Now in Avestan ‘lake/pool’ is vairi-. In fact Avestan has no verb or nouns cognate to the Sanskrit ones √sṛ >sar-. The only cognation is harah- in th… - Nikos Kazanas
" "Now in Avestan ‘lake/pool’ is vairi-. In fact Avestan has no verb or nouns cognate to the Sanskrit ones √sṛ >sar-. The only cognation is harah- in the name of the river harahvaiti – nothing else. But S √sṛ >sar- is a perfectly PIE morpheme appearing in Tocharian B sal-ate, Gk hiallō/hallomai and Latin salire all implying ‘moving, jumping’. Avestan somehow lost this root and its derivatives. So, how did the Iranians manage to concoct this name Harahvaiti, that sounds so exactly like a transliteration of the Vedic Sarasvatī , when they had no words from √sṛ > sar-? Adherents of the AIT offer no rational answers. (For full discussion see Kazanas 2004b, Prabhakar 1994/1995.) There is only one possible explanation. The Iranians, having lived in Saptasindhu moved to Iran (retaining the memory of the place as Haptahәndu); on meeting an amenable river there they gave it the name of the river they had formerly known – Sarasvati > Harahvaiti. The AIT can in no way, except by violating rationality, explain the two Avestan names Haptahәndu and Harahvaiti. This, if nothing else, should have alerted the AIT adherents to the possibility that there is something very seriously wrong in their migrationist scenario. Moreover, it is part of the general linguistic theory that the Avestan h derives from PIE s: so, it is again extremely difficult to see how the IAs who moved further southeast, retained the original s (in saras and saptasindhu) while the Iranians changed it to h.
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About Nikos Kazanas
Nicholas Kazanas (born 1939) is a Greek Indologist. Kazanas has been Director of Omilos Meleton Cultural Institute and he is on the Editorial Board of Adyar Library Bulettin (Chennai). Kazanas was honored by the Government of India with the Padma Shri award in 2021 under the Literature and Education field.
Also Known As
Native Name:
Νίκος Καζάνας
Alternative Names:
Nicholas Kazanas
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The odd thing about this story is that the heliocentric view was known in Europe long before Copernicus but, for various reasons, was totally ignored by the "established" dogma... All this time all kinds of absurdities were written about the heavens, the celestial spheres, the Empyrean and so on, which constituted the “established” view. And all the time the real knowledge was there and all those schoolmen, could, with some practical observation and sensible application of Mathematics, have found out that the Ptolemaic system was not true. But they did not: they preferred to argue about such weighty matters as how many angles could sit on the point of a pin. And when the proofs were presented to them in black and white, hard and irrefutable mathematical demonstrations, they still rejected them preferring the comforts of the ‘‘established” dogma. Theology (and Church interests) decided what was acceptable, not Mathematics.
I have seriously changed my mind on this subject; I have no axe to grind, as it were, no position or reputation to maintain; I can and shall change my mind again if strong and sufficient evidence emerges. Prof Witzel raises many points for discussion - some useful, some wasteful - but offers no evidence other than conjecture. Conjecture or hypothesis is not admissible as evidence in any impartial Court of Law.
I start with some literary evidence. RV 4.1.13 & 4. 2.16 the Angirases declare that their ancestors made sacrifices “here” atra, ie in Saptasindhu. 3.53.11 Sudās fought enemies prāk ‘east’, apāk ‘west’ and udāk ‘north’ only, but not south. So we have no Indoaryans coming from the north and driving natives southward. The movement here is from east westward (apāk) and from south northword (udāk)! M6.61.9,12: Sarasvatī, the Rivergoddess, spread all five tribes beyond the other seven sister-rivers as the sun spreads out the days – again, days and sunlight from the east! 7.6.3 Agni turned the unholy Dasyus from east to west –pūrvaś cakāra áparām! Notice – NOT SOUTH (avāk or nyāk).
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