Linguistic history and language diversity in India: Views and counterviews

This paper addresses the theme of the seminar from the perspective of historical linguistics. It introduces the construct of ‘language family’ and then proceeds to a discussion of contact and the dynamics of linguistic exchange among the main language families of India over several millennia. Some prevalent hypotheses to explain the creation of India as a linguistic area are presented. The ‘substratum view’ is critically assessed. Evidence from historical linguistics in support of two dominant hypotheses – ‘the Aryan migration view’ and ‘the out-of-India hypothesis’ – is presented and briefly assessed. In conclusion, it is observed that the current understanding in historical linguistics favours the Aryan migration view though the ‘substratum view’ is questionable.