The proto-Indo-European language
The idea behind the creation of a proto language
When India was colonized by the Britishers, many scholars and academicians from the Europe came here with them. Their task was clearly spelt out. With a view to rule over India for a prolonged time, they had to devise a strategy so as not to appear hostile or against to the native people here. They could not risk to do so. They were quite handful and the native population here was large in numbers. Also, they had to appear liberal and the one who have colonized the Indian subcontinent for the purpose of civilizing the backward and uncultured native people living here. This was the justification given by the western imperialists for the colonization of the whole world.
Therefore, to meet out their objectives, they started the study of the language, the culture and the traditions of the Indians. When these historians and linguists had interaction with the Sanatana philosophy (the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Sad darshanas, the six systems of philosophies) and the Sanskrit language, they were simply overwhelmed. The philosophy and the language of the people they were pretending to civilize was far advanced than their own. Particularly, when they studied Sanskrit, in their own words, it was more refined, more copious than any of the old and modern European languages. Its formation, its syntax and grammar was simply astonishing. The Sanskrit language had a vast amount of literature available. The Sanatana practices and traditions were being used here in continuity form a time that could not be dated precisely. The most peculiar was the fact that this language had a great amount of similarity to all the European and Asian languages.
It was then, the Western linguists in the nineteenth century proposed that all modern European languages are descendant of an ancestor proto language. Now, everything was to be placed properly. The period when this proto language was spoken was assumed prior to about 3500 BCE. This language was named Proto-Indo-European (PIE) as it must be the mother of the majority of the languages spoken in Europe and Asia. To uphold the supremacy of the European race, it was essential to have the existence of a proto language being spoken in the European region in the ancient time, and from which all the modern languages must have evolved. They started using the ideas about the antiquity of languages and theories related to the sound shifts. They labored hard to construct the grammar and the vocabulary for this newly invented PIE language. The location of the homeland of the PIE speaking people was assumed somewhere in Ukraine/southern Russia and the Caucasus in the European continent (shown as shaded region in the map below) .
To explain the reason for the similarity between the Sanskrit
and the European languages, it was proposed that later in due course of time, from
this European PIE homeland, these PIE speaking people spread to other parts of Europe
and Asia. One of the groups of these people came to the Indian subcontinent and displaced the native people here, drove them to down south. So these people settled here in northern India.
More work for the creation of the PIE language and the PIE homeland.
When similarities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin were discovered by William Jones and the Max Mueller, a suggestion of "monogenesis" (single origin) of these languages as well as their speakers was formulated by them. In the latter part of the 19th century, it was thought that language, culture and race were inter-related, and the notion of biological race came to the forefront. The presumed "Aryan race" which originated the Indo-European languages was prominent among such races, and was deduced to be further subdivided into "European Aryans" and "Asian Aryans," each with their own homelands.
The original homeland for all the Aryans was thought in central Asia, from which a northern branch migrated to Europe and a southern branch to Iran and further to India. The Aryans were presumed to be fair-complexioned Indo-European speakers who conquered the dark-skinned dasas of India. The upper castes, particularly the Brahmins, were thought to be of Aryan descent whereas the lower castes and Dalits ("untouchables") were thought to be the descendants of dasas.
Without understanding the Vedas and the Puranas and their inherent philosophy contained therein, wrong conclusions were drawn either out of ignorance or deliberately to suit the colonization of this part of the world. The sanatana is the core of the spirituality. It has the inherent practical approach, the methods to integrate with the Supreme Divine through various practices. It has the capability to fulfill the spiritual needs of every category of the human kind. It has procedures and practices suited to every kind of spiritual seeker, from a serene, calm and unattached sage sitting in the deep woods to a normal household attached to the senses and deeply involved in this world. Sanatana Dharma has ways and devices to fulfill the spiritual needs and aspirations of that normal household also.
