YSP 40 Caley Smith | The World of Vedic Sanskrit
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- čas přidán 16. 07. 2024
- In this episode we speak with Caley Smith about the ancient and fascinating world of Vedic Sanskrit. We discuss some theories and debates about the origins of Sanskrit, its relationship with other Indo-European languages, the nature and scope of the Vedas, Vedic notions of authorship, comparisons between Classical Sanskrit and Vedic, the importance of orality, and much more. We conclude the conversation with a preview of Smith's upcoming online course, SKT 303 | Vedic Sanskrit.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Caley Smith is a scholar of early South Asian religious history and political imagination. His work focuses primarily on the conceptual continuities and disruptions between the Vedas and emergent ascetic and householder traditions. He is taking a new position this August as the S&R Palvia Endowed Veetraag Vigyaan Professor in Jain Studies at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia. His current book project, The Invisible Mask, explores the ritual impersonation of the god Indra its influence on the impersonation-recitation traditions of early Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
Links
SKT 303 | Vedic Sanskrit | www.yogicstudies.com/skt-303
harvard.academia.edu/CaleyCha...
This is awesome information. Thanks for taking time to record and post.
45:25 small correction. Vaidiki Brahmins on the Andhra coast still follow Shrauta traditions in the same way Nambuthiri Brahmins do in Kerala. The majority of Vaidikis recite the Krisha Yajurveda as part of the Taittirya Shakha. They actually still do soma sacrifices involving goats and cattle while Nambuthiri brahmins shifted to figures made from rice flour in the shape of the animals.
Great podcast! Thank you Seth and Caley, I am looking forward to the course!
Learnt so so much today...Dhanyabad 🙏
It was great listening to these thoughts. To someone like me curious about Vedas, most of the videos I find turn out to be exaggerated accounts on the subject. Very glad to chance upon Dr Caley Smith.
20:24 OMG! How easily one can get misled here..! The exact word in Sanskrit(Vedic) is Drshya (Dṛśya (दृश्य) refers to “perceived objects”, perceiver (draṣṭṛ), perception (darśana) ) There is one more Sanskrit word called /dṛkpatham/(dRkpAta to be exact) meaning view point). Greek/Latin/Hindi come from second stem drk. There are so many Sanskrit words from from "drk". The double consonant 'Dr' is more archaic and it changes to simplified forms with addition of any vowel like 'dor(ka)' in Greek ,'de(kha)' in Hindi. Even if one says 'k' is more archaic, then Sanskrit has drk and Hindi has 'kh' . Certainly Indian homeland(or IA speakers are PIE speakers) can't be ruled out..
What is your point?
🙏🏽
Hey Dr. Smith, is it possible for you to talk of the traces of hittite rituals and merseburg sorcery hymns in AV as witzel alludes? Also any discussion of Athrarvaveda being older in content to RV would be great. I know I am reducing quite a bit of academic nuance in this comment.
The laryngeal traces in Rig veda would be a nice topic to deconstruct for a layman as well.
Thank you!
I am not the person to talk about Hittite rituals, tbh, but there stylistic parallels between the Merseburg accounts and some AV material "bone to bone, sinew to sinew" etc. It's hard to say what is of common stylistic inheritance and what simply emerges from the logic of practice. On this I would recommend the works of Velizar Sadovski. As for dating the RV vis a vis the AV, as diachronic corpora of course some parts will be older than other parts but metrically, that is in scansion, the RV is typically the older of the two texts. That is not to say some old passage could not have survived in the AV and was subject to a younger system of pronunciation. As for laryngeal traces in the RV, it's something I will cover somewhat in the course itself.
20:24 Dr Caley Smith ! In Hindi it is "me(in) dekha". So Hindi has more archaic PIE type verb. Hindi,Prakrits,Pali,Proto Bangani have Centum features but are unfortunately misclassified as Indo Aryan and as descendants of Vedic because of misleading pro-Sanskriters claims. Secondly, sometimes the archaic words in Vedic appear in compounded words. Eg: Disa - means direction, but the probably more archaic 'Dik' is also present in a compound form like Dikpala (as in Ashta Dikpala) - Gods of 8 directions. *wodr PIE for water appears in a compounded form like Samudra(ocean/pool of water). Recent SOTA Paul Heggarty paper also models Prakrits as far off distinct sister dialects of Vedic Sanskrit.
What is the "Yaga effect" ? I couldn't find it from googling. This is all so fascinating. Looking forward to the course.
This video made me think about how "yug" is "south" in Slavic and wondering whether there was a relation to the summertime yoking and wandering season. Sanskrit is very similar to Slavic languages in many ways, at least it seems so to me.
This was imply the colloquial expression for feeling moved emotionally by the culmination of the yāga, in this case a rough synonym for yajña
sh - kh transformation is extremely common in Indo-Iranian languages. Don't know what Mr.Smith was talking about. Even within the dialects of Odia, we have dishuchi and dekhuchi to mean see. In Pashto some dialects spell words with sh, others say with kh.
Sounds very interesting, looking forward to this course. I like how Seth leads the podcast, to the point and very relaxed. Caley is really in the subject, and seems like he is very thorough. Good podcast. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
The verb for "see", दृश्, is used as an example of how Sanskrit can't be the PIE in this video, the verb forms of दृश् have words like didṛkṣate- which is very close to Greek word used here...dedorka, I am assuming Dr. Caley Smith can give us a reference (if available) to more examples of why Sanskrit can't be PIE will help a lot...
Yes they fed selective words into the so called SOTA linguistic models
When will the course videos be uploaded? Waiting for them.
