From: stlatos
Message: 62300
Date: 2008-12-28
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: george knysh
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 1:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Interpreting some Scythian names
>
>
> ***GK: All that might well be so. But the fact remains that however
you technically dearticulate "AUKHATA" you still come up with terms
intimating a sense that is identical with the names retained for us by
Herodotus and Pliny (plus Pliny's sources). ...*****
>
> Not quite. I really can't see a way to decompose Aukhatai into
"earth" + "diggers" in a way that any specialist would find acceptable
-- not, at any rate, as "au-" + "khata-". The division au-khata- is
almost certainly wrong in the first place, for reasons I hope to be
able to discuss later.
The goddess of the earth was Apía (if that includes the suffix of
loc. *-ya:x then ap- was the root); p>w before k wouldn't be odd,
*khantra- *khat.a- 'digger' wouldn't be unusual (loss of n in *mazant-
> Octa-masadas; tr > t (or t. which couldn't be indicated in G) in
other agent nouns like *wira-martra- > *wirmatra- > ormáta-, oiórpata-
'man-killing' (with written ou- or o- for w- being commonplace)).
A change of sr > s. is also likely (*bhiru-akstra- 'hating the
cowardly' > *bhruksra- > *bhruks.a- > phrúxa; *ma:ti:r ma:spli: >
*marti impsra > Artímpasa).
But, of course, it's unlikely the -p- in Apía is original; brixába
'ram's forehead' should be *vrixs.-aba- (Oss wærykk 'lamb', *xWokW- >
G o:^p- 'face') with kW>p (med. p>b as in tapita- 'warm' > Tabití
'Histíe: (goddess of the hearth)'. Since Europe literally meant
'broad face' the description of the ground as a sur-face seems
understandable. The change kW>w before K would be even simpler. As
additional ev.:
> ***GK: ... This should be a cue for linguists to work harder and see
if they can discover some way to overcome "formal difficulties". Even
taking into account that good old Herodotus may have occasionally
garbled things. After all they wouldn't want to be historical amateurs
would they?(:=))*****
>
> Well, well, well... Work harder? We do work hard. Some way to
overcome "formal difficulties"? I hope you aren't suggesting that we
should relax our methodology and lower our critical standards in order
to get preconceived results. That would be very bad science. From the
fact that the Aukhatai were "agricultural Scythians" it doesn't
automatically follow that their ethnonym must mean "earth-diggers",
"farmers", or the like. Herodotus, with all due respect, offers many a
completely spurious etymology
>
You have no way of knowing this.
>
-- e.g. Arimaspoi, the allegedly cyclopic Scythians, from "arima"
meaning 'one' and "spou" meaning 'eye' (or "ari" 'one' + "maspo"
'eye', as other auctores divide it).
>
Skt s.ad.aksó: 'six-eyed' shows the cluster from kWs > ks. so kWs >
ps > sp should be fine (especially with other examples of kW>p). I've
already mentioned final o: > u: recently. Met. of ps > sp would be no
different than pr > fr > rf.
Since there are so many different possibilities for the first (one,
only, lacking, defective, half (or even round, wheel, comparing the
Cyclopes), I'll leave that for later.
I agree that he wasn't fluent in Scythian (for example, not knowing
the plural of -spoú was *-spá:s or similar). Also, of course, he
didn't have a modern grasp of linguistics (that if a word ends in a-
and is added to one beginning in -a which merge into -a- it needn't be
divided so only one possess the -a-).
>
If I reject such naive guessing, does it make me a historical amateur?
>
> Piotr
You made a guess with no evidence at all (not even the
unknown-to-you but possible ev. Herodotus could have had), saying
-aspo- could be 'horse' (assuming it was the name of a real group
named for a real characteristic instead of that of fictional one-eyed
people named for an inhuman ch. (like s.ad.aksó:)). You have no ev.
that H. made any guess at all (I think he heard rightly that it meant
'one-eyed').