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DarshJalan t1_j0s2e9w wrote

Reply to comment by Re-Horakhty01 in Greek Hinduism - any surviving legacy? by Isabella1293

Considering that we still don't know how old Sanskrit is, it is wrong to claim fully that the text predates Sanskrit. Again, ancient Indians never kept record. The oldest Sanskrit text that was found is a massive religious collection of hymns. That same trial for all we know could be backwards.

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Re-Horakhty01 t1_j0uc19x wrote

Except that we'd expect multiple branches of the language family closer to the origin point, not less, and we see this with the Proto-Indo-European languages, with a cluster of branching as the Proto-Slavs, Proto-Celts and Proto-Italics splinter off moving west and south away from the Black Sea whilst there's not so much branching going on when you get down into India. This suggests the origin up in the steppe.

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DarshJalan t1_j0ula3a wrote

I don't get that tbh. Shouldn't there be more clusters branching out the further away from origin a thing is? Like tree branches?. Also proto slavs, proto Celts and proto italics being younger than Sanskrit should be proof that argues for this

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Re-Horakhty01 t1_j0umlol wrote

They aren't younger than Sanskrit, I am not sure where you got that idea from. As for the clustering, this is the Linguistic Center of Balance Principle . Essentially the idea is that if people migrated out from a location you're going to find the languages and cultures that came out of these peoples in greater proximity together nearer to the homeland because people will be splitting off along the path of migration. Thus India is unlikely to be the origin point of the Indo-European languages as there's only the Indo-Aryan branch present, representing only the strand of the migrations whilst it's likely to be out near the Black Sea because the closer you get to that area the more frequent and closer together the Indo-European language branches get.

People are more likely to stop at a shorter distance and settle down, and the others from their group just keep going, so the shorter distance is more densely populated with the languages descended from the original group than the other way around.

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