Irish Chronology of the Irano-Afghan and Abrahamic People

So a while back I read Charles Vallancey's "A Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland." In it he makes some pretty interesting links between Irish literature and Iranian literature. Of course Bob X the "go to guy for linguistics" around here has warned me that a lot of Vallancey's work is pseudo-linguistic in contrast to what we know today. One etymological relationship Vallancy points out and is often cited even in recent literature is the connection between the national designation Ireland and Iran. BX sounds pretty sure of himself that the Eire prefix which developed into Ireland or the earlier Irish form Eran does not share the same root as Iran or earlier form Eran or even earlier Airyanam in the language of the Airya "Aryans" and that Eire actually developed from the Greek form hyper + borea. BX's explanation doesn't sound unlikely, but in "Indo-European Poetry" M.L. West points out explains that the both the name Iran and perhaps the Irish form Eire developed from the same root as the Zoroastrian Airyaman akin to Airyanam and mentions other possible cognates in other Indo-European languages including Irish like the Irish Eremon, the name of Odin iormunr, Ol Norse Iormungandr "the world serpent" Old English eormencyn "mighty race" and he also mentions something which reminded me of what Vallancey was saying. He mentions an Irish man "who drove the Tuatha De Danann, the people who stand for the old gods in Irish mythology, underground. He was the legendary first king of the sons of Mil, the Goildelic Celts, that is, in our terms, of the first Indo-Europeans in Ireland (unless the earlier Fir Bolg represent a prior settlement of 'Belgic' P-Celts). This reminded me of Vallancey because he put forth that the battles fought mentioned in Irish literature actually took place nearer in proximity to Iran or Iran at a time when Iran was called Eran by the Parthians and that this is where the term Eran is actually derived. J. Makkay says Danae and her son Perseus recall the names of iranian tribes, the Turanian Danavas and the Persians. Similarly, Vallancey links the Tuatha De Danaan to the Turanians mentioned in Irano-Afghan literature who worshipped the Daeva or gods and who were at war with the Zoroastrians. Finally, the "Book of the Taking of Ireland" actually mentions one Persian in particular, Xerxes. But that's not all. The chronological account of events it lists is as such:

"ARIUS, the fourth king of Assyria, had thirty years, and Ireland was under the children of Partholon during that time. The birth of Isaac son of Abram in his, and the death of Reu when when he was king....XERXES, who was called Baelus, the sixth king of Assyria, had thirty years. In the thirteenth year of his reign Abram died." - Trans. Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister, The Book of the Taking of Ireland, pg. 37

Partholon sounds like it could be akin to the national designation of the Parthavan "Parthians" especially if the v/l allephone can be explained. Partholon was the son of Sera which brings to mind both Zerubabel and Zoroaster. But the the most striking thing about this chronology is that it describes a much more contracted timeline for when Abram "Abraham" actually lived. It places Abraham around the same time as Xerxes.

 

This is kinda like the Bible code to me. Yep, you sure can pull a lot out of the Bible by listing all the consonants in order and reading them up, down, slant-wise within 5 or 10 or 20 characters. Continuing in the Irish vein, if one does the exact same thing to that modern hymn of the Gaelic heart, "Finnegan's Wake", one can verify that Finn McCool was actually Michael Collins and anna livia plurabelle gave birth to the Rh negative Neaderthal that was the father of the Indic-Iranic-Irishic nation (see pages 1, 3 and 666).


Panta Rhei! (Everything Flows!)

 

When I think of Bible Code I think of all this esoteric symbolism embedded between the lines in the Biblical literature. The Irish chronology doesn't hide anything. It's pretty overt about what happened thought it may be, as BobX put it, a "garbled" recollection of the course of events. And it's really hard not to deny ALL the connections that Vallancey suggests. Its actually kind of amazing that the Irish chronologers as well as the Greeks were able to remember what they did like in regards to Aryan "Irano-Afghan" culture especially when you think about how little people West of the Irano-Afghan zone know about Irano-Afghan culture 2500 years later. For example, pretty much every Aryan (Irano-Afghan) has heard of Zartusht or Zoroaster. Outside the confines of the Irano-Afghan zone only a select few do.

 

Interesting. My mother is Irish, as is my father. Their grand parents came off the boat. I understand Gaelic. But I have no clue as to what is said in Farsi (Iranian persian). I also know that what I've been taught and what you are telling do not meet in the middle.

 

Here, I have a theory:

The Celts (a name given to such folk in 1701 by an Englishman...origianlly they were called Gauls or Gaelic as far as 250 BC), arrived on the Emerald Isle circa 350 BC. The "Tuahtha de D'dannon" welcomed them as kinsmen and brothers. Then the Tuahtha died. Not because of war, simply due to disease their immune systems weren't used to. The new Gaelic people so afraid of death, refused to let the "originals" disappear from existence. So they made them into faeries, imps, leprichans, and trolls. This way their memory would live on. The Gaelic folk could read and write, but refused to out of some fear of bad omen. It was rare that anything was written for over 700 years, until Patrick of England arrived as a slave.

 

Most of those hypotheses are difficult to prove or even find strong evidence. I am 3/4 Scottish Highlander and 1/4 Ulster Irish. I have to concede lack of knowledge to the two linguistic chaps here. Scots Gaelic was my first language in childhood, and learned the German language of English in grade school.

Greeks had a name for Celts called Keltoi, which most scholars believe, is the origin of the name. We do not generally call ourselves Celts until recently. We are Albannach (Scottish Gaels) or Eireannach (Irish Gaels). Some cultural myths in various European and Asian groups strongly suggest that Indo-Europeans played a major part in making alterations in the native Europeans of the West and Asians of the East. The other thing Indo-Europeans did was influence the religions of the people whom they conquered in the vast migrations of the 6th Century BCE.

We see the latter in the common characteristic of all people from the Cro-Magnon or Maglamose people of Western Europe, to the Tocharian, Kushans, Iranian, and Indian in the East and the central group including the Balts, Slavs, Thraco-Cimmerians, Scyths, Sarmations, Iasgians, Achaeans, Doric, and Ionian, and Hittites.

The swath of land from Europe to Asia Minor to Iran, India, and northern China had religions altered by Indo-European conquest. The basic pattern was a Father God, a son of God who was also the Sun God, and a messenger god, with a female Goddess (Brigit and Virgin Mary.) You do not see any of this in the Semitic Religions.

Another factor difficult to see is the influence of long distance trade between these people. Some words of foreign traders can end up in the native dictionaries.

Indo-European Religious relationships in Eurasia likely in my opinion altered the unique Jesus Religion of the first Jesus followers. He was kind, compassionate, wise, moral, and went further than Buddha did. Unfortunately, that early Jesus Religion was watered down by Indo-European religions by cultural diffusion or syncretism. Perhaps without realising it, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, and Anatolians began to view Jesus more as a Celtic, Teutonic, or Iranian warrior hybrid offspring of Father God with a human virgin. Many had him resurrect (not a Jewish belief.)

Later, in the interests of Constantine I, Theodosius I, and Theodosius II there was a conscious effort to Indo-Europeanise the Jesus Cults into a NEW RELIGION, which they called Christianity. In the Indo-European form, Jesus was the Sun God (celebrated on Sunday) and his mythical birth at the Winter Solstice (when all Sun Gods are reborn.)

