Talk:Dasa

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This page is really well writtern. Well done! .The Mystic - 14:12, 28th July 2006

[edit] there too?

'This talk section was initially at Talk:Out of India theory'

Following a "See also" at Dahae (now rewritten, so the link is gone), I ran into the article on dasa that is stylistically (and then some) precisely the same sort of cruft as in this article, and there is a reference to one Parpola person who is also cited here. The tripe at the dasa article with respect to Avestan/OP daha (hahaha) seems just the same sort of "creative" construction that someone tried to pass off here as legitimate scholarship.

Hence the question: is the Parpola fellow cited here and cited there legit? If so, is that article coat-racking like this one is/was?
-- Fullstop 23:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Asko Parpola is a famous Indologist noted for his attempts to decipher the IVC script. He is very much for real. Paul B 00:02, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
would he be cited for OP daha (refs [3] and [4] there)? And if so, in what context?
That article's conclusion that dasa == daha is not explicitly stated, but implied all over the place.
-- Fullstop 01:19, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Paul, I see you active on that article too, do you know who added this sentence:
When Zarathustrianism was established, Shri Varuna who Zarathustra referred to as the Ahura Mazda (Rigvedic Assur Mehda or Assur Mahadeo)
Thats a Maleabroad'ism. Direct from the now (thankfully) deleted 'Zoroastrianism and Hinduism'
-- Fullstop 01:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I've no idea who wrote that, but it must be quite recent. It wasn't there when I last looked at the article. Paul B 06:31, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

"Shri Varuna = Ahura Mazda" is patent nonsense (although it has a kernel of merit. Both Varuna and Mazda are "supreme Asuras"), but the connection dahae=dasa isn't too far-fetched. Mayrhofer and Bartholomae make the connection. Mayrhofer also states that a connection with dasyu is plausible (but uncertain). I think formerly, scholars were very positive about the connection. The etymology proposed was from the root dam "to tame", in the meaning of "subjects, slaves"; alternatively compared with Greek doulos (Mycenaean do-e-ro < *doselos) "slave". This isn't widely accepted now, but neither is it positively rejected: people are rather agnostic about the question. But many great scholars of the past have proposed the equation, so it is at least worth discussing. dab (𒁳) 07:51, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

