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P. .11. La6oaoB, 3mwiuowogu?ecicui caotiapb iyt/)dCKOceO n3bina, ToM I (AM), MIocKBa:"AKaaeMHJlHays", 2001, 686 cc. [R. L. Tsabolov, Etymological Dictionaiy of Kurdish, vol. 1 (A-M), Moscow: "Academy of Sciences", 2001, 686 pp.]
The emergence of a whole seriesof fundamentalworkson Iranian and, more extensively,on Indo-Europeanetymology and historical lexicology from the end of the nineteenth century' has made the compilation of etymological manuals of various formats on the Iranianlanguages-especially West Iraniandialects,usuallyhaving a restrictednumber of genuine vocabulachardly exceeding several hundred items, easily identifiable with the corresponding New Persian forms, and even more so a huge amount of borrowings from that language-an easy task even for people withouta proper knowledgeof the intricaciesof the comparativephilology. Among the linguists studying specific issues of particularNew Iranian languages, this circumstanceis clearly becoming a great temptation for the attempts of creating the so-called "opuses"in the form of etymological vocabulariesand glossaries,commonly considered a very prestigious business in linguistics. And it is, indeed, true in general, as to compile an etymological dictionary requiresa fundamentalcommand of not only the object language and the related languages, their history and primary sources, but the knowledge of a number of contiguous disciplines and appropriate methodology as well, plus, of course, a solid experience in historical linguistics. It is quite typical then, that almost all authors of the etymological dictionaries of the main
I CC, e. g., the following: P. Horn's Persian Etyrological Dictionary and H. Hubshmann's comments on it (Persische Studien); H. Hubschmann's Armenische Grammatik,G. Morgenstierne'sdictionaries of the Pashto and Shughni group and his glossaries to the Indo-Iranian frontier dialects; dialectological materials from the posthumouslegacy of F. C. Andreas published by A. Christensenand K. Barr;numerous publications of W. Eilers, including his well-known series [VestiranischeAMundarteir, E. Benveniste'sand W. B. Henning'spublicationson variousIranian texts with comprehensive etymologicalcommentaries;H. W. Bailey'sepoch-makingKhotanese Dictionazy,as well as the hundreds of papers and notes on Iranian etymology of this great master;V. Abaev's Ossetic etymologicalvocabulary;many importantetymologicalessays of I. Gershevitch,V. A. Livshits, M. Mayrhofer, D. Machenzie, P. Skaervo and K. Hoffmann; Etymological Dictionary ofArmenian by Hr. Acharian;M. Mayrhofer'sA Concise EtymologicalSanskrit Dictionary and Old Indo-Aryan etymological dictionary; R. Turner's Indo-Aryan comparativedictionary;J.Pokorny'sIndo-Europeandictionary, etc.
? Brill,Leiden, 2002
Iran and the Caucasus,6. 1-2
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Indo-European languages are virtually great cor)phaei of their fields. However, the type of etymological dictionary to be discussed here requires no profound or multilateral knowledge or an extensive scholarlyexperience.It is sufficientin the given case only to adopt a simple method of collectingthe materialand presenting it, using a certain pattern with the relevant attributes and an appropriatesetting. The core of this "method"consists in finding the lexical units of a given language or dialect chosen as object, cited as illustratingmaterial for the etymology of related Iranian forms in dictionariesand studies on the history of the vocabulary of different Iranian languages (fortunately, many of them are provided with excellent word indices). Furthermore,one should simply change the title word of the entry into the word from the illustration belonging to the target language. For example, if a certain etymological glossary, say, Persian, contains the entry "gfyan "tent", from OIr. *widjna-; cf. Parth. widan, Baluchi gidan, Bakhtiariguhjn, etc.", then we correspondinglychange the Persiangiyan into Baluchigidan (if the targetis Baluchi),or gvhAn (if our aim is to compile a Bakhtiaridictionary),while the rest will be given as illustration.At bottom, as a bibliography,one can cite a great deal of multi-languageliteratureborrowed both from the given publication, or from other sources, so that the average honest reader will not bother to inquire whether the suggested etymology belongs to the author of the text or whether it has been taken from the worksindicatedin the References. Thus, in case of need one can knock out a rather weighty etymological dictionary of any New Iranian dialect only on the basis of the known and long-establishedetymologies. And if one augments the bulk of the dictionary with the Arabo-Turkishor simply Persian borrowingsavailablein huge quantitiesin all New Iranian dialects, then it would certainly yield a volume of a few thousand pages. Besides, the so-called textual illustrations,to be taken from dictionaries and literary collections, are also accommodative material insofar as the volume should