DESI WORDS SPEAK OF THE PAST

About the Book

A New Era of New Beginnings Each article in this book is a portion of Indian prehistory in the Ancient Near East. The gate to this ancient world was opened the day to Professor Cyrus H. Gordon offered his congratulations to me (June 1995) for my discovery of Canaanite words in Bengali and traces of that language in other Indian dialects. I did not anticipate the consequences while toying with these newly discovered Dešì or Native Indian words and matching them against words of ancient Near Eastern texts. These ancient words have been collected, deciphered, transliterated, and published by many scholars, which took many centuries of hard toil. It was astounding to realize how the Egyptian terms of a fourteenth century BC Amarna letter for particular vessels and ornaments and the name of a common Indian spice would crop up as cognates of Dešì words in Bengali (Article 1). A few of them are not only alive in common, everyday language, but all of them are almost intact in form and meaning. After finding out the existence of a massive number of Canaanite and Egyptian words in Bengali, I realized the need to uncover the historical connections. The exploration of ancient ethnic names, names of countries of the mythical cosmology, names of divinities, and their innumerable synonyms and epithets in early Indian literature unleashed a torrent of information. The data was overwhelming, unbelievable, and even traumatic. Everything I learned was against my conventional notions. Confused and terrified, I ran to Professor Gordon. Professor Gordon devoted his precious time to further investigate the Rigveda in an attempt to pave the path for my research. Today, I remain thankful for his short article The Near East Background of the Rigveda (see References), but time did not permit him to do more. After he passed away, I realized that the Rigveda contains many Ancient Near Eastern place names, but they are hidden within the proper names. This characteristic of toponymical names (names containing a place name) is elaborated in each article of this book. These ancient names proved to be the most important tools to decode the geographical settings and historical backdrops of the Epic-Puranic myths, events, and even the context of some hymns of the Rigveda and Atharvaveda. This very tool also helped to reveal the identity of the priest poets of the Rigveda as well as of the ancient Pali writers.

About the Author

Liny Srinivasan received a B.A. from the University of Calcutta, and a M.A. from the University of Poona, India. She then held the position of Lecturer in charge of the Dept. of Geography at Nistarini College, Purulia, India. Liny further received a M.A. from SUNY, Binghamton, NY and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA both in Geography. She was a Fulbright scholar for research on The Hindu Temples in Calcutta. Liny had the opportunity to associate with Dr. Cyrus H. Gordon and Dr. Constance W. Gordon for seven years. The time was spent for many lively discussions on ancient scriptures, languages and culture of both ancient India and the Near East. After her discovery of Near Eastern Origin of Desi i.e., non-Sanskrit words in major Indian languages, particularly in Bengali and publication of a joint article with Prof. Gordon in Mother Tongue, the Journal of ASLIP in 1995, she published twenty four articles in English and twenty in Bengali, including a book 'Mishor theke asa Bangla sabda' showing presence of massive number of Canaanite and Egyptian words in Bengali.