arts.
       
> 
>    Show me with comparative elements that the methods of computation
>    chosen by you are indeed accepted norms by any established scientist.

     I had explained this above. The method I am attempting, like the one
     involving ka-varga + l  are yet to be established as means of showing
     extensive borrowing. If I can show for a dozen such combinations
     chosen intelligently, it might be possible to argue a case for
     extensive borrowing. I was mostly quoting results of borrowings
     established by well known linguists with some additional support
     from Tamil for the selected samples. 
> 
>    Show me the correlation of 50% of words in Sanskrit with Tamil and
>    the method of establishing that correlation. By correlation I mean rooting
>    from Tamil. 


      I've already explained how I arrived at the estimate.
> 
>    Show me that any such resemblences cannot have occurred from other 
>    spoken prakriti's. 

        There is a famous saying attributed to poet VakpaTi ( 8th cent.A.D)
        which claims that all Sanskrit words owe their origin to
        Prakrit! 

             'sayalaao imam vaayaa visanti etto ya Nenti vaayaao
              enti samuddam ciya Nenti saayaraaocciya jalaaim'
                      -GauDavaho 93 
         [ "All languages enter this (Prakrit) and all languages take
            their start from this: the waters enter nowhere but into sea, and
            start from nowhere else than from the sea" ]

      That a particular word in Sanskrit came from Tamil or some other
      dravidian language is established by the development of that word
      within the language ( semantic and other) and by establishing
      cognates ( again possibly with developments within), historicity
      in some cases etc. Therefore resemblence is not enough to establish
      borrowing or the direction of borrowing. For example if you find
      no cognates in indo-european languages for a 'Sanskrit' word
       and this word is also found in Dravidian with extensive semantic
       devlopments with literary citations etc. then it is safe to assume
      that the Skt. word is a borrowing from dravidian. Sanskrit 'kaala
      = time'  Skt. 'kaala = black' etc. were ascertained as borrowings
      from these considerations. 
> 
 
>    Also show me why that the rooting process cannot be from Sanskrit 
>    to Tamil or indeed to Prakritis.

      See my comments above.
> 
>    Having done that establish to be that the methods of correlating 
>    is scientifically valid.

       Don't get too worked up with scientific validity etc. The methods
       used in historical and comparative linguistics are not very regid
       scientific-formula type deterministic ones. It is nevertheless
       highly reliable in most cases. A variety of facts are brought in
       to support a hypothesis.
> 
> In otherwords, I am trying to force to be a scientist, not an emotional
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> tamil patriot. Actually a dravidian racist, for your postings determine
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> that phrase, not our intent to describe. I don't describe people unless
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> that fact shows from the posts.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

   It is indeed good to be rational and not becoming emotional in
   analysing these. 
   As far as i can recall, I had not argued in an emotional manner.
   I had asked you before to kindly let me know where I had advanced
   'dravidian racist'
   doctrines and 'racially slanted' articles but you have not come up
   with any; but instead you merely repeat these. The above words
   show your civility to someone who had been arguing with you 
   candidly.

   You say " I don't describe people unless the fact shows from the posts"
   I like the confidence and aplomb in your words. But can you please
   substantiate a repeated personal attack on me ? 

   

   Regards*
   Selva Selvakumar

   *[ with regards to those who read and understand me, irrespective of
      whether they agree with me or not ]