Scythian languages

The Scythian languages ( or or ) are a group of Eastern Iranian languages of the classical and late antique period (the Middle Iranian period), spoken in a vast region of Eurasia by the populations belonging to the Scythian cultures and their descendants. The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythian-speakers were nomadic pastoralists of Central Asia and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Fragments of their speech known from inscriptions and words quoted in ancient authors as well as analysis of their names indicate that it was an Indo-European language, more specifically from the Iranian group of Indo-Iranian languages.

Most of the Scythian languages eventually became extinct, except for modern Ossetian (which descends from the Alanian dialect of Scytho-Sarmatian), Wakhi (which descends from the Khotanese and Tumshuqese forms of Scytho-Khotanese), and Yaghnobi (which descends from Sogdian). Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows:

Classification

The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree in considering the Scythian languages (and Ossetian) as a part of the Eastern Iranian group of languages. This Iranian hypothesis relies principally on the fact that the Greek inscriptions of the Northern Black Sea Coast contain several hundreds of Sarmatian names showing a close affinity to the Ossetian language. However, the classification of the Iranian languages in general is not fully resolved, and the Eastern Iranian languages are not shown to form an actual genetic subgroup.

Some scholars detect a division of Scythian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum:
* Alanian languages or Scytho-Sarmatian in the west: were spoken by people originally of Iranian stock from the 8th and 7th century BC onwards in the area of Ukraine, Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. Modern Ossetian survives as a continuation of the language family ''possibly'' represented by Scytho-Sarmatian inscriptions, although the Scytho-Sarmatian language family "does not simply represent the same ssetianlanguage" at an earlier date.

* Saka languages or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the first century in the Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day Xinjiang, China), and including the Khotanese of Khotan and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq.

Another dialect of Scythian evolved into the Sogdian language.

Another East Iranian language related to the Scythian is the Chorasmian language.

Phonology

The Scythian language possessed the following phonemes:

History

Early Eastern Iranians originated in the Yaz culture (ca. 1500–1100 BC) in Central Asia. The Scythians migrated from Central Asia toward Eastern Europe in the 8th and 7th century BC, occupying today's Southern Russia and Ukraine and the Carpathian Basin and parts of Moldova and Dobruja. They disappeared from history after the Hunnish invasion of Europe in the 5th century AD, and Turkic ( Avar, Batsange, etc.) and Slavic peoples probably assimilated most people speaking Scythian. However, in the Caucasus, the Ossetian language belonging to the Scythian linguistic continuum remains in use , while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranian group are still spoken, namely Pashto, Pamir languages and Yaghnobi.

Corpus

Inscriptions

Some scholars ascribe certain inscribed objects found in the Carpathian Basin and in Central Asia to the Scythians, but the interpretation of these inscriptions remains disputed (given that nobody has definitively identified the alphabet or translated the content).

Saqqez inscription

An inscription from Saqqez, dating from the Scythian presence in Western Asia, and written in the Hieroglyphic Luwian script, may represent Scythian:

The king mentioned in this inscription is the same individual as the Scythian king , whose name is attested as in Assyrian records and as in Greek records.

Issyk inscription

The Issyk inscription is not yet certainly deciphered, and is probably in a Scythian dialect, constituting one of very few autochthonous epigraphic traces of that language. János Harmatta, using the Kharoṣṭhī script, identified the language as a Khotanese Saka dialect spoken by the Kushans, tentatively translating:

Personal names

The primary sources for Scythian words remain the Scythian toponyms, tribal names, and numerous personal names in the ancient Greek texts and in the Greek inscriptions found in the Greek colonies on the Northern Black Sea Coast. These names suggest that the Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian.

Recorded Scythian personal names include:

(), meaning “seed,” “germ,” and “kinship.”
, -
,
, , Ancient Greek: , romanized:
, , Means “possessing greatness through his words.” Composed of:
:, “word.” Compare with Avestan (), “spoken,” and (), “word”.
:, “great.”
, -
,
, , Ancient Greek: , romanized:
, , Hypocorostic derivation from the word , meaning “chest armour, armour.” Compare with Avestan (), () “chest armour.”

Place names

Some scholars believe that many toponyms and hydronyms of the Russian and Ukrainian steppe have Scythian links. For example, Vasmer associates the name of the river Don with an assumed/reconstructed unattested Scythian word *''dānu'' "water, river", and with Avestan ''dānu-'', Pashto ''dand'' and Ossetian ''don''.
The river names Don, Donets, Dnieper, Danube, and Dniester, and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea) may also belong with the same word-group.

