(Russian readers can find the Russian translation of this post here courtesy of vedic.su)
Dr. Weer Rajendra Rishi (1917 – 2002) was a well known Indian linguist. He was fluent in Russian and worked in the Indian Embassy in Moscow between 1950—1952. Dr. Rishi was the author of (1) Russian-Hindi Dictionary (foreword by the late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru), (2) Russian Grammar in Hindi, (3) Russian Folklore in Hindi (4) Hindi translation of Pushkin’s poem ‘Gypsy‘, (5) Marriages of the Orient, (6) Roma—The Punjabi Emigrants in Europe, the USSR, the Americas etc. (7) Romani-Punjabi-English Conversation Book, (8) Romani-Punjabi-English Dictionary and (9) Multi-Lingual Romani Dictionary (Romani Hindi English French Russian).
One of his last works was a book India & Russia – Linguistic & Cultural Affinity. This book is now very rare and it is undeservingly forgotten so I would like to bring it back as a tribute to Dr. Weer Rajendra Rishi.
The book has XIII chapters but it is Chapter II Affinity in Language which is, in my view, the most interesting part of the book. These are some excerpts from this chapter:
“As mentioned in the preceding chapter both Russian and Sanskrit belong to the satem group of the Indo-European family of languages. This, however, creates one mis-understanding in one’s mind that the relation between Sanskrit and Russian is as distant one as that between Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages. As will be explained in this chapter, the relation between these two languages is very close and correspondence between these two languages is so minute that, to use Dr. Sidheshwar Varma’s words, it cannot be a mere chance*. The facts unfolded in this chapter are compulsory enough to lead us to conclude that during some period of history, the speakers of Sanskrit and Russian have lived close together. This will be elucidated in Chapters V onwards.
(* Dr. Rishi refers here to the Foreword (Appreciation) to the book by Dr. Siddheshwar Verma, Honory Academic Adviser of the Vishveshwaranand Vedic Research Institute: “The data placed by this work definitely establish the fact that with the resemblance even in some minutest details, such analogies would never be a chance, and that, therefore, the speakers of these languages must have lived together in some periods of antiquity“)
Compare this assertion with the results with the conclusion draw by other linguists: “before the primitive Aryans left their European homeland, Indo-Iranian and the prototypes of Baltic and Slavonic must have existed as close neighbours for a considerable period of time. (Burrow, T. The Sanskrit Language. Faber & Faber, 1955, p.23.)
“In the sphere of vocabulary, there is such a large number of words which are common to these two languages that it has not been possible to mention all of them in this chapter. Only a list of basic words common to both these two languages has been given. Moreover, as explained in the succeeding paragraphs of this chapter many of the grammatical rules are common to both these languages and the number of words common to these two languages formed after the application of such common grammar rules could be further multiplied. This is not so when we compare Sanskrit with any other language belonging to the Indo-European group, leaving aside Iranian and Persian.“(p.14)
“In the previous chapter, we have already referred to the statement made by Sir Jones saying that “the Sanskrit language is of a wonder structure; more perfect than the Greek, mere copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either”. The very name ‘Sanskrit’ means ‘carefully constructed’, ‘systematically formed’, ‘polished and refined’. Same can be said of the Russian language. In addition to the strong common grammatical base which we will discuss later in this chapter, it is the pleasingness of the mere sound of the language which is common to both Russian and Sanskrit.“ (p.15)
“That the melodiousness of the rhythm of the Russian folklore and the Sanskrit verse synchronises with each other is confirmed by a news item published in the Soviet Land (No. 2 of January 1968) published by the Information Services of the Embassy of the USSR in India, New Delhi. It is stated that the style of the verse of Russian folk legends and Puskin’s tales is closer to the rhythm of Sanskrit verse. Professor Smirnov (1892— 1967), the reputed Sanskritologist of the Soviet Union has translated Mahābhārata into Russian in this type of verse. Professor Smirnov had with him a recording of an extract from the Mahābhārata read in Sanskrit original by Professor Nirmal Chandra Maitra of India to the accompaniment of Indian instruments. When after playing the recording of the Sanskrit version, Professor Smirnov read his Russian translation, the enchanting melody of the rhythm was found to be very much like that of the Sanskrit original as read by Professor Nirmal Chandra Maitra and sounded in unison.“(p.16)
On the following pages Dr. Rishi gave some interesting comparisons of Russian and Sanskrit noun declension, verbs, prefixes and suffixes, prepositions concluding the chapter by an impressive list of Russian- Sanskrit common words. The full text can be found here. Most of the words in this list are indeed cognates although I would not agree with Dr. Rishi in a few cases. For example the Rus. pa ‘step, dance figure’ is a French loan so it would not be justified to include it here as a cognate of Skr. pada ‘foot’, although ultimately they do share the same ancient root. There are other Rus. cognate words e.g. pod ‘ under, the bottom part’ which would be more appropriate in this case. These small mistakes, however, do not diminish the importance of Dr. Rishi’s work. Most of the cognate pairs listed in his book are included into my Dictionary. See, for example the list of cognate verbs and nouns.
Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/menik/5033687444/sizes/o/in/photostream/
borissoff 
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February 21, 2013 at 19:03
PasserBy
May I ask a question indirectly linked to the relation between the two languages? Is there any correlation between the two types of language groupings: ‘Cent-Sata’ and ‘Glue-Fusion’? I did not mention isolating ones as inapplicable in the context.
The reason I ask this is that, I might be wrong, but Dravidian languages are agglutinative. This prominent Indian linguist was a Dravidian speaker by birth. Sanskrit, on the contrary, is inflecting. A lot of lexemes got imported into Dravidian speech. Was he based on Sanskrit in his judgements?
And furthermore – technically, what is the more sophisticated linguistic state – there were reports lately that Estonian is gradually turning from ‘glue’ to ‘fu-‘ 🙂
February 21, 2013 at 21:15
borissoff
Why do you think that “This prominent Indian linguist was a Dravidian speaker by birth”? As far as I know, Dr. Rishi was born near Patiala (Punjab) and his first language was Pungabi and, of course, Hindi. Both are Indo-Aryan languages. He was born to a Brahmin family and knew Sanskrit very well. In his book he clearly compared Russian with Sanskrit so Dravidian does not enter here in any way. You are right by saying that “Dravidian languages are agglutinative”.
As for your question regarding “correlation between the two types of language groupings: ‘Cent-Sata’ and ‘Glue-Fusion” and “Estonian is gradually turning from ‘glue’ to ‘fu-’ ” I shall try and give a more detailed reply over the weekend.
February 23, 2013 at 20:04
PasserBy
I might be wrong in what I said, I was hoping you might have some clues? Anyway, if you shed some light on this obscure aspect I asked about, I would be most grateful!
February 23, 2013 at 23:50
borissoff
I have been pondering on your question and still cannot quite grasp what type of “correlation” you have in mind. The two groupings relate to different categories phonetics and morphology. Do I understand it correctly that you imply that “satem” tend to be more “fusional” while “centum” are more “agglutinative”?
February 24, 2013 at 05:18
PasserBy
That pretty much reflects the hunch. But things are always more complex. To start with, there are no 100% Centum, 100% Satem IE languages. Likewise, if we imagine an axis from Agglutinative to Fusional IE languages will also have a distribution on it, which can also be measured statistically. From the scientific point of view, a correlation to me would mean a correlation between the two distributions. I don’t have such data, and didn’t hear of research in this direction, but suspect a lot could be learnt in such an exercise. It just seems to me that Satem languages are more fusional and more sophisticated at the same time – and this is the second aspect of my question.
February 24, 2013 at 12:39
borissoff
You are right by saying that there are no purely fusional or agglutinative languages. The difference is often elusive and, as in case of Estonian, due to a phonetic process known as apocope (loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, and especially the loss of an unstressed vowel), some of its agglutinative morphemes may come to resemble fusional forms. This does not mean that Estonian is on the way of becoming a fusional language.
I would not like to return to the 19th century German Romantic Nationalism (e.g. Humbolt) and speculate on what language types are more ‘superior’. However, the specific trait of a fusional language is that one form of a morpheme in it can simultaneously encode several meanings. Often there may be several morphemes in a word but morpheme boundaries are hard to identify because the morphemes are so fused together. In more general terms, “[…] fusion (both morphological and semantic) is defined as a process where the end product (a fused word) is something else than the sum of components” (Pirkola 2001). If this amounts to ‘sophistication’ is a good question. Trubezkoy, for example, believed that agglutinative languages were a superior form because they are logical and practically free of irregular forms. This comes at a cost, however, and fusional forms are often more compact and informative. Compare the accusative of Rus. sobak (Fem., pl. Acc.) and Turkic köpekleri where köpek ‘dog’, -ler– denotes plural and -i is an Acc. marker.
