Re: Asian Migration to Scandinavia

At 4:08:22 PM on Monday, October 20, 2008, raucousd wrote:

[...]

> (2) Francesco wrote:

>>Yes, the etymology of the Avestan term a:tar ~ a:qr (see
>>A. Lubotsky's IA etym. database) *'fire' (n.) > 'fire-god'
>>(m.) is still unknown.

>>On the contrary, R.gvedic atri 'a devourer; name of a
>>r.s.i' is from *at-tri, i.e. from the IA root ad- 'to eat,
>>consume' (cf. atra for *at-tra, meaning both 'a devourer,
>>demon' and 'food'; atrin 'a devourer, demon').

>>The term atri is once used in the R.gveda (2.85) as an
>>epithet of the fire-god Agni, but this does not mean it
>>was a cognate of Avestan a:tar.

> I find it odd that anyone would say that the etymology of
> atar is unknown, and it's also curious that the Skt. words
> atharvan, more or less `fire priest' and Atharvaveda, (one
> of the vedas) are also said to have no etymology. I don't
> have Lubotsky, which you refer to often, but I'll try to
> find it.

You can find it (and others) at
<http://www.ieed.nl/%5Cindex2.html>.

> Here is what I used:

> *Haeus(os), a goddess of dawn or the sun, e.g. Ushas, many
> examples, (p. 409, 410, 432, Oxford Introduction to
> Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World'',
> by J.P. Mallory and Douglas Q. Adams, Oxford University
> Press, Oxford, 2006), which includes Hittite as^s^u `lord,
> god.' Approximately the same info is included in the
> Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, J.P. Mallory and
> Douglas Q. Adams, ed., Fitzroy Dearborn, London, 1997,
> which I also use. Under Haeusos in EIEC p. 148, they
> include Lat. Aurora, OE eastre 'goddess of springtime'
> etc., (although these obviously have various extensions.)
> They translate this root as `dawn' with a sense of `ro
> shine'.

None of this is directly pertinent to Francesco's objection:
the PIE root here underlies neither <a:tar> nor <atri>.

> *(Ha)aeust(e)ro, p. 294, 301, Oxford Intro. but see the
> form *as-t- r, "with intrusive -t- [between s and r] in
> northern dialects" given on p. 702, and 780, G&I. I think
> all of these forms are included in one or the other of
> those references.

> (Gah! diacritics! The Ha which I put in parentheses in the
> second form above is supposed to be a laryngeal with -a-
> coloring, that is the a should be in subscript. I also use
> cap. H for laryngeals to distinguish them from lower case
> h which marks an aspirate.)

Cybalist convention, insofar as there is one, is exactly the
reverse: upper-case letters indicate superscripts, so what
are traditionally called the voiced aspirates are *bH, *dH,
and *gH, while the laryngeals are *h1, *h2 (a-coloring), and
*h3 (o-coloring); *h is an unspecified laryngeal. Thus,
*h2eus(os) or *h2ews(os). Presumably there's an extra <a>
in your *(Ha)aeust(e)ro.

[...]

> Words that mean `fire' and words that mean `devourer' are
> not far apart semantically, since fire devours. This seems
> to be a common observation or metaphor among IE. Are you
> objecting to my use of the form Atri when it should be
> atra, or atrin? OK

No, the objection is to the idea that <a:tar> and <atri> are
related (and also to the idea that either is related to
<Easter>.

> (3) Piotr wrote:

>>On 2008-10-16 10:34, Francesco Brighenti wrote:

>>Why not *h2áh1-to:r- from *h2ah1- 'burn, be hot', as in
>>Pal. ha:ri, ha:nta (more widespread and better known with
>>an *-s- extension)? Cf. Albanian *a:tra: > *otrë > Geg
>>votër, Tosk vatër 'fire, hearth', and probable traces in
>>Slavic.

> You propose H2áH1-to:r, is that in Lubotsky also? I'm
> giving approx. the same form from Mallory and Adams,
> above.

But you're not: *h2ah1- 'to burn, to be hot' is a different
root from *h2aus- 'to shine', and *-to:r is a different
suffix from *-ro (in the version that considers the *t
intrusive).

[...]

> (6)
>>Rick McAllister wrote:

>>Are you (raucousd) trying to say that Easter and Ostara
>>are from a compound of os- + atar- (vel sim)? Something
>>like "God fire, God hearth"?

> It never crossed my mind. I'm basically quoting G&I plus
> Mallory & Adams and I'm fairly sure it never crossed their
> minds either. A form like Easter based on *aster, looks
> like breaking, a very common feature of Anglo-Saxon
> vowels.

The OE is <e:astre>, nom. pl. <e:astron>, from PGmc.
*austro:n-; PGmc. *au > OE /e:a/ is regular. (It also isn't
an instance of breaking, which was not triggered by a
following /s/.)

Brian