Why Marble?

[chimera]

Is there a buried folk-memory about the Indo-European tradition that Mount Meru was the mythic central world-mountain of governance?

Meru is (in Asia today) a shining mountain of gold and jewels, home of the Aryan gods. The word seems to appear in Greek "marmaros", Latin "marmor", "marble" shining stone. (Welsh "mered" jewel).In European languages "mur" meant a stone-wall, as in "merlo" corner posts of castle battlement, and in "murla" armor (wall?).

Meru was specifically built as Angkor Wat in Cambodia with a central tower and 4 corner towers. This is the shape of Norse stave church steeples with 4 corner towers. The Norwegian embassy in Thailand showed the similarity in details in Thai/ Norse temples.

So was marble ("shining Meru"?) used for the Acropolis, Forum and Capitol Congress because of that ancient concept?

Chimera

[Andrew Dalby]

Is there a buried folk-memory about the Indo-European tradition that Mount Meru was the mythic central world-mountain of governance?

Meru is (in Asia today) a shining mountain of gold and jewels, home of the Aryan gods. The word seems to appear in Greek "marmaros", Latin "marmor", "marble" shining stone. (Welsh "mered" jewel).In European languages "mur" meant a stone-wall, as in "merlo" corner posts of castle battlement, and in "murla" armor (wall?).

Meru was specifically built as Angkor Wat in Cambodia with a central tower and 4 corner towers. This is the shape of Norse stave church steeples with 4 corner towers. The Norwegian embassy in Thailand showed the similarity in details in Thai/ Norse temples.

So was marble ("shining Meru"?) used for the Acropolis, Forum and Capitol Congress because of that ancient concept?

Chimera

Linguists, so far as I can find, don't believe in a connection between Greek marmaros "sparkling stone, marble" and Sanskrit Meru "name of a mountain". The Greek word seems to be connected with Indo-European words meaning "shine" etc., but the Sanskrit name is thought to be local to India (cf. Kannada meruve "pyramid), not Indo-European in origin.

This isn't conclusive -- there may be other theories I haven't encountered, and anyway linguists can be wrong. The real difficulty with your suggestion, it seems to me, is that the early location from which Indo-European peoples and languages are thought to have spread -- the Russian steppe -- doesn't have any mountains and these early peoples didn't do any building in stone (except maybe burial chambers). By the time the speakers of Sanskrit were interested in Mount Meru and the Greeks were building their temples, they were thousands of miles apart and had no links with one another.

I would have said that Greeks built in marble because it was there, and that Romans afterwards built in Greek marble because the Greeks had made it fashionable. But what do others think?

[chimera]

Yes, OInd. "marici" meaning "solar" (proto IAry. "meluha" as "solar beam") seems to be the base for "marble".

(ha ha pun). However, "Sumer" is perhaps "su. surya" as "sun" and "meru" gold mountain of jewels. As Egypt. "m.r" is "pyramid" of white limestone facing with gold-leaf, then there seems to be convergence of "marici" and "meru". Eg. "mero" means "good water-view. nobleman" and Meru was amid 7 ring mountains and 7 seas.

It is the cosmic north pole /pole star, and mythically is placed in the Pamirs north of Afghanistan-Aryana, of Scythian territory, who entered Greek Bactria-Punjab in 2nd cent BC. Scythians entered Ukraine 8-7th centBC and influenced Poland. Greeks had a colony in Scythian Crimea.

Brahmins (meaning Scythians Tocharians Cimmerians etc.?) of Aryana developed their teachings 1500-500BC

and Iranian Brahmins (Zoroastrian?) were in Commagene Syria in Roman times, and probably in the region from 1400BC as leaders of Hurrians and Cimmerians. The Meru idea was probably an abstract concept when diffused westward away from Brahma and Indra to Celts and Norse, and more so for Athens and Rome.

Chimera

[miguel]

As far as I know, the Cambodia language is Khmer. The earliest written language to have been found in the region of Cambodia is in Sanskrit, an Indian language. The writings were be dated in 5th and 6th century. I cannot find any source to show that the language is decended, or somehow indirectly, from Greek and Latin. And as you know, the old Indian language is not formed by alphabets. You cannot really determine how are the languages related just by those translations.

 

All I know of Mount Meru is a legend in the Hindu belief, said to be the centre of the universe. Is it really a mountain of gold and jewels? I have no idea.

