Let me start withYuval Noah Harari, the great pattern-recognizer of humankind. I am sorry he does not even mention a great document of humankind, the only 'book' which has survived -- thanks to an extraordinary oral super-hi-fidelity tradition of recording utterances with accuracy & built-in error-correction -- despite the cultural onslaughts of millennia, the Rigveda (about which Shrikant Talageri has written another great book called Rigveda: a Historical Analysis). I am sure that Harari has not read both the books.
Daimabad seal
Santali glosses
How can he talk about 'primordial' language without even knowing that kanda kanka means 'rim of jar'? The word 'kanka' is a tadbhava of कर्णक ifc. f(आ).) a prominence or handle or projection on the side or sides (of a vessel &c ) , a tendril (शतपथ-ब्राह्मण). I am citing this because, this is the signature tune of the Indus (Sarasvati) wealth-accountant, keeper of the daybook, ledgers or bills of lading of artisans/seafaring Meluhha merchants: Sign 342. This sign occurs on over 90% all 8000+ Indus Script inscriptions.
Harari in his Part 3 The Unification of Humankind, in his tour de force, Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind, presents a photo of Ka’a. (Fig.24 Pilgrims circling the Ka’aba in Mecca).
He presents a succinct summary of Indo-Aryan tourists arriving in India about 3000 years ago. See his follow-up inquiry cited on pages 337-338: “Biologists, anthropologists and even linguists provided scientific proof that Europeans are superior to all other races, and consequently have the right (if not perhaps the duty) to rule over them. After William Jones argued that all Indo-European languages descend from a single ancient language many scholars were eager to discover who the speakers of that language had been. They noticed that the earliest Sanskrit speakers of that language who had invaded India from Central Asia more than 3000 years ago, had called themselves Arya. The speakers of the earliest Persian language called themselves Airiia. Euroepean scholars consequently surmised that the people who spoke the primordial language that gave birth to both Sanskrit and Persian (as well as to Greek, Latin, Gothic and Celtic) must have called themselves Aryans. Could it be a coincidence that those who founded the magnificent Indian, Persian, Greek and Roman civilisations were all Aryans?”
Harari surprisingly does not refer to Rigveda, Avesta or Indus Script. He cites a Sumerian tablet signed by Kushim (pages 138, 139). “It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror.” This quote cites the work of Hans J Nissen, Peter Damerow and Robert K. Englund, Archaic Bookkeeping: Writing and Techniques of Economic Administration in the Ancient Near East, Chicago, London, The University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.36.
Where do I disagree with Harari?
I reject his theory of Indo-Aryan invasion of India.
I reject his theory of primordial ‘Aryan’ language.
I say that Meluhha was the spoken form of Chandas of Rigveda, a document that Harari does NOT mention even once in his tour de force. Of course, he does NOT also mention Indus Script which has now produced over 8000 inscriptions and we keep on parroting, say, in CBSE textbooks for children: ‘Indus Script has not been deciphered so far.’
So, how do we bring Harari, Hock and Witzel to a debate on OIT versus AIT (if you prefer Harari’s account or ATT (if you prefer Rajeev Srinivasa’s summary)?
So, what language did children of Sarasvati civilization speak? Were they illiterate? Or, did they communicate their economic transactions through their Indus Script inscriptions? By a miracle, Ancient India had become a Super Economic Power contributing to over 33% of Global GDP in 1CE (pace Angus Maddison).
I suggest that we should collectively crack the Indus Script code and prove Harari, Witzel and Hock wrong. Harari has to be told, in particular, that Rigveda and Indus Script (and the language of the Sarasvati Civilization) did contribute to the History of Humanmind with some important evidences from this history -- as important evidences as the Ka'aba of Mecca or Accountant Kushim's Sumerian tablet.
For those interested in pursuing arguments about the language spoken by Sarasvati civilization people, and their partial script, which preceded the full scripts of Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī,see:
https://independent.academia.edu/SriniKalyanaraman (OVer 1600 monographs)
Indian Lexicon --Comparative dictionary of over 8000 semantic clusters in 25+ ancient Bharatiya languages (Over 8000 semantic clusters which may help us read the 1000+ hieroglyphs of Indus Script and their cognate homonyms in Meluhha, Indian sprachbund, 'language union')
