--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...>
wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@>
> wrote:
>
> > As far as I know, the Finnish word for 'slave' (presumably
> > captured in raids into southern territories), orja-, is
> > considered one of the many loan words from Proto-Indo-
> > Iranian... into Uralic which would indicate that:
> >
> > 1. the early habitat of Proto-Indo-Iranians was in an area close
> > to the Central Asian steppe-taiga interface, e.g., near the
> > Urals;
> >
> > 2. these Proto-Indo-Iranians called themselves *arya-.
>
> Apparently Wikipedia does not buy into this fantastical story
> which is a corolloary of the now defunct Aryan Invasion Theory...
>
> Here Koenraad Elst squares off the IE-Uralic contact into an Indian
> Homeland scenerio thus:...
>
> "It was the Iranians who came in contact with Uralic on a large
> scale..."
>
> That fact that close kinship vocabularly can be borrowed puts a
> dent into the idea of genetically separated families especially
> if they occupay a vast contigous area like Eurasia. Morover were
> no loand from Uralic into IE which starnge if these langauges were
> in mutual conntact. More likely as Elst says orya is a late loan
> from the Iranians who moved into Central Asia.
>
> M. Kelkar
=============
Koenraad Elst and the others âOut-of-Indiaâ theorists who claim that
the Indo-Iranian loan words in Uralic come from some Iranian source
(s), and not from Proto-Indo-Iranian, have not studied the subject
in depth. Just to make an example, another strong case (in addition
to Proto-Indo-Iranian *arya- > Uralic âslaveâ) for the existence of
old linguistic contacts between groups of Uralic and Proto-Indo-
Iranian speakers in the steppe-taiga interface zone east and west of
the Urals is provided by the Proto-Indo-Iranian word *asura- âlord,
god, asura (= antigod)â, which is reflected in old loans in Uralic
both in the meanings 'lord' and 'rich':
- Mordvinian (Erzya) azoro- âlordâ
- Mansi (Vogul) at@Ér-, o:t@... 'chieftain, sovereign, prince'
- Udmurt (Votyak) uzir-, uz@... 'rich'
- Komi (Zyrian) ozir- 'rich'
Note that, if these words had been loaned from some Iranian language
(s), the borrowed form should have been something like ahura- (the
corresponding term in Avestan, where the /s/ > /h/ change had
already occurred), not asura-. Yet the typical Iranian aspiration is
absent in *all* the Uralic words listed above.
Actually it is the whole belt from the Ukraine to Siberia that
contains hints or direct attestations of the old Proto-Indo-Iranian
*asura-. Compare, respectively:
- Ess, the highest god of the Ket Yenisseians of Middle Siberia;
- the Buryat Mongolian äsi gods of the forests/mountains;
- the yz gods of the Gilyak (Paleosiberians of the the lower Amur
valley and Sakhalin).
There is much more linguistic material which contradicts the OITersâ
odd arguments about the nature of the IIr. loans into Uralic and
some languages of Siberia. I have just uploaded in the files section
a Word document named âPIIr. loan words in Finno-Ugrian and
Yenisseian.docâ. You can access the direct link from the following
announcement message:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/53180
To Kelkar:
Please read the document in question (an excerpt from a paper by
Michael Witzel) AS A LINGUIST WOULD DO and then come back with your
counter-arguments (if any).
Regards,
Francesco