[chimera]

As Brahmins were developing their concept of Meru from 1500BC, it would predate Latin-Greek cultures, as did Hurrian Brahmin culture from 1400BC. Meru is a mythic concept but perceived as being in the Pamirs which are closer to European steppe-lands than to the Indian plains. Indo-Aryan concepts were apparently persuasive without alphabets, as Celtic knowledge was verbal, not literary. The idea of Meru may appear in the architecture of Fr. and Br. Celtic temples, and in Irish kingdom layout design, reflecting the layout of Angkor Wat of Greek Scythian Indians. A Trojan origin for Rome brings the Meru idea closer to Roman heritage.

chimera

[docoflove1974]

As far as I know, the Cambodia language is Khmer. The earliest written language to have been found in the region of Cambodia is in Sanskrit, an Indian language. The writings were be dated in 5th and 6th century. I cannot find any source to show that the language is decended, or somehow indirectly, from Greek and Latin. And as you know, the old Indian language is not formed by alphabets. You cannot really determine how are the languages related just by those translations.

 

Correct. Khmer is one of the Southeast Asian languages that are somewhat 'mid-family': not quite Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese), not quite Austronesian. It's related to Hmong, Laotian, Vietnamese, Thai, and others in that area.

 

The borrowing of alphabets is nothing new. Hittite borrowed the Sumerian and Akkadian alphabets--both cuneiform alphabets for Semitic languages which were adapted to the Indo-European Hittite. And if memory serves, the Phoenician alphabet served as a basis for either the Greek or Roman alphabet (I'm fuzzier on this one; others will fill in the gaps, to be sure). Japanese (Altaic language) borrowed the Chinese (Sino-Tibetan) alphabet oh so many years ago. There are other examples, to be sure.

[spittle]

Philology.

 

I read a chapter in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language concerning the origin of modern languages.

It stated that virtually every language from Sanskrit in the east to Latin and Old German in the west all derived from a common ancestor called Proto Indo-European that was spoken on the Russian steppe around 4000BC.

 

I said virtually every language because there are some 'isolates' such as Euskera (the language of the Basques) that are unrelated to any modern languages and are, quite frankly, a mystery.

 

Finnish, Hungarian and Korean are thought to share a common ancestor. Which is very wierd!

 

My favourite is Tockarian. The most eastern of the Indo-European (not Indo-Iranian sub group) languages.

[docoflove1974]

Philology.

 

I read a chapter in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language concerning the origin of modern languages.

It stated that virtually every language from Sanskrit in the east to Latin and Old German in the west all derived from a common ancestor called Proto Indo-European that was spoken on the Russian steppe around 4000BC.

 

I said virtually every language because there are some 'isolates' such as Euskera (the language of the Basques) that are unrelated to any modern languages and are, quite frankly, a mystery.

 

Finnish, Hungarian and Korean are thought to share a common ancestor. Which is very wierd!

 

My favourite is Tockarian. The most eastern of the Indo-European (not Indo-Iranian sub group) languages.

 

Almost right. Proto-Indo-European branched off into various daughter branches (in parentheses are the daughter languages that are the 'direct' descendants, or in the case of Celtic, the closest to that timeframe that we have attested):

Anatolian (Hittite)

Indo-Aryan (Avestan, Sanskrit)

Hellenic (Ancient Greek)

Balto-Slavic (Old Church Slavonic)

Italic (Latin, Oscan)

Germanic (Proto-German)

Celtic (Gaulish; Old Irish, Old Welsh)

Tocharian (A and B, spoken in far western China and the Himalayas)

 

There are individual languages without 'sisters' that are within this PIE group: Armenian, Albanian

 

There is also the Fino-Ugric group, and Finnish and Hungarian are the main representatives.

 

Korean and Japanese are not part of this group; they are considered part of the Altaic group, which includes Mongolian and Turkish; this group is very 'loose', as in there are big leaps between the various languages, and not everyone is convinced that this is all one group.

 

Basque and Etruscan are linguistic isolets in Europe; they are not related to any other language family: not PIE, Fino-Ugric, Altaic, or any other.

 

Philology is really the study of the word, and is closer to etymology. Linguistics studies more of the grammar and structure of the entire language.

[Andrew Dalby]

As far as I know, the Cambodia language is Khmer. The earliest written language to have been found in the region of Cambodia is in Sanskrit, an Indian language. The writings were be dated in 5th and 6th century. I cannot find any source to show that the language is decended, or somehow indirectly, from Greek and Latin. And as you know, the old Indian language is not formed by alphabets. You cannot really determine how are the languages related just by those translations.

 

Correct. Khmer is one of the Southeast Asian languages that are somewhat 'mid-family': not quite Sino-Tibetan (Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese), not quite Austronesian. It's related to Hmong, Laotian, Vietnamese, Thai, and others in that area.

 

Not Thai or Laotian, if you'll forgive me, Doc! But, yes, the others you list belong, like Khmer, to the Austroasiatic family. So does Munda, in the hills of eastern India.

