Re: Swiftness of Indra

Arnaud, you obviously appreciate Dumézil as do I.

Something he never quite got, though, was that each one of the major gods
has two aspects: a beneficial and a harmful one.

Probably, at the very earliest time, these aspects were not separated; and
divinities were regarded somewhat as the Hebrew god: sometimes god and
sometimes bad.

But, for the emotional comfort of men, most cultures separated the two
aspects under different names so they could concentrate their praise on the
beneficent aspect, and feel free to hate the maaleficent.

Indra, whatever the origin of his name, is beneficent.

The maleficent aspect of the weather/sky is named Vrtra in Indic mythology,
and the winding snake symbolizes the whirlwind, storm-floods, and, somewhat
incongruously (for us), drought.

You will be on the wrong track if you analyze Indra as meaning something
harmful.

Your reconstruction of the earlier form behind Indra is wrong.

The first syllable must derive from *yAn-.


Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Swiftness of Indra


>
> 1) Alexander Lubotsky's suggestion that *indra does not conform to
> the expected Indo-Iranian vocalization, and may, therefore, be a non-
> IE word;
> ==========
> It's absurd to start with the wrong root
> and then declare the word must be a loanword
> because the wrong root does not provide the expected result....
> A.
> ==============
> 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'.
> =============
> Considering the fact that Indra belongs to
> the Second class of tripartite ideology : warriors.
>
> I suggest *?int?ara is PIE :
> ?i "the one who"
> n- "is not"
> t?ar "true, righteous, orderly"
>
> PIE *d_r- true has #t?- as initial.
>
> Burns temples, kills cattle, etc
>
> Arnaud.
> =============
> 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
>
> ==========
> This pontic = PIE family looks really nice !!
> I agree with Colarusso.
> A.
> =============
>
>
>