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In Search of Kentum Indo-Europeans in the Himalayas

In 1988 and 1989 Claus Peter Zoller reported the astonishing discovery of what appeared to be the remnants of an ancient Kentum Indo-European tongue in the Western Himalayas in a modern language known äs Bangäni. Zoller's Bangäni findings not only had far-reaching implications for our understanding of the prehistoric migrations of ancient Indo-Europeans, they also appeared to violate much of what is received knowledge in historical linguistics. In 1994 we conducted fieldwork in order to verify these remarkable findings. The results of our investigation are presented here. On the basis of these results, it is our contention that no Kentum Indo-European remnants exist in the Bang am language. We also discuss the implications of our findings for the historical linguistic and methodological issues raised by Zoller's work. We have normalized Zoller's phonetic transcriptions with our own in the following way. We indicate the velar nasal (n) and the retroflex sounds (d, /, n, r, /) in accordance with Indological tradition rather than with the newer International Phonetic Association symbols. Likewise, we indicate the so-called long vowels with a macron (0, u). Bangäni low tone is indicated by a grave accent In Bangäni, äs in Hindi, the sibilants / and s have merged to yield a single modern phoneme, which we transcribe äs s, which has remained distinct from s. We represent the unyoiced palatal consonants in the conventional manner (c, ch), but we represent the voiced palatal äs (z) because of its fricative character. The palatal occlusives have become affricates in Bangäni, but the voiced palatal tends strongly towards a fricative realization. The phonetic realization of Bangäni /c/ varies [ts ~ ta], äs does that of Bangäni /z/ [z ~ dz] (seldom [ ,] e.g. in place names). For the former Zoller's notation is ts' or 'tS', and he notes that latter phoneme variously äs 'z', 'dz' or 'd3'. Our transcriptions assume a tentative phonological analysis, butlined in Van Driem & Sharmä (forthcoming), Bangäm toponyms are transliterated äs they would be written in Hindi, with some additional phonological details on local pronunciation provided in square brackets. Written Hindi and Nepali are translit-