Tracing word origins is not my area of study. The new area of studying connections is genetics. A British study showed that the DNA of Irish, Highland Scots, and Welsh is most like that of Basques and Etruscan, than French, Germans, Spaniards, Non-Tuscany Italians. This of course has nothing to do with imposed religious beliefs first from the Indo-European invaders and secondly from the Indo-Europeanised Christians.

Amergin

 

Interesting reading. I shall ponder on your thoughts. Thanks.

v/r

Q

 

With a Burr on the tongue and a lilth of me breathe and with the timbre of a Dylan Thomas I say Lift a Glass of Stout to such a fine tongue swagging banter as best as any I've heard in quite awhile.

Cheers all around for the entralling repartee and cerebral repose of such vintage.

Hazzah Hurrah!

 

The "Book of the Taking of Ireland" consistently refers to the Medes, Cyaxeres, Astyages, Xerxes (as the "High King of the World" for what that is worth), and Scythia. It describes how this Partholon son of Sera was a Greek, but mentions how he came from Scythia which is not a Greek anomaly. Its an Iranian anomaly. Also Partholon had to sail across the Caspian Sea which is much closer to Iran, and nowhere near Greece. There are two possible explanations for Partholon's confusion with the Greeks that I can think of 1.) lots of histories confound their histories with the Greeks. The Nordic people thought that the figures of their myth originated in Troy and the Irish chronologers were also mistaken in this sense 2.) the Irish chronologers are confusing the Perso-Greek dynasty that preceded the Parthavan (Parthian) in the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) zone who they call Partholon.

 

Eire is not a "prefix", it's the whole word. There is no "earlier Irish form Eran": the (modern) genitive case Eireann "of Ireland" is the usual way to make it an adjective "Irish"; the earlier form is Ibheri where "h" is used in Gaelic to mark consonants that are often weakened or dropped (that is, it might be pronounced "Iberi" or "Iveri" or "Iweri" or "Ieri"), whose adjectival form Iberinn is source of Latin Hibernia. The only connection to "Iran" is the usage of -n as an adjectival ending. I never connected it to Hyperborea: I have no idea where you got that, but "Hyperborea" was Greek for the source of the amber-and-fur trade (like the silk-and-dye trade between Rome and China, it was all conducted through intermediaries so the two people at the ends didn't know each other), which would be Baltic and Vandic people. The "Iberian" name is pre-Indo-European in origin.

Yes, forms like "eorman" look like the Indo-Iranian "aryaman" meaning a "man" who behaves in a "noble / hospitable / honorable" manner. It can also take on the sense of "our ethnic group" (as the only people who know how to behave), as in this Old English form eormencyn where cyn is "kin" (in the modern spelling; the pronunciation has not changed), so it is the race ("kin") of "eor" men (however, west of Indo-Iranian the word seldom seems to have become the usual ethnic self-designation).

The Belgics were not a "prior" settlement, but a very late invasion, 3rd century BC. One branch of them went east, invaded the Balkans, then were hired by an Anatolian king and took territory around Ankara; Greeks called them "Galatians" (that is, Gauls) but preserve a native name "Tolistobogoi" which would be their distorted pronunciation of Tuatha Bolgi. It is from this branch that we get accurate dates on their migration; but the main body went west, conquered "Belgium" (of course) and much of the southeast of Britain (Julius Caesar notes that the chiefs in that area were descended from kin of the Belgae on the continent). They had pretty much petered out by the time some of them raided into Ireland (if it weren't for the mentions in the "Book of the Takings of Ireland" we wouldn't know much about it).

The Goidelic or "Q" Celts had been there well earlier; within the "Book of Takings" it is probably the Tuatha Danaan who represent the coming of Celtic languages. What actually happened to that ethnic group is that they imposed themselves as a conquering aristocracy so that their language became dominant, and then they intermingled with all the pre-existing groups, like usual, so that the genetics are largely from the prior "Iberian" populace; within folklore, the heroic ancestors become deified wholly or partially, as the bards contrast the disappointing leaders of their time with an imagined Golden Age in the past (again, like usual). The "sons of Mil" I don't think are anybody real: just a Christian tack-on at the end of the story so that the present Irish aren't descended from all those heathens (the sons of Mil are supposed to have slaughtered everybody and totally replaced them, as in the book of Joshua; that's a commonly told story, which is nowhere very true to the facts).

No, it does not mention any Persians whatsoever. It is talking about "Assyrians" except that the author does not know any Assyrian names at all, and randomly assigns to his "Assyrian" kings any names from the east (anywhere in the east) that he happens to have heard of.

Have you ever heard a single word I have said to you???
From the very first time we met, I have been repeatedly saying to you that it is senseless to say things like "could be akin" when all that you have is "there are some letters in common". You have less commonality than it looks like in the spelling, since the "th" is not the same in Gaelic (where it means that the "t" might either be pronounced "t" or completely silent) as in the transcribed Iranian (where it means the "th" dental fricative as in English); and Partolon/Parolon is a personal name, not an ethnic designation, as contrasted with Parthava, which is not derived from any ancestor-name but was purely ethnic/geographic. The "v/l" that you are proposing is a bizarre sound-shift; if you are serious about it, the evidence that you need is a dozen more cases of the same correspondence, "l" in Gaelic where there is "v" in Iranian, but since I doubt you could even find a single such case, forget about trying to say things like "they could be akin".

No, it doesn't contract the timeline for Abraham; it proposes "Xerxes" as a name for an "Assyrian" king living over a thousand years before the Persians existed, which is nonsense, but they had to make up names for their Assyrian kings from somewhere.

They knew absolutely zero about any Irano-Afghan culture. They had heard a name of somebody who invaded Greece from the east, but knew that name only in the Greek form, and thought it was a generic name for eastern kings from long ago and far away, not even knowing that Assyrians and Persians were different people.

Which is exactly how it was back then, also.

The spelling Keltoi occurs sometimes in ancient Greek; the pronunciations and spellings with "g" instead of "k" were always more common, so I don't really understand why "Celt" has become the usual form nowadays (the pronunciation as "Selt" is particularly barbarous!)

Actually, Ireland was literate surprisingly early. The usual system was called the Ogham, a system of notch-marks in groups of from one to five in various orientations making an alphabet of twenty, evidently derived from a sign-language finger-alphabet (not for communication with the deaf, but so that educated people could send messages to each other that the ignorant would not pick up on) but commonly carved on pieces of wood; a more cryptic system Beth-Luis-Nion used bundles of sticks with the species of wood (beth is "birch") or the shape (nion is "forked") indicating the letters (the whole code is no longer known). It was suitable principally for short messages, but could also be used for mnemonic tags summarizing some long recitation (such as a bardic poem, or a law code).

