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Post by ancalimon on May 1, 2012 2:51:06 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on May 1, 2012 14:31:01 GMT 3
I know at least two Turkic and one Iranic proposals to read that Esik inscription.
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Post by ancalimon on May 1, 2012 20:38:49 GMT 3
So which one sounds more plausible? None?
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Post by Ardavarz on May 2, 2012 3:00:19 GMT 3
There are more, including one based on the Sakha language. But none seems convincing enough given that there is no bilingua to check it against. Thus everybody reads different things with more or less adjustments and arbitrary assumptions.
For me personally this inscription is still a mystery that is far from being solved
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on May 2, 2012 9:57:39 GMT 3
So which one sounds more plausible? None? I think in the same way with how Ardavars wrote above.
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Post by ancalimon on May 2, 2012 13:59:47 GMT 3
So how are they regarded as speaking an Iranian language when even what they wrote can not be deciphered for certain?
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on May 2, 2012 19:42:27 GMT 3
I believe that it's wrong to assume that they spoke just one type of language, but were rather speakers of multiple languages. The existence of bilingualism among Steppe nomads is also attested from later periods, such as from the records of Mahmud of Kashghar who explicitly describes which Steppe and Central Asian peoples spoke/used two languages at the same time.
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Post by ancalimon on May 2, 2012 19:51:41 GMT 3
I believe that it's wrong to assume that they spoke just one type of language, but were rather speakers of multiple languages. The existence of bilingualism among Steppe nomads is also attested from later periods, such as from the records of Mahmud of Kashghar who explicitly describes which Steppe and Central Asian peoples spoke/used two languages at the same time. But almost every serious academic research I've seen talks about them like their language is Indo-European and they have an Indo-European culture. A simple example: www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/530361/Scythianmember of a nomadic people originally of Iranian stock This sounds like "Scythians were Indo-European". (I'm not even starting to talk about the wikipedia article. It says Saka were Iranian and were assimilated into Turks. Not that they are serious) People tell me that those researches that talks about them as being any other thing is either pseudo-science or absolute.
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Post by Yazig on May 2, 2012 20:49:15 GMT 3
New research needs to be conducted. This theory is old and needs improvement.
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Post by Ardavarz on May 3, 2012 1:54:08 GMT 3
What is needed is clearly defined notions and terms. The theory can be all right if it is understood correctly. But when the same terms are employed that may mean different things in different contexts - like linguistic, ethnic, or even racial - and they are mixed arbitrarlily in the common mind which is taught by the nationalist ideology to perceive human groups as rigid entities with fixed characteristics throughout time and space, then only confusion could arise.
Multilinguism is rather a rule than exception especially in the Steppe world. It's just than one or another particular language may become in fashion so to speak in given age and spread amogst the different tribes in given territory as means of communication (it's all that it is - there was no "nationalism" in those times, while the reasons for choosing one can be different - political, religious or other).
There is an interesting case of bilignuism in modern Uzbekistan for instance and besides the mutual Turkic-Iranian (Uzbek-Tajik) influences, researches have shown that there are clans from the one background (judging by their family names) speaking the other language and vice versa. Thus such changes occur constantly and even at very recent times. The study of such phenomena can prove very useful for understanding the development of the Steppe culture in the past, but unfortunately the prejudice of the nationalist bias always seek to imagine continuity of some monolitic groups with identical linguistic, ethnic and cultural features in order to justify the claims to certain territories. I am afraid that as far as the state institution exists there will be no objective science, not to speak of the sane persons to make it.
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Post by ancalimon on May 3, 2012 3:36:29 GMT 3
I guess the biggest difference between Indo-European people and Turkic people back then is that Indo-Europeans are both nomadic and sedentary but Turkic people are only Nomadic?
For example as far as I remember legions of Darius advances towards Scythians. Scythians fall back with their horses. Dari tells Idanthyrs to stop running away and fight. Idanthyrs replies saying : "we don't have cities or croplands to defend, we have the graves of our ancestors. Try to destroy them. Then you will see whether we fight you or not.
So here we have the Sedentary Persians (with Iranians as the ruling elite I guess?) and the nomadic Scythians (with a Persian ruling elite I guess but whether they are Iranian or Turkic is not yet clear? Somehow I see the Persians as some kind of "Ottomans" or "Americans". They have many different people in their lands. Is that right?).
For example I see a cultural difference here. I guess the Iranians don't have graves of their ancestors and maybe they only burn their dead. On the other hand, the Scythians clearly have graves and even though they too burn some of their dead, they also bury some.
Somehow both are accepted as from Indo-European stock and the Turks have not yet come out of their hiding place back then as far as I can tell from what I've read from respected history books.
Is there a map showing Indo-European civilizations presence on the world?
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on May 3, 2012 10:25:50 GMT 3
Encyclopaedia Britannica is not the upmost authority in Scythian studies. It does not even cite any references.
I totally agree.
Actually no one claimed that the ruling elite of Scythians were Persians. Don't forget that Persian and Iranian/Iranic are two totally different concepts. Regarding the Persian Empire, you are right, the empire was composed of dozens of different peoples and even though the Persians were the ruling dynasty, the Persian people formed only a small percentage of the empire's total population. Even "Achaemenid Art" shows this to us, as most of it was made by non-Persian artists of Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Greek, etc origin and I guess real "Persian influence" was rather small in the entire art.
Regarding the Scythians, Herodotos talks about multilinguilism among them. Even though it is generally accepted that both the Scythians and Sarmatians were Iranic peoples, the descriptions of them from Greek and Persian sources show us a rather big collection of different tribes with different ethnicities/origins/languages/etc all called "Scythian" and "Sacae" - these names seem more likely to be general names rather than homogenous ethnonyms as we tend to think in our modern world. Same case with the names Hun, Tiele, Turk and Tatar too. Plus, Scythian and Sarmatian names and words recorded in various sources, primarily Greek and Roman, are both of Iranic and Turkic stock (I guess there are still lots of vocabularly that is unsolved) so it's wrong to claim that these people were only Iranic or only Turkic.
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Post by ancalimon on May 7, 2012 7:21:31 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on May 7, 2012 10:40:49 GMT 3
Interesting.
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Post by Ardavarz on May 8, 2012 3:42:39 GMT 3
I can add at also least two variants based on Sakha language: tengry.org/site/runi/Үòүө û÷÷àòà óҥòý Ñóóhàðûë. Õîì óóñ òàë. Àҕà È÷÷è. ܲë, ûë, ûë òóòà õîìîòî. Ýííüý êөhүòý è÷÷èëýhèñ ñүhүðү. "Prays descendent of nobles Suuharyl. Gaunt tribe choose. Father Spirit. Take, take, take. Take at once offending. Awaiting gift-tribute, take the illness." Or: Õîì óóñ ûë Àҕà È÷÷è. ܲë, ûë, ûë. ܲëûíòà õîì òûí êүүò, è÷÷è ûëûñ ñүhүðү. "Gaunt tribe take Father’s Leader. Take, take, take. Taken evil force wait. Spirit take together with me the illness" Actually the author Andrey Krivoshapkin (who is a physicist and not linguist) developes his own interpretation of the Orhonic rune script and gives also an alternative reading of the Orhon inscrptions based on Sakha language. Indeed I am not competent to evaluate the correctness of the grammar while the Russian translation doesn't make much sense to me, but it doesn't seem right to use a modern language in its contemporary form for interpretation of an ancient inscription with the same old excuse that this language allegedly doesn't change much throughout the history (because it is too perfect to do so, I suppose). And also I doubt that there is a direct connection between Sakha and Saka.
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