Sanskrit is the Source

Marty here ! It's now spring of 98 & it's come to my attention I have not updated this rant in quite some time. For shame. However I still cling to my belief (as stated below) even though many twentieth century scholar types have tossed this belief onto the nineteenth century funeral pyre. I even read recently one outlandish statement (made by a man writing outside his field) that the Hyksos were the source of all Indo-Euro languages. Beware ! Right-o then, I shall leave the earlier piece intact, as I still believe it !

Prior to 1860 it was scholarly inclination/opinion that the source of all our Indo-European languages was in Asia and thus Sanskrit enjoyed high prestige and commanded awe from many in the west.

After 1860 the tide turned, as scholarly tides are wont to do, and Sanskrit became just a branch off the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the mighty Indo-Euro language family.

Of course, this was the time of some strange theories in anthropology concerning the link between the level of civilization and the size and shape of a person's head...odd stuff indeed.

Soon the alleged center of Indo-Euro origins shifted closer to Europe--where the anthropologists lived. As this Eurocentrism took over, there was little motivation to seek Western cultural/linguistic origins in the East.

How often do I hear the counter-argument that if Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-Euro tongues, why don’t we look like Indians?(!)Well, ponder on this: Everyone reading this speaks English, but we’re not all of Anglo-Saxon descent are we? Today the majority of people in India can speak English, but few have actually intermarried with genetically “English” people.

The amazingly quick spread of the Turkish (Altaic)language is a prime example of how fast and far a language could travel even before the days of airplanes and satellite signals.

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