Wood, of course, is not something that survives well in wet climates. We get our first examples of Ogham from the 4th century when the custom of carving tombstones came into vogue (stones are not in great supply in Ireland) and then some manuscripts in the post-Christian period after parchment became known. Some skeptics think the script is no older than the 4th century when we start to see it; but linguistically, the Ogham spellings often reflect forms more archaic than the Old Irish of the period, going back to Proto-Q-Celtic (whenever that was). MacAlister has a theory that the system wandered out to Ireland from Gauls in southern France and northern Italy who invented it in the 6th century BC when Greeks were settling Massilia (Marseilles) and Etruscans moving north; but his associations of particular Ogham characters to Greek/Etruscan letters seem arbitrary and forced. So the date could be anywhere in between there, but I'm inclined to think MacAlister is right in putting the date of origin early, even though all the details of his theory are dubious.

No, Amergin, there is no Indo-European paganism that looks anything like that; instead the basic pattern is a multiplicity of gods and goddesses. If a god is called "Father", it is because he has a huge number of children, of both genders, not a single son. The role of the sun and moon is generally much smaller than in Middle Eastern paganisms, and the sun may or may not be among the children of the "father" figure: among the Celts the sun-god Lugh (from the non-Indo-European "wolf/sun" totem) is prominent but is not one of the children of Dagda (and Arduina from the "bear/moon" totem becomes associated to the hunt, but disassociated from the moon); the Germanics do not have a sun-god or moon-god at all ("Loki" from the wolf/sun figure is completely disassociated from the sun, and not related to the Aesir's family tree); among the Greeks, Apollo and Artemis are indeed children of Zeus (or "Zeopater") but they may or may not be identified with the sun and moon (often instead the sun and moon are Helios and Selene, cousins of Zeus with some mythical stories but no particular cult); in India, the sun-god S'urya disappears after the Vedic period and never seems to have been major (he was originally the god of the South direction and the Summer season); in Iran, Mithra did not become a sun-god until very late in the post-Zoroastrian period (originally a god of friendship / contract / alliance).

And I have called you many times before on your peculiar invention of the "messenger god": very seldom is there any deity at all that you could call that, and when there is, it is a very minor figure (Iris the rainbow in Greece was a messenger, for example). You grab random deities and dub them "messenger gods" for no discernible reason, just to create some pseudo-paganism which is really a weak copy of Christianity.

The major mutations of the ideology happened in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when Christianity was still illegal. The arguments in the councils from Nicaea onward were about the subtleties. From the late 2nd century, the orthodox Christians (those accepting the four gospels including "John" in nearly its present form) identified Jesus with the Word of God, through whom everything in the universe was created (that is, at the "Big Bang" when God said "Let there be light!" God was creating light by speaking the Word). The debate between Arius and his opponents at Nicaea was over the question of whether Jesus was created at the beginning of time as the first creation, or was uncreated and equally eternal with God; when it became settled that the divinity of Jesus was the same as the divinity of the Father, the question moved on to how that related to the humanity of Jesus.

Now, when the Goths converted to Arianism, they understood it in a cruder fashion, that Jesus was created by God at the time of the virgin birth, and that of course is a paganization of the religion-- but that is not what Constantine or Theodosius was establishing in the Roman Empire. The Gentile Christianity from Paul up to Constantine incorporated a lot of Zoroastrian and Hellenistic philosophical concepts that were alien to the Jewish tradition (and possibly not what Jesus really had in mind). But these philosophies are not the same as the crude mythologies of the ancestral paganism.

Blarney go bragh!

 

The chronology speaks of 3 migrations into Ireland. That of Partholon, Nemed, and the Tuatha De Danann and describes all of them to have had their origins in Scythia. The original spelling for Scythia in "The Taking of Ireland" is Scithiia. There is also an association with the name Partholon and the name Ceasair which looks like it could have something to do with the Parthians and the Romans.

Well you'll have to explain to me how they randomly assign them then because from what I see there is a clear distinction between the kings of Assyria and the Persians.

"XERXES, ARMAMITRES...BOLOCHUS" - 33

Here also -mitres appears to have some association with Aryan (Irano-Afghan) names like Mithras and Mithradates.

"Now Ireland was waste thereafter, for a space of thirty years after Partholon, till Nemed son of Agnoman of the Greeks of Scythia came thither, with his four chieftains; [they were the four sons of Nemed]. Four-four ships had he on the Caspian Sea for a year and a half, but his ship alone reach Ireland. These are the four chieftains, Starn, Larbonel the Soothsayer, Annind, and Fergus Red-side: they were the four sons of Nemed.

Twelve plains were cleared by Nemed in Ireland: Mag Cera, Mag Eba, mag Cuile Toland, and Mag Luirg in Connachta, Mag Seired in Tethba; Mag Tochair in Tir Eogan; Mag Seimne in Araide; Mag Macha in Airgialla; Mag Muirthemne in Brega; Mag Bernsa in Laighne; Leccmag and Mag Moda in Mumu." - 123

Does Mag mean "great" here?

"Fergus Redside s. Nemed and his son, Britan Mael s. Fergus (settled) in Moin Conain, and filled that country with their children." - 149

An association between Nemed of Scythia and the tribal and place-name Britain.

"BELLEPARES was in the high ingship of the world when Nemed came into Ireland out of Scythia...SOSARMUS 29 " In his time Troy was captured by Hercules against Laomedon 60 years from that capture to the last capture, by Agamemnon and Peleus (sic read Achilles) and the Greeks against Priam and his sons...MITREUS" - 159

Another association with Mithras. And what can you tell me about Sosarmus? His name is curious to me. Could his name be a contraction of Zarathushtra-Ahura-Mazda?

This was an interesting interjection in the notes: "Artoat is a misreading for Iarbonel, in Kg it becomes further corrupted to Artuur, and explained harmonistically as a son born to Nemed in Ireland incidentally opening the door to a possibility of linking up, by misapprehension, the Nemed story with the Arthurian legend." - 195

"In the end of the rule of the Chaldeans the Fir Bolg came into Ireland Baltassar, the last ruler of the Chaldeans, was then king of the world. The kingdom of the Persians thereafter." - 35

Here's a clear reference to the Persians as distinct from the Assyrians.

"SOSARMUS, 30 years. In his reign was the last king of Assyria Baltassar son of Labashi-Marduk
MEDIDUS. 20 years. In his reign Salmanazar took the first captivity of the Ten Tribes....CYAXARES 28 years. It is in his reign that Nabuchodonosor was in Babylon
And ASTYAGES 8 years, until Cyrus son of Darius, son of his own daughter, deposed him. In his reign Nabuchodonosor burt the Temple of Solomon, after he previously devastated Jerusalem." - 163

Here we have Medidus which sounds awfully similar to Mede, and is followed by Aryan names like Cyaxares, Astyages, Cyrus, and Darius.

"Bellepares was king of the world when Nemed came into Ireland. In his tenth year it was that Nemed came from the east with Cecrops for its first king. In that time was the beginning of the reign of the Sons of Israel in Egypt. In that time further. Sru s. Esru s. Gaedel Glas was expelled from Egypt...Sru son of Esru was in exile in Scythia at that time, as well as his son, Eber Scot." - 137

Here Sru and Esru look like they could be variations of Syria and Assyria or Aesir. Both Sr and Esru came from Scythia.

