Re: Asian Migration to Scandinavia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:

>
>
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "raucousd" <raucousd@> wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Lubotsky's "Database query to Indo-Aryan inherited lexicon", based

on

> M. Mayrhofer's _Etymologisches Woerterbuch des Altindoarischen_
> (Heidelberg 1986-1996), is online. The lexical entries given by
> Mayrgofer have been in many cases revised by Lubotsky. The URL of
> this resource's search page is:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/644g4j
>
> As to Old Indo-Aryan atharvan '(fire-)priest', it is most likely
> unrelated to Old Iranian a:tar 'deified fire'. I see you here

follow

> Gemkrelidze and Ivanov, yet I must say that their hypothesis is
> contradicted by more thorough comparative research on the history

of

> this word (Skt. atharvan). On p. 12ff. of his paper available

online

> at
>
> http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/pies/pdfs/IESV/1/VVI_Horse.pdf
>
> Ivanov claims that OIA atharvan is a possible borrowing from OIr.
> a:thrauuan 'priest' (attested only in Young Avestan), which in his
> view would derive from a:tar 'deified fire'; he further speculates
> that Hurrian tari 'fire' may be a borrowing from the same root due

to

> the influence of Proto-Iranian fire cult on ancient Hurrian culture.
>
> Of course, Ivanov must defend his (and Gamkrelidze's) hypothesis of

a

> PIE homeland in Armenia,

Ok. So which homeland is Lubotsky trying to defend?



a corollary of which is that Proto-Iranian

> was spoken southeast of the Caucasus at a very early date; yet,

some

> combined linguistic evidence seems to point in another direction.
>
> The form a:thra- instead of the expected athar- in the Y.Av. term

may

> be due to influence of Avestan a:tar (= a:thr) 'fire', yet the two
> words don't seem to be cognate.

Why not MacDonnell has no problem connecting them. See p. 141

http://tinyurl.com/5aepwn


On the contrary, OIA atharvan and

> OIr. a:thrauuan seem to be true cognates, but the underlying Indo-
> Iranian noun root, *athar-, has no IE cognates and seems to be a

loan

> word from an Indo-Iranian substrate that A. Lubotsky and G.-J.
> Pinault identify with the language(s) of the Bactria-Margiana
> Archeological Complex (BMAC).
>
> The original meaning of *athar- appears to have been something
> like 'magico-religious fluid' (thus Oldenberg), and the stem *-rwa-
> or *-rb(H)a- is common to other alleged BMAC words borrowed into

IIr.

> as substrate words; thus:
>
> BMAC substrate *atHarwan 'priest' > OIA atharvan, OIr. a:thrauuan
>
> BMAC substrate *c'arwa 'name of a deity' > OIA s'arva 'name of a
> god', OIr. sauruua 'name of a daeva'
>
> BMAC substrate *g(H)andH(a)rw/b(H)a 'a mythical being' > OIA
> gandharva, OIr. gan.d@...@ba
>
> G.-J. Pinault, ("Une nouvelle connexion entre le substrat indo-
> iranien et le tokharien commun", _Historische Sprachforschung_ 116
> (2003), 175-189) has connected this hypothesized BMAC substrate

word

> *atHar- with Proto-Tocharian *etre 'hero' (Toch.A atär, B etre).

This

> lexical comparison is part of a wider set of triangulations among
> OIA, OIr. and Toch. attested lexemes that allow Lubotsky, Pinault

and

> Witzel to argue for the existence of the said Central Asian
> substratum of the BMAC as a source for many words in those three
> ancient languages that appear related, but that have no convincing

IE

> etynology.
>

Now, which homeland is Witzel trying to defend?

> Regards,
> Francesco
>

M. Kelkar