Evroazijski stepski pojas kao činilac jezičke i kulturne prošlosti Slovena

Abstract

Razmatraju se mogući odrazi kontakata sa Skitima i Sarmatima u praslovenskoj leksici, posebno neki termini iz oblasti materijalne kulture i razmene dobara (nazivi za metale *sьrebro, *olovo, *mědь; *sani 'saonice"; tъrgъ 'trgovina').

Stretched over about 7000 km from the lower Danube and the eastern slopes of the Carpathians along the northern shore of the Black Sea and therefrom through the middle of Asia as far as the Altai Mountains and the Chinese Wall, the Eurasian steppe zone, 'the inland sea of grass', since the domestication of horses which took place precisely there, played a role similar to that of the Mediterranean in facilitating not only migrations and conquests, but also the circulation of cultural achievements between its border areas. During the antiquity these vast grasslands were inhabited predominately by the Iranian-speaking nomads, split into various tribes and dialects, but embraced in the ancient sources by the common name of Scythians or Saka. As innovators in the horsemanship, but also as mediators between the great civilizations of the Ancient World and the still uncivilized northern regions, they exercised a great influence on the neighbouring or even remote peoples, which is reflected in a number of words presumably borrowed from Scythian by many European and Asian languages. One of them was Common Slavic once spoken in the NE European parkland (Russ. lesostep'). Its vocabulary seems to comprise a substantial layer of Scythian loan-words, revealable as such by their phonetic features and distributed over various semantic fields agriculture, weapons, handicraft, spiritual life, etc. These borrowings from Scythian are to be dated approximately between the 8th and 2nd century B.C. besides an earlier Iranian stratum is to be supposed in Slavic lexicon, less distinguishable from its inherited core, as well as a later one, Serration lacking the distinctive traits of Scythian phonetics and having some others of its own, which are common to the modern Ossetic, such the consonantal metathesis in the ethnic names Sьrb(j)i from Sarm. *sœrb lt OIran. *sabra- = Slav. sębr' 'freeman', cf. Sarm. Serbi EN in Ptolemy (2nd century A. D) Osset. sœrvœt 'common land' Xьrvati lt Sarm. Hurvav PN (Choroathos in Greek inscriptions from 2nd-3rd A. D) lt OIran. *Hu-brāvr- = OInd. Subhrātr-, cf Osset. (Digor) œrvadœ 'brother'. Here an attempt is made to elucidate the impact of Scythian and generally Iranian on Slavic metallurgical and trade terminology. The designation for silver is shared by Slavic, Baltic and Germanic, which can be traced back to an original form *sirabra- that underwent various dissimilations. Being unmotivated in all of these languages, this word is probably an ancient borrowing. In view of the cases such as OIran. *tsvanta- avr- 'sacred fire' gt Scyth. *santāhr-aka- gt Gr sandarákē 'realgar', the first element sir(a-) can be traced back via Scyth *sihra- to OIran. *tsvivra- 'white (metal)', while -abra- is probably to be connected with Indo-Iranian abhra- 'sky, cloud', thus 'heavenly white metal' a compound of the inverse type well known to Ossetic and already to Sarmatian. For lead there is an old designation common to Slavic and Baltic (ORuss. svinьcь, Lith. šv nas), but in both domains it is largely suppressed by olovo, Lith. álvas, with no satisfactory etymology, probably borrowed from an unknown source. If we allow that its -l- can go back to Scythian l lt d then it has a close parallel in Khotanese daujsa 'lead' supposing an older *dava-ča- 'dark metal' (if compared to tin) or *adava-ča- 'not darkening rustless (metal)'; from the latter form a Scythian *alava- would be expected which could explain Slavic olovo; if judging from Hesych's glosses álaba 'ink', alábē 'coal', the word seems to have been related to a kind of graphite, cf. its English name blacklead. There is no reason to suspect the Balto-Slavic name of iron OCS želĕzo, Lith. gelež s to be borrowed from Scythian, but the Slavic word for sledge, sani, does seem to go back together with Hesych's gloss sēníkē 'wheelless wagon' lt Scyth. s'inika-, to the Scythian designation for iron *san- lt OIran. *tsvan- (underlying the name of the legendary Scythian king inventor of iron Saneunos); as a term of the ironwork - which was developed in Scythia at an early date (Kamenskoe gorodišče on Dnepr) - the word must have designated the iron part of the sledge, or of the plough, cf. Osset. œfsœn 'ploughshare' beside œfsœrtoe 'sledge runners' (the latter from the heteroclite stem *tsvar-). Another Iranian import led presumedly to the replacement in Slavic of the ancient I.-E. term for 'copper, bronze' ruda (from *roudho- 'red') by *mědь, the older word surviving as a general designation for ore, the new one reflecting probably Iranian māidya- '(bronze) armour', cf. Arab. mādiya-, late Sanskrit mādhī both 'armour', literally 'Median, stemming from Media' (notice that the European name of bronze also comes from Persian). There are other loanwords of Iranian or Greek origin in Common Slavic, which indicate, too, a borrowing of the object along with the word for it by the Slavs through the mediation of the Scythians or the Sarmatians, such as čaša 'glass' lt Scyth. *čāša-, by dissimilation from OIran. *čašta-, cf. Khot. tcaşţa- and, otherwise dissimilated, Av. tašta- ( gt It. tazza, Fr. tasse etc); kurь 'cock, hen' lt OIran. *kaura- 'blind', cf. Gr. Persikòs órnis, Slavic *kuroslěpь 'night blindness'; lukь 'onion' lt Scyth. *lauka- lt Gr. daûkos 'carrot' (thus Germ *lauka- from Slavic, and not the opposite); xalọga 'palisade' lt Scyth *χālanga lt Gr. phálanx, acc. phálanga; košь-nь 'chest' lt Scyth. *koχinos lt Gr. kóphinos ( gt Engl. coffin); talogь 'sediment, dreg' lt Scyth. *tālaga lt Gr látax, acc. látaga etc. All these etymologies imply the Proto-Slavs taking part in an intensive trade between the North Pontic coast and its hinterland That was probably the way they came to apply the name of the Borysthenes (Olbia) to the ivy (*brьst'anь), a plant uncommon in their homeland, but cultivated by the Pontic Greeks for the purpose of the Dionysian cult. It is possible that their very term for 'trade', *tъrgь, is based on another geographical name from the same region, Tyregétai, a Sarmatian tribe dwelling on the lower Dnestr, Týras, who were in position to mediate in commerce between the Greek colony named after the river, situated at its mouth, and the upstream regions. But there is yet another, perhaps more plausible possibility of interpreting this term with no etymological connections in other I.-E. languages since Illyrian tergitio 'negotiator' is proved to be a ghostword. It can be understood as a compound: *tŗ-gu/gov- 'cattle driving' (this being the primitive form of trade), with I.-E. *gụou- 'ox, cow' as its second component, preceded by the verbal root *ter- 'drive' (Slav. těr'ati Oss. tœrun). Anyway, it would have been mostly thanks to their southern neighbours of Iranian stock - by whom they were called Vœnœd-'Wood-Eaters' mockingly for 'woodlanders' - that the Proto-Slavs enlarged their geographical horizon before they started expanding southwards at the end of the antiquity. Some traces of this early information are to be found in the formulas of their traditional poetry, such as *tixьjь Dunajь 'the still Danube' (originally related to Tisza?) and *sin'e mor'e 'the (greyish) blue sea', primarily a designation for the Black Sea, a calque or rather a loan from Iranian *axšainam (dzrayah).