"At Sru s Esru the relationship of Partholon and Nemed and the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha De Danann and the sons of Mil of Spain unite. And each of these peoples had the Scotic language: this is evident from the story that when Ith son of Breogan came into Ireland, and he and the Tuatha De Danann conversed, it is through Scotic he conversed with them and they with him: and they said that they were of the seed of Rifath. Others say that Nemed was of the seed of the son whom Partholon left in the East, namely, of the seed of Agla son of Partholon.

He came out of Scythia westward, voyaging on the Caspian Sea, till he came in his wandering to the great ocean in the north." - 129

The Caspain Sea is nowhere near Greece or Assyria. The Capsian Sea is just north of where Iran is today.

"Lot equalled all her troop in strength,
the mother of Cicul son of Gumour
daughter of Neir rough and hairy,
from Mount Caucasus of the crooked top." - 75

Another example of these invading people coming from a region closer in proximity to the Aryan (Irano-Afghan) zone than Greece. Here it would appear to be the Scytho-Cimmerians.

Yes, but that is generally how it goes when a military elite invades weaker civilizations. It doesn't take a lot of them. And because there a fewer of them it's obvious that their genes would be hard to trace centuries down the road. (Which begs the question WHY THE HECK DO YOU GUYS CONSTANTLY THINK THAT THE IRANO-AFGHANS ARE ARABS??? There is some serious lack of educating being done here.) Yet the one thing that does linger on is their language, though I would expect that because the pre-existing language groups were not accustomed to certain sounds in the new language that their version of it becomes more garbled due to accentual differences. So though these "sons of Mil" if they existed in some shape or form may not have dominated the pre-existing societies biologically, but they may have virtually wiped out their native or pre-Indo-European language. This is why I think you're being to stringent when it comes to determining morphological relationships. You depend solely on the linguistic aspects and tend to write off the historical relationships. I agree with two things 1.) that it is undeniable that the IE languages are related and 2.) that some IE. languages were attested before others, but that is just about as much as I am willing to accept. Just because we don't know how v shifted to l doesn't mean that it didn't happen. What about folkchanges? Or what about linguistic phenomenon wherein a language group intentionally changes their pronunciation of words to distinguish themselves form other groups? You generally wouldn't expect [z] to develop to [j]. But Vietnamese people do that. You generally wouldn't expect [h] to shift to a velar fricative, but I hear Spanish speakers do it all the time.

I think you're analysis is off. The proper chronology is as such:

SOSARMUS probably Zoroaster
Medidus the Medes
CYAXARES
Astyages
Cyrus
Darius
XERXES

And it was during this period that the OT was compiled and redacted. Because the Jews were living under a people who rejected polytheism and they had come to adopt the practice so under Aryan (Irano-Afghan) tutelage they created myths about Abraham "the non-brahman" and wed him to Sarah a from derived from Sura as in Ardi Sura Anahita and Anahita = undefiled ~ virgin.

Other etymologies which have been proposed are: Moses name derived from Mashyo "the Zoroastrian Adam" cf. Mazda who was represented by the luminaries e.g fire. Moses spoke to the burning bush. Joseph was a corruption of variant forms of Aspa which were common ethnic designations among the Indo-Iranians e.g. Ashakanian "the first Parthian dynasty." Isaac was a corruption of Saka cf. Scythian. Isaiah was obviously a corruption of Asha cf. order

 

Gwich e Moira...

Professor Bob, I'll step in as soon as you give me half a chance...

 

You can't conceal , Truth forever. Truth is immortal ,immortality is her nature.

 

I'm not sure what "chronology" we're dealing with here. There is the "Book of Takings of Ireland", which occurs in variant texts (preserving Irish manuscripts under the British occupation was often touch-and-go); then there is Charles Vallancey's original "Vindication of the Ancient History of Ireland" from 1786, found here, which I thought you were talking about; but the source you are quoting in this post appears to be some kind of later revision of Vallancey.

All of the sources have more than just three. The "Takings of Ireland" generally comes in ten books (not all present in all texts):

I. Origin of the world, following Genesis with some peculiar inputs from various Latin authors. (I think this and II are written by some Christian author, intended as a replacement for III-VII.)

II. Origin of Gaelic. One of the "72" princes who built the Tower of Babel, said to be from Scythia although with a totally Irish name, tries to reconstruct the original language of mankind from the multiple languages they found themselves speaking after the "confusion"; he teaches the true speech to his son, who marries a daughter of the Pharoah. The Gaels live in Egypt and get enslaved; they escape at the same time as Moses, but go the other direction, wandering across North Africa to end up in Spain-- then disappear until Book VIII.

III. Before the Flood, Cessair settles Ireland. Supposedly she has advance knowledge that a bad flood is coming, but thinks that it won't reach the far ends of the world. It does; Ireland is submerged with all of Cessair's people. During the Ice Age, sea-levels were so low that the English Channel and Irish Sea were all dry land, which is remembered as the country of "Lyonesse"; when the glaciers broke up, sea levels for a time went high enough that Ireland went completely under, and I think this too is a genuine preservation of memory, that people did reach Ireland before the time when it temporarily disappeared, and that society was matriarchal way back then.

IV. Partholon's people settle an Ireland which still contains numerous large lakes (the antique geography is described, again I think accurately). They have to fight off invasions from the Fomorians of northern Britain (also likely to represent Iberian, pre-Indo-European peoples) and plagues (malaria would have been a problem given the more numerous standing-water pools) and go extinct (this I do not believe, but it is a theme in this book that all the old peoples have to have vanished and been replaced completely, rather than contributing to a messy mixed ancestry for the current Irish).

V. Nemed is supposed to have been a collateral relative of Partholon (this is another theme, that each of the takers has some kind of "legitimate" inheritance claim, which we do not need to take seriously). They have continuing troubles with Fomorian chiefs like "Conan" (the name is variable, but forms of it occur for many later chiefs like Conn of Connaught so I think this was a genuine old royal name). I take the Nemedians to represent the introduction of improved agriculture to Britain (where the archaeological record is good) and thence to Ireland (presumably) in the mid-2nd-millenium BCE, and I think this was the introduction of Celtic language: the techniques (the "Celtic field") were those found earlier on the Continent in Celtic-speaking areas, and while technology can be borrowed without migration of the people, I don't think that was the case here. In Britain Celtic remained in the "P-Celtic" form not terribly different (as far as we can tell) from Gaulish, because the previous Iberian population was overwhelmed and marginalized (not necessarily conquered and slaughtered, maybe just heavily out-bred by the better-fed); the unique "Q-Celtic" of Ireland I ascribe to the mutations resulting from adoption of the language by people who used to speak something very different (in Ireland, the Iberian strain still contributes heavily to the genetic ancestry). O'Rahilly, whose interpretation is widely quoted, thinks to the contrary that "Q-Celtic" was a very late arrival, straight to Ireland from Spain with no intermediate stops, after multiple waves of "P-Celts"; I don't think it was possible in ancient times for settlers to get to Ireland without passing through Britain (sailing generally avoided open water as much as possible) so I think of "Q-Celtic" as an early arrival and its degree of divergence as a mark of its anciency.

