Importance of the Indian Linguistic Area and its implications on the Aryan Migration/Invasion Theory
(This article appeared first on MyIndMakers ) India is a multilingual society. According to the 1961 census, there were 1,652 languages in India. For these many languages to exist and to survive the test of time, there needs to be a cohesively conducive environment. And there isn’t a better ingredient of such an environment than a prolonged era of relative peace and tranquility. Believe it or not, despite the epic Mahabharata war, the brutal Islamic invasion, and an encumbering and destabilizing partition, India has been fortunate to have a history of relative peace and tranquility compared to many other parts of the world. This is evident in many facets of the Indian civilization, none better than in its languages. Through the process known as ‘contact’ and ‘convergence’, the languages of India that happen to belong to distinct linguistic families have created something of a linguistic melting pot – a melting pot where divergent linguistic identities merge and give ris