Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian

particularly the Old Indian dialect continued in Vedic. It is the name for one of the
crucial elements of the new type of chariot-yoke. The widely spread stem is of the
thematic type in *-o- : Hittite yukan; Vedic yugám “yoke”, Nuristani Prasun yû , üyû
“plough” 357 ; Eastern Iranian Yazguliam yoG “yoke”, Shugni yuG, Mundzhan
yπgh/yîg 358 , Armenian lowc 359 ; Greek zugÒn “yoke”; Old Church Slavonic igo; Old
Icelandic ok “yoke”, Gothic yuk “pair”, Latin iugum; Lithuanian jùngas, with reshaping
of the noun under the influence of a verbal nasal infixed stem similar to Old Irish cu-
ing- < *com-jung-os, Old Indian a-yu©g-as “unpaired”. As with some other words in
the same semantic field with a clear inner form due to the connection to a primary verb
(see above on derivatives from *we´gh- “drive”), there are several other nominal stems
with partly synonymous meanings. A stem in *-s- is attested in Mycenaean Greek
(Dative plural ze-u-ke-si “for pairs”, also with a derived -u- stem: ze-u-ke-u-si “for
those who are in charge of the harness”, cf. the unexplained -u- in Gothic jukuzi), Latin
(iûgus) and Slavic (*iÛ-es-e); a comparison to the Hittite form i-ú-ga-aÍ-Ía “yearling”
seems possible 360 (the metaphorical temporal development of the main technical
meaning of the root is shared by all the ancient dialects as well as its application to
different kinds of couples and pairs). In Old Indian (sa-yuj-), Greek (sÊ-zuj) and Latin
(con-iux “spouse; husband or wife”) archaic compounds, the athematic
357 In general the diffusion of the plough studied by Vavilov and Haudricourt (Haudricourt and
Delamarre 1986; Haudricourt 1987) is connected to that of the wheeled chariot, and many terms are
transferred from one field into the other; the details and some special cases are to be discussed
separately; for Eastern Iranian see: Steblin-Kamenskij 1985 with references. In the literature on
comparative Indo-European symbolic anthropology the problem has been discussed in connection with
the role of “the plough with a yoke” among Scythian symbols, Benveniste 1938; Dumézil 1978; Xazanov
1975; Raevskij 1977; 1985, 27.
358 Andreev a.o. 1957, 366; Griunberg 1972, 392 (yax in the text on reaping, 168, sentence 5); Steblin-
Kamenskij 1985, 161.
359 The initial l- < *j- in the Armenian form, apparently influenced by Northern Caucasian laterals (for
other internal Armenian explanations see references in Lehmann 1986, 212, J 12), is particularly
interesting for comparison to those Northeastern Caucasian forms of the word with the same meaning
that have an initial r-.
360 But cf. Puhvel 1984, 497-499.