VI. Three peoples, Fir Bolgi, Fir Dumnoin, and Fir Galloin, invade. The Bolgi's campaigns we know about. The Dumnoin were from Brittany originally, according to their own lore; in Roman Britain they controlled Cornwall (Damnonia in Latin, English Devon-shire) and also Dum-barton near Hadrian's Wall (capital of the kingdom of Strathclyde in post-Roman times, expanding over Lancashire and southern Scotland); probably the northern branch got where they were by way of Leinster in Ireland, the southeast quarter ruled by the Laigin dynasty (-stadr becoming -ster is a suffix of Norse origin that got imposed on three of the quarters; Leinster / Munster / Ulster were once just Laigin / Moghan / Ulaid). The "Galloin" we don't know, but sound like some Gauls who took advantage. O'Rahilly thinks these are three separate invasions that the "Book" is bundling together, and may be centuries apart. The introduction of metallurgy from the Continent (along with the "Hallstadt" material culture) in the mid-1st-millenium BCE is often thought of as the introduction of Celtic language; I think both the invaders and the invaded were Celtic-speaking already. Aside from taking Leinster in the southeast, the invaders pushed northwest into Connaught (the Book's description of the campaigns does make some archaeological sense) leaving older dynasties in disconnected pockets in Munster and Ulster.

VII. The Tuatha de Danaan push the Bolgi etc. back from Connaught. They are said to come from the far north, which makes little sense (legendarily, there was a beautiful country of Hyperborea out past the ice-wall, but of course, really there isn't much out that way). A different legendary origin (not in the Book) connects them with the Danaans of Homeric Greece (wandering heroes from the Trojan War were a conventional origin-story for people wanting distinguished ancestry, but this cannot be taken seriously). More likely, these are just the Q-Celtics of the north making a revival and repulsing the dynasties originating from the P-Celtic invasions; the name reflects a goddess of rivers and hence fertile fields, a name which goes back to Indo-European (and thus genuinely is cognate to the Danaans of Greece and the Iranian tribes mojo cites, etc.). Their heroic deeds get intensely mythologized, and of course their genealogies go back to deities, and we cannot completely sort out which of the names are divine ancestors who have been re-interpreted as humans, and which are human heroes that have been semi-deified.

VIII. The Gaels in Spain (remember them?) invade under Mil Espain ("soldier of Spain" in dog Latin). The Tuatha de Danaan whip up (with their magical powers) a terrible storm to destroy the Milesian fleet, but the Milesian bard "Amergin" (after whom a poster on this board names himself) sings the winds away. O'Rahilly takes these to be the "Q-Celts"; I take this (together with I-II) just to be pure fiction, giving the Irish a Biblically based ancestry instead of all those paganish figures.

IX. A list of "High Kings" before Christianity. Many or perhaps most of the names are genuine and old, but they would be local chiefs; the notion of a "High King" was quite late. Ireland was a patchwork of territories with local hereditary rulers, all called "kings" however large or small the area, but of limited rather than absolute authority; peace among neighboring kings was maintained not only by marriage alliances, as elsewhere, but by a unique system of hostage-taking: a king never raised his own children, but sent them to be "fostered" among neighboring courts, while raising foster-children from them in turn. Other sagas outside the Book of Takings indicate an early fissure between the kings of "Conn's half" (the north) and "Mog's half" (the south) who apparently did not exchange hostages and had frequent mutual raids; we can connect this to the Fomorians and Nemedians in the Book. After the Laigin (of Bolgi or Dumnoin ancestry?) established an overlordship in Leinster, and took and then lost Connacht, the Eoganacht family became overlords in Munster (the west of the former "Mog's Half") and a fourth quarter in Ulster was recognized. The king of Meath "the middle" where the four quarters met had at least some ceremonial role (if kings of the four quarters had disputes and did not care to set foot on each other's territory for negotiation, Meath would be neutral ground), but the last-named king in Book IX, Niall of the Nine Hostages (had kids from all the prominent families in his household) appears in fact to have been the first to have wielded genuine power.

X. List of "High Kings" after Christianity. Niall gave St. Patrick a hearing, did not convert, but ordered that he be permitted to preach unmolested. Subsequent High Kings were Christian, but not loyal to the church of Rome, until Henry II of England invaded to force them to be so (or such was the excuse). The list in book X is apparently accurate.

The Book of Takings mentions "Scythia" only once, in Book II (one of those that I consider valueless). The concept that "all" the invasions came from Scythia was an invention of Vallancey.

Those books are describing events from ~4000 BCE, if they mean anything. There is certainly no similarity between the stories told and any history of Rome or Persia (Cessair is a female, for one thing).

From here on, you start citing stuff that is nowhere in "Takings" or in Vallancey, and I would like to know where you are getting it.

The GREEKS of SCYTHIA???

Whatever author you are citing has some Romantic belief that not only was there a "High King of Ireland" all the time, but even a "High King of the World".

I don't suppose it would help to tell you again how stupid it is to grab random names with a few letters in common and imagine that all the other letters just randomly change or disappear?
"Sosarmes" apparently arose as a typo for "Sardes" the capital of Lydia in a bad text of Herodotus, and got mis-read as the name of a king of Lydia rather than of the city. Handel wrote an opera about him, and the French translator then changed him from a king of Lydia to a king of Media (librettists don't much bother distinguishing one kingdom from another).

Indicates that your source, whatever it is, dates from ~1850: "Labashi-Marduk", son of Nebuchadrezzar who ruled a couple years after Avel-Marduk, and then was murdered by Nabu-Na'id, father of Bel-shar-usur, was unknown until the decipherment of cuneiform; this text has to have been written sometime after the name was deciphered, but before his relation to the kings before and after was properly figured out.

And it doesn't, actually, empty northward into the Arctic, although that was a long-persisting misapprehension of the geography. This is written by somebody who doesn't yet know that.

I have told you, many many many times, that "Cimmerians/Gimmerai" cannot possibly be of the S'atam linguistic branch (the first would shift to *Jimmer or *Zimmer if that were the case). They are not "Scyths" or any other sort of Iranian; they were not Slavic either; they were Balkan Peripheral, more like Greeks or Trojans or Illyrians.

"Arab" is commonly used among the ignorant when "Muslim" is meant. Nobody really cares about the linguistics; it's the religion they are trying to identify.

Yes. I have to applaud you when once in a while you manage to say something true. Irish diverges from the other Celtic languages because the pre-Indo-European populace was not totally overwhelmed but was made to adopt a new language.

You have no evidence that it DID. Evidence for such a shift consists of multiple cases all showing the same shift.

This rubbish is too stupid to respond to.

You do know of course that "Isaac" is actually Yitzchaq and "Isaiah" is Y-sha'yahu?

 

Everything I quoted came from this book Lebor-gabála-Érenn-taking-Ireland

I thought I might have been missing something when it started at Vol. III, but it looked to be a translation of the original source material because the Celtic version is on every other page. Yet, it did pretty much mention everything you described.

Also I'm not really sure where you're coming up your date for the development of the Celtic language. It seems like with the Irish history someone's always coming up with an earlier and earlier placement for when the Celtic languages developed and when the megaliths appeared, but when it comes to the Indo-Iranians scholars are coming up with later and later dates for when their literature appeared.

