Iran And India

01-13-2006, 12:32 AM

Sushmita,

Thanks for some very good and informative posts, and welcome to the forum!

As Mitradena said that although the term "Arya" was in common usage amidst persians, it doesn't necessarily connect "Arya" with the name "Iran".

You mentioned that Darius used Arya and not Airya as was usual in Iran. May be Iranian "Airya" has more to do with "aila" or "aida"

"Airyanam Vaejo" could then mean seed/origin of ailas/aidas.

This term is also very similar to a place name "Arya-vIryAn" found in old sanskrit texts, which is currently identified with Ajerbaijan. Although Hauma had discounted the possibility that "Airyanam Vaejo" stands for Ajerbaijan.

01-13-2006, 04:51 AM

Also, before the Aryan speakers came to Iran there was a civilization in the south-west corner of Iran known as IlAm/elAm.

Even today there is a province in the south of Iran on the Iraqi boder called IlAm:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east.../iran_pol01.jpg

Now word IlAm does seem related to ilA.

More info on the ilAm/elAm civilization:

http://www.payvand.com/news/04/dec/1072.html

01-13-2006, 05:02 AM

Ashok Kumar,
Thanks for the kind welcome.

About Airyanam Vaejo, Elst and a few others have substantial reason to believe that it is not Azerbaijan but located in Northern India. I once again refer to his article 4.6.6. Iranian Urheimat memory :QUOTEThe Iranians are fairly clear about their history of immigration from Hapta-Hendu and Airyanam Vaejo, two of sixteen Iranian lands mentioned in the Zoroastrian scripture Vendidad.
...
The Iranian homelands Airyanam Vaejo, described as too cold in its 10-months-long winter, and Hapta-Hendu, described as rendered too hot for men (i.e. the Iranians) by the wicked Angra-Mainyu, are Kashmir and Sapta-Saindhavah (Panjab-Haryana) respectively.54I'm inclined to think this is likelier than Azerbaijan. For one thing, Azerbaijan is located Northwest of Iran. Secondly, Zoroaster (whose work is the Avesta which mentions Airyanam Vaejo) was born in Afghanistan which is east of Iran. To get from Afghanistan to Azerbaijan before landing in Iran, the Iranians would have had to do some circular travel: go from Afghanistan, through Turkmenistan (a Finno-Ugric country with mostly non-Indo-Europeans, the little Iranian presence there is from the Islamic times), across the Caspian Sea, into Azerbaijan and from there into northern Iran.

Of course, with the AIT scenario (taking Anatolia which is modern-day Turkey as the fabled "PIE homeland") entry of Iranians into Azerbaijan would be through Armenia. Subsequently they'd have moved south into Iran and then East into Afghanistan and India. Although no proponent of AIT that I've read of has suggested Iran was populated before Afghanistan, so another roundabout travel is required with Anatolia as the Urheimat.
Another problem of Iran being populated by the IEs prior to India would be that very same Avesta's mention of Hapta Hendu as one of the former lands where Iranians lived. There's also the mention of Angra-Manyu, the Angry Mind, which Talageri and Elst have connected with their enemies, the Vedic seers Angiras - see footnote 54 in the above link to Elst's article.

I will defer to your opinion on the name of Iran being derived from Aila. When it comes to Airyanam Vaejo though, the Northwestern parts of India still seem the most reasonable.

Mitradena,
The starting "I" in Iran is pronounced like "ee" in "bee" by Americans and western people. However, (some) Iranians used to pronounce it as the English self-referential word "I". So I-ran is a valid pronunciation. In which case spelling it as Airan would be phonetically correct, English spelling sometimes being arbitrary. This does not exclude the possibility of the name having been derived from Aila as Ashok Kumar indicated. We need to know how they wrote it in their script in older times (not how it's recently written). Their script is very likely to be more phonetically accurate than English, thankfully.

The only way we can know for sure is to find contemporary references by non-Persian people to Iran's former country name. India was known to be called Aryadesha and Bharatvarsha by Chinese travellers who have recorded this. Our own old records also state we called our land Aryavarta. Do old Iranian records state the meaning of Airyanam? And did others outside Iran know it by that name? Or did Persia go by a different name after the Iranians left Airyanam Vaejo? It seems unlikely that Iranians would have gone around naming all Iranian lands by the same "Airyana", because there were so many countries they settled in.
I know Pars was their metropolis, but I don't know what their country was called. Was the countryname unimportant, as it was in the case of Rome? Did Persia have a different name before the founding of Pars? If so what do their ancient records state it to have been?
I just have lots of questions, few answers. Anyone know or have suggestions?

