Re: Mitanni and Matsya

----- Original Message -----

From: Francesco Brighenti

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 9:07 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Mitanni and Matsya

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Patrick Ryan" <proto-language@ ...>
wrote:

> [I had written:]
>
> > I am personally among those who think that the Rigvedic Aryans
> > were not familiar with the ocean because their settlement areas
> > (the Greater Panjab, including parts of Afghanistan) were very
> > far from the nearest seashore.
>
> A legitimate consideration. But do you believe PIE originated in
> Turkey? If it did, oceans would have been familiar from the earliest
> times.

No, Patrick, I don't believe PIE originated in Turkey. The best
solution to the problem of the PIE homeland is, in my layman's
opinion, to place it in the Pontic-Caspian region.

***

Well, I do.

***

I don't believe that the speakers of Proto-Indo-Iranian were familiar
with the sea. Maybe the Caspian shores, or the Sea of Aral, but
certainly not oceans. By the way, I didn't know that Turkey is
surrounded by an ocean! :^)

***

Turkey is practically a peninsula between the Black  and Mediterranean Seas.

***

Varun.a is attested only in the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of Indo-Iranian,
whose ancestral speakers, I assume, lived in the land-locked regions
of Central Asia (the steppe lands of the Andronovo cultural horizon).
They knew of no sea-god, and Varun.a, indeed, isn't originally a sea-
god.

Regards,
Francesco

***

Is Poseidon a god of the sea? Even though his name  contains 'river'?

Would you settle for 'god of the waters', icnluding rivers, and any seas with which they might have been familiar?

 

Patrick

 

***