ABSTRACT
Non-Indo-European elements in OIA have been of interest to scholars since the early years of Indo-European studies. The subcontinent was clearly not a linguistic vacuum at the time the first OIA speakers entered it. On the other hand, the earliest linguistic records relating to the subcontinent are in Indo-Aryan languages (see 2.21), and give very little direct information on the presence of other languages (see 2.84). Thus any linguistic elements of non-Indo-European origin in OIA can provide clues about the kinds of contact which took place between the OIA speakers and other peoples in the region, just as (e.g.) borrowings between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Finno-Ugric provide evidence of prehistoric contact between speakers of these two groups during the period of common Indo-European (Burrow 1973a: 23–7). Information about prehistoric languages in South Asia is derived almost entirely from the presumed traces – both loanwords and structural changes – which these languages have left in Old and Middle Indo-Aryan.
