On fertility, old Kurds, and sheep

[Artur Karp]

At 20:07 8.11.98 -0500, Mark Hubey wrote:
>Dominique.Thillaud wrote:
>>
>> H.M.Hubey wrote:
>> >That is also false. Romans called the Etruscans Tusci/Tursi. Turan was
>> >a fertility goddes of Etruscans. Remarkably, /tuw/ is the root for
>> >birth and begetting in Turkic.
>>
>>         Just a remark. The few we know about the Goddess Turan shows that
>> She is the Etruscan equivalent of the Latin Venus and the Greek Aphrodite
>> and nothing else. Hence, surely not a "fertility Goddess"! Assuming a link
>> between Turan and "birth and begetting" shows the same flimsiness than,
>> phonetically, between 'tur' and 'tuw'.
>
>I think that this old Kurd I talked to circa 1971 who said sex was
>the "entertainment for poor people" knew more about sex and love than
>you did :-)
>
>Nobody else except people with full stomachs usually in 20th century
>or royalty in earlier times could actually make a big deal of "love"
>as opposed to sex. IT is usually a euphemism, and poor and hungry people
>don't care if they screw sheep, and love is far from their minds.
>
>
>>         Best regards,
>> Dominique
>>
>> PS: The confusion between love and fertility is probably a common idea in
>> some monotheistic religions, but Greeks and Romans made a clear difference
>> between the both ;-)
>>
>> Dominique THILLAUD
>> Universite' de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, France
>
>--
>Best Regards,
>Mark
>

-----------------------------------------------------------


As an indologist (able only to read some original Sanskrit, Pali & Hindi),
I wouldn't dare to express any opinions concerning <<cognates between
Chuvash and Etrurian>>.

However, the sentence: <<That is also false. Romans called the Etruscans
Tusci/Tursi. Turan was a fertility goddes of Etruscans. Remarkably, /tuw/
is the root for
birth and begetting in Turkic.>> made me curious. [There is no reason why
an old Pole should be worse in this respect than any old Kurd. Or less
sententious.]

<<Turan was a fertility goddes of Etruscans>>.

If I get it rightly, this statement allows you to identify Etruscan tur-
and Turkic tuw-. The reasoning here hangs obviously on the equation
"fertility - birth and begetting". Let me note a couple of what might be
elementary problems here:

1) Even if Turan were a fertility goddess, it doesn't follow that her
name's morphological structure must be tur-an;

2) Even if Turan were a fertility goddess and her name's morphological
structure were tur-an, it doesn't follow that her name must mean
"fertility" [in fact, the meaning of her name is thought to be something
closer to "Dispenseress" - which may agree with her nymphic (Aphrodite,
Venus) nature; Dominique Thillaud would certainly know better and more].

I would only be glad if my suspicions were not confirmed.

But as it is, there is too much hypothetical element - too many ifs
involved here, for anyone to be so easy (and vehement) about connecting the
Turanians with Turks via the Etruscan goddess of fertility.

And this is precisely the context in which protests start to appear.

I believe what connects them is the conviction that if the use of those
<<more powerful tools>>, for the application of which you appeal, wouldn't
go together with the transparency of basic rules/procedures (and among them
the rigid procedure for data evaluation), we all may become witness to a
lot of wasted effort.

You seem to be certain that the introduction of such tools would ultimately
result in that <<at least some of the more farfetched claims and ridiculous
and fuzzy methodologies will be clearly seen for what they are>> [message
to Lars Fosse, 8.11.].

The use of the phrase <<at least some>> suggests a minimum program.

What is the maximum program?

And: pardon me, that aside with sheep was not at all funny, especially
considering that it also was entirely without value as an argument or
illustration.



Regards,

Artur Karp, M.A.

University of Warsaw
Poland


P.S. It's cold outside (0.C) and raining. I would certainly wish to get out
of this miserable weather and be for a while in a warmer clima of India. If
only via this list.

A. K.