Re: Indo-Aryans outside of India

Thanks much for the summary of Burrow's paper, George!

You write:

> Anything more specific you'd like me to check on?

It's o.k. for now. I must digest it first. God only knows how many
competing interpretations of the position and functions of the
devas/daivas, asuras/Ahura and Bhaga/bagas in Indo-Aryan and Iranian
(as well as their presumed common Indo-Iranian antecedents) have
been provided by the scholars in the past! :^)

Best,
Francesco

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, george knysh <gknysh@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- Francesco Brighenti <frabrig@...> wrote:
>
>
> > 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
>
> ****GK: [My source was not a book but an article :T.
> Burrow, "The Proto-Indoaryans", The Journal of the
> Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland,
> 1973, pp. 123-140. He refers (once) to his larger work
> on Sanskrit, published in 1955.]
>
> A. As to river names. B. rejects the IIr origin of
> Iranian [hara(x)vaiti:) and Indic [Sarasvati] (the
> only other rn analyzed are [sarayu] and Oxus] because
> he feels that the IIr no longer existed as a
> collectivity when these rn were established in Iran
> and India. The split between Iranians and Indics
> occurred,he believes, at the latest by 2000 BCE,in the
> Central Asian steppes. In other words, when they moved
> into Iran,they did so as Indics and Iranians, not as
> IIr. He believes the Indics moved first,hence the
> river in Iran was first called [Sarasvati] and was
> renamed when the Iranians arrived (pp. 125, 126-7).
>
> B. As to the daeva-names. B. believes that gods such
> as Indra, Varuna, Nasatya,Sarva, Vishnu, Savitr,
> Pushan etc.., "demonized" by the Zoroastrians, were
> never part of the Iranian pantheon (even before Zor.)
> and were strictly Indic religious innovations. What
> was IIr acc.to him? Terms such as "daiva", "asura",
> and "baga" (of these only "asura" was strictly IIr).
> He doesn't say which of these was the "common" IIr
> "god name", if there was one. He insists that the
> notion of two sets of IIr gods, one of which went
> Indic (the devas) and the other Iranic (the ahuras),
> is false. His main argument is that Indic demonization
> of the asuras was a late and completely independent
> process, and that the common Iranian pre-Zoroastrian
> "god word" was "baga". Anything more specific you'd
> like me to check on?
>
> BTW Burrow cites Gray favourably and quotes the
> passage from Gray,p. 439 in extenso on his own p. 133.
> He corrects Gray on three points however: (1) "baga"
> rather then "ahura" was the original Iranian god
> word(as above); (2) "daivas" were only made evil by
> Zoroastrian propaganda. He agrees with Gray that they
> were the gods of Indics,not common IIr gods; (3) The
> Iranians did not drive out the Indics from Iran. They
> arrived after the latter had basically out-migrated,
> dominated their remnants, and borrowed some terms from
> them as they eventually assimilated them.****
>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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