Lastly, there are a few relationships that Vallancey also makes that I'm curious to know more about. 1. the NPer. mogh and Ir. mogh both designating a "priestly caste" of some sort. 2. Ir. Magh "great [lake]" OPer. Maga "Great [cause] 3. Ir. Druid Iran. Daru "medicine" darakht cf. tree dorost cf. truth

Would you care to either support or diffuse these proposed etymological relationships?

 

Mojo , I like your posts , please go fishing ,unbury some truths.

 

OK. I couldn't get from that link to anything more than excerpts from the book. I have to think well of the editor, Macalister, since he agrees with me about Books I/II/VIII, that it is a separate and late composition from Books III-VII, made up by a Christian author to make a pseudo-Biblical origin story, not to be trusted for any historical content. He says (Book VIII. Introduction. page 2, the only section I can reliably get the text of) that "Liber occupationis [Book of Occupations, his term for I/II/VIII, as opposed to 'the originally independent Liber praecursorum'] was originally composed, not in Irish, but in Latin" as an explanation for why its text is so highly variable, and goes on to describe it as "merely a quasi-learned parody of the story of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites" (citing several precise parallels) and assesses it (on p. 1) "the book not only possesses no historical value-- as is only too obvious; but in the form in which it is presented it has next to no importance in the general field of anthropology".

So you are getting an actual bilingual, with the Irish text facing the English translation? How do you get to it?

But it is also containing a lot of other stuff that I don't understand. The annotations appear to be from various dates in the 18th and 19th centuries: the names "Sosarmes" (from a 17th century misprinted Herodotus) and "Labashi Marduk" (from early decipherments of cuneiform in the mid-19th century) are obviously not from the Lebor Gabala Erenn itself, and can't even be from Vallancey. Does Macalister mark off "Notes" or "Commentary" from translations of the Lebor itself? For example, it's my understanding that in the Lebor Partholon migrates from Babylon to Greece to Sicily and then sails out the Pillars of Hercules; Nemed is from Greece (descended from a brother of Partholon who stayed behind there) and sails from the Maeotian Sea to the Caspian to the Arctic Ocean (impossible, but medievals didn't know that); the Danaan were a branch of Nemedians who were chased out to Hyperborea (a totally imaginary paradise by the North Pole) and return from there. You assert that they were "all from Scythia": who says so?

You are confusing two different issues. The split of Indo-European into the Centum branch (Celtic and Italic) vs. all the rest (Germanic, Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, Balkan Peripheral; what I have lumped as "Indo-Germanic") is ~4000 BCE, well after the divergence of Indo-Hittite into Anatolian and Indo-European proper, but well before the distinct emergence of all the sub-branches. Exactly when "Celtic" could be spoken of as a distinct entity, as opposed to Italic (and now-extinct Centum sub-branches like Vandic and Lusitanian), is more a matter of semantic definitions than of facts: the humans have been speaking something-or-other, ever since they have been humans, and at every ancient period the languages were what they were, regardless of what you want to call them.

But the issue I have talked about, which is more a question of fact than semantics, is at what date the Celtic languages entered the British Isles. Celtic languages, or Indo-European languages gradually becoming more and more like "Celtic" depending on how you define it, had been spreading from central Europe to western Europe for thousands of years; but exactly when did they cross the Channel to replace "Iberian" languages in the islands? Without literacy, we can only go by archaeological signs of cultural transition: the spread of new agricultural techniques (new to Britain, that is; copying what had been practiced in Celtic areas on the Continent) in the mid-2nd millenium BCE is one of the major transitions; the introduction of "Hallstadt" culture (iron metallurgy, and other material artifacts) from the 7th to 3rd centuries BCE (in multiple waves) is the other. Technology can move without any migration of peoples, of course (Iberians in Britain might have traded with the Continent, learned of new ideas, and brought them home), and even where there was a movement of peoples, we don't know for certain that the people in question were Celtic-speaking until the "Bolgi" (latest of the Hallstadt waves) who interacted with literate cultures-- but we don't know any evidence to the contrary either.

I have expressed my opinion that the earlier ("Celtic field" agriculture) transition, rather than the later, is when the Celtic languages crossed over (the contrary opinion is also widespread among scholars). If my reasoning has not been clear: the genetic evidence indicates that the "Iberian" substrate contributes very little to the ancestry in Britain, whereas it remains an important percentage in Ireland; disappearance and replacement of a native populace is not characteristic of a military conquest (mythical tales of total slaughter are common but the reality always turns out to be a small aristocracy imposing itself on a larger peasantry and then assimilating), but is readily explained by an agricultural people out-multiplying a sparser Stone Age culture (compare the small percentage of Native American in the modern genetics of the US). In Ireland it would appear that the agriculturists trickled over slowly, and the natives learned to farm and keep their numbers up before they were overwhelmed; the mutation of the language into the "Q-Celtic" form unique to Ireland (Scottish Gaelic is also Q-Celtic but this is known to be from early medieval migration from Ireland) is typical of adoption of a new language by natives whose earlier speech was something quite other.

That's a totally different issue. The megaliths are principally in Britain, not Ireland (which is poor in sources for stone), and are certainly from the pre-Celtic Iberians: the date of 1850 BCE established in the 1950's for charcoal from an altar that post-dates the completion of Stonehenge is already before the "Celtic fields" agricultural revolution; more recently a date of 2200 BCE has been established for the erection of some of the bluestones that appear to be mid-stage in the construction; this indication that the construction took centuries suggests that the earliest stage of the construction started perhaps earlier than 3000 BCE.

What are you talking about? The scholarly consensus for a very long time was that Zoroaster was a few generations before Cyrus, contemporary with the kings of Anshan; when I first started debating this with you, I was unaware that this had changed. Now, the linguists think ~1200 BC is the date indicated by the state of Iranian language in the Gathas, and I have found those arguments convincing. The Gathas are certainly centuries later than the Vedas: your stubborn refusal to accept that has no basis except your egotism.

In Irish I only know Mog as an early king, progenitor of the dynasty giving its name to Moghan "Mog's half" (the south) whence Moghanstadr > Munster "the southwest quarter". Comparing to "NPer." that is New Persian is silly: the shift from "a" to "o" and from "g" to "gh" in mag > mogh cannot be invoked to explain earlier words in other languages unless you believe in time machines.

Both are from the "M-quantitative" set of words in Indo-European, not only for large quantities like English many/much/more/most, Latin maius (hence English major), Sanskrit maha, but also for small quantities as in Latin minus. Which consonant comes second after the "m" is different from one group to another for reasons that are not always clear: on another thread I said I really don't know why it is "g" in Persian mag but we also see it, not just in this Irish "great" but also in Greek mega.

Indo-European *deru hence English tree, Greek druos "oak" etc. is associated to the meaning "straight" or "firm" as in English true, and going back to Nostratic (hypothetical ancestor of Indo-European, Semitic etc.) that may have been the root-meaning, see Hebrew derekh "straight path" (compare Latin directio), d-r-k "to walk, proceed in constant direction" (metaphorically, to behave morally).

