Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

If you got "red" from searching the Cologne dictionary for "zona" (coming up with <zoNa> 'red'), forget it. The dictionary uses the Harvard-Kyoto spelling convention, whereby various ASCII characters are arbitrarily assigned to "exotic" letters to enable the exact transcription of Sanskrit in ASCII terms. <zoNa> stands for <s'on.a>, with a voiceless palatal initial, unlikely to be represented as Greek <z>.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:24 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

*****GK: It could also be "Ala-zona", meaning "excellent bay horse"(s). A good "Scythian" appellative (cf. also reconstructed "Tri-aspa"; "Callipidae" (Her. Gk.); and "wild white horses" (Her.) The colour "red" indicative of south/southwest is also appropriate, as is the location on the "Hypanis" (a river with an Indian homonym). So Pontic Indic is possible. But "Thrakoid" can't be ruled out given the attested extant vocabulary parallels between Thracian and Indic (acc. to Duridanov's lexicon nearly 10%), and of course Iranic can't be ruled out either.******