--- Alexander Stolbov <
astolbov@...> wrote:
> George, your postings show that you have a fresh and
> original point of view
> on the earliest Rus events.
> Could you please set forth your conception with key
> arguments. It is very
> interesting indeed.
>
******GK: You're too kind Alexander. My conception is
in a state of constant evolution, as new information
come in. As someone interested in these issues you
know how infuriatingly difficult they can be. Scholars
have been discussing this for more than two centuries
(or should we say snarling at each other for that
length of time). There's hardly any question about
which one can say "well let's start with something
simple such as..." which almost immediately creates
battlefronts. So instead of big syntheses how about
focusing on "simple" things (:=))like... the term
"Rus'" (and related ones): what does it mean? where
does it come from? who did/does it apply to? (I can
already hear (intellectual) pistols being cocked in
the background).===Something "simple", along the lines
of the river name problem you raised.== Putting aside
minor hypotheses, there are currently three major
conceptions as to Rus-(Ros- Ras-): (1) that it has
Scandinavian affinities (via Finnic), applied at first
to the Norse, and thence a spread into other meanings.
(2) that it is derived from southern river names, esp.
the complex to the south of Kyiv-Kiev, applied at
first to a local group there, and thence spread etc..
(3) that it is derived from an Iranic background (and
perhaps even Indo-Iranic), that it was a term
signifying an "aristocracy" ("first" "leading"
"glorious" et sim. as an offshoot of a meaning
connected to "light" [in some languages this involved
a development -RU- --> -LU- but that doesn't concern
us], that it was not originally an ethnonym at all,
and only became one some time after the Norse borrowed
the conception from the political vocabulary of
Western Khazaria. After which, the usual spread
etc..==== I tend to favour this third hypothesis. I
suppose we can talk about this for a few years (:=))...*****
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