01-13-2006, 05:10 AM

Some more info on the elamite civilization:
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/elamite/elamite.php

Some pictures of artifacts:
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/photo_a...amite_album.php

The weaver/spinner in one these artifacts looks distinctly Indian:
http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/Elamspin.jpg

01-13-2006, 07:02 AM

The 'loom' or whatever in third picture definitely looks familiar.

I wouldn't reference iranchamber in public, it's generally considered unreliable. Among Indian things on which they have written "information", consider that:
(1) They claim Pallavas were Iranian. But there's no evidence or record that prior to the Pallavas speaking Prakrt (followed by Samskrt, followed by Tamil) they ever spoke any Iranian language. Secondly, prior to them believing in Hinduism, there is no evidence or record of them having believed in Iranian religions (Zoroastrianism or the religions prior to that).
Interestingly, they think all Reddys, Brahmins from the South as well as a whole bunch of castes in India are all Pallavas (Iranian). Basically they're making most, if not all, of the South into an Iranian population. I wonder if they would have included the Reddys if they had discovered that they were not an "upper" caste group during the Pallava period (the Pallava paper author and others at Iranchamber agree with the AIT in thinking that the caste system was a racial divide and that Dravidians are not "Aryans"). It was during Islam's entry into the South that the Reddys took on the position of Kshatriyas.
The claim that the Reddys are descendents of Pallavas must be because of the many goodlooking Reddy actors and actresses, I'm guessing. The same mistake the west makes about Aishwarya Rai, in thinking she can't be South Indian, "Dravidian".
All these claims without verifiable substantiation.
(2) They claim chess is not Indian but Iranian, without citing any valid proof against the long-existing weighty research into its Indian origin.
(3) They think Jats and Mauryas are all Iranian, because the former "looks European" and some Punjabi names sound a little European (Saxena, Hansraj) and the word "Maurya" contains the name Arya which they assume is Iranian.
About the European sounding names among Punjabis, these are Sanskritic names. Even the Saxons of England claimed their tribe's origins were in Scythia, located according to them near the Black Sea I think. That means the origins of the Saxons of Germany were in the Black Sea region too. See the Shaka/Scythian entry in wikipedia. The Black Sea isn't the part of Europe others have in mind in accusing the Sanskit names of being European, because the word Saxon and the name Hans are particularly Germanic.
(4) They've referred to euro-centrist writers, like L.A.Waddell, who believed in the Aryan race and the AIT, who wrote as far back as around 1900. They regard L.A. Waddell's shoddy work as very good.

Iranchamber is not trustworthy. Even though they claim to have some Iranologists onboard, there seem to be none as many of their conclusions are blatantly wrong and opposed to present and even past scholarship.
Curiously, a number of their authors are Muslims (taking pride in pre-Islamic Iran? it's a start!), and at least one has been said to support "Mughalstan" in India. I'm not saying everything on the site is wrong, just that it will be hard to separate propaganda from fact.
There are better Iranian sites out there for Iranian history, who know how much of the world's heritage is Iranian legacy. There are also good, reliable Zoroastrian sites (actually, the reliable Iranians sites are the Zoroastrian ones).