A linguistic relationship does not imply a functional one:
Av daxiiu are consistently enemies of the faith, Av *daha are consistently followers of the faith.
Skt dasyu are consistently enemies of the faith, Skt *dasa are ambiguous.
  • To state that Skt dasyu/Av daxiiu represent shared Indo-Iranian religious dialectology is ok. But the article doesn't do that.
  • To state that Skt *dasa/Av *daha are equal is not ok. (eg "Dasa is also in Iranian 'Daha'")
  • To imply Av daxiiu equals Av. *daha is not ok. (eg second sentence in Etymology section)
  • To contrast *dasa/*daha/*dasyu/*daxiiu with Asura/Ahura/Daeva/Deva is completely mind blowing.
  • To be freaky is not ok (eg "Daha also referred to a dasyu tribe in Margiana.")
And what are Arrian, Strabo, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus doing in an etymology section?
-- Fullstop 16:43, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
"To contrast *dasa/*daha/*dasyu/*daxiiu with Asura/Ahura/Daeva/Deva is completely mind blowing"? well, but it has been done, in scholarly literature too. You are saying the article needs cleanup, and I agree. Needless to say, this is a question of reconstruction of Proto-Indo-Iranian religion, and prehistoric developments. It's speculative, and it needs attribution, and clear phrasing. But the topic isn't invalid. --dab (𒁳) 16:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
To contrast *dasa/*daha/dasyu/daxiiu with Asura/Ahura/Daeva/Deva in the way the article did it is mind blowing and cannot possibly have been done. You might have missed what the sentence actually said, so here goes again:
While the terms Dasa and Dasyu have a negative meaning in Sanskrit, their Iranian counterparts Daha and Dahyu have preserved their positive (or neutral) meaning. This is similar to the Sanskrit terms Deva (a "positive" term) and Asura (a "negative" term). The Iranian counterparts of these terms (Daeva and Ahura) have opposite meanings.
This is in a section on etymology (!), in the second and third sentence, and where the first sentence says nothing.
Break down:
1. [unlike Sankrit] Iranian counterparts Daha and Dahyu have preserved their positive (or neutral) meaning
false and false comparison.
  • Daha is a proper noun in Av/OP, and as such there is no question of "preservation of meaning".
    In both cases the name in simply one in a list of names. There is no "meaning" to a name in those lists. Substitute *Dasa with "QuackQuack" and the lists would still be what they always were, with no loss of precision or meaning. To suggest that a name in a list has meaning is like suggesting we throw away dictionaries in favor of telephone books. A person named "Dieter" does not "preserve" the meaning of "rich and powerful" :)
    Not that there is any definition of "meaning" that they could possibly preserve. This is the second sentence in the section and the only definition of meaning thus far in the article is the one in the lead section, which reads: The Dāsa are a tribe identified as the enemies of the Aryan tribes in the Rigveda. etc Do you see a "positive (or neutral) meaning" to preserve there?
  • OP inscriptions are political statements. If there is a "moral" dimension, then this is within the context of kingship, and there are no proclamations of religious values. They are not religious compositions and not comparable with religious texts.
  • OP Daha is just one name in a list of various ethnous of the empire. It is possible (I suppose) to apply a negative connotation to the idea of "subject peoples", but thats neither here nor there, and would throw up some very uncomfortable questions.
  • Av *Daha is also the name of some ethnous, and "positive" in that this people are acknowledged as followers of Zoroastrianism.
  • Av Daxiuu has precisely the same meaning as Skt Dasyu.
2. This is similar to the Sanskrit terms Deva (a "positive" term) and Asura (a "negative" term). The Iranian counterparts of these terms (Daeva and Ahura) have opposite meanings.
false equation ("similar"), false comparison ("counterparts"), temporal bias ("positive"/"negative" is *late*)
  • RigVedic Deva/Asura are not opposites. They are not even necessarily mutually exclusive.
  • The dichotomy of Daeva/Ahura is a by-product of something else.
  • Daeva and Ahura do not have an "opposite meaning" vis-a-vis Daeva and Asura.
  • Neither the dichotomy of Deva/Asura nor the dichotomy of Daeva/Ahura represent a feature of Indo-Iranian religion.
 
In an article titled dasa, and in which dasa is (presumably) what the article is about, the etymology section of dasa could (and should) begin with something like this:
Although many different etymologies for dasa- have been proposed, the most widely accepted of these is one deriving from a stem meaning "man". This meaning is preserved in Khotanese dahä "man" and dahi "woman."
The relationship to Iranic daha can be summarized in three sentences:
The Vedic Sanskrit adjective dasa may or may not be linguistically related to Iranic proper noun *Daha. In the the non-religious (political) XPh inscription, OP Daha is one name in a list of subject nations (ethnous). A people of a similar name - perhaps but not necessarily the same as those referred to in the XPh - appear (alongside the Airiia, Tuiriia, Sairima and Sainu) in the Avesta in a list of tribes that followed the Zoroastrian religion. In both Iranian languages, the name only only occurs once.
If dasynu is - in violation of what the lead section says - being treated as synonymous with dasa, then an explanation of dasyu must come before the etymology section. In the etymology section, one might then read:
The Vedic Sanskrit noun Dasyu and its Avestan language cognate Daxiiu both denote a people hostile to the respective religions. An OP form dahyu, meaning "province", is also attested.
-- Fullstop 22:23, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggest we move this section to Talk:Dahae. --dab (𒁳) 11:19, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Moved to the talk for the article under discussion, i.e. 'Talk:dasa -- Fullstop 17:40, 3 October 2007 (UTC)