Gaulish dru-wid "oak-seer" was originally used in Aquitaine, where most people spoke a non-Indo-European language ancestral to Basque, and had a rather different religious culture (the sacred Oak of Gernika was revered in Basque country down to modern times); it was borrowed into Greek as druidos by Sotion of Alexandria, who visited Aquitaine, and then it became the standard Latin term for any religious figure in Gaul because Julius Caesar, who didn't actually know anything about Gaulish religion, plagiarized a Latin translation of Sotion for his chapter in De Bello Gallico on the subject. At least, now that's generally how it is thought to have happened: there has long been puzzlement that Caesar's chapter on the Druids describes them as societally dominant, even over-ruling the kings, and yet, in the rest of the book they never play the slightest role at all; Sotion was describing the society in Aquitaine, when elsewhere in Gaul conditions were quite different. Julius Caesar knew a Diviciacus as a political and military leader, but never calls him a "Druid"; but Cicero met him also, and since he knew how to read omens, calls him a "Druid" because that is the word he understands from Caesar to be the Gaulish term for such a person. That is, in Aquitaine the Druids were a separate "caste", outranking the political-military caste like Brahmans outranking Kshatriya in India; but in Gaul, there was no sharp distinction among the people involved in religion, politics, or the military, who were all drawn from the same class, and druwid apparently wasn't even a word that the Gaulish holy men used for themselves at all, rather a word they used for the Aquitainian priests.

There were three sorts of holy men in Celtic society: the "bards" (Strabo gives bardoi, a more accurate rendering of a foreign word than we usually get from him), who were not just poets but also preservers of the oral traditions; the "seers" (Irish faidh, Gaulish ovates according to Strabo, like Latin vatis "prophet" as in "the Vatican") who could foretell the future by astrology, bird-watching, and other omens; and various "healers" and "philosophers" who knew practical sciences, called druidoi in Strabo (though elsewhere that word is used as a catch-all for all these categories) but maithin in Irish ("brothers" or "fellows" as they often lived in monastic-like communities, same root as English mate and Sanskrit maitri "friendship", Mitra like Iranian Mithra "god of alliances / contracts"). Irish subdivided the "poet" category further: a bard specifically remembered historical sagas, and composed new ones to honor a king's deeds (and if the king did not pay him, vicious satires of the ungrateful king), while a brehon remembered legal codes and precedents, and a filidh scientific and magical lore (astronomy, medicine etc.) of the sort a maithin might need to consult him about. The "tree/true" root mutated to dara in Irish, and was not used for any of these types of holy men: druid in Irish (like druidecht "magic" in Welsh) is evidently a borrowing from Latin rather than an independent inheritance from proto-Celtic, adopted when Christians needed some generic term for "pagan holy men" and did not wish to call them by names like "seer" that implied they were honorable. This is the great irony about the modern "Druids" in Britain and Ireland: although they want to revive the ancient traditions, it is probable that no-one ever called themselves "druids" in the British Isles before the 18th century.

 

Precisely. I paid for it.

It looks like all of it comes from a Celtic language.

"Now Ireland was waste thereafter, for a space of thirty years after Partholon, till Nemed son of Agnoman of the Greeks of Scythia came thither, with his four chieftains; [they were the four sons of Nemed]. Four-four ships had he on the Caspian Sea for a year and a half, but his ship alone reach Ireland. These are the four chieftains, Starn, Larbonel the Soothsayer, Annind, and Fergus Red-side: they were the four sons of Nemed.

Twelve plains were cleared by Nemed in Ireland: Mag Cera, Mag Eba, mag Cuile Toland, and Mag Luirg in Connachta, Mag Seired in Tethba; Mag Tochair in Tir Eogan; Mag Seimne in Araide; Mag Macha in Airgialla; Mag Muirthemne in Brega; Mag Bernsa in Laighne; Leccmag and Mag Moda in Mumu." - 123

237. Ba faas tra Heeriu ??arain, fri ree trichat mbliadan ?ar Parthaloon, conostoracht Nemed mac Agnoman do Greecib Scithiia...


"BELLEPARES was in the high ingship of the world when Nemed came into Ireland out of Scythia...SOSARMUS 29 " In his time Troy was captured by Hercules against Laomedon 60 years from that capture to the last capture, by Agamemnon and Peleus (sic read Achilles) and the Greeks against Priam and his sons...MITREUS" - 159

273. POLEPARIS in andighe in domain on tan taame Nemed an He?mn assm Scithiia...

"Bellepares was king of the world when Nemed came into Ireland. In his tenth year it was that Nemed came from the east with Cecrops for its first king. In that time was the beginning of the reign of the Sons of Israel in Egypt. In that time further. Sru s. Esru s. Gaedel Glas was expelled from Egypt...Sru son of Esru was in exile in Scythia at that time, as well as his son, Eber Scot." - 137

254...Sru mac Easru for loinges ?sin Sceithia...

"At Sru s Esru the relationship of Partholon and Nemed and the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha De Danann and the sons of Mil of Spain unite. And each of these peoples had the Scotic language: this is evident from the story that when Ith son of Breogan came into Ireland, and he and the Tuatha De Danann conversed, it is through Scotic he conversed with them and they with him: and they said that they were of the seed of Rifath. Others say that Nemed was of the seed of the son whom Partholon left in the East, namely, of the seed of Agla son of Partholon.

He came out of Scythia westward, voyaging on the Caspian Sea, till he came in his wandering to the great ocean in the north." - 129

248. Doluid asin Scithiia...

OK, I'd like to take a moment here to challenge you're very last sentence. Of course my background in the field of linguistics is limited, but nevertheless here goes...

Speaking in terms of the differences between Avestan and Sanskrit consonants...

Sanskrit displays evidence of aspirated plosives:

*bh > bh - b

*dh > dh - d

*gwh > gh [ɡʱ]; h [ɦ] - g; j [dʒ];γ +

Linguists like to use this fact to show that Sanskrit is more archaic than Avestan, but no other IE. language displays aspirated consonants so there is no way to support this as archaism. Moreover based on my understanding Sanskrit was influenced by Dravidian languages whereas Avestan was more isolated. Therefore in the case of *gwh > gh [ɡʱ]; h [ɦ] - g; j [dʒ];γ is looks to me like Avestan j [dʒ];γ is closer to the PIE than Sanskrit h [ɦ] especially when you consider there is not strong support for aspirate plosives in PIE.

*ĝh > h - z + Here Avestan preserves the intermediate [z] allophone between * *ĝ[h] and Sanskrit [h]

*p > p; ph - p;f - it looks like Sanskrit wins out over Avestan on this one.

*ĝ > j - z here it looks like Sanskrit wins out over Avestan but I wouldn't be surprised if z > j > g

Velar Fricatives

*s > s - s ~ h [h, x];s Here it looks like there is evidence of s > velar fricative, maybe it was the other way around

*kʷ > k; c [tʃ];kh - k; c [tʃ]; x before a consonant or original laryngeal; this looks like a tie

So all in all if we were to conclude that the aspirated plosives were actually innovations then that's 3 cases where Avestan is more archaic than Sanskrit. Then there's Avestan [z] where Sanskrit has [h] after PIE *ĝh. Avestan has h [h, x];s where the other IE. languages including Sanskrit have . Sanskrit has [j] where Avestan has [z] from *ĝ. They tie on *kʷ > k; c [tʃ];kh - k; c [tʃ]; x. So all in all based on this view Avestan is 5 times more archaic in its consonants than Sanskrit, and Sanskrit only shows 1 maybe 2 archaisms over Avestan if you are going to conclude that s > [h,x] and not h > x > s.

