Rod had said...
I think what I was getting at is that I thought India was the birthplace of
the goddess mother, and it was here that mankind made its first struggle to
try and structure their beliefs into an organised system of values.
And I was sure that Sanskrit, was the earliest known language for which we
have actual documents still in existence... I could be wrong of course
DMB...
Yes, Sanskrit is very old, as far as languages go. Usually they just evolve
naturally into other languages. Linguists have worked it out in percentages,
as in "on average a language changes 8% every one hundred years" and stuff
like that. But some change very fast, like English, and some change slowly
because they're intentionally preserved for religious and/or cultural
reasons. Latin and Sanskrit are two of the most static languages for that
reason.
I think its interesting that the proto-indo-european language doesn't really
exist anywhere, but was reconstructed by the linguistic analysis of its'
derivatives. And that's what Pirsig uses to get at the oldest idea, rht.
Think about the first religions with this in mind: The Aryans who invaded
India already had religion before they headed south - or west.
Thanks,
DMB
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