From: tgpedersen
Message: 60899
Date: 2008-10-15
>If this is any help
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Raucous D <raucousd@> wrote:
>
> > The other element is the "Aesir-Asura correspondence", the close
> > correspondence between names of Germanic gods and names for
> > Zoroastrian gods which was noticed by language scholars long
> > ago... This seems to put the Germanic-speaking people on the
> > Zoroastrian side of the Pandemonium, that is the trend in which
> > the Zoroastrians demonized the devas of the Sanskrit speakers
> > while the Sanskrit speakers demonized the asuras of the
> > Zoroastrians.
> > For this reason, a deva (daeva) is a demon in Avestan, and an
> > asura is a demon in Sanskrit, especially later Sanskrit. The
> > pattern is much wider than this: it includes many more gods and
> > also other languages, both Indo-European and Semitic.
>
> Could you kindly further elaborate on these points? My received
> wisdom is that the deva/daiva vs. asura/Ahura(mazda) polarization
> only developed in religious cultures (Vedic, Zoroastrian)
> descending from the common Indo-Iranian stock. Where do you find
> traces, and especially *linguistic* traces, of this polarization
> in other IE language groups, or in Semitic?