Yeah, but what if you're to take into account the Old Persian magush or the earlier Avestan forms, and then how do you explain how they developed into the same sound and semantics. Vallancey claimed Mog in Irish was a "priest" just like in Iranian.

I thought Latin directio was from PIE *reg I cf. right, rex, direct

I think I'm going to have to rescind my statement about being mixed up about how the forms Odin, Vatican, Avesta, and Veda are not cognates, because it looks like they are. Odin cf. Woden "seer" (amongst other things), Vatis "seer" cf. Vatican compare Veda and Avesta cf. wisdom, evidence, hollywood; and now I'm wondering whether the proposed relationship between druwid "seer" and dervish "sufi" might actually be accurate too.

 

Ah. I may need to buy the book as well. I thought this was another of your strange web-sites.

Until I have any money, apparently I can't look for myself, but can you clue me in to what the numbers are? I had been taking them for page numbers, but apparently not.

You are mistaken. Where Sanskrit has "bh" vs. "b" other languages will often show two different sounds: in Germanic "b" vs. "w" but in Italic "f" vs. "v" as for example bherati "to carry" is English bear, Latin fer but balati "to exert power" is English wield while bala "power" is Latin valor. In Avestan they collapse into the same sound. Now PIE may not have sounded like Sanskrit, but must have had two different sounds: if it was one sound to begin with, it could not have systematically shifted into two different sounds in the descendant languages (how would the Latins "know" that this was one of the "b" sounds that the Germans made a "w" so that they should make it "v" while that was one of the "b" sounds that stayed "b" in German so they should make it "f"?)
​

There is just about nothing at all in Sanskrit that looks to have come from Dravidian (there are some things in Dravidian that look to have come from Indic, though later).

Absurd: "g" sounds often palatalize into "j" sounds, but never the reverse.

I have no clue why you would think "z" an intermediate between "gh" and "h".

I would. It would be unique in the history of the world for z > j > g rather than g > j > z.

Not likely: "x" to "sh" occasionally happens, but we don't find "sh" anywhere.

Right.

No. Avestan has mergers there; this is 3 cases where Avestan has seriously departed from the original, whether Sanskrit is preserving the original well or not.

Avestan is clearly less archaic there.

No question Avestan is less archaic.

"j" is the intermediate shift: "g" palatalizes to "j" which then simplifies to "z"; so neither is preserving the original (this is one of the S'atam shifts) but Sanskrit is closer.

There are, in fact, a couple of features in Avestan which are more archaic than Sanskrit, but you have failed to hit on a single one of them.

Yeah, precisely. When the words look LESS alike the further back you go (rather than looking MORE alike as you go back in time), that indicates that they are not originally related at all.

There is nothing easier in the world than randomly rummaging through dictionaries of different languages and finding words with the same sounds. English moggie is slang for "kitty-cat": must be related, huh? Persian bad means "good" but is just like English bad, so obviously Iranians have a warped moral code and have reversed bad and good, right? Unless both those words are derived from German Bad "bath" or Turkish bad "wind". As for the semantics, they're not the same at all.

Vallancey claimed a lot of baseless things. Mog was a king, and the Irish really didn't have any such thing as a "priest".

Maybe; don't know how to explain the di- part though, in that case.

NO. THEY AREN'T. Vague look-alikes aren't "cognates". You need more than that.

NO. It means RAGE. I have told you this before.

or "soothsayer" or "fortune-teller" or "augur" or "prophet". In ENGLISH the word seer does come from the verb see, but in Latin vates is not from videre which, you should note, has an "i" instead of an "a" and a "d" instead of a "t"; and the Celtic forms have the analogous distinction. A Sanskrit cognate of vates is bat. "in truth; amen; indeed!"; German wetten, English bet (originally meaning "predict" more than "wager") is a cognate in Germanic. Note again: Sanskrit "b" corresponds to Germanic "w" (though it ended back at "b" in English) and Latin "v" (though Sanskrit "v" also merges into Latin "v").

Yes, now the "e" vowel in the Indo-Iranian Veda, Avesta does correspond to "i" in Germanic wise, wit or Latin videre "to see" (root of evidence). You were doing fine until you threw in "hollywood": WTF???

Dervish is from an Iranian root meaning "poor" (with no clear cognates in other IE branches). I can, however, if you like, point you to a bunch of Celtic chauvinist web-sites which will prove to you beyond question that all religious ideas about monotheism and afterlife and so on were invented by the Celts, and that Zoroaster as well as Pythagoras learned everything they knew by studying under Druid masters.

EDIT: missed this bit of lunacy, because your quote tags mismatched a little.

Sigh. Greek mega is a perfectly common native word. And yes, Irish magh certainly does not derive from the Greek any more than the Greek derives from the Persian. All three derive independently from Proto-Indo-European. You have profoundly misread your source, which states that Persian names starting Baga- often get twisted by the Greeks into Mega- by "folk etymology", which means replacing something you aren't familiar with by something that you think it might have come from. It is precisely because mega IS A NATIVE GREEK WORD that it was mistakenly used to REPLACE something from Persian.

 

237, 273, 254, and 248.

No that's pretty much what I said. Sanskirt shows these aspirated plosives where none of the other IE. languages do. I view this as a sign of 4 cases where Sanskrit develops from the proto-Indo-Iranian consonants where Avestan doesn't. And b > w or v or even v > b is not uncommon so why would that mean it had to have developed from an aspirated plosive/

If a sibilant like can develop into an aspirate like [h]>(h) then I don't see why a sibilant like [z] or something softer like an wouldn't develop into [h].

I have found evidence of a z in the word "zoo" being pronounced j "joo" in Vietnamese, but getting from j > g would appear to be less likely. But what about j > dj > g?

If it occasionally happens that's all I need to know. "sh" to "s" happens too right? It's not something you can discount unless you're trying to attribute some kind of language dominance to a people other than the Aryans (Irano-Afghans).

And I got another question. Avestan is more archaic than Old Persian. Yet Avestan shows Airya whereas Old Persian shows Ariya. So how do you know that the Vedic with its Arya form is not contemporary to Old Persian or maybe Young Avestan? Old Persian and Sanskrit was mutually intelligble.

Actually this form bad is kind of an interesting one for me. From what I understand bad in Persian does not mean "good" it means "bad," but bad also cf. faith, better : NPer. bettar, and bad also means "powerful" maybe from another root cf. potent so maybe faith belongs here? And yes there is also bad cf. wind, but I've also noticed that Sem. bedouin means "people of the arid land" which maybe be some sort of confusion between Iran. behdeen "people of good faith" and [people of the] bad "wind/arid" + din "cult"

But weren't the Magush well-nigh kings?

OED says di- fr. dis prefix repr. L. dis-, corr. to Germ. *tiz- and rel. to Gr. DIA-.

see Wōden Etymology and origins

See Vatican- are its orgins from paganism