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Indo-Iranian lexicon and phraseology in the ritual poetry of the Avesta, Veda and Beyond

Sadovski, Velizar. 2017. The columns of R̥ta: Indo-Iranian lexicon and phraseology in the ritual poetry of the Avesta, Veda and Beyond. In Ivo Hajnal, Daniel Kölligan & Katharina Zipser (eds.), Miscellanea Indogermanica: Festschrift für José Luis García Ramón zum 65. Geburtstag (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 154), 715–743. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität Innsbruck.

The focus of the present article […] is laid on the phraseological and poetical combinatorics of the word for ‘pillar, column’, Ved. sthū́ṇā-, YAv. stū̆nā-, OPers. stūnā-, fem. […], which as a common appellative designates a constructive element of the Vedic and Avestan house (incl. the ‘mobile house’, the [migration] wagon) and functions, as well, as a key metaphor in hymns of house, e.g. in the ceremony of ‘ascending the pillar’ (by the beams) in the ritual of building a new home […]. Both in its everyday usage and in its metaphoric applications in texts of ritual character, the word seems to belong to a common lexical stratum of Indic and Iranian.