Re: [tied] Why are Horses Vedic Again?

Juha Savolainen <juhavs@...>
<<Whatever debate may exist about the possibility of reconstructing “horse”
for the PIE, it is virtually certain that “horse” can be reconstructed for
the
(Proto) Indo-Iranian. Indeed, it is entirely possible that we can reconstruct
also the “chariot” for the (Proto) Indo-Iranian language. In vulgar English,
this means that horses and perhaps even chariots were familiar things in the
(Proto) Indo-Iranian language community, they were a part of their culture. A
fortiori, the Vedic Aryan speakers must have known the (domesticated) horse
from the very beginning. And most
likely they also knew chariots from the very beginning, although here the
situation is not as clear as with respect to the horse.>>

No. This is the same presumption again.

First of all, what was the word for "wild horse" in proto-IIr? Presumably,
the domesticated horse did not fall from heaven and was early on pretty much
an identical animal to the wild horse, whose habitat was Central Asia. At
some point and for a long time after first domestication, there would be more
wild horses than domesticated horses. This could mean that any reference to
the horse in p-IIr could have been a reference to the wild horse or their
traded by-products like horse-hides, horse-meat, horse-hair, horse-hooves,
etc. And where we DO have historical evidence of the introduction of the
domesticated horse, native speakers very often called them "deers", "dogs"
and "buffalo" -- so it's not clear that the early pre-literate word for horse
even specifically referred to a horse.

Secondly, there is NO evidence that "horses" were "familiar things" in p-IIr
culture. The presence of the word in a reconstructed language just does not
prove what you claim. "Elephant" was a word in 19th century American
English, but the vast majority of its speakers had never even seen an
elephant. And "dragons" and "unicorns" are familiar words in many languages,
but they never existed.

Thirdly, what is your dating based on? If you are saying Vedic culture
started with RigVeda, that's fine. But if you are in anyway talking about
the pre-literate IE in India, you have no proof for any absolute dating prior
to that. In fact, for all you know, Harappan culture might have adopted IIr
just like the Normans adopted French. And more importantly, you don't know
when horses became "familiar things" in "pre-Vedic" culture and just how much
of "pre-Vedic" culture was in fact continuous with Harappan.

If you and Witzel want to believe any of this based on your own personal
convictions, that's fine. But let's not pretend that there's any objective
certainty in any scientific sense in any of this.

Regards,
Steve Long