be aggrandised. In a nutshell, manufacturingsuch an "etymological"dictionary is a matter of time and assiduousexertion. But an opus of this kind can at best serve as a lexical manual for beginners, provided, of course, that the compilationhas been executed competendy. All these ideas have been giving me trouble since I had a look at the dictionaryby R. Tsabolov, recentlypublishedin Moscow, of This content downloaded from 88.241.165.15 on Sun, 10 May 2015 20:17:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Kurdish etymology,compiled exactly according to the principlesI have just mentioned.2 At the basis of the book is the word stock of Kurmanji,or the Northern Kurdishdialect, althoughit includes a certainamount of vocabularyfrom the South Kurdishdialectalgroup. This dictionary contains 3,433 words, of which 1,189 are Arabic or Arabo-Persian, 432 Persian, 291 Turkish and 47 Armenian borrowings;that is to say, it has some 2,000 units, excluding the Armenian, which certainly belong to the common, so to say, regionalvocabulary,present in any New Iraniandialect and easily discernible within the basic lexical stock of these dialects. Moreover,most of these forms have been borrowedfrom the old dictionaryof A. Jaba and F. Justi3 indicating exactly the source of each loan word. Therefore, only 1,000 plus allegedly original Kurdish forms remain, part of which still prove to be either Kurdish adaptations of Persianformsor not Kurdishat all. No wonder, since one of the principal sources of the author, the same dictionary of Jaba and Justi, being a very useful manual on Kurdish etymology-it is actually the first ever etymological dictionary of the Kurdish language, mostly useable to determine the lexical borrowings-at the same time includes a large number of words from the dialects that are in actual fact not Kurdish, such as Zaza, Gurani, Laki, Luri, and so on. Many dictionary entries are provided with textual evidence, quotations from different dictionaries and literary sources. The documentary substantiationin a historical dictionaryis certainly an importantpreconditionfor achievingthe objectiveetymological analysis, identifyinggrammaticalcharacteristicsof the word and tracing its history. And that is particularly necessary when examiningobsolete forms and differenthapax legomena having no living representationin the language. However, it is ridiculousto cite page-long excerptsof text for ordinarytransparentloan words from Arabic, Persian or Turkish, from commonly available sources. Besides, strange as it may seem, in many cases the important genuine word needing a contextual consideration is given in its isolatedform.
2 Incidentally,the etymologicalstudies of this type are coming into vogue also in Iran. The Iranian scholarlyjournals these days are full of similar publications. Fortunately, however, such exercisesin Iran do not yet overstepthe boundariesof shortnotes or articles. 3 A. jaba and F.Justi, Dictionnairekurde-fran9ais, SPb, 1879.
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It is to be noted on the whole that the textual illustratons are not the objective per se, and it is not accidental that very few etymological dictionariespossess the documentationof this kind.4 Indeed, there is no need to overburden the text by citing superfluous excerpts in the form of sentences if they are not instrumentalfor sorting out the meanings of the form, illustrating an important category clarifying its origin, or, substantiatingits earlier usage in classical sources. Incidentally,I still managed to come across one such occasion, that is to say, when the citation has to show the presence of the lexical unit in a classicaltext with accompanyingsubstantiationin the folkloricspecimens. That was the entry containing the word k'ingox "hood, priest's headgear" (p. 552), which, however, is a word-for-wordcopy of my article (with no reference), wherein I reconstructedthe form by way of emending the text in Arabic script in the poem "SheikhSan'an" by Faqi Tayran, a seventeenth-centuryKurdish poet, citing the relevant verse and the parallels from the folkloric variants of the poem.5 In any case, it can be stated with no exaggeration that more than half of the volume of this thick book of 686 pages is occupied by unnecessarycitations. Let us then come to the etymologicalpart. One may exclude the Kurdish adaptations of the Persian forms, disputable cases, ixqn (pp. 67compounds such as aginak, agizp'rez, a:FgiSawat, 2g 68), which should actuallybe consideredunder the main word agir "fire",and the parallel forms such as gizrr(p. 390)/ kYzrr(p. 556) (see below). There are also cases such as Kurd. kaw "partridge"(p. 511) and explicitly Persian k'abk id. (p. 527), which incidentally are offered different etymologies (borrowedfrom P. Horn in the first instance and from H. W. Bailey in the second, with no crossreferences,as if they were differentwords).The incidence of such cases has reduced the book under scrutny to no more than some severalhundred Kurdishword formsproper.
