--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>
> Some loose ends:
>
> Finnish kantel
> Estonian kannel
> Latvian kokle
> Lithuanian kankle.s
*********
http://www.people.iup.edu/rahkonen/kantele/diss/history.htm
is a complete doctoral dissertation on the kantele.
Rahkonen writes:
"Perhaps the foremost authority on the scholarly literature pertaining
to the Baltic psalteries was a Professor of Religious Studies at the
University of Oregon, Stephen Reynolds, who began collecting and
studying these materials as a hobby. Two of his papers (Reynolds 1973;
1984) presented an outstanding analysis of this literature. I can do
no better here than to summarize his observations. Reynolds suggests
that there have been at least three different competing theories on
the origins of Baltic psalteries, which he calls the Slavic theory,
the Finnic theory and the Oriental theory (Reynolds 1984).
The Slavic theory can be traced to the Russian scholar A. S. Famincyn,
who published a monograph on the Russian gusli in 1890.Famincyn argued
that Baltic psalteries were known to the Russians in the middle ages
and may be among the gusli mentioned in the old Russian epic poetry,
the byliny. He believed the instrument originated in Byzantium and was
carried by the Slavs to the Finns and Estonians, and from them to the
Lithuanians and Latvians. For some reason, the Slavs forgot their
instrument, but borrowed it back again at a later time from the Setus
of southern Estonia. As part of his argument, Famincyn used linguistic
evidence.He believed the original name of the instrument came from
primitive Slavic gandtli, which became gosli among the Slavs, gusli
among the Russians and kantlis, kantle, kantele, and its cognates
among the Balto-Finns.Famincyn also believed that the helmet-shaped
gusli was directly related to Baltic psalteries, as a more advanced
form of the instrument.
The Finnic theory originated in pre-revolutionary Russia among several
scholars, the most important of whom were Mikhail Petukhov (1892) and
N. I. Privalov (1908). This theory took into account the fact that the
kantele was mentioned prominently in the Kalevala runes and held that
the kantele originated in Uralic-Altaic antiquity. Privalov believed
that the Slavs borrowed the instrument from the Balto-Finns, since the
wing-shaped gusli was only found in adjacent areas. The theory also
proposed a Finnic etymology for the names of the instruments and held
that there was no genetic relationship between the Baltic psalteries
and the helmet-shaped gusli.
The Oriental theory was developed by Curt Sachs (1916), who claimed an
Asian origin for the Baltic psalteries, but did not discuss the route
by which they arrived in the Baltic region nor their path of
diffusion. He too used linguistic evidence to argue that the word
kantele and its cognates were derived from the Georgian word kankula,
which is related to the middle High German cannale, coming from the
Arabic qanun and Greek kanon. Like Famincyn, he grouped the
helmet-shaped gusli and Baltic psalteries together. Sachs's theory had
an influence on western scholars, who propose a relationship between
the kantele and qanun (for example see Marcuse 1975:221 and Falvy 1981)."
So three theories, each with its own etymology, Slavic, Finnic, and
Georgian!
Dan