Daniel Prior, PhD

Arbeitsvorhaben

Steppe Horizons of Indo-European Myth

This is one component of a set of related projects I am currently working on that call into question the ethnolinguistic “branding” of certain cultural motifs heretofore labeled Indo-European or Central Eurasian, as if the former were different from the latter. The first of this project’s two objectives is a re-edition, English translation, and commentary on the earliest text of the Kirghiz oral epic poem “Joloy Khan.” Written down from the oral performance of an anonymous Kirghiz bard and published with a German translation in the nineteenth century, the long epic “Joloy Khan” (5,322 lines) has remained virtually unused by scholars and readers. Grounds for its revival are compelling, however. Besides being an entertaining, sometimes bizarre story, an unusual example of the Central Asian Kirghiz tradition of oral heroic epic poetry—very far from the concerns of the more famous epic of Manas—its thematic content harbors numerous motifs that resemble myths and rituals of diverse Indo-European peoples.
The project’s second objective is then to interpret the poem’s Indo-European (IE) echoes. The Turkic language of the Kirghiz is unrelated to IE. The Kirghiz arrived relatively recently in Central Asia, where they likely absorbed resident populations that were much older, including speakers of Iranian languages (descended from Proto-IE) that have since died out in the area. However, the diversity of IE-like motifs and themes in “Joloy Khan” cannot be mapped exclusively onto known antecedent materials in the Iranian branch of IE. The exquisite correspondences among the sources cut across multiple branches of the IE language family, complicating possible reconstructed scenarios of their retention. The aim here is to rethink the durability of imaginative thought in space and time; common assumptions about ethnolinguistic identity and analytical categories in comparative mythology come under scrutiny.

Recommended Reading

Prior, Daniel, ed. and trans. The Semetey of Kenje Kara: A Kirghiz Epic Poem on Phonograph. Harrassowitz, 2006.
–. “Fastening the Buckle: A Strand of Xiongnu-Era Narrative in a Recent Kirghiz Epic Poem.” The Silk Road 14 (2016): 186–195.
Saghïmbay Orozbaq uulu. The Memorial Feast for Kökötöy Khan: A Kirghiz Epic Poem in the Manas Tradition. Translated by Daniel Prior. Penguin, 2022.

Publikationen aus der Fellowbibliothek

Prior, Daniel (Wiesbaden, 2006)

The Semetey of Kenje Kara : a Kirghiz epic performance on phonograph with a musical score and a compact disc of the phonogram Turcologica ; 59