01-13-2006, 07:27 AM

Elam and Dravidian language connection:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...rasschaert.html
QUOTEmost linguists believe that Dravidian entered India from southern Iran (Elam/Makran), while the origins of Sino-Tibetan were in the middle basin of the Yellow River in China.It's best to be careful about this, as it is not a proven fact. Linguists believe the Dravidian languages came to India from the Mediterranean via South Iran. But according to genetics I thought the origin of Sino-Tibetan wasn't in China. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...d/urheimat.htmlQUOTEThis would fit in with David McAlpin's Elamo-Dravidian theory, which puts Proto-Elamo-Dravidian on the coast of Iran, spreading westwards to Mesopotamia (Elam) and eastwards to Sindh and along the Indian coast southward.28 This theory is supported by the similarities between the undeciphered early Elamite script and the Harappan script, and by the survival of the Brahui Dravidian speech pocket in Baluchistan. It would make the Harappan culture area bi- and possibly multi-lingual: a perfectly normal situation, comparable with multi-lingual Mesopotamia or with Latin-Greek bilinguism in the Roman Empire.
But in that case, Indo-Aryan influence on Dravidian may be much older than usually assumed, and date back well into the heyday of Harappan culture. However, the Dravidians influenced by Indo-Aryan in Gujarat and Maharashtra may have been a dead-end in the history of Dravidian, losing their language altogether. There is no trace of Harappans migrating south, whether to save their Dravidian language from Indo-Aryan contamination or for other, more likely reasons. 
However, not all agree to the general belief that Brahui is a Dravidian language. Eg. Bernard Sergent disputes it ( http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/sergent.html ):QUOTEAt this point, it is customary to point to the Dravidian Brahui speakers of Baluchistan (living in the vicinity of Mehrgarh) as a remnant of the Dravidian Harappans. However, Sergent proposes that the Brahui speakers, far from being a native remnant of a pre-Harappan population of Baluchistan, only immigrated into Baluchistan from inner India in the early Muslim period. Given that Baluchi, a West-Iranian language, only established itself in Baluchistan in the 13th century ("for 2000 years, India has been retreating before Iran", p.29; indeed, both Baluchistan, including the Brahminical place of pilgrimage Hinglaj, and the Northwest Frontier Province, homeland of Panini, were partly Indo-Aryan-speaking before Baluchi and Pashtu moved in), and that the only Indo-Iranian loans in Brahui are from Baluchi and not from Pehlevi or Sindhi, Sergent deduces that Brahui was imported into its present habitat only that late. (p.130) We'll have to leave that as just a proposal for now: a Central-Indian Dravidian population migrated to Baluchistan in perhaps the 14th century.
...
Sergent is also skeptical of David MacAlpin's thesis of an "Elamo-Dravidian" language family: what isoglosses there are between Elamite and Dravidian can be explained sufficiently through contact rather than common origin.
Regarding the Baluchis from West-Iran, http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch45.htm states:
QUOTEthe Baluchis have immigrated into this area from Western Iran during the early Muslim period. Before that, in most of the areas where Pashtu and Baluchi are now spoken, the language was Indo-Aryan Prakrit. 
Various origins given for the "Dravidians".
No one seems to agree or be certain about where the Dravidian language family comes from. (Or are they talking about Dravidian as people?) It seems there's little interest to research this language family, most are only interested in the "Indo-European" one, else why are there so many theories:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article...ism/kamdar.html QUOTEAnd the Dravidians are traced back by various scholars to Elam, Central Asia or even Africa, immigrating into India only in the early Harappan age. Central Asia is most interesting. So the Dravidians are also geographically Central Asians? Dravidians are also geographically Iranians? The only difference with the AIT's scenario of marauding Indo-Europeans invading from Central Asia then is the linguistic family in question and the time of entry. (We all know humans are from Africa, so the last possibility is nothing clever.) What about the South Indian Kumari Kandam origins? Who do we believe? The ancient Tamil people or the motivated western scholars? Hmmm. I must bear in mind that none of the above has taken into account the recent genetics research.

Dravidian and Finno-Ugric links:
Others believe the Dravidian languages were the origin if not part of the origin of the Finno-Ugric languags (Finnish, Saami, Turkic, Hun, etc.). See http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch34.htm QUOTEThe most important theory in this line of research is the Nostratic superfamily theory, postulating a common origin for Eskimo-Aleut, Altaic, Uralic, IE, Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian and possibly South-Caucasian. Some people make fun of this theory, and refer it jokingly to the ânostratosphereâ, yet its basic postulate makes perfect sense: differentiation of ancestor-languages, as attested in detail in the case of Latin and the Romance language family, must have happened at earlier stages of history as well. Whether the present superfamily theory and the methods actually used for reconstructing the supposed Nostratic vocabulary are at all acceptable, is a different matter.
And again, at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../keaitlin2.html
QUOTEA third partner in this relationÂship must also be taken into account, though its connection with Uralic looks older and deeper than that of PIE: Dravidian. Witzel (1999/1:349) acknowledges the "linguiÂstic connections of Dravidian with Uralic". Both are families of agglutiÂnative languages with flexive tendencies, abhorring consonant clusters and favouring the stress on the first syllable. Sergent (1997:65-72) maps out their relationship in some detail, again pointing to the northwest outside India as the origin of Dravidian. We may ignore Sergent's theory of an African origin of Dravidian for now, and limit our attention to his less eccentric position that a Proto-Dravidian group at one point ended up in Central Asia, there to leave substraÂtum traces discerniÂble even in the IE immigrant language Tocharian. The most successful lineage of Dravidians outside India was the one which mixed its language with some Palaeo-Siberian tongue, yielding the Uralic languaÂge family.
...
The interacÂtion of the three may perhaps be illustrated by the word *kota/koTa, "tent, house" in Uralic and in Dravidian, and also in Sanskrit and Avestan but not in any other branch of IE: perhaps Dravidian gave it to Uralic as a birth gift, and later imparted it to those IE languages it could still reach when in India. If this part of the evidence leaves it as conjectural that India was the habitat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, it does at least argue strongly for some Central-Asian population centre, most likely Bactria-Sogdia, as the meeting-place of Proto-Uralic, Proto-Dravidian and PIE, before IE and Uralic would start their duet of continuous (one-way) linguistic interaction on their parallel migrations westward.
About the theory of âElamo-Dravidianâ, originating in southern Iran, once again:
http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/wiah/ch9.htm QUOTEThis theory, as well as the âevidenceâ for Western origins of Dravidian constituted by a Dravidian (Brahui) speech pocket in Baluchistan, is rejected by Bernard Sergent (GenÃ¨se de lâInde, p.45-84), but he offers other indications for a non-Indian origin of Dravidian, linking it with Uralic and even some African languages (though, if correct, the-se data could equally support a scenario of Dravidian expansion from India). It would make sense insofar as according to genetics India was populated before other Non-African countries.

