Download This PaperProto-Dravidian in Indus Civilization: Ultraconserved Dravidian Tooth-word Reveals Deep Linguistic Ancestry, Supports Genetics
85 Pages Posted: 28 Aug 2020 Last revised: 16 Jun 2021
Date Written: August 18, 2020
Abstract
Ever since the discovery of Indus valley civilization, scholars have debated the linguistic identities of its people. This study analyzes numerous archaeological, linguistic, archaeogenetic and historical evidences to claim that words used for elephant and ivory (like, ‘pīri’, ‘pīru’) in ancient Mesopotamian and Persian civilizations were borrowed from ‘pīlu’, a Proto-Dravidian elephant-word, which was prevalent in the Indus valley civilization, and was etymologically related to the Proto-Dravidian tooth-word ‘*pal’ and its alternate forms (‘*pīl’/‘*piḷ’/‘*pel’). This paper argues that there is sufficient morphophonemic evidence of an ancient Dravidian ‘*piḷ’/‘*pīl’-based root that meant ‘splitting/crushing’ and ‘tooth/tusk’, and that the root was present in middle Indo-Aryan language ‘Pali’, possibly as a Dravidian substratal/adstratal word, proving its prevalence in ancient North India. This paper further observes that ‘pīlu’ is among the most ancient and common phytonyms of the toothbrush tree Salvadora persica, which is a characteristic flora of Indus valley, and whose roots and twigs have been widely used as toothbrush in IVC regions since antiquity. This study claims that this phytonym ‘pīlu’ had also originated from the same Proto-Dravidian tooth-word, and argues that since IVC people had named their toothbrush trees and tuskers (elephants) using a Proto-Dravidian tooth-word, and since these names were widely used across IVC regions, a significant population of Indus valley civilization must have used that Proto-Dravidian tooth-word in their daily communication. Since ‘tooth’ belongs to the core non-borrowable ultraconserved vocabulary of a speech community, its corollary is that a significant population of IVC spoke certain ancestral Dravidian languages. Important insights from recent archaeogenetic studies regarding possible migration of Proto-Dravidian speakers from Indus valley to South India also corroborate the findings of this paper.
Keywords: Dravidian, Proto-Dravidian, Indus Valley Civilization, Indus languages, Brahui, Linguistics, Language Phylogeny, South Asian Archaeology, Basic Vocabulary, South Asia Population, Dravidian Migration
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
