--- Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...> wrote:
> My personal hypothesis is that IIr *bHaga- was
> borrowed into (Balto-?)Slavic very early/.../ I
> leave open the question of how thoroughly the source
> culture had been Zoroastrianised (Zoroastrianism
> itself did not develop in a vacuum but absorbed more
> ancient Iranian beliefs and traditions). The
> religious terminology borrowed by the Slavs was,
> anyway, "provincial", i.e. Middle NE Iranian, not
> classical Avestan.
*****GK: Again, both history and archaeology seems to
confirm this. The Sarmatian groups with which the
early Slavs interacted were the Yazigi, the Roxolani,
and from the 1rst c. A.D. the Aorsi (esp. the
"Satarchei Spalei" to use Pliny's terminology). The
gravesites left by these populations show no evidence
of "Zoroastrian" practices. It is possible that these
were brought west of the Don by some subsequent Alanic
groups, esp. those which continued the Sarmatian
infiltration into the Bosporus Kingdom and immediately
adjacent areas (such as Theodosia). A case might even
be made that these "Zoroastrianizing" Alans did not
cross the Don until Hunnic times (depending on a more
exact date for the Periplus Ponti Euxini). By then the
notion of "bog" should have long been absorbed into
mainstream Slav culture.*****
>
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