Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Arts & Culture Culture, Arts, Literature & Linguistics
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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

You are right, I can understand Seraiki as its similar to Punjabi and Sindhi a little bit if I listen carefully...

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Historically, the state of Gujarat has been one of the main centers of the Indus Valley Civilization. It contains major ancient metropolitan cities from the Indus Valley such as Lothal, Dholavira, and Gola Dhoro. The ancient city of Lothal was where India's first port was established. Also, Dholavira, the ancient city, is one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India, belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization. The most recent discovery was Gola Dhoro. All together, about 50 Indus Valley settlement ruins have been discovered in Gujarat.
Daimabad of maharashtra was another site of Harappan settlement. Also the Indo-Gangetic plain has excavation proving the existance of Harappans or their cousins which places it as a contemporary as well as a successor of Indus valley civilization.

How is Mehrgarh related to Indus valley civilization to call it a precursor ? Any similarities of script or things like that ?

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

maybe this is the missing link, if it is the precursor than we can see the Iranian influence as well.

Mehrgarh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mehrgarh (Brahui: Mehrgaŕh, Urdu: مہرگڑھ), one of the most important Neolithic (7000 BCE to c. 2500 BCE) sites in archaeology, lies on the “Kachi plain” of now Balochistan, Pakistan. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia."[1]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-0)

Mehrgarh is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River valley and between the now Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by an archaeological team directed by French archaeologist Jean-François Jarrige, and was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh—in the northeast corner of the 495-acre (2.00 km2) site—was a small farming village dated between 7000 BCE to 5500 BCE and the whole area covers a number of successive settlements. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artifacts have been collected.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1)

Lifestyle and technology

Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Residents of the later period (5500 BCE to 2600 BCE) put much effort into crafts, includingflint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BCE.[3]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-2) Mehrgarh is probably the earliest known center of agriculture in South Asia.[4]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Harris1996-3)
In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence in human history for the drilling of teeth in vivo (i.e. in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh.[5]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Coppa-4)
edit]Archaeological significance

Mehrgarh is now seen as a precursor to the Indus Valley Civilization. “Discoveries at Mehrgarh changed the entire concept of the Indus civilization,” according to Ahmad Hasan Dani, professor emeritus of archaeology at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, “There we have the whole sequence, right from the beginning of settled village life.” According to Catherine Jarrige of the Centre for Archaeological Research Indus Baluchistan at the Musée Guimet in Paris:"…the Kachi plain and in the Bolan basin (are) situated at the Bolan peak pass, one of the main routes connecting southern Afghanistan, eastern Iran, the Balochistan hills and the Indus River valley. This area of rolling hills is thus located on the western edge of the Indus valley, where, around 2500 BCE, a large urban civilization emerged at the same time as those of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Egypt. For the first time in the Indian Subcontinent, a continuous sequence of dwelling-sites has been established from 7000 BCE to 500 BCE, (as a result of the) explorations in Pirak from 1968 to 1974; in Mehrgarh from 1975 to 1985; and of Nausharo from 1985 to 1996."

The chalcolithic people of Mehrgarh also had contacts with contemporaneous cultures in northern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran and southern central Asia.[6]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-5)

edit]Periods of occupation

Archaeologists divide the occupation at the site into several periods.

edit]Mehrgarh Period I

Mehrgarh Period I 7000 BCE–5500 BCE, was Neolithic and aceramic (i.e., without the use of pottery). The earliest farming in the area was developed by semi-nomadic people using plants such as wheat and barley and animals such as sheep, goats and cattle. The settlement was established with simple mud buildings and most of them had four internal subdivisions. Numerous burials have been found, many with elaborate goods such as baskets, stone and bone tools, beads, bangles, pendants and occasionally animal sacrifices, with more goods left with burials of males. Ornaments of sea shell, limestone, turquoise, lapis lazuli, sandstone have been found, along with simple figurines of women and animals. Sea shells from far sea shore and lapis lazuli found far in Badakshan, Afghanistan shows good contact with those areas. A single ground stone axe was discovered in a burial, and several more were obtained from the surface. These ground stone axes are the earliest to come from a stratified context in the South Asia. Periods I, II and III are contemporaneous with another site called Kili Gul Mohammed.
**
In 2001, archaeologists studying the remains of two men from Mehrgarh made the discovery that the people of the Indus Valley Civilization, from the early Harappan periods, had knowledge of proto-dentistry. Later, in April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of human teeth in vivo (i.e. in a living person) was found in Mehrgarh. **According to the authors, their discoveries point to a tradition of proto-dentistry in the early farming cultures of that region. “Here we describe eleven drilled molar crowns from nine adults discovered in a Neolithic graveyard in Pakistan that dates from 7,500 to 9,000 years ago. These findings provide evidence for a long tradition of a type of proto-dentistry in an early farming culture.”[5]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Coppa-4)