 

The Khmer script, like nearly all the south/southeast Asian scripts, can be used equally well for writing Sanskrit and Pali (the classical languages of India) and for writing local languages e.g. Khmer. And these scripts are all related: they derive from the Brahmi script of early India, which is conjectured to have been borrowed from some early Near Eastern alphabet But Khmer is one of the most beautiful.

 

As you are rightly emphasising, related scripts don't mean related languages. Just think of all the language families in which our familiar Latin alphabet is now used!

[Skarr]

While on the subject of language, there is also Tamil, an ancient language in the South of India, which is not derived from Sanskrit and which has a huge amount of literature and inscriptions that date back to 200 BCE.

 

The Southern India kings spread their kingdom east via the sea and colonized what is today modern Cambodia. Evidence of their widespread influence is of course, most visible in the sculpture and temple complex in Angkor Vat in Cambodia, with many of the figures celebrating various stories from the ancient epic, "The Ramayana".

 

The origin of this language is shrouded in obscurity and maybe the oldest form could be traced back to say 500 BCE.

 

Language, especially written language, using alphabets developed slowly over the ages and the first languages were probably very symbolic and evolved out of signs that were universally recognized and often were pictorial representations of what humans saw around them. I would guess that in the early days, it must have been far easier to share a common language, being built around a few key symbols.

 

For example, while you could invent many different symbols for a bird, the meaning is clear, irrespective of the skill of the artist drawing that symbol - whether a stick figure or an elaborate colored symbol. I guess languages evolved into today's complexity based on the exponential growth of intelligence as humans spread all over the world, inventing new ways of doing things etc. etc. all of which would have exhausted the limited span of symbolic communication.

 

I think that once one particular group evolved their own "language" from these early symbolic methods, the growth of their own branch must have been unstoppable, culminating in the development of distinct languages like Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and so on. Very interesting topic and very closely connected to the development of humans as a whole and their spread throughout the globe.

[docoflove1974]

Not Thai or Laotian, if you'll forgive me, Doc! But, yes, the others you list belong, like Khmer, to the Austroasiatic family. So does Munda, in the hills of eastern India.

 

Ack! So it be! Thanks, AD!

[chimera]

Sanskrit is today the royal Brahmin language in Thailand, imported from Angkor Wat. Scythians from Greek Bactria in Punjab influenced the Naga snake-dynasties of the region. Thus IE Scythian culture reached from Cambodia to Poland, and to Greek Crimea. Thus the original post about Meru and marble :- Angkor Wat is evidence of European tradition , centered on Scythian Aryana-Afghanistan. The governance theme of Meru may relate to Roman governance expressed symbolically by marble "shining stone".

chimera

[Andrew Dalby]

Sanskrit is today the royal Brahmin language in Thailand, imported from Angkor Wat. Scythians from Greek Bactria in Punjab influenced the Naga snake-dynasties of the region. Thus IE Scythian culture reached from Cambodia to Poland, and to Greek Crimea. Thus the original post about Meru and marble :- Angkor Wat is evidence of European tradition , centered on Scythian Aryana-Afghanistan. The governance theme of Meru may relate to Roman governance expressed symbolically by marble "shining stone".

chimera

 

Absolutely agreed -- Greek art in Bactria, via Gandhara, influenced India in the 3rd to 1st centuries BC, and thence the influence was transmitted to southeast Asia, e.g. Angkor Wat and Burubudur.

 

It seems likely also that Indian classic drama, e.g. by Kalidasa, was influenced by the plays of Menander and his contemporaries.

 

And finally, among the dialogues of the Buddha, as eventually written down in Pali by the Theravada Buddhists, include the long philosophical dialogue between Menander (the other Menander, the Indo-Greek king) and a Buddhist philosopher whose name I can't remember. Someone else will fill this in or I will. You might argue that in this way the genre of philosophical dialogue (as in Plato and Xenophon) passed from Greek to Indian literature. I bet someone has argued that somewhere.

[caldrail]

Maybe its just me,but isn't it more likely that marble was used in ancient rome because it looks good and has the right properties? Is that not the reason we still use it today? Because it conveys wealth and good taste?

[chimera]

Describing Angkor, Q.Wales referred to Greek-style shrines and mural-carvings of Gr. and Persian soldiers. The long gallery at Angkor recalls the Athens Agora collonade. However, both Athens and Angkor were at their peak after Brahmins developed the Meru idea and then recorded doctrines from 500BC. I wonder if the 7 hills of Rome were identified to make the link with Meru amid 7 ring-mountain? Was there a centralised city-layout to focus on a marble-lined building precinct?

chimera