III. THE LANGUAGE OF THE SARMATIANS
3. The Sarmatian Dialects of the North Pontic Region
5.
The Old Iranian group of phonemes *fri- has also a twofold development
1. fli-, 2. li-.
Old Iranian *fri- > fli-.
Olbia,
Latyshev, IOSPE I, 24: Vasmer (loc. cit.) regards this word
as the equivalent of the Ossetian word limän 'Freund' and traces
back both words to the Old Iranian form *frīyamāna-.
The antecedents of this view were that Hübschmann (Etymologie und
Lautlehre der ossetischen Sprache, 46) connected the Ossetian word
limän
with Avestan frya-
:
friya
and Old Indian priya-, both the latter meaning 'lieb, wert, freund',
and suggested the idea of an exact correspondence between Ossetian limän
and Old Indian prīyamāṇa-.
Miller, too, (
,
III. 83) sought to derive the Ossetian word from the Iranian stem *fri-,
without defining, however, more closely the Old Iranian form to which it
might have corresponded. It was on the basis of the Old Indian form prīyamāṇa-
conjectured by Hübschmann that Vasmer restored his Old Iranian form *frīyamāna-
which would correspond exactly to the name
as well as to the Ossetian word limän. But this conjecture
raises many difficulties. First of all, it is open to doubt that the group
of phonemes -īya-
developed into -i- ~ -ə-
in Ossetian (limän — ləmän).
On the basis of the correspondence between Western Ossetian liyun
~ Old Indian rīyate
(see Miller, Die Sprache der Osseten, 17) one would rather expect
the development -iy- or -iyu- (the position is particularly
clear in the 3rd person plural: liyuncä < Old Iranian *rīyanti).
But even if one were to disregard this difficulty, it is certain that the
form -māna-
would have developed in Ossetian into -män, not into -man (cp.
Ossetian bon 'Tag' < Old Iranian *bānu-,
Miller, op. cit., 20). Thus the probable development in Ossetian
of the Old Iranian form conjectured by Vasmer would be *liyumon
~ *liumon, perhaps *limon. But the difficulties belong not only to
the category of phonetics but also of semantics. The Old Indian form given by
Hübsch-
89
mann is the participle of the verb prīyate
'befriedigt, froh sein, Gefallen finden an': hence its meaning is 'glad,
satisfied'. From this meaning it would be fairly difficult to deduce the
meaning 'friend'. All these difficulties disappear, however, if we regard
the name
and the Ossetian word limän as developments of the Old Iranian
compound *friya-manah-. The first part of this compound would correspond
to Avestan frya- 'lieb, wert, freund', while the second part to
Avestan manah- 'Sinn, Geist: Denken, Gedanke'. The meaning of the
compound would thus be 'freundlichen Sinn habend, freundlich gesinnt'.
Similar compounds are very frequent in the Avesta: naire.manah-,
hamō.manah-,
hu.manah-,
etc. There exists also the compound expressing the exact antonym of *friya-manah-:
duš-manah- 'des Denken übel ist, des Denken feindlich ist, feindselig'
(Bartholomae,
AirWb.,
753–4). The Modern Persian dušmän which is the development
of the Old Iranian compound duš-manah-, as well as the Greek word
'feindlich gesinnt, feindselig' which present a close parallel, later came
to mean 'Feind'; in the same way the Old Iranian compound *friya-manah-
'freundlich gesinnt' which developed into limän in Ossetian,
came to acquire the meaning 'Freund'.
Olbia. See
the foregoing.
Olbia, Latyshev,
IOSPE
I, 64: < Old Iranian *friyāna-
~ Avestan fryāna-
'Name einer gläubigen tūrischen
Familie' (Vasmer, loc. cit.). It is worth noting that all the three
available forms which show the development fri- > fli- came
from the same district, viz. Olbia.
Old Iranian fri- > li-.
Panticapaeum,
Latyshev, IOSPE II, 29A, Tanais, Latyshev
IOSPE II, 446;
< Old Iranian *friya-manah-.
Gorgippia,
Latyshev, IOSPE II, 402:
:
limvna-k.
Same as the preceding, with the suffix *-ka-.
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