4 A classical example is the EtymologicalDictionary of Armenian by Hr. Acharian, wherein the textual examples are not only justified, but very expedient, since the author provides chronologically textual occurrencesof almost all lexical units taken from classical sources, which are not easily accessible.This dictionaryis today valuedjust for its detailed substantiation,rather than for the etvmologies, which have mostly become outdated. This principle is pursued also by V. Abaev in his Historic-EtymologicalDictionary of the OssetianLanguage although his documentationcan hardlybe argued in all cases. O paUHHIIX apMeHt3MaX S See r. C. AcaTpsa, B KypACwIOM", IfIeropUICofpiao7ool.teuueehia
K.ypita.7 All Apmacuiott
CCP 2 (1986):
173.
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Thus, the most numerousgroup of lexemes in the firstvolume of the Etymological Dictionary of the Kurdsis Language is composed of the Arabic, Turkish and Persian borrowings (in excess of one half of the work).As for the Armenianborrowingsin Kurdish, representedin the work is their minor portion made up of generallyknown formsonly. It can be noted with complete assurancethat the identifications of the overwhelmingmajorityof the Arabic, Turkish and Persian forms are taken by the author from Jaba and Justi. The aforementionedsmall group of the Armenismsmay also have their descent traced back to the indicated work and, partially, to our publications,again with no referencemade. Actually,however,the number of the Armenian borrowingsin Kurmanji is many times larger, over 400 units covering important semantic fields (agriculture,animal husbandry,plant names, technical terms, and so on); the first volume then must have contained at least a hundred and fifty units, while Tsabolov could show only what he could have found in Jaba and Justi and in our works. It is remarkablethat the Armenian loan-wordsthat did find their way to the dictionary out of the aforementioned sources remain unexplainedby the author (for example, Kurd. kWlin,Zaza kAlan, kalen "sheath, case" (pp. 512-513), from Arm. dial. kalan id., a verbal noun from kalem,"to cover, hold"). Besides, not all explanationsfound inJaba andJusti are right, yet they are faithfullycopied by Tsabolov. Cf. Kurd. dawar,Zaza dawAr,"cattle"(pp. 284-285), from Arm. dial. davar,Class. Arm. tavar id. (which has been traced by the author to the Turkish d/tavar id., itself an Armenian loan-word);dem "face, looks" (p. 302), from Arm. dem-k' id., in turn, an Iranism (hardly from ClassicalPersian dem, noted only in classicalliteratureand in the Farhangs, the presence of -m- unambiguously shows the late characterof the adoption of the word, otherwise we would have *dev/w, or dTw,which is actually noted in the languagesas being rather an original Kurdish form, from OIr. *daiman-); k'izir "deputyvillage elder"(p. 556), from Arm. dial. k'ozir,Class. Arm. gzir (ratherthan from the Turkishkizir,as assumedby the author, otherwise it would be *kYz?rin Kurdish; as for Kurdish gZzrT "nobleman, village elder" (p. 390), it is borrowed from another Armeniandialectalform of the same lexeme, gizir, and, of course, not from Persian giziY);dirJv/w "money, coin" (p. 310), an old loan-wordfrom Armenian dcram, because of long -a- and -v/w < -m (in the case of borrowingfrom Persian dir(h)am,as stated by This content downloaded from 88.241.165.15 on Sun, 10 May 2015 20:17:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
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Tsabolov, we would have *diram,or *digv, Kurdish diram (ibid.) is also definitelyan Armenism,but of a later period:Arm. -a- gives in all cases Kurdish long -a-, while Arm. dial. -a- is reflected in Kurdish as short -a-6),and so on.7 On another occasions Tsabolov gets into a "do-it-yourself' mood and finds himself in the wrong boat. Thus, instead of the correct explanation in Jaba andJusti (pp. 113, 124) of Kurd. cay, Jay (the latter form is lacking in the list of Tsabolov) "a spike, an iron fence, a rod" (pp. 251, 257), from Arm. c'ay, dial. j'ay, he "horn"(!). interpretsthe form as an adaptationof the Persians'a7x As to the etymologiesof the originalKurdishforrnsgiven in the dictionary, nearly all belong to the category of long-known and frequently quoted forms in works on historical lexicology of the Iranian languages. They have been taken by Tsabolov from the publications of old and new authors-from H. Hubschmann