In conclusion, if there is any relation between the Aila clan and Elam (Elamites), it would be interesting to find out conclusively if Elam is related to the Dravidian language family and if Aila is referring to Elam. I'm not sure of the Aila-Elam link, nor even of the more popular belief in the Dravidian-Elam link - but if true, it would connect Dravidian and Indo-Aryan linguistic groups as well as Indian tribal affiliations. But I don't know. And what's with the many Dravidian-Urheimat scenarios anyway?

Does anyone here know Tamil? "Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam" (LTTE of Sri Lanka). What does Eelam mean?

01-13-2006, 07:29 AM

QUOTEThe claim that the Reddys are descendents of Pallavas must be because of the many goodlooking Reddy actors and actresses, I'm guessing.


This is a good guess. I agree the Iranians are just as superficial as the Europeans.

The iranchamber.com is definitely a biased site.
The article written by some Samar Abbas (Indian muslim?) on the Pallavas is absolute rubbish.

However I gave links to the Elamite civilization because at least that is a little believable.

01-13-2006, 07:32 AM

Bangani, a Kentum language in India: http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../keaitlin1.html QUOTEMoreover, the discovery of a small and extinct kentum language inside India (ProtoâBangani, with koto as its word for "hundred"), surviving as a sizable substratum in the Himalayan language Bangani, tends to support the hypothesis that the older kentum form was originally present in India as well. This discovery was made by the German linguist Claus Peter Zoller (1987, 1988, 1989). The attempt by George van Driem and Suhnu R. Sharma (1996) to discredit Zoller has been overruled by the findings made on the spot by Anvita Abbi (1998) and her students. She has almost entirely confirmed Zoller's list of kentum substratum words in Bangani. But as the trite phrase goes: this calls for more reseaÂrch.
Zoller does not explain the presence of a kentum language in India through an Indian Homeland Theory but as a left-over of a pre-Vedic Indo-European immigration into India. He claims that the local people have a tradition of their immigration from Afghanistan. If they really lived in Afghanistan originalÂly, their case (and their nuisance value for the AIT) isn't too different from that of the Tocharians, another kentum people showing up in unexÂpected quarters. But if even the Vedic poets could not recall the invasion of their grandfathers into India (Vedic literature doesn't mention it anywhere, vide Elst 1999:164-171), what value should we attach to a tradition of this mountain tribe about its own immigration many centuries ago? Could it not rather be that they have interiorized what the school-going ones among them picked up in standard textbooks of history, viz. the AIT model? Their presence in Afghanistan or in Garhwal itself is at any rate highly compatible with the OIT.
And an interesting piece of information in footnote #90 at http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch54.htm
The famous placename "Susa" was Elamite. I never knew: QUOTE90Remark that the Iranian name Hindu for âIndusâ, hence also for âIndiaâ, indicates that the Iranians have lived near the Indus. If they had not, then Sindhu would have been a foreign term which they would have left intact, just as they kept the Elamite city name Susa intact (rather than evolving it to Huha or something like that). But because Sindhu was part of their own vocabulary, it followed the evolution of Iranian phonetics to become Hindu.

**Hauma Hamiddha** · 01-13-2006, 07:37 AM

-Iran is indeed derived from Airyana vaejo not Aila. There is no doubt about this.

-Many Indo-Iranian tribes called themselves Aryan, but specifically declared their rivals non-Aryan.

-The claim that Sassanians persecuted others is particularly exaggerated by the Western Christian authors. Both Rome and Iran where pluralist states like India till the coming of Christianity. Christian exclusivism targeted the Roman empire first. Here it faced stiff competition from the old Indo-European Roman religion and the rising Mithraism which was pretty similar to Mazdaism but concentrated on Mithra rather than Mazda (varuNa). But the Christians duely demonize Mithraism too for obvious reasons.

After Constantine's conversion the Christian exclusivism spread to Iranian territories. Constantine advised the Iranian emperor Shapur II to convert to the Yesu mata. Of course the Iranians did not bother. That initiated the holy war of the Christians. About 80 years later Christians started desecrating Iranian fire temples. This resulted in swift retaliation as the Christians were punished by the Iranian for their hostile attacks in Iranian territory. They fled west into the Roman territory and sought aid from the Christian roman emperor. In the christian Roman empire Iranian and other pagan shrines like those of the Germans were descrated, though Iran itself recognized minority rights of Christians and provided them protection to worship.

