Again: The Indo-European Words for "Wine"

Again: The Indo-European Words for "Wine"

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

Often, some friends send me the tweets of opponents who criticize me or deliberately misrepresent what I have written. In some of these cases, I find the matter important enough for me to respond by way of writing a short blog on it. But many times, the tweets, by supporters who claim to be  quoting my views or research conclusions, leave me totally nonplused. They express views or conclusions which have never been made by me anywhere, and I become totally nonplused as to how I should react, because the discussions then go off at a tangent from the relevant point.

Apparently someone tweeted the following:

 

A tweeter, whom I have reason to believe is a supporter, responded as follows:

This was followed by:

This was followed by:

 

And it goes on. But note the following:

1. "Talageri (2000) pointed out that the wanderwort for wine is found in all the western branches of the IE family but not in the three eastern branches - Iranian, Indic and Tocharian. He considered this as problematic for late-stage (1500 BCE) dispersal theories".

The first sentence is absolutely correct: I have certainly "pointed out that the wanderwort for wine is found in all the western branches of the IE family but not in the three eastern branches - Iranian, Indic and Tocharian". But I considered this as "problematic" for (or rather as strong linguistic evidence against) any theory of west-to-east migration of the IE branches, since the distribution of the word shows that the western branches could only have borrowed the word as they migrated from east-to-west across what I called the Semitic longitudes, while the eastern branches were always to the east of the Semitic longitudes and never migrated across them, which is why they never acquired the word. This is purely linguistic evidence for the geographical location of the Homeland (in the east), but it has nothing to do with any chronological time-frame (1500 BCE or otherwise).

2. "Alcohol production from vines, wheat and wild sugars are three separate pathways. I-Ir elites were only familiar with the latter two….Sintashta had wine-making from vines. This is Talageri's hypothesis".

When in my elaboration of my hypothesis have I even once referred to wheat alcohols and wild sugar alcohols? Or even hinted that "Sintashta had wine-making from vines"? I have never made any claims about Sintashta, which has never been a part of the earliest history of IE dispersals as elaborated by me in my OIT description. I have merely pointed out that the Druhyus migrated northwards from Afghanistan into Central Asia and then moved westwards through northern Eurasia into Europe. Sintashta is on that route certainly, but I have not specified any particular archaeological site on the route by name, since I have dealt only with the literary and linguistic evidence for the earliest stages. It is the job of the archaeologists to trace out the geographical sites on the subsequent route (and as per the recent paper by Heggarty et al, the IE migration into Sintashta was from the south, which fits in with the OIT though not so intended by them).

I have only dealt with the linguistic evidence of the words for wine; and I have only specified that these words were borrowed as the branches were passing the Semitic longitudes from east to west. The exact spots on those longitudes, whether Sintashta or the Caucasus or West Asia, has never been specified by me (and whether they are "wanderworts" or "Semitic" words or "Caucasian" words is irrelevant: they are not IE words). But I have pointed out that the linguistic nature of the borrowings (in three forms) fit in with the three stages of migrations from India as per the OIT (Early, Middle/European, Late):

"Witzel, therefore also fails to understand the logistical significance of the development of certain other words (e.g. the words for wine), common to most other western IE languages, but absent in IndoAryan, and even refers to them as if they somehow (it is not explained how) prove the AIT, when actually they fit in with the OIT: “early IE loans from Semitic somewhere in the Near East such as **wVjñ, IE *woin (Nichols 1997:143), words that are not found in India.” (WITZEL 2005:360). Obviously, since they were borrowed into the western IE languages as they moved away from India. In fact, this particular word, borrowed from Semitic, is found in three grades, according to Gamkrelidze, which, in fact fit in with the migrations from India: the word is not found in Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Tocharian, which remained in the east; it is found

a) in Anatolian (Hittite), the Early Dialect emigrating westwards, from “PIE *wi(o)no-, with zero grade”;

b) in the European Dialects (Italic, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic) from “PIE *weino- with e-grade vocalism”; and

c) in the Late Dialects migrating westwards (Greek, Albanian, Armenian), from “PIE *woino- with o grade” (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:557-558)." (TALAGERI 2008).

So, in short, the evidence of the words for wine is linguistic evidence for the east-to-west movement and against any west-to-east movement of the various IE branches.