Recorded Scythian place names include:

Herodotus' Scythian etymologies

The Greek historian Herodotus provides another source of Scythian; he reports that the Scythians called the Amazons ''Oiorpata'', and explains the name as a compound of ''oior'', meaning "man", and ''pata'', meaning "to kill" (''Hist''. 4,110).

* Most scholars associate ''oior'' "man" with Avestan ''vīra-'' "man, hero", Sanskrit ''vīra-'', Latin ''vir'' (gen. ''virī'') "man, hero, husband", PIE . Various explanations account for ''pata'' "kill":
*# Persian ''pat-'' "(to) kill", ''patxuste'' "killed";
*# Sogdian ''pt-'' "(to) kill", ''ptgawsty'' "killed";
*# Ossetian ''fædyn'' "cleave", Sanskrit ''pātayati'' "fell", PIE "fall".
*# Avestan ''paiti-'' "lord", Sanskrit ''páti'', PIE , cf. Lat. ''potestate'' (i.e. "man-ruler");
*# Ossetian ''maryn'' "kill", Pashto ''mrəl'', Sanskrit ''mārayati'', PIE "die" (confusion of Greek Μ and Π);
* Alternatively, one scholar suggests Iranian ''aiwa-'' "one" + ''warah-'' "breast", the Amazons believed to have removed a breast to aid drawing a bow, according to some ancient folklorists, and as reflected in Greek folk-etymology: '' a-'' (privative) + ''mazos'', "without breast".

Elsewhere Herodotus explains the name of the mythical one-eyed tribe Arimaspoi as a compound of the Scythian words ''arima'', meaning "one", and ''spu'', meaning "eye" (''Hist''. 4,27).

* Some scholars connect ''arima'' "one" with Ossetian ''ærmæst'' "only", Avestic ''airime'' "quiet", Greek ''erēmos'' "empty", PIE ?, and ''spu'' "eye" with Avestic ''spas-'' "foretell", Sanskrit ''spaś-'', PIE "see".
* However, Iranian usually expresses "one" and "eye" with words like ''aiwa-'' and ''čašman-'' (Ossetian ''īw'' and ''cæst'').
* Other scholars reject Herodotus' etymology and derive the ethnonym Arimaspoi from Iranian ''aspa-'' "horse" instead.
* Or the first part of the name may reflect something like Iranian ''raiwant-'' "rich", cf. Ossetian ''riwæ'' "rich".

Scythian theonyms

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder's ''Natural History'' (AD 77–79) derives the name of the Caucasus from the Scythian ''kroy-khasis'' = ice-shining, white with snow (cf. Greek ''cryos'' = ice-cold).

Aristophanes

In the comedy works of Aristophanes, the dialects of various Greek people are accurately imitated. In his '' Thesmophoriazusae'', a Scythian archer (a member of a police force in Athens) speaks broken Greek, consistently omitting the final ''-s'' () and ''-n'' (), using the lenis in place of the aspirate, and once using ''ks'' () in place of ''s'' ( sigma); these may be used to elucidate the Scythian languages.

Alanian

The Alanian language as spoken by the Alans from about the 5th to the 11th centuries AD formed a dialect directly descended from the earlier Scytho-Sarmatian languages, and forming in its turn the ancestor of the Ossetian language. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language.
Ladislav Zgusta, "The old Ossetian Inscription from the River Zelenčuk" (Veröffentlichungen der Iranischen Kommission = Sitzungsberichte der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse 486) Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987. in Kim, op.cit., 54.

See also

* Getae
* Dacian language

Notes

Bibliography

*
* Harmatta, J.: ''Studies in the History and Language of the Sarmatians'', Szeged 1970.
*
*
* Humbach, Helmut & Klaus Faiss. ''Herodotus’s Scythians and Ptolemy’s Central Asia: Semasiological and Onomasiological Studies''. Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2012
*
* Mayrhofer, M.: ''Einiges zu den Skythen, ihrer Sprache, ihrem Nachleben''. Vienna 2006.
*
* .
*
* Zgusta, L.: ''Die griechischen Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste. Die ethnischen Verhältnisse, namentlich das Verhältnis der Skythen und Sarmaten, im Lichte der Namenforschung'', Prague 1955.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scythian Languages
Eastern Iranian languages
Extinct languages of Asia
Extinct languages of Europe
Languages attested from the 1st millennium BC
Scythians
Sarmatians
History of Ural