Re: Indo-Aryans outside of India

--- Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh
> <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
> > B[abaev]'s Temarunda analysis seems OK.

****GK: Sorry for the ambiguity. I only meant that it
seems to be a genuine comment about the real Sea of
Azov (Lacus Maeotis) not the Aral Sea.****

>
> 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'.

****GK: This seems better than Trubachov while
confirming(?) his main thesis.****

>
> 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?

****GK: Miguel's report has everything that
matters.****

>
> > 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?

****GK: Be glad to. I only read the first page. Gray,
for his part, argues that

"from Central Asia,through the open reaches east of
the Caspian which have given access to the Iranian
Plateau to conqueror after conqueror, there came at an
undatable period an invasion (or series of invasions)
of a people who spoke an Indo-Iranian dialect which
represented the Indo-European hard sibilant by 's',
and who termed their deities *deivos. In their turn
these invaders were gradually driven south by another
invasion (or series of invasions) by a kindred
people(or peoples)who had changed the hard sibilant
's' to 'h', who called their divinities *ahuros, and
who had, as kindred peoples often have,somewhat
different vocabularies. These h-people (the later
Iranians) gradually expelled the s-peoples until the
latter finally made their way into India.
In their contacts the h-peoples adopted some of the
words of their s-enemies, but since they already had
corresponding terms of their own (e.g. us(h)- as
contrasted with ka:rn(.)a-, ahura- as opposed to
deva(')-, etc.),they had no need to add them to their
vocabulary except as referring to their foes.
Hence,these terms of the s-peoples,expelled or
conquered, formed no real part of the vocabulary of
the h-peoples, as they did of the word-stock of the
s-peoples, and the former employed them only in a
derogatory sense,applying them solely to beings, human
or superhuman, whom they hated and despised as hostile
and malign.
If this hypothesis be correct,the Ahurian and
Dae(-)vian vocabularies of the Avesta were due to
historical and political factors of invasion,
conquest, and expulsion, and are still traceable in
geographic distribution; they were not caused by
linguistic oe even by religious considerations."
(Louis H. Gray, "The 'Ahurian and 'Daevian'
Vocabularies inthe Avesta", Journal ofthe Royal
Asiatic Society, 1927, p. 439.) Gray studies 52 such
terms tabulating their use, and states that "a survey
of the geographical distribution of the words under
consideration seems to justify the conclusion that in
the majority of cases the Ahurian terms [ay-,
uruthwan-, us(h)-, gam-,etc... he lists 20 GK]find
cognates in several modern Iranian dialects, and often
outside Iran as well;the Daevian words,on the other
hand,[as(h)-, gav-, gah-,drav-, etc... he lists 18 GK]
find cognates only outside the modern Iranian area,
except for a few in the Pamir dialects." (p. 434)

>
> Best wishes,
> Francesco
>
>
>

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