the Wheel and Dating PIE

Gábor Sándi g_sandi at hotmail.com
Mon Mar 6 07:19:00 UTC 2000


There must be some

----- Original Message -----
From: <JoatSimeon at aol.com>
Sent: Friday, 03 March, 2000 12:09 PM

Joat Simeon wrote on 3 March 2000:

>> mcv at wxs.nl writes:

>> Based on the differentiation of the IE languages as attested ca. 1500 BC
>> (Vedic Sanskrit, Mycenean Greek and Hittite), any date within the range
>> 5500-3500 is absolutely reasonable for my Sprachgefuehl. >>

> -- Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek are extremely similar; with a knowledge
> of one language and of the sound-shifts, you can trace the general meaning of
> a text in the other language.  There are even common elements in things like
> poetic kennings.  They're more similar than modern standard German and
> English, comparable to Italian and, say, French.  Though not as similar as
> the modern Slavic languages, one would admit; however, those are unusually
> conservative.

> Looking at those two examples, one would assume something in the 500-1500
> year range for last-common-ancestor of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean Greek.

> Granted, Hittite is more differentiated.  However, the example of the _other_
> early IE languages, when we get some records -- early Latin, for instance, or
> the reconstructed forms of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Celtic or Proto-Tocharian
> -- show that this is an exceptional case.

> As of their earliest attestation, all the other IE languages with the
> _exception_ of the Anatolian group show divergences not much earlier than the
> Greek-Indo-Iranian.

> So if the ancestors of Sanskrit and Greek parted company sometime between
> 2000 BCE and 3000 BCE, which seems reasonable, then the ancestor of, say,
> Latin and the others must have done so only a little earlier.

I do not see how what you wrote here is tenable. Mycenean Greek, as far as I
know, is only known from Linear B texts, which can only be read (tentatively
in many cases) because of likely cognates in later versions of Greek, which
is so well known. The writing system of Linear B is so difficult that
normally we cannot distinguish among the three series of stops, final -s (of
rather great importance in Greek) is not shown, etc. etc. Under these
circumstances, I don't understand how it can be stated that Mycenean Greek
and Vedic Sanskrit are "extremely similar". How can we possibly know? In any
case, most of the extant Linear B texts are inventories and palace accounts,
hardly comparable to Vedic texts.

I know that there are many structural similarities between Homer's Greek and
Vedic Sanskrit, but even there I doubt that it is possible to read
continuous text in one, if you only know the other.

Any Classical scholars or Sanskrit experts out there who could comment?

Sincerely,

Gabor Sandi



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