--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
> B[abaev]'s Temarunda analysis seems OK.
On the contrary, to me its seems far-fetched:
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/archive/article17.html
"*tem-arun-da, 'mother of the Dark, or Black, Sea', where *tem-
means Vedic tamas- 'darkness', *arun- is Vedic arna- 'a stormy sea',
and *da- fits well to Sanskrit dhe- 'to breast-feed'. This makes
temarunda really 'a mother of the sea'.
However, Babev's source is O. Trubachev's article "Temarundam 'Mater
Maris'" available online at
http://groznijat.tripod.com/sci_lang/trubachev.htm
The article is, unfortunately, in Russian. What does it say, in
short?
> There's a couple of interesting articles I'm presently reading.
> One by Gray(old (1927) but still interesting in the Journal of the
> Royal Asiatic Society. He claims that the Iranian plateau was
> earlier occupied by the Indo-Aryans, who were pushed out by the
> Iranians, leaving traces of their language in the latter's speech
> as a substrate. A more recent item (1973) by the late Oxford
> professor T. Burrow (The Proto-IndoAryans), which I've just
> started to peruse, seems to be headed towards a similar
> conclusion.
Burrow has argued for an initial Indo-Aryan settlement not only of
North Mesopotamia (the area later occupied by the kingdom of
Mittani), but also of parts of Iran. His arguments are both
linguistic and religious. Linguistic arguments mainly consist in the
names of Iranian rivers which are seen by Burrow to be borrowings
from one or more earlier Old Indo-Aryan languages. This evidence has
been dismissed by some linguists. Religious arguments mainly consist
in the names of certain Zoroastrian daevas (demons) which would have
derived from an earlier Indo-Aryan substrate. I am quoting from
memory, and unfortunately I don't have easy access to Burrow's book.
I cannot remember why the author excludes that the Iranian river-
names and daeva-names he takes as evidence of an earlier presence of
Indo-Aryans on the Iranian plateau were inherited from common Indo-
Iranian. Could you kindly look into the book and elucidate me on
this point, George?
Best wishes,
Francesco