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India slammed into Eurasia 20 mya or so Himalayas were created as a result; still moving at 2 cm/year (Fall 2009, Science)

Sanskrit

Himalayas average 12000 feet Panjab (5 rivers)

Harappan Civilization 3500-1900bce

Indus River Valley

Probably the civilization behind Proto-Dravidian. Little evidence for kings; may have been egalitarian. Larger than Egypt and Mesoptamia combined. Had trade with Mesopotamia by 2000 bce. Mes: textiles, crops Har: lumber, gold, copper, ivory

very early writing: Harappa, 2600 bce Writing may have developed independently in three places - Egypt, Mesopotamia and Harappa

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Mohenjodaro (below), Harappa each had 40k people 2500 bce

swastika: shows up later in Jainism and Hinduism

Priest, Mohenjodaro 2000 bce

History and Language

1750-1500 circa 900 900-500 circa 500 500-0 0-500 1100-1500 1500-1800 1800-1948 1948-2000 IE people enter India Vedas Vedic Age Buddhism, Jainism Mauryas, others Mahabharata epic Guptas, others Arabic conquests Moghul Empire British Empire Indian Republic Sanskrit Hindu Buddhism, Jain

Indo-European languages circa 2000bce

HBJ HBJ Arabic H, Muslim Mongolian, Persian, Turkish English Panjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, etc. ( ruling languages )

Vedic Sanskrit: 1500-500 bc Early Rig-Veda has three social classes Rishis (seers) or Brahmins (priests) Kshatriyas (warlords) Vaishyas (landholders) Late Rig-Veda adds Shudras (servants, perhaps conquered people) to form the fourfold class system (varna) Ideas of caste (jati) developed later.

Indo-Aryans enter Panjab around 1700bce

varna class means color in Sanskrit

Colors were symbolic (yellow, red, black) Brahmins (priests) Kshatriyas (warlords) Vaishyas (landlords) these were arya noble Shudras (servants) were an-arya ignoble Barbarians (mlecchas chandalas)

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Dalits traditionally did the dirty work butchering animals making leather removing dead animals removing human feces This pollutes them and that s why they re untouchable. still discrimination against them today (though B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit, wrote the Constitution of India)

The Romani
another despised people Flag of the Roma People Gypsies are Indic speakers who left India and live semi-nomadic lives in Europe Romani are 1-5% of the population in reddish countries on this map

Romani is an IndoIranian language Sanskrit is IndoIranian, too, more closely related to French, Persian, and Russian than to most languages of southern India

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Writing did not come to India before the 6th century bce, and then it came from Near Eastern, Aramaean models; the ProtoIndic third-millenium scripts of the Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa civilization had long since entered the sands, and cuneiform despite undoubted cultural contacts with Mesopotamianever gained a hold in Vedic India. (Puhvel 1987, 2002)

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 re"ned than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger a#nity, 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 di$erent idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. (1786)

Sir William Jones

this marks the beginning of Comparative Linguistics

this idea, that similar languages share a common source that may no longer exist lies at the heart of linguistic reconstruction and pre"gures Darwin s biological reconstruction by 100 years for Darwin, too, similar animals share a common ancestor that may no longer exist

Indo-Iranian
Indo-European is new to the region


earlier people had brought farming there

along with other languages

distribution of HG-9 (on Y-chromosome) supports a model in which farming dispersal was accompanied by major population movements, probably originating in what was historically dened as Elam, towards the Indus valley, and this movement was associated with the dispersal of Dravidian languages (Renfrew 1996).
(Quintan-Murci et al , 2001)

the frequency pattern of HG 3 in southwestern Asian supports the idea that IE speakers spread from Central Asia into modern Iran via an eastern-Caspian route, as well as into India. (Quintan-Murci et al , 2001)

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Arkaim "Each house was out"tted with "all modern conveniences," as they would say nowadays. There was a well, an oven and dome-like food storage in every house. The well was branching out into two underground trenches: one of them was directed to the oven and the other one ended in the food storage. The trenches were used to supply chilly air to the oven and to the food storage. The cool air from the trenches was also creating a very powerful traction force in the Aryan oven, which made it possible to smelt bronze there. "

Andronovo people are the likely archaeological counterpart of early Indo-Aryan

Indo-Iranian migrations towards Indian subcontient

Indian subcontinent already
occupied by people speaking
Dravidian languages (there since
Paleolithic times, marked by M20)

http://www.pitt.edu/~sorc/hindu/history/4.gif

(Tocharian)

Language Families of India

IndoEuropean
languages
ood
in and
isolate
Dravidian
languages
from one
another, which probably did the same to Munda etc. earlier

Indo-Aryan languages from Iraq to Bangladesh and Ceylon

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M17 [neolithic, Indo-European marker] is found at higher frequency in those groups speaking IndoEuropean languages. In the Hindi-speaking population of Delhi, for example, around 35% of men have this marker. IE-speaking groups from the south also show similarly high frequencies, while the neighbouring Dravidian speakers show much lower frequencies 10% or less...

