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Scythian
Ptolemy's Scythia
Native to	Scythia
Extinct	mostly extinct by AD 1000, remnants evolved into Ossetic
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Iranian Eastern Iranian Scythian
Dialects	Scytho-Sarmatian
Language codes
ISO 639-3	xsc
Linguasphere	58 (Iranic in general)
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Scythian languages (/ˈsɪθiən/ or /ˈsɪðiən/) refers to all the languages spoken by all the peoples of a vast region of Eurasia named Scythia extending from the Vistula river in East Europe to Sakastan and Mongolia in Central Asia during ancient times. Included also are some languages of eastern Iran and the Central Asian subcontinent. These peoples were at some time by some ancient authors designated as "Scythians" with the form of the name customarily known to them. Languages of many different groups and families must have been spoken by the Scythians. Their modes of subsistence varied from sedentary and agricultural to nomadic and pastoral. They were both warriors and merchants.

The dominant ethnic groups among the Scythians, however, 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 of the Indo-European language family, was Indo-Iranian, Iranian and most specifically Eastern Iranian. Further classification is uncertain and elusive. Alexander Lubotsky summarizes the known linguistic landscape as follows:

Unfortunately, we know next to nothing about the Scythian of that period – we have only a couple of personal and tribal names in Greek and Persian sources at our disposal – and cannot even determine with any degree of certainty whether it was a single language.

Classification

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The vast majority of Scythological scholars agree that the Scythian-Sarmatian languages (and Ossetic) belong to the Eastern Iranian language family — like the once widespread but now extinct Sogdian language. 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 Ossetic language.

Historians normally divide the Scytho-Sarmatian group chronologically rather than geographically:

• Scythian (ca. 800 - 300 BC), mainly evidenced in Classical Greek authors
• Sarmatian (ca. 300 BC - AD 400), mainly evidenced in Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions
• Alanic (ca. AD 400 - 1000), mainly evidenced in Byzantine Greek authors

Some scholars detect a division of Scytho-Sarmatian into two dialects: a western, more conservative dialect, and an eastern, more innovative one. The innovative dialect may correspond to Sarmatian, whereas the conservative dialect may continue the dialect spoken by the old Scythians before the invasion of the Sarmatians.

The Scytho-Khotanese group in the Taklamakan Desert probably has nothing to do with the Scythians near the Black Sea and bears the same name by historical coincidence. It sub-divides into:

• Khotanese, spoken in Khotan
• Tumshuqese, spoken in Tumshuq

The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum:

• Scytho-Sarmatian languages 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 Ossetic 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 language" at an earlier date.
• Saka language or Scytho-Khotanese in the east: spoken in the Kingdom of Khotan (located in present-day Xinjiang, China), and including the Khotanese of Khotan and Tumshuqese of Tumshuq. Scholars classify these languages as North-Eastern Iranian.

History

Early East 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, Ossetic language belonging to the Scythian-Sarmatian linguistic continuum remains in use today, while in Central Asia, some languages belonging to Eastern Iranian family 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).

An inscription from Saqqez written in the Hieroglyphic Hittite script may represent Scythian:

King Partitava equates to the Scythian king called Prototyēs in Herodotus (1.103) and known as Par-ta-tu-a in the Assyrian sources. ("Partatua of Sakasene" married the daughter of Esarhaddon c. 675 BC)

The Issyk inscription, found in a Scythian kurgan dating approximately to the 4th century BC, remains undeciphered, but some authorities assume that it represents Scythian.

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 Scythian-Sarmatian language had close similarities to modern Ossetian.

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 Ossetic don. The river names Don, Donets, Dnieper, Danube, Dniester and lake Donuzlav (the deepest one in Crimea, Ukraine) may also belong with the same word-group.

