________________
(2) nor as
Proto-Aryans
Old Iranian
(in Iran)
Old Indian (in India)
Near Eastern
Indian
Old Indo-Aryan
(3) but as -
Proto-Aryans
Old Iranian
(in Iran)
Proto-Indo-Aryan
(in Iran)
Near-Eastern
Indian
Old Indo-Aryan
Such a view permits us to say that the cluster pt became it in Near-East, but was preserved in India; but the diphthong ai>e in India was preserved in the Near-East. This happened after the branching off of the Near Eastern from Proto-Indo-Aryan.
III. Indo-European
The Indo-Iranian family togt.her with many other languages or language-families like Greek, Latin, Germanic etc. which were once spread over large parts of Asia and Europe form a family of languages known as the Indo-European family, as distinct from such other families of languages as Dravidian, Munda, Tibeto-Burman (in India) and Semitic, Finno-Ugrian etc. (in Europe and Asia).
Similarities between the vocabulary items of Sanskrit and some other languages like Latin or Iralian were long recognised by the missionaries who arrived in India. But they remained more or less as curiosities. The credit for the formulation of the theory of a common origin for these languages goes to Sir Willian Jones who made the now famous pronouncement in 1786 A. D. It was he who for the first time declared that the linguistic similarities between the languages now grouped in the IE family of languages can be
Madhu Vidyā/555
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