SCYTHIAN LANGUAGES

Ptolemy's Scythia

Scythian

Native to : Sarmatia, Scythia, Sistan, Scythia Minor, Alania

Region : Central Asia, Eastern Europe

Ethnicity : Scythians, Sarmatians, and Alans

Era : Classical antiquity, late antiquity

Language family :

Dialects

Language codes

ISO 639-3

Variously :

xsc - Scythian

xln - Alanian

oos - Old Ossetian

Linguist List :

xsc Scythian

xln Alanian

oos Old Ossetian

Glottolog :

oldo1234  Old Ossetic

The Scythian languages are a group of Eastern Iranian languages of the classical and late antique period (the Middle Iranian period), spoken in a vast region of Eurasia named Scythia. Except for modern Ossetian, which descends from the Alanian variety, these languages are all considered to be extinct. Modern Eastern Iranian languages such as Wakhi, however, are related to the eastern Scytho-Khotanese dialects attested from the kingdoms of Khotan and Tumshuq in the ancient Tarim Basin, in present-day southern Xinjiang, China.

The location and extent of Scythia varied by time, but generally it encompassed the part of Eastern Europe east of the Vistula river and much of Central Asia up to the Tarim Basin. Its speakers were part of the wider Scythian cultures, which included Massagetae, Saka, Sarmatians, Scythians and others. The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythian-speakers were nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia and the Pontic-Caspian steppe. Fragments of their speech known from inscriptions and words quoted in ancient authors as well as analysis of their names indicate that it was an Indo-European language, more specifically from the Iranian group of Indo-Iranian languages. Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows :

Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about the Scythian of that period [Old Iranian] – we have only a couple of personal and tribal names in Greek and Persian sources at our disposal – and cannot even determine with any degree of certainty whether it was a single language.

Classification :

The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree in considering the Scythian languages (and Ossetian) as a part of the Eastern Iranian group of languages. This Iranian hypothesis relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the Ossetian language. The classification of the Iranian languages is in general not however fully resolved, and the Eastern Iranian languages are not shown to form an actual genetic subgroup.

Some scholars detect a division of Scythian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum :

• Alanian languages or Scytho-Sarmatian in the west: were spoken by people originally of Iranian stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of Ukraine, Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. Modern Ossetian survives as a continuation of the language family possibly represented by Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions, although the Scytho-Sarmatian language family "does not simply represent the same [Ossetian] language" at an earlier date.

• Saka languages or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the first century in the Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day Xinjiang, China), and including the Khotanese of Khotan and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq.

Other East Iranian languages related to the Scythian are Chorasmian and Sogdian.

A document from Khotan written in Khotanese Saka, part of the Eastern Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages, listing the animals of the Chinese zodiac in the cycle of predictions for people born in that year; ink on paper, early 9th century

History :

The approximate distribution of Eastern Iranian languages in 100 BC appears in orange [citation needed]

Early Eastern Iranians originated in the Yaz culture (ca. 1500–1100 BC) in Central Asia. [citation needed] The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe in the 8th and 7th century BC, occupying today's Southern Russia and Ukraine and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova and Dobruja. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic (Avar, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. [citation needed] However, in the Caucasus, the Ossetian language belonging to the Scythian linguistic continuum remains in use today, while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranian group are still spoken, namely Pashto, Pamir languages and Yaghnobi.

Corpus :

Inscriptions :

Some scholars ascribe certain inscribed objects found in the Carpathian Basin and in Central Asia to the Scythians, but the interpretation of these inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody has definitively identified the alphabet or translated the content).

An inscription from Saqqez written in the Hieroglyphic Hittite script may represent Scythian :

Transliteration : par-tì-ta5-wa5 ki-s3-a4-á KUR-u-pa-ti QU-wa-a5 | i5-pa-s2-a-m2

Transcription : Partitava xšaya DAHYUupati xva|ipašyam

Translation : Delivered dish. Value: 40 calves 30 silver šiqlu. And it was presented to the king. King Partitavas, the masters of the land property.

King Partitava equates to the Scythian king called Prototyes in Herodotus (1.103) and known as Par-ta-tu-a in the Assyrian sources. ("Partatua of Sakasene" married the daughter of Esarhaddon c. 675 BC)

The Issyk inscription, found in a Scythian kurgan dating approximately to the 4th century BC, remains undeciphered, but some authorities assume that it represents Scythian.

