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Post by Azadan Januspar on Nov 9, 2012 13:26:43 GMT 3
I am not sure if I understood nor I see how I could relate the Scythian>Indo-european to Sumerian>Turkic comparison as well as the reason why it is called "Arian Problem" but I have to add, love your conclusion that was funny; a good one.
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Post by ancalimon on Nov 9, 2012 18:23:42 GMT 3
I talked about Scythian>Indo-european & Sumerian>Turkic because by definition, if we were to assume Scythians as Indo-Europeans, Sumerians can also be assumed as Turks even more because of work of Tuna.
The Aryan problem is the same thing as Eurocentrism problem. Some Europeans look at ancient history, prehistory to simply answer things that they think are related to them. During this process, they eliminate all other cultures out there labeling them as unhistorical. Turks are one of those people. Actually they are so much of a problem that they are completely regarded as not existing at all as if they came from a different planet recently. They have to show the evidence that Turks are from a different planet if they are to convince me.
That article I linked talks about this issue and claims that people called Aryans are Turks.
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Post by hjernespiser on Nov 9, 2012 21:35:57 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 10, 2012 12:23:57 GMT 3
ancalimon has a point. While I prefer not to make any comments regarding the Sumerian-Turkic issue (I don't have sufficient knowledge on the Sumerians to make comments), there surely is a widespread Eurocentric approach in Central Eurasian studies (note that I also oppose Turkocentric and Mongolcentric approaches). Currently there is a tendency to link everything from pre-Gokturkic Central Eurasia to Indo-European and Palaeosiberian-Yenisseian peoples and Turkic and Mongolic (most notably the Turkic) peoples are often disregarded. For example, everyone now thinks that the Scythian-Saka tribes and Sarmatians were *almost* purely Iranic and that they just spoke Iranic languages; the same approach is also popular in Turkish historiography in which historians think the Steppe peoples were homogenious single ethnic groups. However, as I have repeated before in this forum, bilingualism and multilingualism was a common thing in the Eurasian Steppes and often ethnic groups, peoples and tribes contained people with different ethnic origins. In the case of the Scythians and Sakae, large number of tribes were given their names but as Herodotos himself wrote, these tribes often spoke different languages. That's why, even though we know that most Scythian-Saka and Sarmatian names are identified as Iranic today, there are also a few Turkic ones out there as well.
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Post by ancalimon on Nov 11, 2012 7:47:33 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 11, 2012 22:25:30 GMT 3
But why would a people named "Child"? Are ther any other examples of that case in history?
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Post by Ardavarz on Nov 12, 2012 2:30:44 GMT 3
It is actually Ōxos (Ώξος) in the Greek sources and I think it was something like Oaxo in the Bactrian writings and also Vakṣu or Vaṅkṣu in Sanskrit (the latter is also name of an arm or branch of the Ganges meaning something like "bending, going crookedly"). There is no "Oks"! You see, there are some conventions in writing foreign names in Russian (like omitting the endings -os, -us from Greek and Latin words, "x" is rendered by "ks" because there is no such letter in the modern Cyrillic alphabet etc.). Authors like that one usually pick some of them (often from old editions of the translated texts) without even bothering to check the original spelling and pronunciation, then if the words seem visually similar while written with Cyrillic letters, this is taken as "evidence". It is an amateurish approach at any rate - such resemblances in most cases are pure illusion. Thus I am not sure about "okuz" (how exactly was written this word by Mahmud Kashgari?), but it doesn't seem plausible to me that the syllable "kuz" (which would be stressed) could be reduced to "ks" by any foreign hearer.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 12, 2012 10:37:31 GMT 3
The word is Ögüz (written Ügüz by some scholars) with the meaning "river" in Old Turkic documents written in the Gokturk-Uyghur periods. I will check it from Mahmud of Kashghar's work tonight as well.
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Post by ancalimon on Nov 12, 2012 19:59:05 GMT 3
Isn't it related with what we use today in Turkish meaning river? akarsu ak: flow, rush, swarm su: water
Öküz: ox <?> Akýþ: the flow, the rush, the swarm There has to be a connection which I'm not seeing. But why would a people named "Child"? Are ther any other examples of that case in history? I know of many different ethnic names like this. For example Karamanoðullarý means children of Karaman. We especially have to think about the word çaða and consider its other deep meanings other than the evident child meaning. Let me explain what I thought about this today: Here is from starling: Proto-Turkic: *čĀka Altaic etymology: Altaic etymology Meaning: new-born child Russian meaning: новорожденный ребенок, детеныш Turkish: čaɣa (dial.); čaɣa 'young of birds' (Old Osm. XIV c.) Tatar: čaɣa Middle Turkic: čaqa (Pav. C.), (Xwar.) čaqa 'young of birds' (Фазылов 2, 511) Uzbek: čaqalɔq, (Tashk.) čaqa Uighur: bala-čaqa 'children' (dial.) Azerbaidzhan: čaɣa Turkmen: čāGa Kirghiz: bala-čaqa 'children' Kazakh: qɨzɨl šaqa 'quite naked (of young of animals)' Noghai: bala-šaɣa 'children' Karakalpak: qɨzɨl šaqa 'quite naked (of young of animals)' Comments: VEWT 96, Менгес 1979, 170. While the word means new born child, it also means 'young of birds'. We today know of a bird named "saka" in Turkish. We have to make all possible figurative meaning of "bird". A bird is "kuþ" in Turkish. It's almost the same word in all of the Turkic dialects ranging from gus, guþ, kuþ, kus, koþ, .... etc... We have to think of words similar to kuþ. Especially those words that seem to be related within context and Linguistics alone would not suffice. We would have to use every possible knowledge we can find.
