Armenian
A language known from texts written after 405 ce, Armenian is an independent branch of the I[ndo]-E[uropean] family; but it is closest to Greek, Iranian (by diffusion), and perhaps Phrygian. ...
Aryan
A group of Indo-European speaking people who spread through Iran and N. India in the early 2nd millenium bce. This is the so-called Aryan invasion.
asura
(Skt.). Demigods, titans. A group of beings who were considered to be the opponents of the gods according to orthodox vedic mythology. Later, they were incorporated into Buddhist cosmology as ...
aśvamedha
An elaborate Vedic śrauta ritual, culminating in the sacrifice of a horse. First mentioned in the Ṛg Veda (but with parallels across Indo-European cultures), it is discussed at length in the ...
Balkans
The countries occupying the Balkan peninsula of south-eastern Europe, lying south of the Danube and Sava rivers, between the Adriatic and Ionian seas in the west, the Aegean and Black seas in the ...
Baltic Languages
The Baltic family belongs to the satem branch of I[ndo-]E[uropean], along with Sl[avic], Indo-Iranian, and Armenian. Lithuanian, its most important member, was included in the Comparative grammar of ...
Bengali
In 1989, Bengali was reported to have some 162 million speakers, making it a major language of the world. It is the national language of Bangladesh, where some two-thirds of ...
Celt
From the 5th cent. bc, Greek ethnographers described the Celts as one of the major ethnic groups of central and western Europe, locating them inland from Marseilles. Caesar in De bello Gallico states ...
Celtic languages
The Celtic branch of Indo-European is traditionally divided into Insular Celtic and Continental Celtic. The records of the Continental Celtic languages consist of names, occurring in profusion in ...
Classical Scholarship
[This entry includes five subentries: AntiquityByzantiumWestern Europe in the Middle Ages and the RenaissanceModern Classical ScholarshipHistory of the Study of Ancient Art and Architecture See also ...
Corded Ware Culture
[CP]General term applied to a wide range of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age communities in central and northern Europe who used cord‐impressed decoration on their pottery, especially beakers and ...
Drāviḍa
Sanskritic name, possibly derived from the word ‘Tamil’, for the speakers of the non-Indo-European languages of South India, and by extension for their culture, including their architectural style.
Dravidian
Adjective, derived from Drāviḍa, applied to the languages and cultural forms associated with the peoples of South India, principally the inhabitants of Tamil Nadu (dominant language: Tamil), Andhra ...
druid
A member of the ruling caste of the Gallic Celts. Knowledge of the Druids is derived chiefly from the hostile accounts of them in the Roman authors Julius Caesar and Tacitus. Caesar reports that they ...
Émile Benveniste
(1902–76)Frenchlinguist, generally regarded as one of the main precursors to structuralism. Born in Aleppo in Northern Syria, then a French Mandate, Benveniste's family, who were Sephardic Jews, sent ...
English language
The Germanic language spoken in England which takes its name from the Angles (who first committed their dialect to writing) and was extended to refer to all the dialects of the vernacular, Saxon and ...
Finno-Ugric
Group of related languages spoken by more than 22 million people in Finland and n Norway, in Estonia and Karelia, in various areas at the n end of the River ...
Franz Bopp
(1791–1867)A Bavarian who, inspired by Charles Wilkins' Pāṇini-based Sanskrit grammar, and the work of Sir William Jones, attempted to reconstruct proto-Indo-European, and so helped to found modern ...
Georges Dumézil
(1898–1986)An influential French scholar of comparative philology and mythology, who developed the theory of a tripartite division underlying Indo-European thought and social structures, in which the ...
Germanic languages
The Germanic family belongs to the western (centum) branch of I[ndo-] E[uropean]. (For reference, see Kluge 1913, Prokosch 1939, Schwarz 1951, Maurer 1952, Krahe and Meid 1967, Coetsem and Kufner ...