If we go through the Sanatana Shastras, we observe that the life of a Brahmin is the toughest one. The rules and the rituals and the practices ordained for a Brahmin are the toughest one, very hard to follow in their entirety. Out of the four vernas, Brahmins were the carrier of the Sanatana philosophy and the pracces. There was no room for the laxity or corruptions of these principles due to misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the Shastra. They were supposed to carry the Sanatana knowledge system from one generation to the other through an oral tradition. They were the carrier and the protector of the practical rituals and the processes of this system. Injunctions as to inner and outer purification, non-amassing of the wealth and surviving solely on the dana, charity given by the other three vernas were ordained for them.
Most misunderstood is the Shudra verna of the ancient varna system. Shudra is in no way a derogatory word as popularized by the forces anti to the Sanatana. It simply means the ordinary people who do not have much interest in the philosophical matters related to the atma and the paramatma. They are simply centered on this life. The strict practices and the tapa and the restraints in the matter of worldly sensual enjoyments are difficult for them to follow. In this way, the Shudra are seen as inferior. But this is only in the matters of practices that leads us to the Supreme.
In the matters of the worldly accumulation and the worldly pleasures, there has been no discrimination. In fact, all the land, the construction activities, the fine arts, agriculture, metallurgy is exclusively right for this varna. They are entitled to the worldly knowledge. The Shastras relating to shilpa, natya, are all written for this varna. With regards to the knowledge, they are no inferior to the other varnas. Had it been the case, the splendid and the magnificent architecture and the sculptures could not have been possible in the ancient times. They were financially stable and these tradesmen had padronage from the Raja. Magasthanes in his Indica has elaborately described as to how these tradesmen got patronage from the king and got periodic grants.
The Aryan Invasion Theory served politically to suggest a common ancestry and dignity between the Indians and the British. Apart from the colonial perspective, this theory had another purpose to serve. The Christian missionaries, to make their task of conversion easier, interpreted this theory otherwise. They proposed that the dasas and sudras were indigenous people and the rightful inheritors of the land, whereas Brahmins were Aryan and alien and they drew attention to the plight of the so called lower castes, who they said were oppressed by the upper castes since the time of Aryan invasions. They completely ignored the fact that for the past 1000 years, this part of the land was under foreign rule, initially under Muhammedan and later under the Britishers and blaming the Aryans for the plight of the Indian people is far from reality.
The extent of the Vedic Civilization
But the fact is something else. It was the Indian subcontinent that was the homeland of the Aryans. These people have flourished here and from this region, they moved to different directions. The Sanatana Shastra, Aitareya Brahmana, an ancient collection of sacred hymns composed between 1000 BCE to 500 BCE describes the extension of the Vedic Civilization beyond the Himalayas to the northwest in Uttara Kuru and Uttara Madra. Aitareya Brahamana 8.14 says Uttara Kuru had Vedic consecration for their kings. The word Uttara Kuru got corrupted to Ottorokorrha being the region lying between the Aral and the Caspian Seas. It is possible that from these regions of Uttara Kuru and Uttara Madra, the Vedic philosophy and practices further propagated to Europe. We observe a close connection between the Vedic and the Slavic languages and the practices related to the worship of the Supreme Divine in many forms in these two regions. The Sanskrit language still exists quite clearly in the Lithuanian and Slovenian languages. It has similarity of its words with all the Indo-European languages. The interaction between the Vedic people and west Asians was through the Mitanni empire in the west Asia.
The archeological findings have established that the Mitanni empire had Vedic roots. On excavations, the references to the Vedic deities, Mitra, Varuna, Indra, Nasatya (Ashwin twins) in the peace treaty signed by the Mitanni kings with their rivals have been found.
The name of the rulers of this empire have Sanskrit origin. Some of the Mitanni kings are :
Kirta | ||
Shuttarna I | ||
Barattarna or Parshatatar or Parrattarna | ||
Shattiwaza or Kurtiwaza |
Mittani empire also had close links with the Sun dynasty Egyptian kings, the pharaohs. The pharaoh Akhenaten of Egypt who ruled between 1352-1336 BC was son-in-law of the king Tushratta of the Mitanni empire. The name Tushratta, which has been recorded in the Hittite cuneiform script can be a corruption of the Sanskrit word Dasaratha or Tvesaratha which find earlier mention in Rigveda and means the one who has splendid chariots. Therefore, the Mitanni people practiced Sanatana philosophy and worshiped Vedic gods. They had bonds of marriage across several generations with the Egyptians pharaohs who were the kings of the Sun dynasty having Vedic roots.