Mehrgarh Period II and Period III

Mehrgarh Period II 5500 BCE–4800 BCE and Merhgarh Period III 4800 BCE–3500 BCE were ceramic Neolithic (i.e., pottery was now in use) and later chalcolithic. Period II is at site MR4 and period III is at MR2.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1) Much evidence of manufacturing activity has been found and more advanced techniques were used. Glazed faience beads were produced and terracotta figurines became more detailed. Figurines of females were decorated with paint and had diverse hairstyles and ornaments. Two flexed burials were found in period II with a covering of red ochre on the body. The amount of burial goods decreased over time, becoming limited to ornaments and with more goods left with burials of females. The first button seals were produced from terracotta and bone and had geometric designs. Technologies included stone and copper drills, updraft kilns, large pit kilns and copper melting crucibles. There is further evidence of long-distance trade in period II: important as an indication of this is the discovery of several beads of lapis lazuli—originally from Badakshan. Mehrgarh Periods II and III are also contemporaneous with an expansion of the settled populations of the borderlands at the western edge of South Asia, including the establishment of settlements like Rana Ghundai, Sheri Khan Tarakai, Sarai Kala, Jalilpur, and Ghaligai.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1)

ehrgarh period IV, V and VI

Period IV was 3500 to 3250 BCE. Period V from 3250 to 3000 BCE and period VI was around 3000 BCE.[7]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-maisels1-6) The site containing Periods IV to VII is designated as MR1.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1)

edit]Mehrgarh Period VII

Somewhere between 2600 BCE and 2000 BCE,citation needed] the city seems to have been largely abandoned in favor of the new nearby settlement ofNausharo when the Indus Valley Civilisation was in its middle stages of development.

edit]Mehrgarh Period VIII

The last period is found at the Sibri cemetery, about 8 KM from Mehrgarh.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1)
edit]Artifacts

edit]Human Figurines

The oldest ceramic figurines in South Asia were found at Mehrgarh. They occur in all phases of the settlement and were prevalent even before pottery appears. The earliest figurines are quite simple and do not show intricate features. However, they grow in sophistication with time, and by 4000 B.C., begin to show the characteristic hairstyles and prominent breasts. All the figurines up to this period were female. Male figurines appear only from period VII and gradually become more numerous. Many of the female figurines are holding babies, and were interpreted as depictions of “mother goddess”.[8]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Nelson1-7)[9]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-8) However, due to some difficulties in conclusively identifying these figurines with “mother goddess”, some scholars prefer using the term “female figurines with likely cultic significance”.[10]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-9)
edit]Pottery

Evidence of pottery begins from Period II. In period III, the finds becomes much more abundant as the potter’s wheel is introduced, and they show more intricate designs and also animal motifs.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1) The characteristic female figurines appear from Period IV and the finds show more intricate designs and sophistication. Pipal leaf designs are used in decoration from Period VI.[11]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Singh1-10) Some sophisticated firing techniques were used from Period VI and VII and an area reserved for the pottery industry has been found at mound MRI. However, by Period VIII, the quality and intricacy of designs seems to have suffered due to mass production, and due to a growing interest in bronze and copper vessels.[7]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-maisels1-6)
edit]Metallurgy

Metal finds begin with a few copper items in Period IIB.[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-sharifthapar1-1)[11]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh#cite_note-Singh1-10)
edit]Common variant spellings

  • Mehrgarh is also spelled Mehrgahr, Merhgarh or Merhgahr.
  • Kachi plain is also spelled Kacchi plain, Katchi plain.
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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

But what about the language of Mehrgarh ? We know that Harappans were dravidian since the Indus script is similar to Dravidian . The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BC, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt allegedly marked with Indus script signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification. So does that mean that Mehrgarh were Dravidian people ? That can imply that both Sanskrit and Avestan (old-persian) evolved out an older Dravidian like language. There is already enough speculations and proof to prove that Sanskrit got its structure from Dravidian languages and so maybe Iranian Avestan did so as well since they are so similar .
The proto-Elamite script of the Iranian plateau is undecipherable as well. Scholars have tried to link both the scripts on the basis of similarities. Both are bronze age scripts and we know that Indus people spoke a dravidian like lang so may be bronze age Iranian spoke a dravidian like language too. This again can imply a common dravidian language in the region which was an ancestor to both Avestan and Sanskrit.