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Post by ancalimon on Nov 12, 2012 20:24:20 GMT 3
I can not edit the post above because it messes up the characters.
Now we have several different meaning within a single word.
1-) Bird 2-) new born 3-) young 4-) child 5-)naked (natural?)
So what other ethnonym do we have related to all or some of the above?
Kipchak comes to my mind. It seems like the word chak part that word is also related with "child". Kof Çaða : Maybe it means "child from cove". But that would be over simplifying things and what we have usually have following this procedure is usually a folk etymology. So we would need to examine the possibilities.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 12, 2012 23:29:40 GMT 3
Wrong. The Qaramanids were known back in their time as Qaramanlu; Karamanoğulları (and all the other principality names ending with -oğulları, "sons") is a modern term coined in the 20th century. Back then, those principalities were known with the names Osmanlu, Qaramanlu, Aq Qoyunlu, Aydınlu, Sarukhanlu, Germiyanlu, etc.
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Post by Ardavarz on Nov 12, 2012 23:49:27 GMT 3
The word is Ögüz (written Ügüz by some scholars) with the meaning "river" in Old Turkic documents written in the Gokturk-Uyghur periods. I will check it from Mahmud of Kashghar's work tonight as well. Thanks. Now I could find it in my Old Turkic dictionary - they quote several examples from Old Uighur texts like Oghuz Name and Qutadghu Bilig. I knew it should be something like that (k may be q, g or gh, palatal vowels are not marked etc.) and that's why I said those old translations cannot be trusted as far as the accuracy of spelling is concerned. They were intended for general public, not for specialists - linguists or historians. Isn't it related with what we use today in Turkish meaning river? akarsu ak: flow, rush, swarm su: water
Öküz: ox <?> Akýþ: the flow, the rush, the swarm There has to be a connection which I'm not seeing. I'd rather bet on something like Aqsu or Aksu ("White water") - there are many places and rivers with such name: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AksuThis reminds me the Russian legend about Belovod'e (also "White water") - allegedly some utopian country in Altai or Central Asia. It is often compared with the Buddhist Shambhala which also was located either in Central Asia or Mongolia (by other versions - in Himalayas or Kunlun mountains).
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Post by Ardavarz on Nov 14, 2012 0:41:04 GMT 3
BTW about the name "Saka" - it doesn't need to be from the language or languages of those people themselves. I don't know of any evidence that they have designated themselves as "Saka". Quite the opposite - according to Herodotus this was how the Persians called the Scythians (and indeed it is found in the Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions). In my opinion Saka (= Sanskrit Śaka) is just general Indo-Iranian designation of the Steppe people (whatever they may be) meaning most likely "nomad" (as one of the etymologies maintains). In the Indian mythological geography there is such continent called Śāka-dvīpa which can be interpreted as "island or continent of the Śakas" (not the Śaka tree as traditionally assumed) and this is probably the designation of the Eurasian Steppe. Then there is a particular sub-caste of Brahmins said to originate from there - the so-called Shakadwipi or Sakaldwipiya Brahmins considered as Magi and sun-worshippers (Skt. Saura - "solar", cf. with the name of Sauromatae; mata means "thought, idea, belief" in Sanskrit): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakaldwipiya_historyI wonder sometimes whether this name can be related to the Arabian Saqlab (pl. Saqāliba) given that in North-Eastern Iranian languages the transition d > l is well known feature and thus the Indian Śāka-dvīpa (that would be pronounced as Saka-dīpa in Prakrits like Gandhari and Pali) could become something like *Sakalipa in Bactrian from where the Arabs took it as designation of some northern people (sometimes associated with the Volga Bulgars). Anyway, what I mean is - maybe those "Scythians" (Saka) have never used the name Saka at all and it was an alloethnonym.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 14, 2012 12:18:57 GMT 3
That is a possibility too. Or perhaps, like what usually happened in the Eurasian Steppes, it was the name of only a group of tribes or a people, and later it's usage was expanded to comprise all steppe peoples (as happened in the examples of Hun, Tiele, Turk, Tatar and Mongol).
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Nov 24, 2012 17:59:57 GMT 3
Just checked Mahmud of Kashghar (sorry for being late); he wrote the Turkic word Öküz meaning "River" as ﺍﻜﺰ, with a kaf ﻚ and not with a qaf ﻖ.
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