Home Gudgeon and gist Language Log Zoroastrian "heaven"

Zoroastrian "heaven"

Language Log 2025-01-23

[This is a guest post by Chris Button]

I think I might finally have figured out heaven: 
 
tiān 天 LMC tʰian, EMC tʰɛn, OC xjəm
xiān 祆 LMC xian, EMC xɛn, OC xəɲ ~ xjəm
 
It's Pulleyblank's formulation (xj- > tʰ ; -jəm > -ɛn), but it also explains why x- is retained in 祆 because of it using the intermediary stage -əɲ (between OC -jəm and EMC -ɛn) as the OC source of the EMC form (where OC x- > EMC x-) rather than -jəm (where OC xj- > EMC tʰ-).

As discussed by Pulleyblank elsewhere (e.g. with 年 vs 稔 ), the palatalization of the coda in -ɛn < -jəm only occurs in ping sheng (to overlap with regular -ɛn < -əɲ). So, the xiesheng derivative tiǎn 忝 "shame" (with 天 as phonetic) regularly reconstructs as LMC tʰiam´, EMC tʰɛmˀ, OC xjᵊmɁ with EMC ɛmˀ rather than ɛnˀ.
 
Two further things to consider: 
  1. 丁 does not after all appear to be phonetic in 天 despite it sometimes appearing that way in the earliest inscriptions.
  2. The source of Indo-European "heaven" seems to be unresolved. Pokorny suggests (s)kʲəm- "cover" as the source of the words "heaven" and "shame". Semantically, that happens to compare with 天 "heaven" and 忝 "shame" in Chinese. And then if we really want to speculate, OC xjəm and IE kʲəm- do look rather similar, but that is most likely coincidental!

Selected readings