The Khakas-Altaian Mythonym Ker and the Proto-Yenissean Word for ‘Mammoth’. 2

Abstract

The article continues the research on the names of mammoth or other mammoth-like monsters as characteristic elements of the mythological onomasticon of some Siberian traditions (Turkic, Yenissean, Tungusic). In the first part of the article, the author identified a reconstructed Proto-Yenissean form *čer / *ťèkə́r ‘mammoth (giant horned fish)’ > Ket 1tēľ ~ Yug 1čel ~ Pumpokol *kher (> Altaic, Khakass, Teleut ker, kär ‘a monster, especially a giant fish’) as a possible origin of these names. In this part, the author proposes a pre-Yenissean (Sino-Caucasian) etymology for it: *c̣HírV[ʁ]V (> North-Caucasian *c̣irVχV ‘caterpillar, snail; line’ ~ Sino-Tibetan *čaŋ ‘lizard’ ~ (?) Burushaski hargin ‘dragon, a monster that a snake turns into.’ It is assumed that the image of the mammoth-fish (as opposed to a more widely known and probably more ancient image of mammoth-bull) was formed in the Proto-Yenissean tradition after the speakers of the Yenissean proto-language migrated from the southern ancestral homeland to Siberia. It is based on ideas about the transformation of a snake, fish or similar chthonic animal into a giant dragon-like creature that existed among the Sino-Caucasian ancestors of the Yenisseans spread in the Pamir-Hindukush region, and was known to the ancient Chinese. The formation of the image of the mammoth-fish among the Yenisseans was also influenced by the Iranian motif of the “a belt dissecting a tree.” The Yenissean image of the mammoth-fish reached Siberia, particularly, it was borrowed into the shamanic tradition of the Evenks, which is evidenced by the possible etymology of the Evenki selī ‘mammoth’ (including mammoth-horned fish) from the reconstructed form of the unknown Yenissean language *seĺ (< *čer / *ťèkə́r).