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Ok. Just read a bit . Mehrgrah was neolithic era where as Indus valley was Bronze age settlement. So may be Mehrgarh may be the "oldest settlement" found in our region. But I am not sure if the Indus valley people were the same descendents of the Mehrgarh people or anything like that.

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

The civilization is very ancient hence not understood fully. The researchers have not been able to find out what language they spoke. I’ll not be surprised if their language was Brahui.

WORLDS FIRST URBAN SETTLEMENT; MEHRGARH (Balochistan) PART II - YouTube

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Yes. No surprise if Brahui turns out to be the most direct and less unaltered descendant of the Harappan language.

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Gods, Sages and Kings: Vedic Secrets of Ancient Civilization - David Frawley - Google Books

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

@Ali_Syed. Nice info. Thanks

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Calypsodic, are you sure that harrapan spoke dravidians language?? because none of the sites that I have worked while in DU, could hardly decipher symbolic sign language, the seals of bull, peepal, and pashupati are of conjuctering nature at best.

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

So is dogri and pahadi spoken in Jammu and Himachal

from sindh to delhi in the west to Gujrat in south.

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

It is one of the possible hypothesis. The discovery in Tamil Nadu of a late Neolithic (early 2nd millennium BC, i.e. post-dating Harappan decline) stone celt allegedly marked with Indus script signs has been considered by some to be significant for the Dravidian identification.
The language being unattested in any readable contemporary source, hypotheses regarding its nature are reduced to purported loanwords and substratum influence . The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis proposes that the extinct Harappan language (the language or languages of the Indus Valley Civilization) may also be part of the same family. As with any hypothesis, there are both supporters and opponents of this theory. I just proceeded in this discussion by supporting the theory. I may be wrong.
The origins of the Dravidian languages, as well as their subsequent development and the period of their differentiation are unclear. The Dravidian family has defied all of the attempts to show a connection with other tongues, including Indo-European, Hurrian, Basque, Sumerian, and Korean except Uralic where there has been observed some similarities. Dravidian is one of the primary language families in the Nostratic proposal, which would link most languages in North Africa, Europe and Western Asia into a family with its origins in the Fertile Crescent sometime between the last Ice Age and the emergence of proto-Indo-European 4–6 thousand years BC. However, the general consensus is that such deep connections are not, or not yet, demonstrable. This is one reason that some scholars hypothesize that the Harappan languages were Dravidian in origin. I am just accepting that for the sake of the discussion and it does not in any way mean that I am right. :slight_smile:

If U check the time line of Indus Valley Civilization, it started around 3300 BC. So the info below makes some sense on Harappans being Dravidian Lang speakers:

The circumstances of the advent of Dravidian speakers in India are shrouded in mystery. There are vague linguistic and cultural ties with the Urals, with the Mediterranean area, and with Iran. It is possible that a Dravidian-speaking people that can be described as dolichocephalic (longheaded from front to back) Mediterraneans mixed with brachycephalic (short-headed from front to back) Armenoids and established themselves in northwestern India during the 4th millennium BC. Along their route, these immigrants may have possibly come into an intimate, prolonged contact with the Ural-Altaic speakers, thus explaining the striking affinities between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic language groups. Between 2000 and 1500 BC, there was a fairly constant movement of Dravidian speakers from the northwest to the southeast of India, and about 1500 BC three distinct dialect groups probably existed: Proto-North Dravidian, Proto-Central Dravidian, and Proto-South Dravidian. The beginnings of the splits in the parent speech, however, are obviously earlier. It is possible that Proto-Brahui was the first language to split off from Proto-Dravidian, probably during the immigration movement into India sometime in the 4th millennium BC, and that the next subgroup to split off was Proto-Kurukh-Malto, sometime in the 3rd millennium BC

Source:Britannica Article on Dravidian

Edit:
Dravidian hypothesis

The Russian scholar Yuri Knorozov surmised that the symbols represent a logosyllabic script and suggested, based on computer analysis, an underlying agglutinative Dravidian language as the most likely candidate for the underlying language.Knorozov’s suggestion was preceded by the work of Henry Heras, who suggested several readings of signs based on a proto-Dravidian assumption.

The Finnish scholar Asko Parpola led a Finnish team in the 1960s-80s that vied with Knorozov’s Soviet team in investigating the script using computer analysis. Based on a proto-Dravidian assumption, they proposed readings of many signs, some agreeing with the suggested readings of Heras and Knorozov (such as equating the “fish” sign with the Dravidian word for fish “min”) but disagreeing on several other readings. A comprehensive description of Parpola’s work until 1994 is given in his book Deciphering the Indus Script.

