Re: Swiftness of Indra

--- Patrick Ryan <proto-language@...> wrote:

>
> The only objections I would raise would be:
>
> 1) it is rather unusual to borrow a name for the
> supreme god;

Not true: See Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah et al. In
Meso-America Nahuatl names were borrowed, calqued or
subjected to popular etymology, etc. In West Africa,
some names were shared: e.g. Legba was Ewe-Fon but
passed into Yoruba and then into Santería as Eleguá.
Some Buddhist deities, avatars and boddhisattvas had
names that passed from Sanskrit to Chinese to
Japanese.
Religion and religious terminology seem very prone to
borrowing

>
> 2) forges are not usually associated with
> sky/weather gods.
>
>
> Patrick
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 5:27 PM
> Subject: [tied] Re: Swiftness of Indra
>
>
>
> George Knysh:
>
> > 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.
>
> Joao S. Lopes:
>
> > But this epenthetical -d- is possible if the word
> is not IE.
> > Indra < *Inra ?
>
>
> May I jump in here with some additional data and
> hypotheses?
>
> Don't take me too seriously (I'm thinking of this
> idea for the first
> time right now), but, if the word Indra is not IE,
> it could belong
> to a hypothetical Macro-Caucasian substrate language
> of Central
> Asia.
>
> This conjecture of mine rests upon:
>
> 1) Alexander Lubotsky's suggestion that *indra does
> not conform to
> the expected Indo-Iranian vocalization, and may,
> therefore, be a non-
> IE word;
>
> 2) Michael Witzel's theory according to which the
> "Central Asian
> substrate words" found by Lubotsky in Indo-Iranian
> would have been
> borrowed by one or more Macro-Caucasian language(s)
> spoken by the
> peoples of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological
> Complex (BMAC);
>
> 3) John Colarusso's speculation that Indra may
> represent an early
> North-West Caucasian loan into IE -- cf. Circassian
> /y@.../ 'huge +
> present participle', Abkhaz /á-yna-r/ 'the huge +
> present
> participle', the name of the god of the forge Aynar
> ('the Huge One')
> > *inra > *indra (with intrusive -d-), in this case
> originally
> meaning 'the Great One'.
>
> Here is the link to the page from a book by
> Colarusso where this
> etymology is discussed (N.B. Colarusso theorizes
> that North-West
> Caucasian languages may be genetically related to
> the IE family in a
> larger "Pontic" family):
>
> http://tinyurl.com/357ype
>
> ==========
>
> Addenda:
>
> M. Witzel, "The Rgvedic Religious System and Its
> Central Asian and
> Hindukush Antecedents", in A. Griffiths & J.E.M.
> Houben (eds.), _The
> Vedas: Texts, Language and Ritual_, Groningen,
> Forsten, 2004
> (preprint pdf):
>
> "One may therefore revisit the old etymology of
> Indra from ind 'to
> swell'. [M. Mayrhofer's] EWAia... connects indra
> with the
> meaning 'strong': índra or *indrá 'strong, strength'
> ~ Gr. oidéo: 'to
> swell' and perhaps índu 'drop'; if this goes back to
> *(h)i-n-d-ro ~
> Slav. *je,dr' 'strong, forceful' (Croat. jédar
> 'strong', O.Russ.
> jadr' 'quick')..."
>
> And, from another (2002) preprint pdf by Witzel
> ("Early Loan Words
> in Western Central Asia: Substrates, Migrations and
> Trade"):
>
> "[An] interesting river name is that of the Indra
> River in S.
> Tajikistan, Indar-a:b, and the Inder lake (Russ.
> ozero Inder) on the
> lower Ural river in W. Kazakhstan. In light of the
> proposed non-IIr
> etymology of the name of the god Indra... these
> widespread names may
> reflect the C. Asian substrate language as well.
> Much more research
> is needed, however, to turn these proposals into
> something closer to
> certainty."
>
> Regards,
> Francesco
>
>

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