Re: Poseidon and the Underground Snake-God

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...>
wrote:

>
> Goal: to gather data for assuring a hypothesis that PIE mythology

include a deity from the underground, earthquake-bringer, snakelike.

>
>
>
> Traits:
>
> *bHudH- "bottom"
>
> Ahir Budhnya (India), Python (Greece), Nidhöggr (Scandinavia)
>
> *eg^Hi-, H2engW(H)i- "snake"
>
> Ahir Budhnya (India), Az^i Dahaka (Persia), Ekhidna and Typhon

(Greece), Nidhöggr (Scandinavia)

>
> *dHubH- "dark"
>
> Typhon (Greece), Domnu (Ireland)
>
> earthquakes
>
> Typhon, Poseidon (Greece), Loki (Scandinavia)
>
>
>
> How Poseidon fits into this scheme? Poseidon's name has many

dialectal variants: Poteida:n, Potida:n, Pohoida:n, Poseida:on. I
think this great variety implies a hard adaptation of a non-Greek
name. So, linking this name to *poti- or any another Greek etymology
is implausible (I don't believe that posei- is a frozen vocative
*potei-). The Mycenian form is po-se-da-o, which implies
*poseida:hon.

>
> How this name can be analysed?
>
> *Po-seida:h-on
>
> *Posei-da:h-on
>
> *Pose-ida:h-on
>
>
>
> An idea occurred to me: a link between Poseida:hon and Ahi Budhnya

(inverted, Budhnya Ahi). The source would be another IE language.

>
> So, following this way:
>
> *Pot-/Pos- < *bHudH(yo-)
>
> *ida:hon < *eg^Hi (this is more rough)
>
> Conclusion:
>
> I'm studying this hypothetical entity, it was a kind of dragon or

dragon-god (H1eg^Hi-, H2egWHi-), underground-dwelling (*bHudH-, *ni-
), dark (dHubH-), its power or bulk provoking earthquakes (cf. Loki,
Typhon, Poseidon), venomous or fire-breathed.

>

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/dan.html

The interesting thing about this *d-n- root is that it apparently
means two things:
1) water
2) a flat surface
But that's just apparent: it means the flat surface of the sea. As
seen in the model of the world where the world tree *m-d- stands in
the middle (at the *omph-) reaching up to the vault of the sky. The
*d-n- defines the "vertical surface" in which the land mass we live
on floats.


Torsten