From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 3633
Date: 2000-09-13
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 12, 2000 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Religion
> I still don't understand. What's the reflex of *worsa-? And why is
> *-nos (passive?) attached to it? How does this make grammatical sense in
IE?
Sanskrit varsa- "rain", from *WERS- "wet, sprinkle, rain", related to *wers-
"male animal" (Lat verres "boar", Sanskrit vrs.abha- "bull")
*-NOS is a suffix widely spread over theonyms: Wothanaz, Neptunus, Silvanus,
Nechtan, Portunus, etc. Also present in Gothic thiudans "king" (<*thiudanaz
<*teutonos), Lat tribunus, dominus (<*domu-nos). The suffix -nos can be
equivalent to -potis "master, owner", cf. Sans. dam-pati- x Lat dominus.
> ...But wouldn't this *werxWnos mean "bound" and not "binder"?? We'd expect
> *werxWte:r, no?
>
Your argument is valid.
>
> But it seems to make sense to me that Yama (or *Yemos) is the god of the
> dead. I don't see why he had to "borrow" this name from some other deity.
> Rather, perhaps Purusha is a blend of two or more deities including
*Yemos,
> or even a new aspect of *Yemos, while Yama himself is on a whole the main
> derivative of *Yemos.
The meaning fo *Yemos (or Ymmos?) must be "twin". So, Ymir make sense
(<*Yumijaz). But Indo-Iranians have Yama & Yima. Jaan Puhvel deducted Latin
Remus as a modification of *Iemus, with R- through association with Romulus.
>
> Joao:
> >Your interpretation of colour symbolism is so radical and litteral,
>isn't
> >it?
>
(...) Note the "frosty" beginnings of Ymir and creation?
> >From Creation to Ragnarok, it's all one big seasonal change after another
> where Creation is "winter" and Ragnarok is "fall" with "spring/summer" in
> between.(...)>
Interesting. I will think on it.
> Green is associated with the earth (Middleworld) because of the obvious
> reason that this is the colour of plantlife, especially in the spring.
Dark
> blue is also mixed in with this because, as I've said, the IE-speakers
> didn't have specific colour names, so ALL dark colours were lumped in.
> Japanese is an example of a language that has a single word for both green
> AND blue (Egyptian too, I think). Because of the later association between
> the middleworld and commoners (farmers, pastoralists), green got stuck on
> them too.
> Red is associated with blood and is the appropriate colour for the warrior
> caste as well as the only contrastive colour left to attribute to the
> Underworld. It is also the colour prominent in fall as the leaves change
> colour.
> Marija Gimbutas pays attention to this colour symbolism. I believe Mallory
> does too. The colour symbolism, AFAIK, exists in Indic symbolism (what was
> it now... "varna"?) as well as in some European myths. I think Mallory
> describes it in detail - I have to kuh-nab :) that book again.
I know this colour symbolism white-red-dark color (blue/green/black) x
priest-warrior-peasant. But how can we know if any god's color came from PIE
base?
> >I agree with you interpretation of XegWnis elements in Shiva. However >I
> >believe there's apart from IE Fire-God a different igneous entity,
> > >associated to End of World, with reflexes in Shiva, Surtur,
>Ashvatthaman
> >(Mahabharatta), Kalki, Badava (the Submarine Fire) and >Trojan Fire.
>
> But why another? Aren't you introducing unnecessary complexity? As I have
> said, it doesn't make sense that "Fire" should come from the WATERY
> Underworld, does it? Fire is a Middleworld element, surely. This is where
> having a theological structure for IE myth in place helps to fend off
> unlikely scenarios. If you accept Fire coming from the Underworld, then
you
> will have to rework the concept of the three realms in a feasable way. A
> firey Underworld?? Sounds very "Christian".
I didn't say Apocalyptical Fire came from Underworld! In India , The Fire
will came from Submarine Horse-headed Fire, or from Horse-Headed Giant
Avatar of Vishnu. Surtur came from South. I believe PIE people believed in a
distant Southern Land of Fire. Cf. Muspellsheim (Does anybody knows the
etymology of Muspell-?) In Ragnarok Loki doesn't burn anything...he kills
Heimdallr, like Mahabharata, when Bhishma was killed by an "avatar' of
Shiva.
I think LOKI was a composite of two PIE components:
1) The Trickster Fire-God (Prometheus, Agni)
2) A god or giant, progenitor of monsters (Typhon?, Phorkys?, Tvashtr (cf
his children Vrtra, Trishiras) . He is not necessarily "malign".
> Joao:
> >Ea was the Sumerian of Sea and of Knowledge and Science. I think he had
> >some influence in the features of Prometheus.
>
> But why would a Sumerian deity affect Indic mythology?
Maybe the Proto-Sumerian mythology was akin to Dravidian Mythology.
>
> - gLeN
>
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