Taken with the archaeological data, we can say that the old hypothesis of an invasion of peoplenot merely their languagefrom the steppe appears to be true.

(Wells 2002, 167; my emphasis)

Major languages of India today But there are at least 415 distinct languages spoken in the country (SIL)

Hinduism & Buddhism

The Indo-Aryan languages here all pretty much derive from Sanskrit

www.ling.upenn.edu/ ~jason2/papers/natlang.htm

Hinduism
oldest major religion still in practice holy scripture includes Vedas (in Sanskrit) Vedic period 1500-500 bce

Veda 1.1
agn-m c Fire-ac yajas-ya sacri"ce-gen htra-m, invoker-acc

-e praise-1sg dev-m divine-acc

purhita-m, fore-placed-acc rtvja-m, minister-acc

ratna-dht-ama-m. treasure-giver-superlative-acc

I praise Agni, set before others, divine minister of sacri"ce, the invoker, the treasure-giver.

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Hinduism didn t spread Sanskrit past India

Siddhrtha Gautama (c. 563-483 bce) the Buddha (awake-pp) born in Lumbini, Nepal, from his mother s side (...) wrote nothing (cf. Jesus, Socrates) Tripitaka (3 baskets) is the basic scripture

Buddhism

Mangala Sutta (part of the second basket)

The Buddha (says): Not consorting with fools, consorting with the wise, paying homage to those worthy of homage: This is the highest protection. Living in a civilized land, having made merit in the past, directing oneself rightly: This is the highest protection. Broad knowledge, skill, well-mastered discipline, well-spoken words: This is the highest protection. Support for one's parents, assistance to one's wife and children, consistency in one's work: This is the highest protection. [Does anyone know of a religion addressed to women??]

Theravda (SouthEast Asia) enlightenment from experience, critical investigation, and reasoning (not from blind faith); enlightenment by getting rid of desire; anyone can be buddha if they discover the path and teach it to others; no gods here: philosophy

Very little Buddhism in India for the last 1500 yearsdriven out in part by Islam

Mahayana (East Asia) Buddha is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient; lots of demigods (saints, bodhisattvas), more mystical: religion (Vajrayana, Tibetan Buddhism is part of this branch, with Dalai Lama

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the "rst people to study language as a science: Panini 520-460 bce

The Sanskrit Grammarians:

Indian Mathematics
zero as a number comes from 9th century ce India notion of zero goes back to 5th century bce nya void Indian mathematics was transmitted orally until 5th century bce sine, cosine, arc tangent 200 years before calculus was invented in Europe
ON THE ACQUISITION OF DHARMA, ARTHA AND KAMA

Chapter 2

MAN, the period of whose life is one hundred years, should practise Dharma, Artha and Kama at di)erent times and in such a manner that they may harmonize together and not clash in any way. He should acquire learning in his childhood, in his youth and middle age he should attend to Artha and Kama, and in his old age he should perform Dharma, and thus seek to gain Moksha, i.e. release from further transmigration...

Dharma is obedience to the command of the Shastra or Holy Writ of the Hindoos to do certain things, such as the performance of sacri"ces, which are not generally done, because they do not belong to this world, and produce no visible e)ect; and not to do other things, such as eating meat, which is often done because it belongs to this world, and has visible e)ects. Artha is the acquisition of arts, land, gold, cattle, wealth, equipages and friends. It is, further, the protection of what is acquired, and the increase of what is protected.Artha should be learnt from the king's o*cers, and from merchants who may be versed in the ways of commerce. Kama is the enjoyment of appropriate objects by the "ve senses of hearing, feeling, seeing, tasting and smelling, assisted by the mind together with the soul.

Khajuraho Temples 950-1050 ce Jain and Hindu gods representations of daily life and about 10% sex

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Kama Sutra Vatsyayana, 200 CE

Sanskrit love/sex manual no pictures originally but lots of descriptions essentially tries to treat love and sex
as science

MAN is divided into three classes, viz. the hare man, the bull man, and the horse man, according to the size of his lingam. Woman also, according to the depth of her yoni, is either a female deer, a mare, or a female elephant. There are thus three equal unions between persons of corresponding dimensions, and there are six unequal unions, when the dimensions do not correspond, or nine in all, as the following table shows:

Chapter 1 KINDS OF SEXUAL UNION ACCORDING TO DIMENSIONS, FORCE OF DESIRE OR PASSION, TIME Kind of Union

History and Language

1750-1500 circa 900 900-500 circa 500 500-0 0-500 1100-1500 1500-1800 1800-1948 1948-2000 IE people enter India Vedas Vedic Age Buddhism, Jainism Mauryas, others Mahabharata epic Guptas, others Arabic conquests Moghul Empire British Empire Indian Republic Sanskrit Hindu Buddhism, Jain

HBJ HBJ Arabic H, Muslim Mongolian, Persian, Turkish English Panjabi, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, etc. ( ruling languages )