Lachhmi Dhar Kalla

Lachhmi Dhar Shastri Kalla was Reader of Sanskrit at St. Stephen's College, the University of Delhi, and head of the Department of Sanskrit from 1922 to 1949.

Quotes

• The absence of common names in the Indo-European languages for such Asiatic animals as the lion and the tiger and the camel, cannot prove the European origin of the Aryas [Indo-Europeans], for the names of such animals as are peculiar to the East might easily be forgotten by the people [after they had left India] in die West where those animals were not found. Or it is very probable that there may be several synonyms for the same object in the Aryan mother tongue—the one tribe of the Aryas in Asia or India having taken the fancy for one name while the other for another. . . . Professor Giles is an advocate of the European home of the Aryas. He ought to realize that his argument cuts both ways, for the names of European flora and fauna do not exist in the Asiatic Aryan lan- guages either. Really it should not be difficult to understand that the names for trees and animals disappear as the trees and animals themselves disappear.
  • Dhar, Lachhmi. 1930. The Home of the Aryas. Delhi: Delhi University Publications. (30) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Dhar (1930) went on to argue that "ancient Sanskrit possesses the greatest number of roots and words and the greatest variety of grammatical forms, belonging to the Aryan mother tongue, when compared with all the other Aryan languages in the world" (59).
  • Dhar, Lachhmi. 1930. The Home of the Aryas. Delhi: Delhi University Publications. quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• How is it that as the speakers of the language traveled all their way from Europe to Asia and then finally settled in India, they were able to retain in India alone of all countries—their final destination which they must have reached after a course of several centuries—almost exactly the same accent on words which their European forefathers used to possess centu- ries before in their forest-home in Europe or their Asiatic fathers on the table-land of Asia away from India, but which their bretheren in different countries . . . could not preserve. . . . Nor can the Aryans be supposed to have traveled through an ethnic vacuum as they started their journey from Europe or outer-Asia and traveled across thousands of miles of land before they could reach India, and escaped the influence of alien speech habits on their language. . . . (on the contrary, it was] the Aryas in their journeyings in Europe and Asia outside India [who] could not avoid . . . [being] overwhelmingly swamped by foreign people. . . . thus the ethnic disturbances have disturbed the original Aryan [Indo-European] accent in Outer-Asia or Europe. . . . the continuity of the original Aryan accent in ancient India implies the unbroken geographical and ethnic continuity of the Aryan race from the most primitive times in India. . . . Thus the home of the primitive Aryan language can be located round the home of the Vedic speakers who possessed almost exactly the same word or sentence-accent as their Aryan [Indo-European] fathers did. (47-51)5
  • Dhar, Lachhmi. 1930. The Home of the Aryas. Delhi: Delhi University Publications. ) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• Dhar (1930) finds problematic is accounting "for the fact that India which is supposed to be the last home of the Aryan race produces the first or the most ancient record of the Aryas (viz., the Vedas], the like of which is not produced by them in their homes in Europe or in Asia outside India" (55). He discounts the possibility that there might once have been older Indo-European texts in Europe that had become lost, since "the instinct of preservation is as strong among the Aryas outside India as in India, for we have Homer and the Avesta preserved to this day" (57). His solution is that "the greater the distance from the primitive Indian home of the Aryas, quite naturally the later in date was the birth of a new Aryan language and literature" (59).
  • Dhar, Lachhmi. 1930. The Home of the Aryas. Delhi: Delhi University Publications. ) quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.