Dear Dr Kalyanaraman,
There's nothing mysterious about these similarities. They
are not restricted to Croatian (standard Croatian would do
just as well) but can be observed between Sanskrit (or any
old Indic language such as the dialect apparently used by
the Mitanni élite) and any Slavic language. The Russian
numerals (I mean standard Russian, not some conservative
highland or insular dialect) are:
odin, dva, tri, chetyre, piat', shest', sem', vosem',
deviat', desiat', ... sto (100),
and their Polish equivalents are:
jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, pieNc', szes'c', siedem, osiem,
dziewieNc', dziesieNc', ... sto
(c' and s' are pronounced exactly like Sanskrit palatals).
Skt. bhra:ta: corresponds to Polish and Russian brat (and of
course to English brother) -- after all all these languages
are related and derive from a common ancestor (the PIE word
is reconstructed as *bHra:te:r). Similarly, vis'a and ves
(Polish wies') go back to PIE *wik-/*woik-, which also gives
us the international prefix eco- (as in ecology) via Greek
(w)oiko-.
Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian are pretty close cousins, and
their ancestral proto-languages were for a long time
neighbours, geographically. As a matter of fact, the Slavic
word for "100" (*sUto) was in all likelihood borrowed from
an Iranian language (the expected Slavic form would be
*seNto if the word had been inherited directly from PIE).
One of the words you quote (himna--hymn) is a shared
loanword from Greek. Most of the languages of Europe and
many in other parts of the world have a similar word for
'hymn' because they have borrowed it from the same source.
Polish and English have "hymn", French, German and (say)
Norwegian have "hymne" (with some pronunciation differences
of course), and Russian has "gimn" (Russian regularly
replaces foreign "h" with "g").
Another similar case is "angira" which comes from Greek
angelos like the word for 'angel' in lots of other languages
(Dutch engel, Polish anioL, French ange, etc. -- all
borrowed from Greek, usually via Latin). Indic languages may
replace "l" with "r" (many of them do it regularly); the
same replacement is visible in the inherited vocabulary,
e.g. PIE *l in the root *leuk- (English light, Latin lux,
Greek leukos) appears in Sanskrit as roc-.
My very best regards,
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
From: "S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan99@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 11:25 PM
Subject: [tied] vis.aya, vaiyam, vaejo and Croatian
parallels
I am citing from a note received from Stjepan Spanicek; the
article is about
Sarasvati River evidence and Croatian proto-history:
(Croatian Literary Newspaper, Quarterly Edition for
Literature and Culture,
Karlovac - Zagreb, Croatia, No. 13(32)/Year VII / January -
June
1998. Author: Dr. Andrija ®eljko Lovriæ - Translated by
Stjepan Spanicek)
[Quote]
Mittani (Kurdistan 16 - 12 century BC):
1 - aika, 3 - tera, 4 (?), 5 - panza, 7 - satta, 9 - na, 10
(? - further
unknown).
Vedic (12 - 5 century BC):
1 - eka, 3 - tri, 4 - chatur, 5 - panca, 7 - sapta, 9 -
nava, 10 - des, 20 -
dvides, 100 - satem.
Veyska zayk (present in the most archaic Croatian language
of the mountainous
villages on Island KRK in the Adriatic Sea - Croatia):
1 - eni, 3 - tari, 4 - cetyre, 5 - pet, 7 - sedaan, 9 -
devet, 10 - deset, 20
- dwayset, 100 - stuo. In Sarasvati language there are more
important words
which are very similar to Croatian:
bhrata - brat - brother; gatha - ganga, himna - hymn;
bhesha - besjeda - speak,
devas - djeva - girl,
angira - anðeo - angel,
visa - ves, selo - village,
maria - marjan - hero
vaeyah - zavièaj - homeland... [End Quote]
In reference to Vaeyah, let us see two concordant lexemes
from Tamil and
Sanskrit:
vaiyam = earth (Tamil)
vis.aya (Skt.) " to extend "' cf. Pa1n2. 8-3 , 70 Sch.)
sphere (of influence
or activity) , dominion , kingdom , territory , region ,
district , country ,
abode (pl. =lands , possessions)(Online Cologne lexicon)
What would be the IE form of the word representing a
'territory'? The Tamil
form is particularly interesting since it seems to be closer
to the Avestan
form, 'vaejo'.
Regards.