Saturday, October 17, 2009

my first ques ... starting off with an easy one ...

Legend has it that in ancient times , an indian conquistador set on a new conquest to extend his empire . he set his plans to travel via the ancient silk route but he lost track when the weather turned tables . his mentor advised him that should he continue his conquest , the gods would punish his army . paying no heed to his guru's words , he continued in a direction he had very little idea about but yet he was able to easily annex it to his kingdom . as a token as offering to the god of war ie. lord muruga , he built a temple dedicated to lord karthikeya . the temple still exists today , but ravaged . identify the country / region that he annexed , taking that temple as root for the derivation of the name .

10 comments:

ashwin said...

angor vat, cambodia

Sharmavardhan said...

angkor wat...cambodia?

Abhiram M K said...

nope

Abhiram M K said...

ans : the clues lay in " change in weather conditions " , " silk route " and " lord muruga " . angor vat is a good try considering the silk route mis-tour , but it does not boast any muruga temple . the answer lies in the name of god . muruga was also known as skanda . hence the name SCANDINAVIA . the country : modern day regions of sweden and norway .

Unknown said...

If you don think its true... Read on!


http://www.jatland.com/home/Scandinavia

Rohan said...

Scandinavia and Scania (Skåne) are considered to have the same etymology. Both terms are thought to be derived from the Germanic root *Skaðin-awjō, which appears later in Old English as Scedenig and in Old Norse as Skáney.[22] The earliest identified source for the name Scandinavia is Pliny the Elder's Natural History, dated to the 1st century AD.

Various references to the region can also be found in Pytheas, Pomponius Mela, Tacitus, Ptolemy, Procopius and Jordanes. It is believed that the name used by Pliny may be of West Germanic origin, originally denoting Scania.[23] According to some scholars, the Germanic stem can be reconstructed as *Skaðan- meaning "danger" or "damage" (English scathing, German Schaden).[24] The second segment of the name has been reconstructed as *awjo, meaning "land on the water" or "island". The name Scandinavia would then mean "dangerous island", which is considered to be a reference to the treacherous sandbanks surrounding Scania.[24] Skanör in Scania, with its long Falsterbo reef, has the same stem (skan) combined with -ör, which means "sandbanks".

In the reconstructed Germanic root *Skaðin-awjō (the edh represented in Latin by t or d), the first segment is sometimes considered more uncertain than the second segment. The American Heritage Dictionary[25] derives the second segment from Proto-Indo-European *akwa-, "water", in the sense of "watery land". Gothic saiws, "lake" is one of the Germanic groups which include English sea and German See.[26] However, according to the Indo-European Dictionary (IEED), a research project of the Department of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics at Leiden University, the second segment may not have an Indo-European etymology. The IEED states that Uralic evidence has long been recognized for this segment, namely the Finnic saivo ("'transparent place in the sea'") and the Norwegian-Lappish saivvƒ ("'(holy) lake, idol'").[26] Some scholars have found a parallel between the Uralic evidence and the area's old mythology and belief systems, where the soul of mankind is believed to dwell in water until birth and return there after death.[26] IEED lists a Germanic reconstruction that indicates a similar connection to metaphysics, namely *saiwa-lō ("soul"), appearing as saiwala in Gothic and sēle in Old Frisian.-wiki

In addition there are 4 other possible etympologies-nowhere is this "skanda" mentioned..

Rohan said...

pure speculation by some obscure journals

Unknown said...

Go to the link I have posted.

Rohan said...

yeah i went there man...no proof at all , no basis in fact

Ratnesh Mathur said...

Was in oslo at the Viking Museum, yesterday ...Was intrigued by a large "Yogi" & "Swastika" design on a Viking bucket .... there are plenty of visual links in old viking ( celtic, actually) symbols & mythology, and dharmic religions.
Do see this bucket yogi-design photo on this site below & plenty of other sites -

http://satyamyoga.com/SwAnandakapila%20yoga%20connections.htm

Keep the faith, says bonjovi - indoeuropean language speakers have links beyond linguistics...