Re: Witzel and Sautsutras (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

> Now, taking into account that the Iranians once putatively
> worshipped the Indian gods until sometime around the time of
> Zoroaster -- or so I've read; and that the main difference with
> Iranian seems to be initial /s-/. Is it possible that Mittani
> Substrate and Sindes are descended from some branch that broke away
> from proto-Iranian or from Indo-Iranian?

In my opinion, as well as that of most of Indo-Iranian specialists, it isn't. See the paper by Thomas Burrow, "The Proto-Indoaryans", which you can access through this message:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/70232
(read especially the first two or three pages)

A discussion on the Zoroastrian daevas (demons) known after Iranian names which are identical to those of certain Vedic gods (indra etc.) can be found at pp. 128ff. in Burrow's paper. His hypothesis is that these condemned daevas were never (Proto-)Iranian nor Proto-Indo-Iranian (= Proto-Aryan) gods, but were originally gods worshipped by Proto-Indo-Aryans who had settled in eastern Iran before the Iranians migrated to that region from northwestern Central Asia.

Kind regards,
Francesco


________________________________

> From: Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...>
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2012 10:30 AM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Witzel and Sautsutras (was: Mapping the Origins and Expansion of...)
>
>
>  
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
>
> > An interesting place to look, which, I believe Torsten commented on
> > is Crimea, for the Sindos-Meotians (vel sim). They seem to have IE
> > vocabulary absent from Vedic. Their language also seem lambdic as
> > opposed to Vedic rhotcisms. The term Sindos, however, seems to me an
> > exonym, perhaps applied to them by peoples who identified them with
> > peoples of the Indus/Sindhos valley. Has anyone done any serious
> > indepth research on this group?
>
> Cyril (Kirill) Babaev, founder of this List, once had an online article which also covered the topic of the so-called "Pontic Aryan" language(s) and the former assessments of this question by Kretschmer and Trubachov. It can be retrieved here:
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20060712182124/http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article17.html
>
> Sindes also is the name of a river (with persisting, pre-/non-Iranian s-) mentioned by Tacitus (Annales X.10); it divides the Dahae from the Arii, and thus refers to the Merw (Murghab) or Tedzhen river.
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>