bhakti- etc

[H. Mark Hubey]

Yaroslav V. Vassilkov wrote:
>
> Dear Mark,
>         sorry, but I fail to see any historico-semantic or phonetic
> correlation between Turkic *bogha*, *bugha*, *buga* - and Iranian / Slavic
> derivatives of IE *bhag. Or the Mordovian *pas /paz/ pavas* (< Volgo-Permian
> *paghas < IIr *bhagas). If you mean that common Russian / Slavic *bog- is to
> be traced to Turkic *bogha*, I can not agree with you, because this Turkic

The word could have made its way into Turkic very long ago. The question
is
one of too many coincidences. The bull is still very important among the
Parsis, and the cow is still important in the Hindi religion. There is
a semantic and phonological match. "wealth" could easily come from "god"
in the form of "blessed with goods". The bull could easily be
transformed
into a symbol of fertility even for crops in primitive agricultural
societies
and obviously would be important for pastoral communities especially if
they were cow-herders.


> word has really been borrowed into (Southern) Russian and Ukranian, but in
> the form of *bugaj* 'bull', which is phonetically quite correct. But the word
> *bog could never represent Turkic *bogha / bugha / buga, while it reflects quite
> correctly Iranian *bhaga* >*bag/a/.* (Slavic *o* regularly corresponds to
> Iranian *a*). What is equally important (besides phonetic similiarity /
> identity of Slavic and IIr words) is full coincidence of all aspects of
> their meaning, their "semantic field" (in both cases "lot; share; good luck,
> happiness; god of good luck/destiny; god in general").

It could have easily been borrowed back or even back and forth. We still
don't know if many of the cognate words in IE are mostly diffusion back
and forth between languages or come from the earliest *PIE protoform.

>      And why Turkic word for a "bull" should appear in other languages with the
> meaning "God"? Can you refer to any language where the word meaning "bull"
> acquired eventually meaning "god" or "(monotheistic) God"?
>         If I misunderstood you, please correct me.
>         All the best,
>                                       Yaroslav Vassilkov
>
> >Yaroslav V. Vassilkov wrote:
>
> >> n. 'lot, share', m. 'god'; New Persian bag- 'god'. The element representing
> >> the form *bahta- has been found in some Scythian names from North Pontic
> >> Steppes. Russian and even common Pra-Slavic *bog "(happy) lot", "share",
> >> "destiny", "god", "God" - is most probably a loanword from an Iranian
> >> (*Indo-Iranian?) source (formally and semantically it is the closest parallel
> >> to Skt bhaga/Bhaga and Av. baga-). The same word, but in its Indo-Iranian
> >> form *bhaga-s, was borrowed by the Volga Finns (Mordovian-Erzja *paz*, *pas*
> >> 'god' Mordovian-Moksha *pavas* 'god', 'good luck', 'happiness').
>
> >How about something even more obvious. Bogha = bull.
>
> >Worship of animals or gods manifested in animals, or the animals
> >as manifestations of gods probably has a very long history in
> >human affairs.
>
> --
> >Best Regards,
> >Mark

--
Best Regards,
Mark
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