--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
> NB : DRW does not stand for HighPressure Nuclear Plant.
Why not just stick to the argument and spare us your
stand-up routine, for, like Patrick, you're just not
very funny.
> I didn't claim Varuna is a loan from Hurri
Oh but that is _precisely_ what you said. I quote from
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/56487
where you wrote:
> In Hurri,
>
> Varuna is uruwaanasiil [uruwanosil] Indra is indara [int?ara]
>
> To be frank, I can't believe a second that Hurri borrowed these
> words from Indic.
>
> It's the other way that sounds possible : Hurri > Indo-iranian.
>
> Indo-Iranians came empty-handed and got what they discovered on
> the spot.
>
> Arnaud
We have in the quote above an arrow pointing from 'Hurri'
to 'Indo-Iranian', and the claim that Indo-Iranians came
to Mitanni "empty-handed" and got Varuna and Indra "on the
spot".
> I wrote that the usual assertion that Hurri uruwanaasiil
> is a LW from Indic is obviously impossible for phonetic
> reasons.
Those reasons aren't so obvious though. Why don't you
explain them?
> I also consider that the same applies to Indara [int?ara]
> because -d- in Hurri points at [t?] glottalized stop.
What do you mean by saying that it "points at [t?]"?
All that is relevant is whether or not the sound in
question, regardless of fine phonetic detail, was the
closest sound available in the Hurrian repertoire to
the Indo-Aryan 'd' which it needed to represent.
If you're trying to say that there was a closer sound
to Indo-Aryan 'd' in the Hurrian phonological system
than the one used in 'Indara', which you say "points
at [t?]", then simply say so, as that would be of some
significance. As it stands now, you've yet to offer
any convincing reason for believing they weren't the
simple Indo-Aryan loanwords, found in a list of several
other Indo-Aryan loanwords, that they appear to be.
> I added in a different mail that Varuna is not attested in
> Avestic.
>
> So we can hypothesize that Varuna is not inherited in Indic
> and might be substratic.
A Sanskrit or Vedic word's failure to have an Iranian
cognate doesn't by itself mean that it's necessarily
a loanword from outside of Indo-Aryan. For one thing
a cognate could have existed but escaped attestation,
and for another Varuna's name could easily have been
a newly coined word within Indo-Aryan using inherited
root and suffix, needing only have come into existence
sometime before the composition of the Vedas, if indeed
Varuna doesn't ascend to Proto-Indo-Iranian as you are
suggesting.
Please look again at the etymology which bases the name
on the root vr- 'enclose, confine, restrict' and the
suffix -una-, and then look at the role of Varuna in the
Rig Veda itself, where we are even told explicitly at
one point that Varuna 'pra vrnoti', and then tell us if
you still can't see it as anything but a loanword.
David