Mirror: https://www.academia.edu/9494773/History_of_Bharatiya_languages_Tracing_back_to_Meluhha_and_Indus_script
Language experts have given up theories of language divisions in India giving lie to politically-driven Dravida identity theories.
The consensus is that ancient India was a language union where language streams of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda, Tibeto-Burman and Himalayan languages together flowed into the glacial perennial river of Bharati also called Sarasvati.
Most people spoke vernacular Sanskrit drawing their word repertoire from these streams. This vox populi, popular speech, was referred to as Meluhha (later called Mleccha).
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As stone-copper age evolved into bronze age, many ancient Bharatiya were so-called because they had graduated from working with stone to become creators of alloys of metals and workers of metal casting.
Bharata means metal caster. So were Asur, metalworkers who produced the Vidisha Iron pillar now called Delhi Iron Pillar, non-rusting even after thousands of years' exposure to weather and climate changes.
Rigveda referred to these ancient people, the metalcasters bharatiyo, as Bharatam Janam, that is, Bharata people.
The Bharata people invented Indus script which was used to create metalwork catalogs on seals, tablets, copper plates. The script used a rebus method using a form of picture-writing. Pictures are referred to as hieroglyphs, that is words which signified the pictures were in fact mirrors of similar-sounding words which referred to metalwork. Thus, baraDo which meant metalcaster was denoted by barad'bos indus gaurus, bull'. The same word could also be denoted by a picture of a spine or backbone of a seated person.
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Language experts have given up theories of language divisions in India giving lie to politically-driven Dravida identity theories.
The consensus is that ancient India was a language union where language streams of Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Munda, Tibeto-Burman and Himalayan languages together flowed into the glacial perennial river of Bharati also called Sarasvati.
Most people spoke vernacular Sanskrit drawing their word repertoire from these streams. This vox populi, popular speech, was referred to as Meluhha (later called Mleccha).
A Meluhha is shown carrying a coat on an Akkadian cylinder seal of an interpreter called Shu-Ilishu. A good example of a Meluhha artisan/seafaring merchant trading in Mesopotamia
As stone-copper age evolved into bronze age, many ancient Bharatiya were so-called because they had graduated from working with stone to become creators of alloys of metals and workers of metal casting.
Bharata means metal caster. So were Asur, metalworkers who produced the Vidisha Iron pillar now called Delhi Iron Pillar, non-rusting even after thousands of years' exposure to weather and climate changes.
Rigveda referred to these ancient people, the metalcasters bharatiyo, as Bharatam Janam, that is, Bharata people.
The Bharata people invented Indus script which was used to create metalwork catalogs on seals, tablets, copper plates. The script used a rebus method using a form of picture-writing. Pictures are referred to as hieroglyphs, that is words which signified the pictures were in fact mirrors of similar-sounding words which referred to metalwork. Thus, baraDo which meant metalcaster was denoted by barad'bos indus gaurus, bull'. The same word could also be denoted by a picture of a spine or backbone of a seated person.
S. Kalyanaraman
Sarasvati Research Centre
November 26, 2014