In fact, the word Mitanni is is derived from the Mitra, the Vedic solar deity. The Vedic Sanatana roots of the Mitanni Empire confirm the Sanatana past of the West Asian region also and the origin of the Semitic languages from the Sanskrit.
The pre-eminence of Sanskrit in the Proto-Indo-European language.
There are ten main branches of the PIE
language i.e. Anatolian, Albanian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic,
Celtic, Greek, Germanic, Indo-Iranian, Italic and Tocharian spreading across the world. It is to be observed that only one percent of the PIE cognates are
found in all these Indo-European language branches. Further, more than half of the
reconstructed PIE vocabulary is based on just 4-5 language branches and it is only
one percent of the reconstructed vocabulary is based on a cognate found in all ten
major language groups.
So the data discussed above shows that the reconstructed PIE vocabulary is formed on the basis of only few of these ten branches. Out of these few groups which have contributed to the PIE vocabulary, the Sanskrit language has played a major role. Even the proponent of PIE language do admit the Sanskrit language as one of the earliest one with vast literary evidence. They place it with Mycenaean Greek and Anatolian (Hittite). Sanskrit has gigantic ancient literature. The religious practices and the traditions described in this literature are carried out and followed word for word till today. The Stutis or the hymns praising the Deities are sung verbatim as were used in the ancient Vedas, Puranas and Upanishadas period. The detailed worship of the Deities is performed as per the injunctions ordained in these Shastras. So the peripheral literature available in Sanskrit language is large. It is more than any other major language group of these 4-5 branches mentioned above. In fact, with its systematic grammatical structure and vocabulary, it was the Sanskrit language that facilitated the understanding of many of these ancient language groups, a work that could not have been possible without the Sanskrit being in the picture at the centre.
The etymological evidence
Etymologically, all European languages have evolved from Sanskrit. Evidence that the languages of Europe had, with a few exceptions, evolved in stages from a common source, was found neither in Greece nor Rome, nor anywhere in Europe, but in an ancient and distant language, the Classical Sanskrit of India, used from the time immemorial in the speech and practices of the people of the Indian subcontinent.
Opinion of the eminent linguists and
indologists on Sanskrit
William Jones’s opinion on Sanskrit : The celebrated linguist William Jones had described Sanskrit as "more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either". The following are his words:
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its
antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more
copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing
to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms
of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong
indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them
to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there
is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the
Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same
origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same
family.”
Max Muller’s opinion on Sanskrit : Max Muller, German philologist and also an Indologist popularized the Aryan Invasion theory (AIT). This theory proposes that the northern India was invaded and conquered by nomadic, light-skinned people. These people were named Aryans. These Aryans came to India from the PIE homeland described above. So he was very well a part of the system that undermined the place of the Sanskrit by terming it just an offshoot of the imaginary proto language. But the same Max Muller at one place wrote how difficult it was to defend this hypothetical PIE homeland, PIE language and the Aryan Invasion Theory. He admits that it is the Hindu only that has been successful in preserving the grammar, the roots and the vocabulary of the PIE people. He admits that though the other branches of the PIE language differ significantly from each other, it is the Sanskrit that agrees with all the other branches. It is very surprising for him. The following are the words of the Max Muller:
The Vedic Sanskrit is almost similar to the reconstructed PIE language.
Furthermore, we have far more convincing reason to assume that the Sanskrit is is the proto language that is the origin of all the Indo European family of languages. If we see the early Vedic Sanskrit vocabulary, we observe that only four percent of this vocabulary is non Indo-European. This fact convincingly places the Vedic Sanskrit almost equivalent to this hypothetical ancient Indo-European language.