Dravidian shares strong areal features with the Indo-Aryan languages. Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing, from Indo-Aryan, whereas Indo-Aryan shows more structural features than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages. The Dravidian impact on the syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan impact on Dravidian grammar. Some linguists explain this asymmetry by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan languages were built on a Dravidian substratum

Source: Wikipedia

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Something interesting I came across. This accepts the Invasion theory. But even if it was the Migration theory, the history of the origin of Harappan language remains the same. Whether the Aryans invaded(doubtful) or migrated(possible), history accepts to the presence of Dravidian language speakers spread across Ancient India to Iran(Elamo-Dravidian) who influenced the development of Indo-Aryan languages in the subcontinent:

Many hypotheses have been put forward about the affinity of the Indus language, but only two alternatives have had wider support.

Indo-Aryan languages have been spoken in the area once occupied by the Indus civilisation and gradually all over North India since at least 1000 B.C. It is natural to assume that they were spoken there even earlier. Speakers of Hindi, Bengali and other Neo-Indo-Aryan languages especially have been prone to interpret the Indus texts as Sanskrit (understood in the broad sense of Old Indo-Aryan), from which their own mother tongues have evolved.

The Sanskrit hypothesis, however, is difficult to reconcile chronologically with the date of the Indus civilisation (about the second half of the third millennium B.C.) and antecedent Early Harappan neolithic cultures which were responsible for its creation. Comparison of the Vedic texts with the Avesta and with the West Asian documents relating to the Aryan kings of Mitanni suggests that the Vedic Aryans entered the Indian subcontinent from Northeast Iran and Central Asia in the second millennium B.C.

Moreover, it is abundantly clear that the early Aryans were nomads and that the horse played a dominent role in their culture, as it did in the culture of their Proto-Indo-European-speaking ancestors. The horse is conspicuously absent from the many realistic representations of animals in the art of the Indus civilisation. Comprehensive recent bone analyses have yielded the conclusion that the horse was introduced to the subcontinent around the beginning of the second millennium B.C.

Horse-drawn chariots made the Aryan-speaking nomads a superior military force which gradually subdued all of North India. Numerically the early Aryans can have been only a fraction of the Indus population, which is estimated to have been about five million. Obviously these millions of people were not all killed; they were made to acknowledge the Aryan overlordship and to pay taxes. In the course of time and through gradually increasing bilingualism, the earlier population eventually became linguistically assimilated. It is most unlikely that this process of linguistic Aryanization happened without leaving clear marks of the earlier substratum language upon Indo-Aryan.

There are several structural and lexical Dravidisms even in the Rgveda, the earliest preserved text collection, pointing to the presence of Dravidian speakers in Northwest India in the second millennium B.C. The 25 Dravidian languages spoken at present form the second largest linguistic family of South Asia. Until recently, about one quarter of the entire population has spoken Dravidian, while the speakers of Austro-Asiatic, the third largest linguistic family of long standing in South Asia, numbered just a few per cent. The Indus language is likely to have belonged to the North Dravidian sub-branch represented today by the Brahui, spoken in the mountain valleys and plateaus of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, the core area of the Early Harappan neolithic cultures, and by the Kurukh spoken in North India from Nepal and Madhya Pradesh to Orissa, Bengal and Assam.

Indus writing: Sanskrit or Dravidian?

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

In Punjabi which is IndoAryan language urine is called mootar, while in Malyalam which is Dravidian language also the word for urine is mootar. How can u explain it?

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

You explain it in the same way how in Hindi which is an Indo-Aryan language a stupid /foolish person is called Murkh and at the same time in some Dravidian languages the word for a foolish/stupid person is also murkh .:hoonh:

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

Most of the history during the past 2500 years has been documented, and can be verified through the travels of alberuni, chinese travellers etc and then comparing with the relics of old settlements that have been discovered. What about the Indus valley civilization, how can that be understood now? The oldest text of the subcontinent, was sanskrit, and rig veda which can give more clues dates up to 1500 BC. But I believe it was written much later, whats the history behind rig veda and what does it tell us about the people in the land at that time?

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Like in Punjabi, Calypso means kali keri(black bug).

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there is always two words for same word,sanskrit word is used more in respected way,local word for mootar would made to be sound nasty
i think even in malayalam there should be another word for mootar

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

word for urine is mootra in sanskrit

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Re: Punjabi/Urdu/Hindi/Sansikrat

:D