--- Alexander Stolbov <
astolbov@...> wrote:
> I don't think that the Kingdom of Vani could be a
> good candidate for Vanir.
> A question to the linguists:
>
> Is it thinkable that a transformation like
>
> Hunnu > *Vun > Van
>
> occurred in a East Iranian or an North Germanic
> language ?
>
>
> Alexander
******GK:Here is something interesting from the
Turkologist O. Pritsak (cf. his "The Origin of Rus'"
(Harvard University Press 1981), pp. 243-244. [NB.
This work was given an ambiguous reception when it
originally appeared. But even its bitterest critics
acknowledged that it was filled with golden nuggets.
Possibly what follows is one of them. The citation is
from Pritsak's chapter 11 entitled "Snorri's 'Gelehrte
Urgeschichte': has it a historical base?"]
"Sometime between 635 and 665, around Maeotis and the
lower Don, the realm of Magna Bulgaria (not unlike the
previous Bosporus Kingdom) was founded by the
Onogur-Bulgar ruler Kobrat. After Kobrat died, the
country was attacked by the Turkic Khazars, the rising
power in that area. The struggle prompted the
migration of three groups of Proto-Bulgars in the
670's; those remaining made peace with the victors and
accepted the suzerainty of the Khazar Kagan.* [GK: All
* indicate footnotes where P. gives his references. I
omit them here. See the original or request specifics]
The name Onogur [GK: O with a - above it and "g" as
the Greek gamma] is an Altaic tribal name, derived
from a compound with a numeral as the first component:
ON [GK: - above "o"] in ONOGUR [GK: ditto] means
"ten". Not infrequently such names also occur in an
abbreviated form consisting of the numeral alone, e.g.
Nayman, a proto-Mongolian tribe, means "eight". The
Hunno-Bulgarian correspondence to the Turkic ON was
VAN [GK: with - above the "a"].*
The Turkic Khazars, before attacking the VAN
(Onogurs-Bulgars) during the first half of the seventh
century, took possession of most of the realm of the
Alans in the northern Caucasus. The Alans were
commercially active and, voluntarily submitting to the
new and powerful empire, soon became part of its
ruling elite..../
In the second half of the eighth century, when the
Norse traders and adventurers started penetrating into
the Khazar Empire, there still existed memories in the
epic tradition of the great war between the Turks and
Ases, on one side, and the Vanes (Onogur-Bulgars) on
the other, and the ensuing peace.
The Iranian Alans formed a close alliance with the
Germanic warriors during the migration period,
especially with the Goths and the Vandals.* It is not
so unlikely then, that the Alans of the Khazar Empire
-- who were politically Turks and ethnically Ases
(i.e. Iranians) -- transmitted to the Norse trading
and warrior bands the current version of the steppe
tradition that then became known as the religion of
the Tyrkir, alias Aesir.
The basic mythologems of the steppe religion, which
had been abandoned by the now agricultural Germanic
peoples, reappeared in a new version. The struggle of
the first and second function against the third
function was transposed into an epic story whose basis
was a great historical event in southeastern Europe.
The Norse trading and war bands operated in the
Khazar Empire. From there they brought back to the
north, where the Viking movement was just starting to
emerge, a form of ideology and religion that suited
their needs. This reintroduction of the
once-upon-a-time Indo-European religion to the north
later received an epic representation in the form of
the story about Odinn's [GK: O with a ` and the Norse
"d"] journeys from Tyrkland to Saxland, Frakland, and
Scandinavia.
In view of this theory ON Van-r should be identified
with the Proto-Bulgarian name (VAN); Tanais -Don
received the second name Vana-kvisl (the fork of the
/land of the/Vanes), and the territory around its
lower course became known as the "land" or "home" of
the Vanes (Vana-land, Vana-heimr)." *******
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