There has been large scale displacement of the original Iranian stock in Iran by the Moslems

01-13-2006, 07:44 AM

QUOTEThere has been large scale displacement of the original Iranian stock in Iran by the Moslems


So apart from the Parsis the original Iranian race has been destroyed by the Arabs and Turks?

Are the Indian Aryans more reflective of what the original Iranians themselves looked like than the current moslem population of Iran?

01-13-2006, 08:35 AM

QUOTE(mitradena @ Jan 13 2006, 07:29 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEThe claim that the Reddys are descendents of Pallavas must be because of the many goodlooking Reddy actors and actresses, I'm guessing.
This is a good guess. I agree the Iranians are just as superficial as the Europeans.
[right][snapback]44721[/snapback][/right]</div>That's not what I actually meant. They're not respresentative of Iranians in general. I was talking about the Iranchamber site thinking that Reddys "must be" the descendants of the Iranian Pahlavas. I wasn't clear in my post.

Most Iranians don't really know what Indians look like unless it's on TV. They don't know that if they met many people in the South or East of India, they would mistake them for North-Indians or even confuse them with Iranians. (Just like they might confuse people from Central and the rest of North India).
In fact, I am guilty of this too. Often I think that someone looks Indian and they turn out to be Iranian...

And also, Iran, like much of the rest of the world, has been affected by the AIT. Differently than we have been. The entire world has been forced to acknowledge that the mythical "Aryans", equivalent to "Caucasians" in my opinion, are some super-race: goodlooking (huh? what, more goodlooking than everyone else in the world?), masterminds behind all civilisations (Persia, India, China anyone?) and all kinds of other super-abilities. This has bred an inferiority complex in practically every non-European nation. The only ones who can still keep their head high are the Finnish and the Basques who are not IE. Though non-IE, the pro-AIT Indo-Europeans (whoever that is referring to), at least have to concede that the Finnish and Basques look Caucasian. It is to be noted that both these pre-European European people have been oppressed for long periods of time.

Coming back to Iran, it is a country that has gone through very difficult changes. In WWII, the country because of its Islamic leadership allied itself with Nazism. I suspect some at least came into contact with the Nazi race-literature that the Nazis aimed at Muslims (as was the case with the Yugoslavian-Muslim Hanjar who were recruited by the Nazis and were made to read anti-Semitic and anti-Serb literature). It is to the Iranians' credit that so little of that has influenced them after WWII.
Their ruler Pahlavi tried to subtly and not so subtly bring back the ancient Zoroastrian faith. It was tied to Iranian Nationalism and the Mullahs/Ayatollahs could no longer watch the populace slowly slipping into westernisation and worse .... pre-Islamic glories. Even after the nasty Islamic revolution, many people are still proud to identify themselves as Iranian rather than Muslim. However, with that identification, they wish to separate themselves ethnically from what they identify as the original Islamic ethnicity: Arabians. I'm not talking about the Ex-Muslims even. Some of them still are Muslim, but are proud to be Iranian as well (which should be impossible considering their history). Some of the racial paradoxes have spread into the new movement of people who want to disconnect themselves from Islam but can only see ethnicity as a way out.

The Zoroastrians of Iran (those whose ancestors had never converted) are not interested in race or anything like it. They of course only marry other Zoroastrians, but that is for obvious reasons. Some of the new converts to Zoroastrianism in Iran are converting for nationalist and anti-Islamic-Imperialism reasons. And that's not what Zoroastrianism is about. Perhaps deeper study of the religion they've rediscovered will help them to shake the racial dichotomies perpetrated since WWII and rampant in today's world climate. Once again, not all new Iranian converts to Zoroastrianism have converted for these reasons. Most in fact have an earnest interest in their ancestral religion and race has no bearing on their choice or on their life whatsoever. They are nationalistic though, which I think is a good thing. They also view it essential for other countries under Islam to become more nationalistic and have even discussed how Arabians should shake off the yoke of Islam.

So Mitradena, what I've been trying to say in those long paragraphs is as follows: most Iranians are not interested in race. Many that are tend to be of the Muslim variety or those who've left Islam but want some other identity to hold onto and haven't yet grasped onto the wholesomeness of Zoroastrianism. We can't judge, because they've had a very tough past too. Imagine: their ancestors were like the Parsees until their conversion to Islam. And we know Parsees are not racist.

01-13-2006, 08:37 AM

QUOTE-Iran is indeed derived from Airyana vaejo not Aila. There is no doubt about this.


Hauma,

Airyana-Vaejo of Vendidad is "Iran-Vej" in pahlavi. So yes Iran is derived fom Airyana-vaejo. But what is the derivation of "Airyana vaejo"?

What is the etymology of "Airyana vaejo" in terms of sanskrit roots? And who established that etymology?