The above facts compel us to believe that the Proto-Indo-European language that the western linguists were looking for is actually Vedic Sanskrit. It was Sir William Jones who said Greek, Sanskrit and Roman languages must come from a different common source, and then, Thomas Young in 1813 first introduced the term Indo-European and since then, the linguists have been continuing with that hypothesis which is purely based on assumptions but without evidence.
The purpose for the creation of the proto language
What could have been the motive of the Western historians and linguists for the creation of the PIE homeland and a central group of people who spoke the Proto-Indo-European language and who came out of the area of the Caucasus mountains, we are compelled to believe that this PIE homeland hypothesis paved the way for the Aryan Invasion Theory, wherein the idea was presented that Aryans invaded India from the same region and then started their Vedic culture. This helped the western colonizers to stand on morally high grounds when they colonized the world in general and Indian subcontinent in particular. They propagated that it is not the first time that foreigners have invaded this part of the world. Previously also some foreign people i.e. the Aryans came from their PIE homeland to conquer this area. These Aryans fought here with the indigenous native people, the Dravidian and drove them down to southern part of India. This helped them to create a permanent divide between the north and south Indian people and they were indeed successful in their work. The Dravidian politics in the South India revolves around this AIT till today causing hatred for the north Indians in general and Brahmins, in particular.
The current status of the Aryan Invasion Theory.
Today, this theory has crumbled like a house of cards with more evidence showing that it never happened this way. The Vedic Aryans were indeed the indigenous people of the Indus and Sarasvati river regions, from which their culture spread out in all directions and influenced the whole world.
Sanskrit, the most precisely grammared having a refined manner of speaking was for learned classes of the society and for educational purposes, similar as it still is today. In this way, Sanskrit existed along with the different Prakrits or regional languages. We see today in India, there are many languages that have been derived from the Sanskrit. These regional languages still exists but gradually during a prolonged period of time, these languages underwent a change to such a degree that the these languages and the Sanskrit ceased to be comparable. They had to be learned as separate languages. In India today though all the languages are offshoots of Sanskrit but with time they have changed to a considerable degree in terms of their grammar and vocabulary and pronunciation.
It is quite probable that in the same way, the Geek, Latin, Avestin and other languages that we find across the world and which still hold many similarities with their mother language i.e. Sanskrit developed. So these languages spread across the world had their origin in Sanskrit but during the prolonged period of time, these were identified as separate languages although retaining a lot of similarity with the Sanskrit. The homeland, the race and the culture of supposed Proto-Indo-European population which has been discussed above never ever have existed.
The logic/reason based evidence
In spite of the progress the modern society has made, we still have not invented a language more elaborate and developed than Sanskrit. There is no language more sophisticated than Sanskrit. The proponent of the Proto-Indo-European language propose that the parent language of Sanskrit, Greek and Latin the PIE language that was spoken once in antiquity is now dead but they never accept that the language they are looking for is right in front of them, and that is Sanskrit itself. As discussed above, the PIE reconstruction is purely imagination. It is just one of any number of similar reconstructions one can develop.
The Aryans are indigenous to the Indian Subcontinent.
The Aryans are indigenous to India. The Indo-European languages spread from India to the other parts of the world. The theory of an external origin of the Indo-Aryan speaking people in the Indian subcontinent has been deliberately constructed on false premise. There is no evidence to substantiate the external origin of the Indo-Aryans. The Aryans are indigenous to India and the Indus Saraswati Civilization is a Vedic Civilisation. There is no discontinuity between the north Indian and the South Indian people. Recent DNA studies have proved that the DNA of the people of the entire Indian subcontinent is same. There was no conflict between the Aryans and Dravidians, between the the so called upper castes and the Shudras as is proposed by the proponents of the Aryan Invasion Theory. The Indo-European languages spread out from India into their present locations.
It was on the banks of river Sarasvati that Vedas and Puranas were composed by the Rishis, the sages. The Sarasvati river has
been mentioned in the Rig Veda and the later Puranic texts at a number of places as a mighty river.
