Horsesh*t?

The name Ūsiņš may, perhaps, be linked to the Ashvini (अश्विनी aśvinī) which refers to a portion of the moon’s path in Indian astronomy. Ashvini are also the divine twins of the Vedas (healers too, like Iasion, perhaps). These twins may, in fact, also be linked to horses and also, like Ūsiņš, to bees. They may also connected to the Lithuanian Ašvieniai. You see Old Lithuanian ašva and Sanskrit ashva mean “horse”. And the Avestani aspa also means horse and since a wasp or an osa is “kind of” like a bee, there may be more than one connection.

Bee that as it may…

There is something else that is very interesting here.

Why is a horse ashva or aśva in Sanskrit?

Well, an azvin is a horse tamer and, wait for it, aśvayúj, means “harnessing horses.” But harnessing does not just mean the physical act of putting on a harness. Rather it means “taming.”

Now, in Polish, of course, oswoić means, precisely, to tame.

But the crazy thing is that oswoić has a clear etymology of taming and not just taming horses. It consist of the prefix o- and swoić which means “one’s own” like swoi. It is not, in any way, limited to taming or domesticating horses. Rather it can be applied to any animal and can even be used metaphorically.

In other words, it is highly unlikely that the Polish oswoić can be derived from the Sanskrit aśvayúj which is limited to “harnessing” and “taming” horses only.

Unless this is a coincidence, which is a possibility, or a different explanation arises (there are a few, I think remote ones, that do appear to me) one has to at least admit the more obvious possibility that the similarity is caused by Sanskrit aśvayúj coming from an older source language with the original meaning then being lost in Sanskrit but which meaning was retained in proto-Suavic (you could also claim that Sanskrit derives from proto-Suavic, I suppose, though a more modest claim may, at this time, be more palatable).

original “oswoić” >  ashva/aśva > aśvayúj

“to make one’s own” > “horse” > “to tame a horse”

And that is why ashva/aśva means “horse”.

Strange? You better believe it.

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November 8, 2019

One thought on “Horsesh*t?

  1. Ivan Furka

    This is not a coincidence. If John T. Koch is right, then this is just another evidence of spreading proto-balto-slavic dialects toward India. Read his paper from 2018:
    Formation of the Indo-European branches in the light of the Archaeogenetic Revolution.
    You can find it on wwwacademia.edu/38336128/Formation_of_the_Indo-European_branches_in_the_light_of_the_Archaeogenetic_Revolution

    Reply

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