Personal names :

The primary sources for Scythian words remain the Scythian toponyms, tribal names, and numerous personal names in the ancient Greek texts and in the Greek inscriptions found in the Greek colonies on the Northern Black Sea Coast. These names suggest that the Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian. Mayrhofer (apud Lincoln) assigned Iranian etymologies for Scythian names transcribed by Herodotus: e.g. Targitaos from Old Iranian *darga-tavah- and meaning "he whose strength is long-lasting".

Some scholars believe that many toponyms and hydronyms of the Russian and Ukrainian steppe have Scythian links. For example, Vasmer associates the name of the river Don with an assumed/reconstructed unattested Scythian word *danu "water, river", and with Avestan danu-, Pashto dand and Ossetian don. The river names Don, Donets, Dnieper, Danube, and Dniester, and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea) may also belong with the same word-group.

Herodotus' Scythian etymologies :

The Greek historian Herodotus provides another source of Scythian; he reports that the Scythians called the Amazons Oiorpata, and explains the name as a compound of oior, meaning "man", and pata, meaning "to kill" (Hist. 4,110).

• Most scholars associate oior "man" with Avestan vira- "man, hero", Sanskrit vira-, Latin vir (gen. viri) "man, hero, husband", PIE *wiHrós. Various explanations account for pata "kill" :

1. Persian pat- "(to) kill", patxuste "killed";

2. Sogdian pt- "(to) kill", ptgawsty "killed";

3. Ossetian fædyn "cleave", Sanskrit patayati "fell", PIE *peth2- "fall".

4. Avestan paiti- "lord", Sanskrit páti, PIE *pótis, cf. Lat. potestate (i.e. "man-ruler");

5. Ossetian maryn "kill", Pashto mrel, Sanskrit marayati, PIE *mer- "die" (confusion of Greek M and n);

• Alternatively, one scholar suggests Iranian aiwa- "one" + warah- "breast", the Amazons believed to have removed a breast to aid drawing a bow, according to some ancient folklorists, and as reflected in Greek folk-etymology: a- (privative) + mazos, "without breast".

Elsewhere Herodotus explains the name of the mythical one-eyed tribe Arimaspoi as a compound of the Scythian words arima, meaning "one", and spu, meaning "eye" (Hist. 4,27).

• Some scholars connect arima "one" with Ossetian ærmæst "only", Avestic airime "quiet", Greek eremos "empty", PIE *h1(e)rh1mo-?, and spu "eye" with Avestic spas- "foretell", Sanskrit spas-, PIE *spek- "see".

• However, Iranian usually expresses "one" and "eye" with words like aiwa- and cašman- (Ossetian iw and cæst).

• Other scholars reject Herodotus' etymology and derive the ethnonym Arimaspoi from Iranian aspa- "horse" instead.

• Or the first part of the name may reflect something like Iranian raiwant- "rich", cf. Ossetian riwæ "rich".

Herodotus' Scythian theonyms :

Herodotus also gives a list of Scythian theonyms (Hist. 4.59) :

• Tabiti = Hestia. Perhaps related to Sanskrit Tapati, a heroine in the Mahabharata, literally "the burning (one)".

• Papaios = Zeus. Either "father" (Herodotus) or "protector", Avestan, Sanskrit pa- "protect", PIE *peh3-.

• Api = Gaia. Either "mother" or "water", Avestan, Sanskrit ap-, PIE Hep-

• Goitosyros or Oitosyros = Apollo. Perhaps Avestan gae?a- "animal" + sura- "rich".

• Argimpasa or Artimpasa = Aphrodite Urania. To Ossetic art and Pashto or, "fire", Avestan a0ra-.

• Thagimasadas = Poseidon.

Pliny the Elder :

Pliny the Elder's Natural History (AD 77–79) derives the name of the Caucasus from the Scythian kroy-khasis = ice-shining, white with snow (cf. Greek cryos = ice-cold).

Aristophanes :

In the comedy works of Aristophanes, the dialects of various Greek people are accurately imitated. In his Thesmophoriazusae, a Scythian archer (a member of a police force in Athens) speaks broken Greek, consistently omitting the final -s (-C) and -n (V), using the lenis in place of the aspirate, and once using ks in place of s (sigma); these may be used to elucidate the Scythian languages.

Alanian :

The Alanian language as spoken by the Alans from about the 5th to the 11th centuries AD formed a dialect directly descended from the earlier Scytho-Sarmatian languages, and forming in its turn the ancestor of the Ossetian language. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language.

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Scythian_languages