Elamite/Harappan/Sergent

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

I wrote:
<< Bernard Sergent -- a proponent of the idea that Harappan-Indus was
Dravidian -- in "Genesis of India" (1997) apparently also takes the position
that the isoglosses cited by McAlpin can be explained "through contact rather
than common origin.">>

In a message dated 11/27/2000 6:30:19 PM, xiang at free.fr writes:
<<You did not read his book.>>

Guillaume is quite right.  My notes are from someone's review in 1998 when
the book was first published in French.

BUT I must point out that it appears my statement regarding Sergent's
position on Elamite and Dravidian being unrelated languages is 100% CORRECT
-- lest we forget the point being made.

<<Sergent rejects the communis opinio that Harappa was dravidian,...>>

This is in fact correct.  My apologies.  Part of the reason for my confusion
were in the notes from the review there is the quote that Sergent admits
"...the Dravidians were certainly already in the Deccan when the mature
Harappan civilization started.... Sergent asserts that the Dravidians formed
a pre-Harappan population in Sindh and Gujarat, and that they were
overwhelmed and assimilated, not by the invading Aryans, but by the
mature-Harappan population."  Note that Dravidian/Harappan connection is not
denied, but rather subjected to "assimilation."

xiang at free.fr also writes:
<<Sergent suggests Harappa might have been burushaski (he has good reasons
for it), but on the whole we don't have enough proofs: if Harappan was indeed
burushaski, we would expect a burushaski substrate in Vedic, which seems not
to be the case (see Michael Witzel's online paper, 'substrates in old
indo-aryan')>>

Looking at this again, I do not see how anything that Sergent is saying
eliminates the possibility the written language of Harappan was Dravidian.
If Semitic speakers could write in Old Sumerian, then Harapan could have
written in old Dravidian.  Who's to say?  Sergent certainly leaves that
opening, doesn't he?

And, since he can only tenously point to "Burushaski" -- one of the other
major "mystery" languages of the region -- he has not really advanced the
issue of Harappan script very far at all.  Query how, with its IE affinities,
the (unknown) early form of Burushaski would exactly have showed up as a
substrate in Indo-Aryan?  And why it would not already have showed up at
least partially in the numerous attempts to decipher Harappan as an IE
language?  Cf. I. Casulje, Basic Burushaski Etymologies: The Indo-European
and Paleobalkanic affinities of Burushaski (1997).

Regards,
Steve Long