आ यत्सा॒कं य॒शसो॑ वावशा॒नाः सर॑स्वती स॒प्तथी॒ सिन्धु॑माता । ॥7.36.6॥
अम्बि॑ऽतमे। नदी॑ऽतमे। देवि॑ऽतमे। सर॑स्वति। 2:41:16
Veda Vyasa, the great Rishi, who grouped the Vedas into four parts and composed the Puranas and the Mahabharata, also stayed at the bank of river Sarasvati for a considerable period of time. This river is presently known as Ghaggar-Hakra River. It had dried up around the Mahabharata war. Based on the astronomical positions of the nakshatras and the planets given in the Mahabharata, its period has been ascertained with great accuracy. Further, with the horses and horse-drawn chariots dating back to 2000 BCE have been found on archeological excavations at many sites in the Indian subcontinent, it became clear that the people here were already using the horses and the chariots. Therefore, the claim of the Aryan Invasion theory proponents that the Aryans who came from the central Europe brought horse and chariots here in the Indian subcontinent got falsified. Today, the Aryan Invasion Theory proposed by the colonial historians with vested interests is standing on the hollow foundations.
As discussed above, this theory was invented by the western colonizers to justify their intrusion into the Indian subcontinent and their rule over the vast majority of the people living in the Indian subcontinent. It was their argument that it is not the first time that this part of the land has been invaded and ruled by the foreigners. Previously also, people alien to this land invaded and subjugated the indigenous population here. So this whole theory had been coined keeping in mind the colonial rule over India for almost 250 years. In both the instances, it was argued that the superior while race subjugated the local dark skinned people.
There
is no archaeological evidence for an Aryan invasion or even migration into
northwestern India during or after the decline of the Harappan city culture as proposed by the AIT adherents . As stated above, the western historians and linguists observed striking similarities between the European languages and the ancient Sanskrit language spoken by the people of the Indian subcontinent. There was also a vast amount of literature available and the
social/cultural and religious practices were being followed here since ancient time
continuously based on that literature. This similarity of the language tempted these linguists to
mistakenly conclude that the linguistic change has been attributed to
migrations of people from the Central Europe to the Indian subcontinent in spite of the fact that there has been no evidence for such a migration.
Indian subcontinent as
the Proto-Indo-European homeland
The above discussed linguistic evidence with the Sanskrit language at the root of the Indo-European language family conclusively proves the origin of the Indo-European languages in Northern part of the subcontinent. Subsequently, with the passage of time, these people and the languages spread to the entire Indo-European region through a series of migrations from the Indian subcontinent to the other parts of the world. The Aryan Invasion or later known as the Aryan Migration Theory proposed purely as a theoretical linguistic exercise fails miserably to explain the pre-dominance of Sanskrit in the reconstruction of the proto language PIE. Had the Sanskrit not been at the center stage, the study and the understanding of many of the above mentioned ten language branches would not have been possible. By the PIE advocates, too much of labor was used in an effort to fit the things at proper place. Every effort was made to exclude the India from being considered a possible PIE homeland. In their effort to exclude Indian subcontinent as the origin of PIE language speaking people, they complicated the matter and the process of establishing the PIE homeland elsewhere in the world only on linguistic grounds became too problematic for them as they had no literary or archeological evidence for the existence of PIE homeland and the PIE language. As discussed above, the linguistic evidence on which they had heavily relied, also not supports their hypothesis and in fact suggests on the contrary.
The Aryans lived in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and then expanded to all over the world. Some of them moved to the Bactria region (the region lying between the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the
Conclusion
The Indian civilization is an unbroken tradition that goes back to the earliest period of the Sindhu-Sarasvati (or Indus) tradition (7000 or 8000 BCE) or even before that to 14500 BCE (as per the dating of the composition of the Surya Siddhanta, a book written on astronomy by Mayasura).
There is no literary, historical or archeological evidence available neither in the Sanatana Shastras and practices nor in any tradition practiced in the entire world to prove the existence of this proto language in the ancient past. We know of no people that spoke or wrote such a mother language, nor have we any direct evidence or written documents concerning it. In view of the detailed discussion made above, there is no righteousness for the Proto-Indo-European to be called a language.
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