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-, PIE *u̯iHro-. Various explanations account for pata "kill":
  1. Avestan paiti- "lord", Sanskrit pati-, PIE *poti- (i.e. "man-ruler");
  2. Ossetic maryn "kill", Pashto mrəl, Sanskrit mārayati, PIE *mer- "die" (confusion of Greek Μ and Π);
  3. Ossetic fædyn "cleave", Sanskrit pātayati "fell", PIE *peth₂- "fall".
• 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 Ossetic ærmæst "only", Avestic airime "quiet", Greek erēmos "empty", PIE *h₁(e)rh₁mo-?, and spu "eye" with Avestic spas- "foretell", Sanskrit spaś-, PIE *speḱ- "see".
• However, Iranian usually expresses "one" and "eye" with words like aiwa- and čašman- (Ossetic 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. Ossetic riwæ "rich".

Herodotus' Scythian theonyms

Herodotus also gives a list of Scythian theonyms (Hist. 4.59):

• Tabiti = Hestia. Perhaps related to Sanskrit Tapatī, a heroine in the Mahābhārata, literally "the burning (one)".
• Papaios = Zeus. Either "father" (Herodotus) or "protector", Avestan, Sanskrit pā- "protect", PIE *peh₃-.
• Api = Gaia. Either "mother" or "water", Avestan, Sanskrit āp-, PIE Hep-
• Goitosyros or Oitosyros = Apollo. Perhaps Avestan gaēθa- "animal" + sūra- "rich".
• Argimpasa or Artimpasa = Aphrodite Urania. To Ossetic art and Pashto or, "fire", Avestan āθra-.
• Thagimasadas = Poseidon.

Alanic

The Alanic 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 Ossetic language. Byzantine Greek authors recorded only a few fragments of this language.

Substratum theories

Divergent views, have proposed that the Scythian languages may have become a substratum to the Hungarian or Proto-Slavic languages. Another proposal by Boris Rybakov suggests a Proto-Slavic substrate.

However, Iranian and specifically Scythian(-Sarmatian) influence, most palpably in the form of various loanwords, is generally accepted by linguists, historians and ethnologists for the Ugric and Slavic languages. To the Scytho-Sarmatian loanwords belongs the Ukrainian and Russian word "khoroshyi" (good) which has Iranian root "khur" (good) and is not found in the other Slavic languages but in Ossetian (northeastern Iranian) instead.

