Re: Asian Migration to Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "raucousd" <raucousd@...> wrote:

> Manu is the father of everyone in Avestan...

This was presumably so, although the term is preserved in Avestan
only in the compound proper name Manus^c^ithra 'of the race of
Manu', which occurs only once in Yt. 13.131.

> ...and also the ancestor of some of the clans (Brahminical and
> Kshatrya, I believe) among the Sanskrit speakers.

In the RV manu means 'man, mankind' in general. The ancestral Indo-
Iranian form, having the same meaning as in the RV, must have been
*manu too.

> I think this is because some aspect of Zoroastrianism (I am
> ignoring its various forms) has been borrowed into India.

No, *manu is a common Indo-Iranian word, and its semantics too.

> Mannus also appears as the ancestor of the Germanic people, but
> only in the reference in Tacitus. Manes (Di Manes) are considered
> the ancestors (or honored dead) among the Romans where they appear
> on countless votive altars.

Proto-Germanic *manna is cognate to Proto-Indo-Iranian *manu, and
both derive from PIE *man-/mon- 'man', but is Latin Ma:ne:s likewise
derived from this root? I don't think so (there's a long /a/ in the
Latin word!). Pokorny and others derive it from *meh2- (Pokorny:
*ma:-) 'good', whence Di: Ma:ne:s 'good gods'.

Regards,
Francesco