and P. Horn to H. W. Bailey, NI. Mayrhofer, I. Gershevitch, D. Mackenzie and V. Abaev, while the dialectologicalNachlass of F. C. Andreas, the valuable treasuryof Kurdish and New Iranian etymologies, published by A. Christensen and K. Barr,8 has obviously been skipped by the author, although the title of this work is present in the Bibliography.It is clear at least from the fact that the explanations of a number of.interesting Kurdish forms offered by Andreas and his discipleshave not been representedin the dictionary. Otherwise, it is hardly imaginable that Tsabolov could forgo making use of them. He would not be slack in citing, for example, the elegant interpretationby Andreasof the Kurdish aqr"fire", from * -jI.(<*ftaz) in order to avoid hiatus,9and would not go into utterlyincongruousspeculations(p. 67). Certainlyused as one of the sourcesof the Kurdishetymologies for the author was the articlewritten by VladimirA. Livshitsand the author of this review,10 advancing over two hundred etymologies, new for the most part. Nonetheless, neither this one
6 See G. S. Asatrian, "Die Ethnogenese der Kurden und friihe Kurdisch-Armenische Kontakte",Iran and the Caucasus,vol. 5 (2001):63. 1 put aside the numerous wrong transcriptionsof Armenian forms, such as ayos for agos (p. 68), c'icforcic "breast"(p. 254), etc. 8 See IranischeDialektaufzeichnungen aus dem Nachlass von F C. Andreas.ErsterTeil: Siwandi, Yazdr und S6T,bearbeitetvon A. Christensen;KurdischeDialekte, bearbeitetvon K. Barr (Berlin, 1939). 9 Ibid: 33. 0 G. S. Asatrian and V. A. Livshits,' Origine du systeme consonantiquede la langue Kurde Acta Kurdica,vol. I (1994):81-108.
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nor any other of my workson the historyof Kurdishvocabularyis ever mentionedby Tsabolov. Despite the representativebody of sources,"Ithe author is not everywhere able to highlight their contents in a proper way. For example, instead of tracing the words to the direct Old Iranian protoforms, frequent mentions are made of the roots only, as in the case with Jr "fire"(p. 82), which must be traced to the oblique form *J9r-,ratherthan to *atar-,which can in no way produce ar in Kurdish.'2Or let us take hewti"concubine",for which Tsabolov suggests(p. 438) the Old Iranian*ham-pat-(!),while it is normally derived from *ha-pa0ni. Moreover, there is not a single instance in the dictionary under scrutiny to show the familiarityof the author with the i-umlaut regularitiesin Kurmanji:the etymons offered by him have direct forms in all occurrences. Cf. direi "long", comes from *draJya-, rather than *darga- (p. 311); hez "strength,might", from *hazya-, rather than haza- (p. 439); ker
(kera5"knife",from *kartya-,ratherthan *I.arta-(p. 549); metin (< *mezin) "to suck",from *maicya-,ratherthan *maik-(*mai") (p. 650), and so on.'3 It is obvious that all these Old Iranian etymons are mechanicallysampledfrom the workswhere they were used to explain other Iranian words or relevant historical and phonetic phenomena. It can hardly be doubted, for example, that *atar(Avestanatar-)had been indicatedby some author, most probably by Horn, as the etymon of the Persian Mar "fire",along with a number of parallel forms from related Iranian dialects including Kurd. ar (as is just the case in Horn14).Tsabolov has taken Kurd. Jr as the title word, mechanically taking the rest into the dictionary entry, with some amendments from the subsequent works. In all appearances,Tsabolov has no clear understandingof the Indo-Iranian rhotacism either, otherwise he would not have suggested the Iranian protoform *Iap. (p. 589) for lev "lip" instead
of *rap- (rather,*rapya-).As we have showvn,quite convincingly " Still, very defective:for example,judging from the Bibliography(pp. 5-14), not a single publicationof W. Eilersis knownto the author. 12 Actually,the same systemof etymologycan be seen in the author'spresentationof the sources of loan-words.Cf., e. g., Arm. gayt'akan for Kurd. kaydagin "refugee"(p. 512) (must be West Armeniandialectalk'aydigan id.); kat'onkr'for kreom (also with -n) "waste products from a haystack"(p. 518) (must be Arm. dial. l;ircon/m "leavings, leftovers"); Arm. kot (or even Georgiank'och)for Kurd. ktd "bowl, cup" (p. 519) (must be, of course, Arm. dial. Akodid.), etc. 13 On the i-umlautin Kurmanji,see in detail Asatrianand Livshits,op. cit.: 100. 14Cf. P. Horn, GrundrissderneupersischenEtymologie,Strassburg,1893:4.
