Mutual intelligibility of Vedic and Greek [was Re: the Wheel andDating P...

[Vidhyanath Rao]

<JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
> -- as an experiment, why not compare a few sentences?  Say:

The trouble is that we don't have exact semantic matches sufficiently
often to do this. For example, what is the equivalent of ``sacrifice''
in Sanskrit? There is `yaj' which really meant `worship' or `honor' as
indicated both by syntax and meaning of cognates in Avestan and Greek.
Then there is `hu' which meant `pour' and more specifically `offer into
the fire'. I am not sure that anyone today can tell which Sanskrit
speakers from 3000 years ago would have selected if they knew Modern
English connotations of `sacrifice' (possibly neither) .  Anyways, here
are my translations into Sanskrit. I will not attempt Greek.

> "I sacrificed a hundred cattle to the gods."

devebhyas' s'atan" gava:m ajuhavam'  OR `deva:n~ chatena gava:m ayaje

> "Our powerful and mighty heroes siezed the land of their enemies."

This is even harder: `powerful' and `mighty' are rather close in meaning
and `hero' is a bit problematic. My best try is:

  asmadi:ya:s' s'aktimanto balavantas' s'u:ra:h. ks.etram ari:n.a:m
a:gr.bhn.an
[For later Sanskrit, change gr.bh- to gr.h]