The sanskrit cognate can be either:

"AryANAm bIjaH" or "ailAnAm bIjaH" or something else.

The "l" in aila is something between "l" and "d" and close to an "r" sound. The first richa of rigveda starts as:

agnim Ile purohitam...

with "l" in Ile written as marathI second "l".

01-13-2006, 09:02 AM

Hauma,
QUOTEIran is indeed derived from Airyana vaejo not Aila. There is no doubt about this.I did think that Airyanam Vaejo referred to Noble land. I have no idea about etymology.
QUOTEMany Indo-Iranian tribes called themselves Aryan, but specifically declared their rivals non-Aryan.Koenraad Elst states that they used the word Airya like Arya was used by the Pauravas. So their rivals like the Shakas were definitely not designated as such (Airya/Arya). The Saxons, whether of Germany or England, can stop all references to themselves as Aryan.

QUOTEThe claim that Sassanians persecuted others is particularly exaggerated by the Western Christian authors.I knew it! Wikipedia is where I first came across the story of the "persecuting Sassanians". But I didn't completely believe it. Then I started to more than just suspect it when an Armenian Christian site was listing all the persecutions it had suffered at the hands of Zoroastrianism. I wondered why they were accusing Zoroastrianism in general when it was obvious they were referring to the allegations against the Sassianian rulers. Then it struck me (I was later proven right): Zoroastrianism is making somewhat of a comeback in Armenia!

QUOTErising Mithraism which was pretty similar to Mazdaism but concentrated on Mithra rather than Mazda (varuNa).Fascinating.

QUOTEAfter Constantine's conversion the Christian exclusivism spread to Iranian territories. Constantine advised the Iranian emperor Shapur II to convert to the Yesu mata. Of course the Iranians did not bother. That initiated the holy war of the Christians. About 80 years laterÂ Christians started desecrating Iranian fire temples. This resulted in swift retaliation as the Christians were punished by the Iranian for their hostile attacks in Iranian territory. They fled west into the Roman territory and sought aid from the Christian roman emperor.Â In the christian Roman empire Iranian and other pagan shrines like those of the Germans were descrated, though Iran itself recognized minority rights of Christians and provided them protection to worship.Sometimes, I wish India would behave a bit more like Persia in the face of Christian aggression. Replace Constantine's empire with any remnant Christian missionary factions in Europe and the western Roman empire with missionary America. India should say no to missionaries: no more overt or covert evangelisation.
However, Persia was too kind in "recognising the minority rights of Christians" within the Zoroastrian heartland. If Islam hadn't come along to change history into the misery we know, doubtless Christianity in Persia would have started showing serious fangs.

QUOTEThere has been large scale displacement of the original Iranian stock in Iran by the MoslemsI don't think you're implying that there are no Iranians in Iran today, right? I am certain that by far the majority of Iran is Iranian (mainly Persian as well as Parthian refugees from Iraq and Kurdish ones from Kurdistan). I'm guessing you mean that many Iranians fled out of Iran as well as many more remaining behind in Iran. The Baluchis might be a case in point. I'm pasting Elst's statement again:QUOTEthe Baluchis have immigrated into this area from Western Iran during the early Muslim period. Before that, in most of the areas where Pashtu and Baluchi are now spoken, the language was Indo-Aryan Prakrit. Were the Baluchis still Zoroastrian when they came to Afghanistan, only to be converted when Afghanistan was finally and completely conquered? Or had their settlement in Afghanistan nothing to do with fleeing from Islam?

01-13-2006, 09:29 AM

I did a search on the Vendidad for "airya". There is no occurence of word "airya" by itself. The following words involving "airya" were found with their closest sanskrit equivalents I can think of:

1. Airyana Vaeja (and Airyana vaejo)
2. aonya takhairya
3. airyama
4. vairya
5. airyaman
6. mairya
7. dairya
8. Ahuna-vairya
9. kshatra-vairya
10. Astairya

It seems airyama is like sanskrit aryamA, and vairya is like sanskrit varya.

Why is there no term "airya" (for sanskrit Arya) by itself in the whole of vendidad??

Only mention of something like arya is in vendidad-5-39:

'I invoke the Glory of the Aryan regions; '

But the e-text I looked at doesn't give the original spelling.

I may have to spend part of a day in the library to get the original spellings, unless someone can post them here.

01-13-2006, 10:04 AM

QUOTE(Ashok Kumar @ Jan 13 2006, 09:29 AM)I did a search on the Vendidad for "airya".Â There is no occurence of word "airya" by itself.[right][snapback]44734[/snapback][/right]Interesting. But they could have used the word more often in regular speech as opposed to its scanty appearance in religious literature. Even in the Avesta, Airya need not occur as a word with a space before and after it, separating it from the enclosing words. Think of how in Samskrt separate words are often glued together (no space between them).

