Indeed, Myth has two styles of gods, after we had only goddesses and they
came after dragons and they came after ancestors. My Fancy is that
re-incarnation took off in a cold climate where animals hibernate because
there it makes sense as a story teaching motif. So how did itself get
embedded in Indian Culture? The Ainu, Japan, still catch and fatten a bear
for Xmas and the way it is killed is anything but nice. Why, so he
remembers whom to discuss when he re-joins the ancestors. So what's the
golden goose doing in European folklore? Stith Thompson is handy here.
Besides what are triple godyses and godlings doing all over the world in
olden times? The rites of the Kabiri were held 'rude' even by the Greeks,
hhhmm. They, by name are dwarfs vide Dutch Kabouters, probably pre-celtic
too. There were three of them who, not unlike the 3 fates, between them
created, uncreated and maintained the world, so what are they doing in India
by that cognomen? Go look in any Hindu Temple.
1; The one and only self begotten All Father of Creation, a giant god whom
nobody much worshipped and he dealt with the whole. Amerindians called het
the great spirit. He was androgyne. We all know what Akhnaton tried and
failed until Christianity arrived.
2: Creator Dwarf gods who tinkered with the bits, lived underground, were
little, of course and came in sexes women first man later.
They come in plenty as the gods, plural whereas the other one came singular
only something also confusing readers of Genesis, until translators fixed it
up. I've altogether some 13 odd different definitions of gods culled from
myths and epics. Fi Gothic god means he who is to be worshipped whereas in
the Athur Veda prayers read more like contracts such as I'll destroy your
statue and find another god iff, etc. Spells come after the manner of
Should you cast lascivious eyes at MY wife may your hair fall out, or worse,
which led to the wish fulfillment interpretation. Contrariwise the
Amerindian got into a silent, inward powwow with the Great Spirit, while
Samoans go talk with the ancestors. Thus, although words may well be
cognate and all that but their meaning, fit and usage in a culture varies
per culture. Thus, as I see it, one can play linguistic games within the
Indo European family, with a few surprises here and there but moving outside
into other ones is a rather dangerous pastime. The usual reference deference
was to call them the little people as calling out their name annoyed them.
They did not like being called for a no good reason. So I fancy one would
find a few other labels as well.
Since also the IE, partly as reconstructed too, replaced older cultures, by
the charming all too human pastime that the only Injun is a deadun, Read
Lyall Watson "Dark Nature" it's common to all mammals and below. [Readily
observed with some pigs, Mum eats the runts] Yes, I always complete my
interjections, one will find not just loan words but loan hoards. Rather
confusing until one learns which words to pick on. Avalokitesvara, fi is
composed of rather archaic syllables one can recover worldwide from Names on
the Land and Thames, "Dark River", Tameisin, etc, is also worldwide but the
dropping of haitches and other parts, as well as adding tends to obscure the
cognations. The mythic account was that caves, clefts and so on were the
wombs of Mama, we still call her Mother Nature and rivers traverses into the
underworld, like Coleridge's Alpheus. There is a quaint survival of this in
hypnosis where one always goes down to reach the unconscious, funny that,
never up whereas shamen go up to find answers, which is correct in a way.
Then there is a sudden jump, cannot find an origin anywhere for that, when
the gods moved into the sky. Even Maori Maui, an ancestor not a god, fishes
up New Zealand form the bottom of the ocean where Alice walks. Similarly in
Nordic myth where the roots of the world tree are in ice, where who was it,
sleipnir exists. Ditto Hawah, wahat , quanat, Arabic for waterhole, is
cognate to Eve, the Mother of all living, as well as awe and ave and ava and
that is also a worldwide word, with quite a few spelling variations but its
sound was relatively stable. Grimm's laws don't explain the half of it.
One Stechini found a way to unscramble the ancient coin weights mess by
having weights and measures as locally contrived, which helped solve a
riddle about the Danish Gundestrup silver 'cauldron' 150 AD which had six
smiths work on it, one from India, they were rather scarce it seems. Would
he have left any loan words? Who really knows?
The other interesting feature is what happens with loan words when languages
each utilise but forty to sixty basic sounds and a word travels with the
traveller? Fi, the banana, thought to be South American, comes from Africa
and a measly fruit it had. To get to S America it either travelled as a well
encapsulated seed or as a plant requires fresh water would have taken some
planning and organisation, take your pick of theories. Nevertheless who
where, during or before stone age times converted it into the large fruit we
know? And so for lots of plants and animals. Genetically our modern pig is a
hybrid of the Chinese and European so somebody arranged and executed the
marriage, and if you know what pigs are like, very pig headed indeed, the
trip must have taken maybe up to several lifetimes, thus so much for farming
having taken off 7,000 BCE in Anatolia, for which we have the evidence. Man
walking could have done it in 30 years, and pigs are lazy too. All the data
used are verifiable, if you know where to look. Not found in any linguistic
textbook I know of although some of the work was done by some very
distinguished linguists indeed. Do you know why penguins sit still? So all
the food stored goes for growth and maintenance
One cannot use a tennis racket unless one clearly knows exactly how big it
is and so too for any discipline.
adrian
==========
Subject: [cybalist] Re: IE Elves.
junk
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Odegard
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 1999 1:59 PM
Subject: [cybalist] IE Elves.
Indo-European elves? Why not.
Edgar Polome, in the article "Elf" in EIEC rates the word *(a)lbh-, 'elf',
as questionable. Besides Germanic 'elf', it's also related to Old Indic
rbhú- 'artistic, learned; artisan, artist; orderer of time; one of a group
of gods'; these are said to be highly skilled divine craftsmen. They are
said to have made the chariot of the Asvins. A more questionable cognate is
suggested by Old Church Slavonic rabu, 'servant'. In Germanic mythology, the
elves have a good reputation on the whole, and are thought of as highly
clever but frequently mischievous.
The underlying etymon would be related to Latin albus (white), Hittite
alpa (cloud), etc.
Polome makes the suggestion at "the deep comparative level" that they are
associated with the progression of the seasons, especially the winter death
and rebirth of the sun.
If we get past the prettified, Spock-eared Tolkienized creatures of recent
myth, there might be something to this.
There are few motifs worth looking at. First, they are 'light', 'bright',
'white'. Second, they are clever craftsman. It's hard to not think of
smiths, tending their forge-fires, making miraculously magical metal
marvels. One is further tempted to suggest that just perhaps we have the
(Western) IE word for "Bell-Beaker man".
The idea that we might also have some sort of solar companions is not
unreasonable either.
Mark.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
I think I've got something on IE elves at home. If I find it I'll let you
know. Count Slavic *orbU- (metathesised in your OCSl word) out, Slavic had
no l-rhotacism, unlike Indo-Iranian. I think the Slavic word belongs to the
etymon *orbh- (cf. E. orphan, German Arbeit). The Slavic word for work was
*orb-ot-a: Polish robota, Russian rabota etc. Thanks to Karel Capek's novel
about mechanical slaves with artificial intelligence, the word has been
popularised worldwide in its truncated form ROBOT.
Piotr
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAB THE GATOR! FREE SOFTWARE DOES ALL THE TYPING FOR YOU!
Gator fills in forms and remembers passwords with NO TYPING at over
100,000 web sites! Get $100 in coupons for trying Gator!
http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/2092
eGroups.com Home: http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/
http://www.egroups.com - Simplifying group communications