[gothic-l] Re; Yair

[sunnytjatsingh]

Hello Yair, your post indeed says a great deal:

"The use of this phrase is indeed offensive and superfluous in the 
context.
Also the claim that Goths were in India has been made in the past by 
respectable historians
and therefore on that basis alone should be worth considering."

I agree – Tod, Toynbee, Trevaskis, Keene, Kephart, etc have all 
directly or indirectly connected Jat and Goths.  

"it is also agreed that the Goths could be referred to as "Get" or as 
"Guti".  The Massagetae east of the Caspian Sea were
regarded by some roman writers as Goths."

I am curious which Roman writers referred to Massagetae as Goths?  Or 
are you referring to Jordanes discussion of Queen Tomyris of the 
Massagetae and her exploits against the Persians "for the first time 
the race of Goths [Getae] says silken tents".  

"It has been claimed that the Massagetae are the Yueh-chi of Chinese 
records 
and that this name was actually pronounced
by the Chinese as Ta-Geti or "Great Geti". Similarly the name 
Massagetae 
has also been explained to mean "Great Geti"."

Very interesting.  Modern linguists like Pulleyblank, Karlgren, 
Torday, Marquart, etc. all reduced the Da Yuezhi into a pnonetic Da 
Gweti or Da Gueti.  Heinrich Klaproth many years earlier suggested 
that Yuezhi was correctly pronounced "Yuti".     

I very much agree with this identification, as in Chinese Da 
means "Great", therefore the Da Yuezhi is the Great Yuezhi, if we 
accept the aforementioned linguistic translation, this becomes Great 
Gueti.   Further Massagetae, according to the 9th Century work De 
Universo by Rabanus Maurus, states that, "The Massagetae are in 
origin from the tribe of the Scythians, and are called massagetae, as 
if heavy, that is strong Getae (Migne 1864: Col 439)."  

Rabanus Maurus, De Universo. Edited by Migne, P.L. Vol. CXI, Paris, 
1864.

As the name of the tribe is probably Iranian, if we examine any 
common Pehlavi lexicon, the root "Mas" means "Great".  Therefore, the 
Massa-Getae means "Great Getae" and exactly corresponds to Da or 
Great Gueti.  It is no wonder that scholars had a difficult time 
dicephering the material differences between Saka (Massagetae) and 
Kushan (Da Yuezhi) invaders.  

"The Massagetae were in Central Asia and there were incursions from 
that 
area into India."

Yes this is well attested.  

"Scandinavian legends trace their ancestry to the region of "Yadi" 
just 
north of Central Asia."

I was aware of Scandinavian legends and their suggestion of origin 
from Central Asia, but I have never heard about Yadi, could you 
elaborate?  

"One could say that all this is coincidence and means nothing.
To my mind however it does seem like a possibility that may be worth 
considering."

I agree.  Here is what Calvin Kephart wrote in 1960:

The Goths
 seem to have wandered farther and to have changed more 
materially as regards their laws, customs, and religious beliefs than 
other tribes of migratory barbarians.  Distinct from the Germans or 
Tuetons, they have nevertheless often been confounded with them, a 
fact due to their nomadic tendencies, personal appearance, and 
general habits
 The coincidence of numerous terms of the Gothic 
language with those of Sanskrit and the identity of many roots of 
words in both languages have established the origin of the Goths to 
be
from Gete, in Western Turkistan
 and not Scandinavia as was once 
generally supposed (Kephart 1960: 502).

Kephart presents an entire chapter of his book to the "Getic Nation" 
of which he claims the Goths, and Chinese Yuezhi sprang from.  The 
origin form of the name was Get or Gut.  
 
Kephart, C. Races of Mankind Their Origin and Migration. New York. 
Philosophical Library: 1960.

"Certainly it is not something to get uptight about.
It works both ways. Ideologically it could just as legitimately be 
asked:
Why should a presumedly North European person be irritated by the 
possibility that a classic European group (the Goths)
may also have had connections with other ethnic groups?"

Precisely, why the irritation?  And then comments of Jats 
borderlining Nazism, very strange.  Here is what James Tod wrote in 
1829 regard Jats and Rajputs, it may seem wild, but there must have 
been some reason for him to write this:

In the Edda we are informed that the Getae or Jats, who entered 
Scandanavia, were termed Asi, and their first settlement As-gard
. 
The Rajput slays buffaloes, hunts and eats boar and deer
. [H]e 
worships his horse, his sword, and the sun, and attends more to the 
martial song of the bard than to the litany of the Brahman
. The 
Rajput delights in blood: his offerings to the god of battle are 
sanguinary, blood and wine.  The cup (kharpara) of libation is the 
human skull.  He loves them because they are emblematic of the deity 
he worships; and he is taught to believe that Hara (Shiva) loves 
them, who in war is represented with the skull to drink the foeman's 
blood, and in peace is the patron of wine and women.  With Parbati 
(Shiva's wife) on his knee, his eyes rolling from the juice of the 
phul (ardent spirits) and opium, such is this Bacchanalian divinity 
of war.  Is this Hinduism, acquired on the burning plains of India?  
Is it not rather a perfect picture of the manners of Scandinavian 
heroes (Tod 1829: 77, 82)?

Tod, J. Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan. Vol. 1. Delhi. Motilal 
Banarsidass: 1971, First Published in 1829.

Best Wishes, 



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