Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

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

From: michael_donne

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Monday, February 25, 2002 3:34 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Scythians, Zoroastrians, etc.

>> [George:] ... 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?

 

Not geographically, of course. Here the labels "Indic" (or "Indo-Aryan") and "Iranian" are used for lack of better terms also with reference to the remote prehistory of peoples and languages so called, before they reached India or Iran. "Pontic Indo-Aryans" sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it should be construed as "speakers of a non-Iranian language closely related to Indo-Aryan, living in the Pontic region". As a footnote to what George wrote, the name <alazones> looks very plausibly Iranian to me, after all: *arya-zana- or the like, meaning 'Aryan tribe'.

>> [Piotr:] 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.

 

What we have is a combination of historical reports, linguistic data and archeology that adds up to quite a lot of evidence, even if some of it is indirect. There are philological grounds for locating the dialect of the younger Avesta in eastern Iran ca. 1200-1000. We know from Assyrian sources that the Medes and the Persians had arrived near Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran by the 9th c. BC. Their later history, including the post-700 BC southward trek of the Persians along the Zagros range into what was to be called Parsumash (Persia proper) is excellently documented. Judging from the linguistic affinities of Median, the Medes occupied a northwesterly position within non-Pontic Iranian at an early date, while Old Persian, with its highly unusual phonological features (including possible eastern Saka connections), seems to have been an intrusive dialect, perhaps originating on the northeastern periphery of "Irania", in Bactria or thereabouts.

 

Even before Iranian-speaking peoples began to move west, we have evidence of contacts between Hurrian and an Indo-Aryan-type language in the middle of the second millennium BC. It seems that the Iranian subbranch (defined by a characteristic set of common innovations) expanded at the expense of residual "non-Iranian Indo-Iranian" (para-Indo-Aryan) languages, replacing them gradually in Central Asia as well as the Pontic region. The only survivals were the Old Indo-Aryan dialects that found refuge in India (plus of course the descendant Indic languages), and the ancestor of Nuristani.

>> 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?

 

There are several dialectal layers in the Avesta. Zarathustra's own dialect was apparently a NW variety of Old Avestan, with some Median influences, while the younger texts, composed in a related but different dialect, contain internal evidence (place-names, etc.) connecting them with eastern Iran. 

>> 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?

 

The Medes, for example, were not Zarathustrians; they had a religion of their own. Little is known about it beyond the fact that it was polytheistic and that there was a cast of "Magu" priests. The early Persian rulers officially adopted the monotheistic cult of Ahuramazda, apparently following Zarathustra's teaching, but syncretic experiments never ceased in the multicultural Persian empire. The codified doctrine of classical Zoroastrianism developed later, after the Greek conquest of Persia.

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

They did, in the 1st c. BC.

 

Piotr