--- Sergejus Tarasovas <
S.Tarasovas@...>
wrote:
> > *****GK: Independently of this, I have my own
> doubts
> > as to whether TURAS represents a "Baltic"
relict./.../
>
> > I don't much care for
> > the Iranic solution either, since it seems strange
> to
> > me that a good Iranic name would have been changed
> to
> > the generic DANA- with the influx of more Iranian
> > speakers into the steppes. Yet it was.*****
>
> ST: I don't see anything typologically impossible
here.
> Eg, Vi`lnius is
> named after a river (the biggest tributary of the
> Niemen) called
> *Vi`lnia: 'streaming; rippling', which later changed
> its name to
> Neri`s 'swift,whirly' (indeed!). Again, Sarmatians
> might well have
> brought a 'ready' name from their previous
> territory.
*****GK: You have almost convinced me. Even if we can
somehow justify a reading of Herodotus' "TU-" as
"TI-", and thus open the door to Baltic analogies
(which by the way I still think are quite promising in
other cases) it would be problematic to apply this to
the lower course of the river. Archaeology does not
support the presence of "northern" cultures here in
the period of Scythian dominance, nor in the period
preceding this dominance. A case could be made for the
Thracians (it's better upstream) but the fact remains
that the Noa culture was replaced here by the Zrubna
hundreds and hundreds of years prior to the advent of
the Royal Scythians. There is just one other
possibility I'd like to explore. Recent research
(Trubachov, Kul'baka) has advanced potent arguments as
to the "polyethnic" character of the Zrubna,
heretofore considered as solidly Iranic. One of
Herodotus' Scythian rivers, the HYPANIS (modern So.
Bog(h)) may well have had a Pontic Indo-Aryan name
[parallels in the Krasnodar Kraj and in northern
India] and the Herodotan ALIZONES, "non-Scythians",
may have been kin to the Maeoti. We note that as early
as the time of Pliny, the name HYPANIS has been
changed to AXIAK (which my sources say is an Iranic
name). After a few centuries it was changed again (to
something close to its modern name)but that is no
concern to the issue at hand. I am wondering if the
TURAS could have been changed to DANA (at the lower
flow) because it was known by incoming Sarmatians to
be as "foreign" to them as HYPANIS? Is there a
plausible Pontic Indo-Aryan etymology for
"TURAS"?*****
>
>
>
>
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