Hi there, the live course has now concluded, but all of the recordings are available for self-study. You can learn more here: www.yogicstudies.com/skt-303
Thank you. If possible, please provide links to some of the content referenced in the talk. Like "Finn's short film" that was mentioned. There could be other such instances as well. Thanks again 🙏🏽
@@sganesh88 I believe this was the video we referenced: vimeo.com/36395650
Thanks for the quick response!
Sanskrit sounds.
Are the sounds of the laws of nature.
Heard by the maharishis.
After the Puru civilization on the River Saraswathi ended around 1700 BCE.
the leadership of India passed to the Iksvaku on the River Ganga.
So to the Iksvaku the Vedas, composed by the Puru, were Sruti, heard, and apaurushaya and timeless and eternal, because the Iksvaku did not know the full history of the Vedas.
Vedas were composed by the Puru-Bharatas between 3,500 - 1900 BCE,
Compiled by the Iksvaku between 1,900 - 1,000 BCE
Written down around 500 BCE.
So "Purus" descendants must have corrected "Iksvakus" misunderstanding about Apaurusheya right ? Instead we(Indians) have been misled for 4000 years that Vedas are eternal and Sanskrit as God's language and even today the same continues
@@uniqguy111
The 'Puru' civilization ended due to drying up of Saraswathi River by 1700 BCE.
So Puru played no role in Indian history thereafter.
Why doesn't anyone in later times, claim to be descendants of Puru, Iksvaku, Kuru, etc.?
@@uniqguy111 Don't waste your time. Fanatics are listening, they are speaking. YOU need to listen and NOT talk back.
As per Yajnadevam's cryptographical readings, classical Sanskrit is written on the seals of the Indus Valley, this means Vedic Sanskrit is likely older than 5,000 years.
Please look into Yajnadevam's work on the Indus Script, it will change your mind Caley Smith
Too much focus on horse which was never successfully bred in India even in pre-modern time. I think more likely migration animal is camel as it was case in silk route. May be one reason why Zoroaster is linked with camel
@MrAmit0123
Horses were domesticated around 3,500 BCE in Steppe or Central Asia.
'IVC' extended up to Kabul, since Kabul / Kuba River is a tributary of the Sindhu.
Lapis Lazuli was brought from mines a few hundred kilometers north of Kabul.
How far was the Horse domestication area from the Lapis Lazuli mines?
Horses too could have been brought to Kabul and
then to the main 'IVC' towns soon after they were domesticated.
Entry of horses into India need have taken 2,000 years to 1,500 BCE,
as proposed in the Aryan theory.
Doesn’t genetics incontrovertibly prove migration of Indo Iranians
How far back can you extend your nationalism - 50,000 years in the case of India / Bharat.
The first Homo Sapiens migrated into Indian Subcontinent before 50,000 years ago and
most of the people in India today are biologically mainly the descendants of these first immigrants.
All subsequent inward migrants melted and merged into the culture, language, religion, etc.,
created by the descendants of these first immigrants. All the subsequent inward migrations have had only a limited impact on the preexisting culture, language, religion, etc., and none have completely changed or replaced any culture, language, religion, etc., in India at the time of the immigration.
Sanskrit cannot be source of Greek, they originated from a common language.
Why couldn't this common Proto language have originated in India?
Thanks for Caley for accepting that this is possible.
However, your claim that OIT supporters claim that Sanskrit was the Mother of all IE languages is silly, no one claims this.
The only claim is that Proto-Indo-European PIE originated in India starting around 4,000 BCE and some of these Proto language speakers migrated out, perhaps Dhruyu group named in the Rig Veda and those who remained in India, the Puru, developed Vedic Sanskrit, starting around 3,500 BCE and these people also started developing the material culture of the Urban Bronze Age Civilization starting around 3,300 BCE.
A second outward migration of Sanskrit speakers from the Sindhu basin took place starting around 1,900 BCE, i.e., when the Bronze Age civilization started to decline and these people are the ancestors of the Persians / Parsu in Rig Veda, Mittanies, etc.
The Rig Veda clearly names many groups of people - Puru-Bharata were the composers of the RV, others were Dhruyu Anu, Yadu, Iksvaku, etc. The Dasarajanya battle was fought between these groups. The reason for this battle could well have been the Puru developments of Vedic Sanskrit and composition of Vedas, other did not like this and refused to accept the leadership of the Puru. The losers migrated out and maintained their language, religion, etc.
If PIE/OIT is true, then the migrations should have happened from India before 5000BC since AASI mixture with IVC estimated to "~5400 to 3700 BCE" CI as per Narasimhan paper.And boy, as per the Paul Heggarty paper, PIE split around 5000 BC.
And the only scientific researcher who has given such dates from multiple angles is one and only Dr. Premendra Priyadarshi.
Hats off to him if it turns out to be true. He gives date for RigVeda, Zagros-Pakistan connection, Halaf Culture connection, Migrations from Asia to Europe (Brandt) at around 6000BC to 5000 BC.
@@uniqguy111
Migration out of India was perhaps a regular feature, since India has always been the world's most populated area.
The moderate climate, high rain fall, large number of rivers, etc., helped India have a large population even during the ice age.
The location is suitable for migration to West, North and East.
Sanskrit is NOT man made.
Maharishi mahes yogy.
Get lost putz, we don't idiotic comments from an armchair expert like you.
20:24 OMG! There is one more Sanskrit word called "dṛkpatham" ( dRkpAta to be exact) . It means look/viewpoint. One can search in Google. Now the interesting/most convincing part is that it looks like Greek/Hindi are derived from 'drk' and not 'darsha'. And the more even more convincing part is that 'drk' is more archaic than Greek 'dorka' or Hindi's 'dekha' .. I am completely stunned! There huge set of words formed from the root 'drk'- all related to "look/view/eye". Sanskrit has huge vocabulary.. Sanskrit(Vedic) has organic coherence of root stems and derived word formations as per Dr Nicholas Kazhanas..