Pre-Greek languages

[Eduard Selleslagh]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

-----Original Message-----
From: Vidhyanath Rao <vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu>
To: Indo-European at xkl.com <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 4:38 AM
Subject: Re: Pre-Greek languages


>Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be> wrote:
>> after all, Elamite - which was in the same situation - was
>> finally recognized as Dravidian

>Actually, Dravidianologists profess agnosticism or reservations: The most
>sympathetic view seems to be that a connection is believable but not
>proven. Kamil Zvelebil, in his original review of McAlpin, pointed out
>several problems; his more recent books seem to indicate guarded
>acceptance, but still he leaves himself some escape hatches.

>>[rather strangely late, if you ask me, because
>> the word Elaam still exists in Tamil, I was told]

>I don't know what Elamites called themselves and how they pronounced it.
>In Modern Tamil it is i:zham, where the `zh' stands for the same sound as
>in `tamilzh'. In some dialects, it comes out a retroflex l, but the older
>pronunciation (and still the standard pronunciation) is not quite an l.
>People have claimed success in teaching it to Americans starting from some
>American varieties of r. Some attempt to connect retroflex s of Sanskrit
>to it (and the transliteration as zh or z-underdot seems to come from
>Cyrilic which makes sound like a shibilant). It seems to me that the
>difficulty is describing it due to ignoring the most important bit: the
>tongue moves along the roof of the mouth >while< the sound is being made.

>Anyway, i:zham nowadays refers to Sri Lanka or rather the northern parts
>of it. I am not sure why anyone should have rushed to connect this to
>Elam.

[Ed Selleslagh]

Thanks for the useful comments.

1. The word Elaam: it's the usual (inaccurate?) western press transcription of
the name of the region you describe (cf. the independence guerrilla war) as
part of the native name of the pro-independence movement (I can't recall its
complete name).  So, it might be regarded as the native name for 'a Tamil
homeland' (in casu in Sri Lanka). That, together with the fact that both
regions are/were Dravidian, explains why Elam (Persia) might be - rightly or
wrongly - connected to Elaam (Iizham, Sri Lanka). I don't think that's
'rushing' it, only mildly speculating without grave danger.

2. The name of Elam (SW of the Zagros mountains in SW Iran): it is based upon
the Assyrian designation Elamtu, itself derived from the indigenous name
<(h)alamtu>. Greek: Elymaiïs. It is mentioned in the Bible (books of Esther
and Genesis XIV). In Achemenid old Persian it's (h)uzhi, which seems to
indicate an original pronunciation of the l like Tamil L, described (in Meillet
& Cohen) as a 'voiced retroflex palatalized sibilant, often confounded with
double underdotted l, ditto d, r or even y'.

[N.B. Sometimes the name of its capital Sousa (Hebr. Shushan) was used to coin
a name for the country.]

3. The presence of Elamite (in Antiquity) and Brahwi (Dravidian) in Iran
strongly suggests that the Dravidian territory stretched far more westward than
at present. It seems - but I have no documentation at hand - that the old Indus
valley culture is now recognized as having been Dravidian, which reinforces the
hypothesis.

It is very likely that the present-day Dravidian territory is the result of the
Dravidians and/or their language being relegated to the E and SE, almost
certainly by the IE Indo-Iranians.

Personally, I even suspect that a lot of what you might call 'Sanskrit culture'
actually owes most of its original content to the conquered Dravidians since
these already had a well established rich culture (like Mohendjo-Daro) when the
IE warriors(?) invaded their countries.

What is the present scholarly opinion on these points?

4. The Dravidian language family is probably of great interest to the study of
the upper nodes of the Indo-Hittite (or whatever) Stammbaum. I guess one day it
will be connected to it, several nodes above the PIE/Anatolian split. (There
are sometimes strange resemblances with IE: the -b- futurum and -<double
underdotted d>- perfectum in Tamil, the -r- medio-passive in Kurukh, etc. Pure
coincidence?)

Unfortunately, my impression is that it is rather undervalued.

Does anyone have any news about the present status of this still highly
speculative part of language (pre-)history?

Ed.

Dr. Ir. Eduard Selleslagh edsel at glo.be
B-9120 Haasdonk
Belgium