snake & mongoose in ancient India

[Michael Witzel]

More "logic" without enough biological or linguistic background:

MW:

>>* Yt 5.129 is even  clearer:  "the female beaver is most beautiful, as it
>>is most furry: the beaver is a water animal"  ....
>>Note that the Avest. text already has to give an explanatory note!
>>But, beavers occur *even now* in Central Asia, as a look in Grzimek's
>>encyclopedia will show.

Rajarshi Banerjee:

>A common aquatic, mongoose like, brown, furry animal would be an otter.
>Otters are far more widespread in India and Iran.

The stress, again, should be on "could". Unfortunately, the otter is *not*
= Skt. babhru/Avest.
bawri,
but  otter =  Skt. udra, and one of the best attested Indo-European animals.


Regularly derived from the very *archaic* IE word for water, (i.e. 'water
animal'): IE *wod-R ,   gen. **ud-n-s  'water' (archaic  r/n heterocliticon
as in Skt. ahar, Gen. ahnas): Engl. water, Hittite uidaar, Gen. wedenas,
Skt. udan (Loc.), udnas (Gen.) etc.

otter:  IE *udro,  Skt. udra, Avestan udra, Greek hudros (and hudra!),
Lith. Udras, Udra;
O.H. German ottar, O.Church Slav. vydra; Serbo-Croatian vidra, etc.
see Pokorny, IE Dict. (Indogerm. Woerterbuch) 1959 :  79

A clear, OLD derivation. Skt. udra' otter' is an old IE word.

>The ancients were not
>always accurate when it came to describing animals.

They were,  when they *wanted* to describe. But the Rgveda and Avesta are
texts of ritual poetry , not biology handbooks. We have to take what they
tell us and see how far we get with this information. And this is enough in
the  case of the beaver (see below).

>For e.g. ground
>burrowing marmots in north west india/afghanistan... were mistakenly called
>gold digging ants by herodotus.

Certainly and well known (also on this list, some years ago I think)
Only, Herodotos never went to Afghanistan/Kohistan and got his news, not
unlike some anthropologists,  through a chain of translators and
travellers: unreliable. Sometoime she believes them, sometimes not.,.

>Distinctive features of beavers are dam building and large flat tails. Are
>these referred to in the avesta? If not then all that can be inferred is a
>furry aquatic creature.

No dams, or flat tails in the Avesta, but a  Goddess' dress made of 30
beaver skins. Specifically of a fem. beaver with 4 cubs (within the range
of a beaver).
Does one make dresses of water rats, etc?? Or mongoose??

Since IE *bhebhru 'beaver' (see earlier message) is attested in a large
number of  IE  languages, is found in Central Asia even today, and  since
Avestan bawri- is derived from the IE word, why to substitute  it by an
unknown species (any water animal or the otter) for the well known and
linguistically and textually well attested Avestan /IE one?

Just to please speakers of Sanskrit who have substituted babhru 'brown,
beaver' by 'brown, mongoose, mungo'??

Occam's razor applies:
IE *bhebhru 'beaver' and *udro  'otter'  have come down to Sanskrit
as babhru 'mongoose' and udra 'otter', as befits the Indian climate.

MW.
========================================================
Michael Witzel
Department of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
2 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge MA 02138, USA

ph. 1- 617-496 2990 (also messages)
home page:  http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

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