--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...>
wrote:
> "...for instance, that the god Tvas.t.ar is also mentioned in the
> Avesta as a fashionerof animals pleads for a high antiquity of
> this tradition; cf. Boyce, 1975 p.81f... and he concludes that the
> term tvas.t.ar- originally must have been identical with the
> Avestic word thwo:r&s^tar-, i.e. âshaperâ or âfashionerâ.
>
> _Struggles of Gods: Papers of the Groningen Work Group for the
> Study of the History of Religions_.
Both the Vedic and the Avestan words are said to be from Proto-Indo-
Iranian *turs^tar- (or *tu_r&s^tar-, where /-/ denotes a glide
and /&/ a syllabic resonant). For reconstruction, see Alexander
Lubotsky's article at
http://www.ieed.nl/lubotsky/pdf/avestan%20thworeshtar.pdf
> "Tvas.tr thus became the preceptor of men, and as he existed from
> time immemorial, he was called Jurat Tvastr, or the ancient
> Tvas.tr, which was corrupted into Zara-thustra^ and still further,
> into Zoroaster."
>
> [...]
>
> This attempt to relate Zarathustra to an euhemerized Tvastr-like
> Avestan Divine Craftsman is interesting, instead of his name's
> usual etymologies "camel-driver", or "golden-camel".
For a review of all the proposed etymologies for the name
Zarathus^tra, see R. Schmitt's _Encyclopaedia Iranica_ article at
http://www.iranica.com/articles/sup/Zoroaster_the_name.html
What all etymologizers agree upon is, as pointed out by Schmitt,
that the second element in this name is Avestan us^tra-'camel':
"Much has been said about the etymology of the Avestan and in
general the Iranian forms of this name as well as about their
attribution to certain dialects. The only point universally agreed
upon is that the second element is Av. us^tra- 'camel' (it is found
in other anthroponyms also)."
Thus, the second element cannot be Avestan thwo:r&s^tar- ~ Vedic
tvas.t.ar- 'creator, fashioner, shaper'. The etymology you
unknowingly quoted is from Abinas Chandra Das' book _Rgvedic India_
(Calcutta 1918) -- see at
http://tinyurl.com/38bqey
This book in question is by now unreadable. It claims such crazy
things as that the beginning of Vedic culture is from 25,000 to
20,000 BCE, that the Vedic Aryans had been living in South Asia from
time immemorial, and that they contributed to the formative stages
of all the civilizations of the Ancient World (including Egypt,
Mesopotamia, the Levant, southern Europe etc.). Das' Zarathus^tra
< "Jurat-Tvas.t.ar" etymology is, of course, a kind of "Sanskrit
first" etymology justified by the absurd dating of Sanskrit by that
author.
Regards,
Francesco