from tamil cave epigraphy to indus valley script

by MaxEntropy_Man Tue May 29, 2012 1:13 pm

an interview with iravatham mahadevan

by Impedimenta Tue May 29, 2012 1:24 pm

absolutely enjoying this! thanks for posting.

by doofus_maximus Tue May 29, 2012 1:35 pm

impy.. you are enjoying this because of the huge font size. You know old age ...

by Guest Tue May 29, 2012 2:06 pm

good link. will read tomorrow. thanks for posting!

by Kris Tue May 29, 2012 2:09 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:an interview with iravatham mahadevan

>>>I didn't know the back story on this gentleman. Such passion and commitment, despite the personal tragedies. Thanks for the link.

by Marathadi-Saamiyaar Tue May 29, 2012 2:09 pm

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:an interview with iravatham mahadevan

Interesting and there are several noteworthy points.

1. If you have a Kushi govt. job yyou spend the rest of the time pursuing your other interests. He pursued knowledge, and most others pursue wealth.

2. His achievements and interests have very little to do with his education - Chemistry and Law

3. Oh.... when someone could not get into aany college, theyy could just walk into law college -that was hilarious.

4. Nothing stopped him from pursuing his interests in history - although he did well in everything he indulged in and could well have taken a more materialistic path.

in addition, his mention of certain places and people brought back some old memories.

by Guest Tue May 29, 2012 2:15 pm

doofus, you have stirred up a hornet's nest. Evil or Very Mad

by Kris Tue May 29, 2012 2:16 pm

Marathadi-Saamiyaar wrote:
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:an interview with iravatham mahadevan

in addition, his mention of certain places and people brought back some old memories.

>>>Yeah, remember a family wedding in these parts when I was 9 or 10.

by Nila Tue May 29, 2012 8:02 pm

Sorry I don't read stories about someone who mentions their caste. I belong to Brahmin family....there ended my reading. I try...

by Kayalvizhi Tue May 29, 2012 8:46 pm

I have talked to IM a few times. Although I am not agreement 100%, I think he is a honest man who does not try to prove a poredeterminede theory/

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 1:03 am

i don't see any evidence of ivc script being proto-tamil in this interview. perhaps an interview is the wrong place to look for it or perhaps it is still work-in-progress.

graham hancock, a writer, who specializes in unconventional theories, traces manu to be of south indian origin in his book, "underworld - flooded kigndoms of the ice age." inspired by it, amish tripathi wrote his book of fiction, "the immortals of melhua" in which he imagined that the ivc people were a civilization that had fled the loss of land in the south to the oceans.

by Kayalvizhi Wed May 30, 2012 1:17 am

>> ivc people were a civilization that had fled the loss of land in the south to the oceans.

This view was expressed by a few others too. In a 19860s (or 1950s) Tamil book "Kumari Kandam or Kadalkonda Thennaadu" (Kumari Continent or Southern Land Swallowed by Sea) he dwells on this idea.

by Idéfix Wed May 30, 2012 1:18 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:i don't see any evidence of ivc script being proto-tamil in this interview.

Don't have time to read the full interview, so let me know if it is answered in there and I will read it when I have some time. But my limited knowledge is that the Tamil inscriptions that have been found so far are all in Brahmi-based scripts. The IVC script is clearly not derived from Brahmi. So it would be hard to test the very hypothesis purely based on scripts; any such test would have to be based on potential similarities in the languages themselves. Also, Proto-Dravidian would be the correct name of the language being hypothesized as sharing some features with IVC language / script, not Proto-Tamil, given the timeline we are talking about. The northern and southern Dravidian sub-families separated from each other perhaps 3,000 years ago, while the IVC language and its script are over 4,000 years old.

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 1:34 am

panini press wrote:Don't have time to read the full interview, so let me know if it is answered in there

no it is not answered there. actually it is partly answered in other interviews of iravatham and max and i have had arguments about iravatham's interpretrations (we read it differently) earlier in old ch and anothersubcontinent.com.

But my limited knowledge is that the Tamil inscriptions that have been found so far are all in Brahmi-based scripts. The IVC script is clearly not derived from Brahmi. So it would be hard to test the very hypothesis purely based on scripts; any such test would have to be based on potential similarities in the languages themselves.

yes! also, the earliest find of brahmi in south asia is in sri lanka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissamaharama_Tamil_Brahmi_inscription

Also, Proto-Dravidian would be the correct name of the language being hypothesized as sharing some features with IVC language / script, not Proto-Tamil, given the timeline we are talking about.

yes, i stand corrected.

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 3:15 am

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:yes! also, the earliest find of brahmi in south asia is in sri lanka. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tissamaharama_Tamil_Brahmi_inscription

The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. Inscriptions in Tamil-Brahmi, a Southern Brahmic alphabet found on pottery in South India and Sri Lanka, may even predate the Ashoka edicts.^{[1]

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi and http://www.thehindu.com/news/states/tamil-nadu/article2408091.ece}

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 5:45 am

Kayalvizhi wrote: I think he [IM] is a honest man who does not try to prove a poredeterminede theory/

i agree with you!

by MaxEntropy_Man Wed May 30, 2012 5:57 am

mahadevan on asko parpola's work which has a bearing on his own work (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article462079.ece).

warning: if you have a severe allergy to mere mentions of the aryan immigration theory, this article might be injurious to your health! the comments section are interesting. they are similar to the conversations we have around these parts.

by Guest Wed May 30, 2012 11:43 am

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:mahadevan on asko parpola's work which has a bearing on his own work (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article462079.ece).

warning: if you have a severe allergy to mere mentions of the aryan immigration theory, this article might be injurious to your health! the comments section are interesting. they are similar to the conversations we have around these parts.

simply brilliant article by iravatham mahadevan. i notice he has not shifted his central thesis in the last 6 years (when i last read his interviews). the main point in the article, from my perspective, is:

- the motifs of harappan culture can be found in vedic culture as well as in dravidian culture. but i think more so in vedic culture (he suggested this in a past interview). this despite the fact that harappan was (in all likelihood) a proto-dravidian culture. vedic culture (which evolved in cemetery h or post-harappan times) is a fusion of "aryan" and harappan or "proto-dravidian" culture.

mahadevan underscores that harappan is purely a proto-dravidian culture with no "aryan" influence. i will tend to disagree with him here (though i am no scholar like him or parpola but i have every right to bullshit in such). i remember reading (don't recall where) that as a consequence of harappan (meluha in sumerian) trade with sumeria (iraq), lapis lazuli was found in excavations in iraq that date to the same period as harappa. we know that lapiz lazuli grows only in the mountains of afghanistan. this suggests that there was contact between the harappans and the afghans. some other hypothesis (perhaps that of romila thapar) suggests that when the harappan civilization died, theses afghans followed them inland and assimilated to give rise to vedic hinduism. so, since contact was there between the harappans and the afghans, we cannot assume there was negligible influence as a consequence of this contact on the culture of the harappans!

it remains (as per mahadevan) that both harappans and the (then) afghans or "aryans" (as he calls them) were proto-vedics.

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