Interestingly, Pliny seems to locate 'Albania' in N W India!! See below -
180-181: �Pliny says, �when Alexander the Great was on his Indian expedition
he was presented by the king of Albania with a dog of unusual size,� which
successfully attacked both a lion and an elephant in his presence. The same
story is repeated by his copyist, Solinus, without any change in the name of
the country. Now, we know from the united testimony of Strabo, Diodorus, and
Curtius, that the Indian king who presented Alexander with these fighting
dogs was Sophites, and he, therefore, must have been the king of Albania.
For this name, I propose to read Labania, by the simple transposition of the
first two letters. Alban would, therefore, become Laban which at once
suggests the Sanskrit word lavana, or �salt�, as the original of this
hitherto puzzling name. The mountain itself is named Oromenus by Pliny, who
notes that the kings of the country derived a greater revenue from the rock
salt than either gold or pearls. This name is probably intended for the
Sanskrit Raumaka, which according to the Pandits, is the name of the salt
brought from the hill country of Ruma��
Reference -
Sastri, Surendranath Majumdar. 1924. Cunningham�s Ancient Geography of
India. Chuckervertty, Chatterjee & Co. Ltd. Calcutta.
Sincerely,
Vishal
PS: Since you talk about 'alans', I am tempted to mention that a tribe named
alina is mentioned in the Rigveda, and was one of the numerous tribes said
to have been banished from N W India by the Bharatas in the Dasarajna war.
**************
Etymology for (Caucasian) Albania
From: "tarasovass" <
S.Tarasovas@...>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 18:44:22 -0000
From: "tarasovass" <
S.Tarasovas@...>
Subject: Etymology for (Caucasian) Albania
Is anybody aware of the etymology of the toponym (Caucasian) Albania?
If I'm not mistaken, it seemes first to appear in Strabo's Geography
(<Albani'a>) and Pliny's Natural History (Alba:nia), and looks like
contamination of Latin Alba-toponyms with something Nakho-Dagestanian
or NE Iranian. Do the Alans have anything to do with it?
Sergei
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