Here's Elst's statement relating to Iranian use and non-use of Airya at koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/books/ait/ch14.htmQUOTEIranian Avesta uses Airya in referring to a specific community, the cultivators in the Oxus river basin, contrasting it with nomadic barbarians who were similar in race and equally Iranian-speaking (generically known as Shakas/Scythians), but who were not part of the sedentary Mazdean âAiryaâ world.111Note: he's apparently referring to the language Avesta, not the sacred book of the same name.

More on Zoller's discovery that Bangani was a Kentum IE language, and the resistance the results of his research met withcan be found in Talageri's RgVeda book at http://www.voi.org/books/rig/ch7.htm
Search for the word Zoller. It's quite instructive to know that there were people who opposed the existence of a Kentum IE language in India.

Mitradena,
The Zoroastrian Iranians in Yazd (I think that's the place) have always been of that faith. Their ancestors had never converted. Therefore, they must be Iranian. Likewise, pockets of the religion survived in other parts of Iran, though heavily persecuted both in the past and still facing trouble today. Add to this that history records large numbers of Iranians being converted through force, through laws of inheritance (only Muslim family members could inherit), kidnapping. This happened for ages in Iran. Most Iranians are Iranian in ethnicity, small numbers among these are thought to be Parthian, etc.
It's a new rumour spread by Muslim groups who're afraid about the Iranian revival, that the only ethnic Iranians had fled long ago to India and were the Parsees. Just a hundred years ago or so, more Iranian Zoroastrians got refuge in India: called "Irani Zarathushtis" I think. They came in quite small numbers (only 10,000 or so I think). This proves that those frightened Muslim groups are lying.

01-13-2006, 10:44 AM

QUOTEThe Zoroastrian Iranians in Yazd (I think that's the place) have always been of that faith. Their ancestors had never converted. Therefore, they must be Iranian. Likewise, pockets of the religion survived in other parts of Iran, though heavily persecuted both in the past and still facing trouble today.


That is correct there a small Zoroastrian population in Yazd which never converted to Islam.

QUOTEThat's not what I actually meant. They're not respresentative of Iranians in general. I was talking about the Iranchamber site thinking that Reddys "must be" the descendants of the Iranian Pahlavas. I wasn't clear in my post.


I understood what you meant.
The author Samar Abbas is obviously a scoundrel who lashes out at Hinduism and Brahmanas in his article. This lead me to suspect he may be an Indian Shia muslim.

QUOTESo Mitradena, what I've been trying to say in those long paragraphs is as follows: most Iranians are not interested in race.


That is good to know. All power to Iranians as they break from the Arab enslavement.

01-13-2006, 10:46 AM

Ashok,

Where can we access the Vendidad?
Is it online?

01-13-2006, 10:53 AM

Ok, I found a transliterated version of Avesta hiding on my hard-disk!

