The Linguistic History of Some Indian Domestic Plants The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Witzel, Michael. 2009. The linguistic history of some Indian Citation domestic plants. Journal of BioSciences 34(6): 829-833. Published Version doi:10.1007/s12038-009-0096-1 Accessed April 17, 2018 3:26:20 PM EDT Citable Link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8954814 This article was downloaded from Harvard University's DASH Terms of Use repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms- of-use#OAP (Article begins on next page) Michael Witzel, Harvard University
[email protected] THE LINGUISTIC HISTORY OF SOME INDIAN DOMESTIC PLANTS From* the mist of times emerge our earliest Indian texts, the Ṛgveda (c. 1300 -1000 BCE), composed in the Northwest of the subcontinent, and the Sangam texts (c. 2nd cent. BCE - early CE), composed in the extreme South. They contain valuable materials in archaic Indo-Aryan (Vedic Sanskrit) and in archaic Old Tamil respectively. The former belongs, along with Old Iranian (Avestan of Zarathustra), to the ancient Indo-Iranian subfamily of Indo-European that stretches from Iceland to Assam and Sri Lanka.1 The latter belongs to the Dravidian family2 that is restricted to the subcontinent but may have relatives in Northern Asia (Uralic) and beyond.3 As for the plant names found in these old sources, it must be observed that recent advances in archaeobotany4 indicate at least three major nuclei of food production in the subcontinent.