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perhaps, the New Iraniandialectspreservenot a single example of retaining the Indo-European *-1- in circumvention of the rhotacism,which had been a universalphenomenon in the Iranian in contrastto the Indian.'5In all cases with -1-we are dealing with a secondary development from the common Iranian *-r-, or, in scarce examples, from *-d (as in leb "deception, deceptive" < *dabya-, rather than from *raip, as stated by Tsabolov, p. 588). The original Kurdish -1- can be traced only in phonosemantic words such as lap(ik) "paw, wrist, palm, hand" (cf. Gurani lap "palm",Pashto lapa "fistful,a bunch of fives",Na'ini lap "bottom of the foot" and, finally, Russianlapa from quite another group of the Indo-Europeanfamily,and so on).'6 A legitimate question can arise: doesn't this whole fat book contain at least a single etymology offered by the author that would be his own?-To be sure, it does-although not too many. But, alas, they are almost all wrong. In other words, all the wrong things in the dictionaryunder review have been produced by the author, while all the true thingsare what is common knowledge. Here are some examplesof Tsabolov'sown etymologies: "smell, fragrance",derived by the author from *waina bT('h)n (p. 200), whereasit must be traced to OIr. *baudna- (via *bohn > *buhn). bihistin, bistin "to hear, listen", is traced by Tsabolov to OIr. *wi-waid- (p. 174), impossible both phonetically and from semantical point of view. It is more realistic to denrvethe word from OIr. busta-/baud- (cf. Av. baod- "to perceive, smell") < IE. *bheudh- "wach zein, beobachten, erkennen, etc.") through *bust > *bTst(due to secondarylenghtening of original short -u- and its norrowing to -i-, see previous item) and intrusion of -ih- before a long vowel and afterinitial b- in bihistin.Kurdishis unique among the Iranian dialects in forming the verb "hear"from OIr. *baud-; it seems to have preserved the primary meaning of the Avestan form, which has been lost elsewherein New Iranian.'7 eilk "a drop",is comparedwith Pers. Jirk"dirt"(p. 254), which is semantically impossible. It would be more correct to compare with Pers. cikka) "a drop",with the infix -1-. la See Asatrianand Livshits,op. cit., 98-100; cf. the positive reaction of Prof. R. Schmitt to this statementin Kratvlos40 (1995):197. 16 See in detail r. c. AcaTpsH, "cyfmlccaabHbIfi -1- it llecoTopbIe Bonpocui 3nemeMHT B apMRHCIKOM x3bIe", 1j)OHOCeMawrTHrKH lcImopuKo-4iLwoAo.'u'aec1ud M.NypH(aAll Ap.iuticicou CCP 2 (1988): 160-178. '' See G.S. Asatrian,"KurdishEtymologies",Iran & the Caucasus,vol. III-IV (19992000): 209.