See also

• Scythia Minor
• Getae
• Dacian language

Notes

1. "Synopsis" (PDF). Linguasphere Register. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 5, 2006. The code stands for Indo-European, phylosector 5; Iranic, phylozone 8, where Iranic is the same as the Linguist List's Iranian. The Register does not include extinct languages.
2. Lubotsky 2002, p. 190.
3. Compare L. Zgusta, Die griechischen Personennamen griechischer Städte der nördlichen Schwarzmeerküste , 1955.
4. E.g. Harmatta 1970.
5. Scythian, member of a normadic people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 8th and 7th centuries BC - Encyclopædia Britannica 15th edition - Micropaedia on "Scythian"
6. The languages of the Scytho-Sarmatian inscription may represent dialects of a language family of which Modern Ossetic is a continuation, but does not simply represent the same language at an earlier time - Encyclopædia Britannica 15th edition - Macropedia on Languages of the World
7. Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.), Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum, Reichert, 1989.
8. Scythian, member of a nomadic people originally of Iranian people who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia in the 8th and 7th centuries BC—The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th edition—Micropædia on "Scythian", 10:576
9. Text and translation in J. Harmatta, "Herodotus, historian of the Cimmerians and the Scythians", in: Hérodote et les peuples non grecs, Vandœuvres-Genève 1990, pp. 115-130.
10. M. Vasmer, Untersuchungen über die ältesten Wohnsitze der Slaven. Die Iranier in Südrußland, Leipzig 1923, 74.
11. P. Kretschmer, "Zum Balkan-Skythischen", Glotta 24 (1935), 1-56, here: 7ff.
12. Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 15.
13. V.I. Abaev, Osetinskij jazyk i fol’klor, Moscow / Leningrad 1949, vol. 1, 172, 176, 188.
14. L. Zgusta, "Skythisch Template:Polytonic", Annali dell’Istituto Universario Orientale di Napoli 1 (1959) pp. 151-156.
15. Hinge 2005, pp. 94–98
16. J. Marquart, Untersuchungen zur Geschichte von Eran, Göttingen 1905, 90-92; Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 12; H.H. Schaeder, Iranica. I: Das Auge des Königs, Berlin 1934, 16-19.
17. W. Tomaschek, "Kritik der ältesten Nachrichten über den skythischen Norden", Sitzungsberichte der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 116 (1888), 715-780, here: 761; K. Müllenhoff, Deutsche Altertumskunde, Berlin 1893, vol. 3, 305-306; R. Grousset, L’empire des steppes, Paris 1941, 37 n. 3; I. Lebedensky, Les Scythes. La civilisation des steppes (VII-III siècles av. J.-C.), Paris 2001, 93.
18. Hinge 2005, pp. 89–94
19. W. Brandenstein, "Die Abstammungssagen der Skythen", Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 52 (1953) 183-211, here: 191; Ė.A. Grantovskij & D.S. Raevskij, "Ob iranojazyčnom i «indoarijskom» naselenii Severnogo Pričernomor’ja v antičnuju ėpochu", in: Ėtnogenez narodov Balkan i Severnogo Pričernomor’ja. Lingvistika, istorija, archeologija, Moscow 1984, 47-66, here: 53-55; G. Dumézil, Romans de Scythie et d’alentour, Paris 1978, 125-145; Dumézil offers a different interpretation in La courtisane et les seigneurs colorés. Esquisses de mythologie, Paris 1983, 124-125.
20. Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 15; L. Zgusta, "Zwei skythische Götternamen", Archiv orientální 21 (1953), pp. 270-271; Grantovskij and Raevskij, in: Ėtnogenez narodov Balkan i Severnogo Pričernomor’ja, 1984, 54.
21. L. Zgusta, "Zwei skythische Götternamen", Archiv orientální 21 (1953), pp. 270-271.
22. Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 11; Brandenstein, Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 52 (1953) 190-191; Grantovskij and Raevskij, in: Ėtnogenez narodov Balkan i Severnogo Pričernomor’ja, 1984, 54.
23. Vasmer, Die Iranier in Südrußland, 1923, 13; other interpretations in Dumézil, La courtisane et les seigneurs colorés, 1983, 121-122; Grantovskij and Raevskij, in: Ėtnogenez narodov Balkan i Severnogo Pričernomor’ja, 1984, 54-55.
24. Dumézil, La courtisane et les seigneurs colorés, 1983.
25. Ladislav Zgusta, "The old Ossetic 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. ISBN 3-7001-0994-6 in Kim, op.cit., 54.
26. "The script of Eden"
27. S.V. Rjabčikov, Drevnie texty slavjan i adygov , Krasnodar 1998; Skifo-sarmatskie istoki slavjanskoj kul’tury: Materialy Južnorossijskoj fol’klorno-ėtnografičeskoj ekspedicii , Krasnodar 2002; see also the homepage of Rjabčikov on the Slavonic Antiquity.
28. B.A. Rybakov, Gerodotova Skifija. Istoriko-geografičeskij analiz , Moscow 1979.

Bibliography

• Lubotsky, Alexander (2002). "Scythian elements in Old Iranian" (PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 116. The British Academy; azargoshnasp: 189–202. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hinge, George (2005). "Herodot zur skythischen Sprache. Arimaspen, Amazonen und die Entdeckung des Schwarzen Meeres". Glotta (in German). 81: 86–115. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Additional literature

• Harmatta, J.: Studies in the History and Language of the Sarmatians, Szeged 1970.
• 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.

External links

• Scythian language A brief overview of the Scythian and Ossetian languages Template:Es icon

• Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions
• Ancient languages
• Scythians
• Sarmatians
• Northeastern Iranian languages
• Extinct languages of Asia
• Extinct languages of Europe