Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates -- more speculation

----- Original Message -----

From: george knysh

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 5:11 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Scythian Cognates -- more speculation

> Your rendition of "Kolaxais" seems plausible. Note that the collective name of the Scythian aristocratic clans (Paralata, Aukhata etc..) was
SKOLOTA, and was constructed, it seems, from KOLA-XAIS (according to a comment by Herodotus).

 

Well, Herodotus says "after one of their kings", having mentioned Koloxais in the preceding sentence; it seems as if Koloxais and *Skolotos (or *Skolos, or whatever his name) had been two different fellows.

 

> As for PARALATA it seems quite obvious that its Greek translation was
"BASILEI" (the "Royals").

 

My etymological suggestion was *pari-arya- 'Arya par excellence', which I suppose amounts to the same thing ("the noblest of the noble").

 

> As to the second brother: I've read somewhere that the name is sometimes explained from "ARP"="AP" (Water) as "King of the Water" (perhaps an Abayev etymology but my memory is uncertain here).

 

This is quite impossible. The Ossetic metathesis *-Cr- > *-rC- (whereby *ap-ra- > *arf- 'deep') can't be that old. The next possibility that has occurred to me is *harpa-xs^aya- 'serpent-ruler'. It's looks attractive on the formal side; any historical support?

 

>... Nobody seems to have been able to figure out "leipo/lipo-". Might this have been a female name transmogrified? There are LIB- LYB- names in Slavic foundation legends.

Slavic "Lib-" is a phonetic variant of *ljub- < *leubH- 'long for, hold dear' (e.g. OE lufu 'love', le:of 'dear', Skt. lubH- 'desire', etc.). It doesn't seem possible to conjure up a Scythian "Lipo-" based on this root (its Iranian reflexes would have to be of the form *rub-/*raub-). I still don't know what to make of this brother's name.

 

Piotr