Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

>The linguistic affinity of the
> second "Nomad" aristocracy, that of the Catiari or
> Cotieri is yet to be determined. Perhaps they were
> Indic (which would qualify for "Indo-Iranian" I
> suppose)....another probably Indic tribe (the
> Alazones

Indic? In what way were they Indic?

Ouch! I began this project to research a few issues in Sanksrit and
before I know it, I'm reading about Iranians and now Scythians and
even Thracians!! Will it never end? :-) Ah well, it's an interesting
path I'm wandering on.

To answer one of Dr. Kalyanaraman's earlier posts about whether is
possible to do Sanskrit linguistics without PIE, in my experience if
you are at all interested in what came before or after India (and I
know he is), then there is no way to avoid delving into the greater
IE language family.

>A couple of centuries later the western Iranian Medes migrated south

of the Caspian Sea to the eastern borders of Mesopotamia, and the
Persians crossed over from Central Asia to northwestern and then
southwestern Iran.

>

Was this only a couple of centuries? Also, the migration is just a
reconstruction right? All that is known for sure is that the Persians
and Medes appeared in history for the first time about then and where
they came from is not truly known.

> The homeland of Zarathustra, and of Gathic (Gatha/Yasna Avestan,
>but not of the younger Avestan texts), was probably NW Afghanistan.

Do the younger texts show a different homeland?

>The Zoroastrian revolution should not be associated with the (much
>earlier) Indic/Iranian split

While this is no doubt true, I believe the oldest actual evidence of
Iranian languages is the Zoroastrian. What are the dates for the
later Iranian languages that don't show Zoro influence?

>Not all Iranians were converted to Zoroastrianism: the new religion,
>influential as it was (especially after Darius I and his successors
>accepted it), appears to have made at best small-scale inroads among
>the northern Iranians.

Were these the Sakas? Did some of them later invade India?

I picked up Mallory's book today and it fell open to the section on
the Iranians, so I guess it is the will of, um, Ahura Mazda. :-)