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To: SunkenCiv
When you say 'Dravidians in south India', you've probably assumed a huge misconception right there. To say India has a dark-skinned populace exlusively in the south and fair skinned ones in the north is a fallacy. Over millenia, large numbers of the northern Aryans have migrated to the south assimilated the local culture, and similarly too large populations of Dravidians have either remained firmly in the north or have migrated to, there. For example, in India's most southern state, Kerala, although the general population is dark skinned, there are large swathes of the state with fair skinned, Dravidic language speaking people, with skin lighter than their northern Indian contemporaries. This is evidence for the Aryan migration into all over India, and not just the south.

Another misconception is that of Dravidic languages being classified as such, distinct from indo-european ones. But the fact is ,each of these southern, Dravidian languages have about 50+ % Sanskrit origin, which is an Aryan (Indo-European) tongue.

Here's one famous south Indian singer...

... observe the general eye and skin colour of this 'dravidian'.

15 posted on 08/12/2004 7:42:27 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: CarrotAndStick
Actually, I made no such statement about dark and light skin; the Dravidians are primarily in southern India, and their language is not IndoEuropean, regardless of the size of the loan vocabulary.
One sees what one wants to
by Iravatham Mahadevan
I agree with Rajaram that it is time we put this 'horse business' behind us and look at the decipherment itself. I have done so. The Jha-Rajaram 'decipherment' is completely invalid. It is, in fact, a non-starter for the simple reason that the direction of reading adopted by the authors is wrong, as demonstrated by Witzel and Farmer (Frontline, October 13, box item at p.12). The 'decipherment' makes as much sense as you would get out of this page if you try to read it from a mirror reflection.
Of Rajaram's 'Horses', 'decipherment', and civilisational issues
by Asko Parpola
It is sad that in South Asia, as elsewhere in the world, linguistic and religious controversies are the cause of so much injustice and suffering. We should remember that from the very beginning, Aryan and non-Aryan languages and associated cultures, religions and peoples have intermingled and have become inextricably mixed. Every element of the population has contributed to the creation of Indian civilisation, and every one of them deserves credit for it.

16 posted on 08/12/2004 9:44:54 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
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To: CarrotAndStick
Dravidian languages have about 50+ % Sanskrit origin

Well, if you look at modern-day Hindi, there are actually two sets of words in it - one native, that descended from Sanskrit, and the other from Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu (which itself is a hybrid of Hindi grammar and Arabic-Farsi vocabulary) brought in by the Muslim invaders. HOWEVER, hindi still retains the original Sanskrit words as well. So for example the word for "book" is either "quitab" (urdu) or "pustak" (sanskrit) and the word for "food" is either "khana" (urdu) or "bhojan" (sanskrit). It is acceptable to use either of these words in speech, and that is one of the reasons why North Indians and Pakistanis can actually understand each other (linguistically that is) atleast at a basic level. It is also why Hindi movies (which tend to use the urdu version of words a lot) are popular in Pak.

In places like Maharashtra in central India where the Muslims didn't rule for very long, the Urdu words are absent from the vocabulary. So in Marathi for example, you can say pustak but not quitab.

A similar situation exists in Tamil (the primary South Indian language) where there are two sets of words - one indegenous (Old Tamil) and the other from an invading group (Sanskrit). Although today the words most used in everyday speech in the south are indeed from Sanskrit, there does exist (atleast in Tamil) a parallel indegenous vocabulary.
18 posted on 09/18/2004 5:07:44 AM PDT by qwerty_ca
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