The encoding is as follows:
QUOTEASCIIÂ Â HTMLÂ Â Â Â Â Â descriptionÂ Â pronunciation
Â aÂ Â Â aÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â aÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in German, or as a in 'father'
Â AÂ Â Â Ã¢ (â°)Â Â a-macronÂ Â Â Â as a in 'father' only lengthened
Â &Â Â Â Ã£ (â¹)Â a-tildeÂ Â Â Â as 'an' in French enfant, a nasalized 'a'
Â @Â Â Â Ã¥ (Å)Â Â a-ringÂ Â Â Â Â as aw in 'saw'
Â bÂ Â Â bÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â bÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â jÂ Â Â cÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â cÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as ch in 'church'
Â dÂ Â Â dÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â dÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â DÂ Â Â dh (or eth=Ã) delta (or eth) as th in 'that', a voiced th
Â eÂ Â Â eÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â schwaÂ Â Â Â Â as u in 'but'
Â EÂ Â Â Ãª (Â)Â Â schwa-macronÂ Â as u in 'but', only lengthened
Â =Â Â Â eÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â eÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in German, or e in 'bed'
Â %Â Â Â Ãª (Â)Â Â e-macronÂ Â Â Â as in German only lengthened or a in 'made'
Â fÂ Â Â fÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â fÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â gÂ Â Â gÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â gÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â KÂ Â Â khÂ Â Â Â Â Â gammaÂ Â Â Â Â voiced x (often transcribed gh)
Â hÂ Â Â hÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â hÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â QÂ Â Â h'Â Â Â Â Â Â h-ogonekÂ Â Â Â as h, possibly stronger (before y)
Â iÂ Â Â iÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â iÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in German, or i in 'it'
Â IÂ Â Â Ã® (â)Â Â i-macronÂ Â Â Â as i in 'it' only lengthened
Â JÂ Â Â jÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â jÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â kÂ Â Â kÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â kÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â lÂ Â Â lÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â lÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English (not used in Avesta)
Â mÂ Â Â mÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â mÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â MÂ Â Â hmÂ Â Â Â Â Â hm-ligatureÂ Â m which has become voiceless after h
Â nÂ Â Â nÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â nÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â NÂ Â Â ngÂ Â Â Â Â Â n-long-tailedÂ nh (gutteral nasal) before stops
Â #Â Â Â Ã± (â)Â n-tildeÂ Â Â Â as n (used before stopped consonents)
Â *Â Â Â ngÂ Â Â Â Â Â n-ogonekÂ Â Â Â as nh
Â oÂ Â Â oÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â oÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in German, or o in 'rope'
Â OÂ Â Â Ã´ (â¢)Â Â o-macronÂ Â Â Â as o in 'rope' only lengthened (or o in 'Minnesota')
Â pÂ Â Â pÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â pÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â rÂ Â Â rÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â rÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â sÂ Â Â sÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â sÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â cÂ Â Â shÂ Â Â Â Â Â s-hacekÂ Â Â Â as sh in 'show' (palatal)
Â CÂ Â Â shÂ Â Â Â Â Â s-hacek-ogonek as sh in 'show' only more retroflex
Â $Â Â Â shÂ Â Â Â Â Â s-hacek-cedillaÂ as sh in 'show' (used before y)
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â (sometimes transcribed by s-acute)
Â tÂ Â Â tÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â tÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in French 'tout' (dental, i.e. with tongue at same
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â position as for English th in 'thin')
Â TÂ Â Â tÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â t-ogonekÂ Â Â Â as t in 'try'
Â +Â Â Â thÂ Â Â Â Â Â thetaÂ Â Â Â Â as th in 'thing'
Â uÂ Â Â uÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â uÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in German, or u in 'put'
Â UÂ Â Â Ã» (Å¾)Â Â u-macronÂ Â Â Â as oo in 'book'
Â vÂ Â Â vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as w in Dutch water (a bilabial semivowel similar to Engl.
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â v but not a fricative) (Humbach transcribes 'uu')
Â VÂ Â Â vÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â v-acuteÂ Â Â Â as v above (used initially with a few exceptions)
Â wÂ Â Â wÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â wÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â xÂ Â Â xÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â xÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as German ch, or ch in Scottish 'loch'
Â qÂ Â Â xvÂ Â Â Â Â Â x-superscript-vÂ as x (as above) with v immediately following
Â yÂ Â Â yÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â yÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English (Humbach transcribes 'ii')
Â YÂ Â Â Ã½ (Ã )Â y-acuteÂ Â Â Â as y above (used initially)
Â zÂ Â Â zÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â zÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â as in English
Â ZÂ Â Â zhÂ Â Â Â Â Â z-hacekÂ Â Â Â as z in 'azure'

Note:

HTML does not currently allow for the accurate representation of all Avesta
graphemes. In particular, the shwa, and different forms of "n", "sh", and
"t" are not distinguished. Thus the ASCII-encoded versions are preferred for
research purposes.

Other notes on pronunciation

aÂÂ Â as bite
aoÂ Â as out
ereÂ much like 'pretty' (when pronounced 'peretty') e.g. peresat


According to this encoding the words that I earlier entered appear in Vendidad as follows:

Airyana Vaeja (and Airyana vaejo) -> airyanem Va%JO
airyama -> airyEmA
vairya -> VairyO or Vairya
airyaman -> airyEmA
mairya -> mairIm
Ahuna-vairya -> ahuna Vairya
Astairya -> astairy=h=

The "aryan regions" in the translated version appears as:
"airyan&m daQyun&m" in the transliterated version.

The transliteration scheme gives "a" to be pronounced as a in father, and gives "A" to be pronounced as a in father but longer! Obviously the transliterator is talking about a as in sanskrit "a" and A as in sanskrit "aa" or "A" (in ITRANS scheme)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Finally a claim: <!--emo& Smile

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' />

All the references to "airya" use "a" and not "A" which suggests that "Arya" is not meant by the term "airya".

My hypothesis of "aila" still stands as "aila" uses hrasva "a" and not dIrgha "A".

01-13-2006, 10:57 AM

Mitradena:

I just found the website from which I had obtained those old transliterated files. Although it seems they are using a different transliteration scheme now. Anyway, it seems to be THE best site I have seen so far:

Avesta Archive

This also gives the translations and comments.

01-13-2006, 11:48 AM

If the avestan "ry" as pronounced in "airya" is similar to marAthI second 'l' ("L" in ITRANS), then the correspondence is justified. Note that marAThI "L" sound is very much like a rolled "rr" sound.

As I already mentioned, rigveda uses this "L" whenever the term "iLA" is present.

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