Munda in Early NW India

[David L. White]

> This has been challenged by among others Prof. Witzel of Harvard,
> who sees the underlying language as possibly an an early form of Munda (or
> some language X).

        Munda has "voiced aspirates", or, more precisely, murmured sounds,
which appear to be native (though of course they also occur in borrowings
from Indic).  I believe it also has retroflex sounds.  So perhaps the
suggestion is not absurd, as it might motivate the appearance of such sounds
in Indic, which is otherwise a bit odd, though strangely this (the oddity)
has not (to my knowledge) received much comment.

Dr. David L. White