There is another interesting side noted by Bernard Comrie (2008):
“Inflectional morphology is generally, and I believe correctly, held to be one of the least borrowable parts of a language’s structure. And within inflectional morphology, there is generally held to be a hierarchy of borrowability, with agglutinative morphology more borrowable than fusional morphology. […]
In cases of borrowing of inflectional morphology, tested in this article only against recipient languages that already have inflectional morphology, there is a strong preference for borrowing agglutinative morphology, which includes the reinterpretation of fusional morphology of the donor language as agglutinative.”
This may explain why modern Indo-Arian languages have moved towards agglunatisation being surrounded by aggutinative languages on all sides: Cartvelian, Turkic, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolian and Uralic.
How does it correlate with ‘Satem/Centum’? Formally, these are incomparable categories. One relates to general language typology and morphology, the other is a feature of the IE language family and phonetics. The very term ‘Satem’ and ‘Centum’ are not free of controversy. In its classic form the distinction is done on the “different evolution of the three dorsal consonant rows of the mainstream reconstruction of PIE, Proto-Indo-European” as it is conveniently explained in Wiki (note that not all linguists accept the tree-row division). This reflects the inherently atomistic approach of the ‘classic’ historical phoneticians. If we look at this in a more systemic way, this shift could be viewed as a movement of the ‘general articulatory setting’ from a [+backed] to a [+forward] type. The purely ‘Centum’ type may be characterised as [+backed/+gutural/-palatising] while the ‘Sentum’ would be [+fronted/+buccal/+palatising]. Traditionally, the process has been viewed as strictly unidirectional (centum>satem) but, as I wrote earlier, there has not been proposed any sensible justification for this. There are examples outside the IE family of the backward process k<s (e.g. in Hawaiian Eng silly becomes killy etc.).There are also examples of /s/ becoming /k/ via the debuccalised /h/: Romany nak `nose’ from Av. nah < *nas-. There may be many views on this but if you look at the map, Centum languages are located at the extreme confines of the IE areal directly contacting languages having clear ‘[+backed/+gutural/-palatising]’ typology: Basque on the West, Berber on the South Across the Mediterranean, and then, goings east along the southern confines: Cartvelian, Turkic, Tibeto-Burman, Mongolian and Uralic. Incidentally, these languages are also clearly aggutinative. Since it is agreed that the PIE dialects were extremely fusional we may rightfully presuppose that we may expect a tendency for ‘agglutinisation’ in the areas of intensive ethnic mixing. We may also, at least tentatively, expect a shifting of the ‘articulatory setting’ backward creating some pre-condition (tendency) for ‘centumisation’. I understand that what I am saying is an utmost heresy in the eyes of the mainstream IE linguists, but it is a legitimate research area especially now when the ideas of language interaction, substrates and mixing are gaining more support.
I know, that I have not given you an answer but, hopefully, I gave you some direction for thinking.
References
Comrie, Bernard. 2008. Language Contact and Contact Languages. Hamburg Studies on Multilingualism, John Benjamins Publishing Company, chapter “Inflectional morphology and language contact, with special reference to mixed languages”, pp. 15–34.
Pirkola, Ari. 2001. “Morphological Typology of Languages for IR.” Journal of Documentation 57(3):330–348.
March 1, 2013 at 12:27
PasserBy
Thanks a lot for your detailed approach – it does give useful insights!
March 1, 2013 at 13:51
borissoff
Please note that this expresses my views as of the date and hour I posted it. Also, as everything else in linguistics, my ideas should be taken critically.
March 1, 2013 at 14:26
PasserBy
Goes without saying:-) – perfectly accepted.
July 27, 2013 at 12:23
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July 27, 2013 at 16:43
borissoff
Спасибо!
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March 21, 2016 at 09:02
Miryana Baran
Sanskrit in Croatia: From Sarasvati to Hrvati – by James Cooper November, 2015 – http://www.sutrajournal.com/sanskrit-in-croatia-from-sarasvati-to-hrvati-by-james-cooper
March 21, 2016 at 09:32
borissoff
Dear Miryana,
Thank you! Incidentally, my new paper “Antun Mihanović and his contribution to Slavonic-Sanskrit comparative studies” on this topic has just been published by Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. You may find it interesting. It is available from:
http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&id_clanak_jezik=226029