Whether the words are ultimately "wanderworts" from some "Language X" or from Semitic is beside the point. Whether the words were borrowed in 2500 BCE or 1500 BCE or any other date is also beside the point. And whether Sintashta had grape wine or not, and which was the earliest date for wine making in the Caucasus or in West Asia (or anywhere else in the earliest wine producing regions: the earlier the date, the starker and more sweeping the difference between the eastern and western branches, and the stronger the force of the evidence for the Homeland in the east) is also beside the point. The linguistic evidence is sufficient in itself for the direction of migration of the IE branches, and should be recognized or dealt with as such without obfuscating it by diverting the discussion into irrelevant aspects. This evidence is as strong as the evidence of the large scale and one-way borrowing of basic words by Uralic languages from Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages, and again emphasizes the fraudulent nature of AIT "scholars" who steadfastly ignore or downplay this linguistic evidence and instead make up single pieces of fake linguistic evidence (or worse, fake genetic evidence) to try to buttress the AIT.

Note: This sweeping evidence of the IE words for wine is reiterated by the sweeping evidence of the IE words for aurochs (the wild western cattle). As I pointed out in my article "The Full Out-of-India Case in Short…":

"The Proto-Semitic word *ṯawr 'bull, ox' is represented in all the major Semitic languages: Akkadian šȗru, Ugaritic ṯr, Hebrew šȏr, Syriac tawrā, Arabic ṯawr, South Arabic ṯwr.

In Indo-European, it is found in Italic (Latin taurus), Celtic (Gaulish tarvos, Irish tarb), Germanic (Old Icelandic ƥjórr), Baltic (Lithuanian taũras), Slavic (Old Slavic turǔ), Albanian (tarok) and Greek (taȗros). The Hittite word for "bull" is not known since it is represented by a Sumerian ideogram whose Hittite reading is not known (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:483), and Armenian has borrowed a Caucasian form (tsul) for bull. In short, here we again have a distinct case of the Semitic influence being found only in the western branches: this Semitic loan for "bull" or "aurochs" is completely missing in the three eastern branches Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Tocharian. Again it illustrates the phenomenon of migration of IE branches from east to west."

Some people try to argue that the word is indeed present in the Avestan word staora (English "steer"), and the Rigvedic word sthaura, which also have the same origin. However, the Avestan word, while it is indeed an adaptation of an original Semitic word borrowed after the Iranians moved out from the core Indian Homeland westwards, it is a totally different Semitic word, with reflexes only in Germanic and Iranian: Gamkrelidze points out that relating this Semitic word with the other one requires relaxing the rules of derivation to "admit such root-initial phonetic changes and root-vowel changes" (GAMKRELIDZE 1995:439), which makes it clear that these are two different Semitic words, both being found in Germanic.

And the word sthaura (not found even once in all the four Veda Samhitas, the Brahmanas and Aranyakas, or the Upanishads) is derived from the word sthūra ("big, broad"), which occurs in the Rigveda as follows: IV.21.4; VI.19.10; 29.2; VIII.1.34; 4.19; 21.1; 24.29; 54.8; X.156.3. The word is also found as sthūla in post-Rigvedic texts. The Avestan word may be an adaptation of the word to the Semitic meaning.

In short, "the Proto-Semitic word *ṯawr 'bull, ox'" is definitely not found in the three eastern branches of IE, and is as damning an evidence against any western Homeland as the words for "wine" and the Indo-Iranian loanwords in Uralic languages.

 

A Sequel: added on the same day, 28/9/2023, evening:

Koenraad Elst referred to the above article on his twitter, with comment: "Common sense can go a long way". Rasmus Bjørn responded as follows: "Common sense is a strong word. The earth is also flat acc. to common sense. Calling the context besides the point *really* grinds my gears".

Common sense may or may not be a strong word; but it does not apply to saying that the earth is flat, which represents ignorance and/or refusal to see the evidence rather than common sense.

His sentence itself illustrates the meaning of calling something "beside the point": whether he writes "besides the point" or "beside the point" is itself beside the point.

What grinds his gears is the following from my above article: "Whether the words are ultimately "wanderworts" from some "Language X" or from Semitic is beside the point. Whether the words were borrowed in 2500 BCE or 1500 BCE or any other date is also beside the point. And whether Sintashta had grape wine or not, and which was the earliest date for wine making in the Caucasus or in West Asia (or anywhere else in the earliest wine producing regions: the earlier the date, the starker and more sweeping the difference between the eastern and western branches, and the stronger the force of the evidence for the Homeland in the east) is also beside the point. The linguistic evidence is sufficient in itself for the direction of migration of the IE branches, and should be recognized or dealt with as such".

I nowhere said that the source of the borrowed words, the date of the borrowings, the presence or absence of grape wine in Sintashta, the earliest date for wine making anywhere, etc. were "beside the point" in themselves: they are undoubtedly important aspects of study. They are "beside the point" only insofar as their relevance to the question of the location of the Original IE Homeland and the direction (east-to-west or west-to-east) of the IE branches is concerned. If anyone thinks otherwise, they should prove the source, the date, the presence or absence, the earliest date, etc. with conclusive evidence and then show how it can alter the conclusion drawn by me from the linguistic evidence.