Reviews Of Different Books

Page 41

REVIEWS 287 The dictionaries are not only unable to catch up with the numerous literary usages that are coming into the language every day, they have left out a whole lot of lexical stock of tadbhava origin. Historical and comparative studies are based on second hand sources, and dialect studies are almost nonexistent. A serious scientific investigation aiming at sufficiently deep and exhaustive description of the language in any one of these aspects, is yet to begin." As regards M. W. Sugathapala de Silva's chapter on Sinhalese (pp. 235-248) special mention may be made of his account of Vedda and Rodiya. On p. 246f. he states that "Vedda and Rodiya are not dialects of Sinhalese. Vedda is a creole with much Sinhalese influence, and Rodiya is a secret language in which non-Sinhalese lexical items are used in Sinhalese structures. Any dialect survey of Sinhalese should treat these two speeches separately. Sufficient work has already been done on Vedda, but Rodiya needs further investigation. As most "secret" words used by the Rodiyas are very different from Sinhalese or Tamil, it would be interesting to search for the origin of such words." The same is true of Vedda, which according to de Silva is "a creole based on an older Vedda language with Sinhalese as the second contributing factor". Some additional data for Vedda are communicated by Hettiaratchi on p. 743. Both languages would seem particularly important for a correct linguistic analysis of the so-called Munda language Nihali (see below, and cf. Kuiper, Nahali, p. 114, where a paper by Wilhelm Geiger on a "Gaunersprache" in Ceylon is quoted as a parallel to Nahali). Braj B. Kachru, in his very instructive survey of "Kashmiri and other Dardic languages" (pp. 284-306), states (p. 286) that "The question of the final affiliation of the Dardic family of languages has not yet been answered." In his opinion there is not "much authentic linguistic evidence" in support of the views of Grierson or Morgenstierne. This sceptical attitude of a scholar who is intimately acquainted with the material and the problems it raises should be a warning to all those who try, on the basis of the available material, to form an opinion on the historical relations of the Kafir languages to the Indo-Iranian family. As Morgenstierne was the first to point out (NTS, 13 [1945), p. 235) the question may be raised if not certain specific Kafir characteristics point to a very early separation of Kafir from the proto-Indo-Iranian group. (It should be observed that even the notion of a common Indo-Iranian period in Western Asia has been questioned. See Kaj Barr, Illustreret Religionshistorie (redigeret af J. A. Asmussen og J. Laessoe), p. 242, who assumes two successive waves of immigration from South Russia, first of the Proto-Indians and later of the Proto-Iranians. If, on the other hand, archaeologists like H. D. Sankalia are right in dating the arrival of the Aryans in India about 2000 B. C. (e.g., Munshi Indol. Fel. Vol., p. 233) this would put the period of a common culture too far back to account for the many parallels in the poetic diction of the Rigvedic poets and Zarathustra (Bernfried Schlerath, AwestaWorterbuch, Vorarbeiten, II, p. 148ff.). See also Morgenstierne, NTS, 13, pp. 234-238.] As far as Kachru is concerned, it should be kept in mind that he is referring to "authentic linguistic evidence", which in his opinion is lacking, and that according to him "Morgenstierne's work ... leaves much to be desired" (p. 285 n. 2), a judgment that would probably not have surprised Morgenstierne himself in view of the very uncommon circumstances under which he at times had to collect his material. Anyway, Kachru's reservations deserve notice since several Indo-Europeanists have drawn far-going conclusions from some data communicated by Morgenstierne (see the references in IIJ, 10, p. 103 n. 4). Kachru concludes his survey with the statement that "the research in Kashmiri and other Dardic languages has made practically no serious progress in the last two decades". Part Two is devoted to the Dravidian Languages (pp. 309-408). Bhadriraju Krishnamurti reports on "Comparative Dravidian Studies" (pp. 309-333), an indispensable