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gill "speech,story",is derivedby the author from OIr. *gfar-(p. 383); the etymon, however,is *g.rda, cf. Persiangila. guherrn "change",comes, according to Tsabolov, from OIr. *p$wart- (p. 399), which is actuallyimpossible.It is probablyfrom OIr. *wi-ar9ya-as postulatedby A. Perikhanian'8for MP guhar-, Arm. veher-.Here also New Persianguharndan"change". VihfTr-, have,n "leven, yeast" (cf. Zaza ame/mnid.), coming probably from the Old Iranian*ham-mada/uyana-.l9The author confines himself to the comparisonwith the Zaza form (p. 432), which is clear as it is. hlv, hayv "moon"),is provided with an obscure OIr. etymon, *asma- (p. 444) and far-fetched parallels taken from Abaev. However, the Kurdishform must be discussedin the paradigmof a series of related lexemes in Iranian, such as NIP -ysm "moon" Zaza asma, asma, aima, asmi id., Tati usma, Talishi ovsim, Harzani os"ma,and so on. Following E. Benveniste,all these forms or * waxsa-mjh.-ka.20 go back to OIr. *uxsmyamJh-ka, Tzir "trousers, curtain lace", is referredto Arabic Tzar(p. 482), while the latter is in turn a borrowing from Persian Tzjr(and is attested also in Judeo-Persian).For &zJrone can propose a pretty decent Iranian etymology, deriving it from OIr. *adi-zaha-bara(ka-)-"whatis coveringthe lower part of belly", cf. Persianzahar "genitals"< *zaha-babra-. moz "wasp",is comparedby the authorwith Persianmun] "fly, bee", MP manc (p. 682), having in fact nothing to do with the Kurdish form. The etymology is transparent:from OIr. *wabsa (JE *JobhsJ), cf. Av. vawzaka-"wasp, hornet",MP vabz "wasp", Mazandarani ma(u)z, vazm "bee", Muslim Yazdi buz "wasp" dialect of the ShiraziJewsbezid., and so on. The number of examples could be augmented; however, that would be pointless.Everythingseems to be clear. By the way, the dictionarylacks a number of important Kurdish lexemes, such as hinjrtin, nartin "send", hindotin "accumulate",kat2iil "crab", GaJvezi "Sirius, Dog-star",kjri "mushroom",kaz "blond, fairhaired",diziw "mark",and so on.
18
A. r. HepHxaHlnH,Cacaiudce,iui (EpeBaH,1973): 480-481. eyde6&uK
19See G. Asatrian,"Vajh-eesteqaq-ecandvaie-yekordi",MajaIIe-ye zabinsenisn2
(1991):77;idem,"Kurdish Etymologies", 210. 20 Cf. G. S. Asatrian, "Dimli", Encyclopaedia Iranica,vol. VII/4 (1995):410;U. Blasing, IranandtheCaucasus, "Asme,asmen,astare", vol. I (1997):171.
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I am very reluctantto characterisethis work, evidentlydesigned by the author as his magnum opus. Nor is it my ambition to see myself as the shattererof the old man's illusions;time is bound to put everything in its proper places, and Tsabolov's Etymological Dictionary will certainly receive its due evaluation. Besides, one can do only whatever is within one's power. However, scholarly knowledgeis regulatedby certainmoral and ethical standardsthat are to be strictly maintained by everyone: old and young, master and amateur. GarnikAsatrian Yerevan State University
Philip Carl Salzman, Black Tents of Baluchistan.-Smithsonian Series In Ethnographic Inquiry, ed. William L. Merrill and Ivan KaIp, Washington and London: SmithsonianInstitutionPress,2000, 390 pp.
A long awaited ethnography, perfect source for a case study, colourful picture of a unique lifestyle and Weltanschauung, relations and institutions ... These are the first explicit attributes which come to one's mind just during a preliminaryacquaintance with the monograph. As a result of Professor P. C. Salzman's almost a quarter century lasted endeavoursand investgations, the "BlackTents of Baluchistan"comes as an overwhelmingmonument to fill the gap of informationin the field of Baluchistudies and enrich the bulk of the ethnographicaccountsin general. After spending more than two years in the Sarhad region of IranianBaluchistanin 1967-68 and 1972-73, the author shows not only the obvious aspects of a society, which is known so far as a nomadic one, but he also brings a new concept of study of the Sarhadi society, approaching to it as an organic and monolithic organisation with its own tendencies of development and stereotypes of relations, thus distinguishingthe Sarhadi Baluches from other nomadic societies. The author himself states in the Conclusion: "The comparativesignificanceof the Sarhaditribes is not that they can be taken as representativeof all nomadic tribes, but rather that their similarities to and differences from other tribes can aid us in understandingand explaining why particular nomadic tribes are the way they are. The interestingquestionsare about how we can account for those differences".Evidently P.
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