Res: Res: [tied] Swiftness of Indra

----- Original Message -----
From: "george knysh" <gknysh@... com>
To: <cybalist@... s.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 12:01 PM
Subject: Re: Res: [tied] Swiftness of Indra

>
> --- Patrick Ryan <proto-language@ msn.com> wrote:
>
> > Thank you, George.
> >
> > What do you think of Lubotsky's reasoning. I think
> > it is hilarious.
> >
> >
> > Patrick
>
> ****GK: I'm not competent to judge the linguistics of
> the issue. But I must confess that I find both
> Lubotsky and Witzel somewhat unconvincing on
> alternative grounds. They both seem to think that
> everything connected to the well-known Soma/Haoma
> rituals in Indic and Iranic paleohistorical culture
> (as reflected in texts) was acquired rather late, and
> as a result of contacts with the BAMC people. Now,
> whatever specific words might or might not suggest,
> the notion that Indo-Iranians had to wait until their
> contacts with earlier well-developed Central Asian
> civilization to become adepts of the "Soma ritual"
> (speaking broadly) is totally negated by
> archaeological evidence. Even if one accepts the view
> that the Soma plant= ephedra, and localizes its
> availability on the highlands south of the steppes. At
> most this would have meant a change in the identity of
> the "holy plant". While still in Ukraine and South
> Russia, the predecessors of the later Indo-Iranian
> tribes which contacted with the BAMC had a fully
> developed "holy plant drinking ritual", with all the
> gadgets petaining thereto. All this was unearthed in
> dozens of tombs of the Catacomb culture (2800-2200
> BCE), and fully reported in the archaeological
> literature. At that time the "holy plant" was the
> poppy ("mak" in today's Ukr.) I was ready to accept
> the notion that Indra was a later borrowing on the
> authority of Lubotsky and Witzel,even as I was
> rejecting some of their broader contentions about
> rituals. But if you think the notion is laughable, I'm
> listening(:= ))).****

<snip>

***

First, let me confess that I have been struggling to find a suitable
derivation for this word for literally many years. I am interested in
ancient religion as well as ancient language.

Let us start with the form itself.

In order to get a zero-grade of <in-> from the first syllable, necessitated
by the stress-accented suffix -*ró in the second syllable, an emphatic
formant, one must start with a full-grade *yAn-, where *A is the Ablautvokal
(*é/*o/*Ø).

This process results in *in-ró, into which *d was inserted for ease of
pronunciation: *in-d-ró.

*CVC+*ró is a well-known pattern in PIE for forming, primarily, emphatic
(elative) adjectives.

To reduce the first syllable to *yN is, of course, also possible, but would
result in *yadrá rather than <indrá->. Of course, it would make the -*d-
superfluous also: no *n-r, no *d.

Indra was a name for the IE weather/storm- god. His name should characterize
him in an unmistakable way.

That is the good news.

The bad news is that I can find no attestation of the root I am nearly
certain existed, which would have had the form *yén-, and would have been
related to *ya:(H)-, 'speak excitedly'.

Perhaps one on our list will know of a word that could derive from PIE *yén-
that was not preserved in enough PIE-derived languages to be included in
Pokorny as (P)IE.

Perhaps someday I shall find it.

But formally alone, L&W are incompetent.

Patrick