Walter Kish
I am sure that many among you have fond memories of the Scythian gold exhibit that toured North America over a year or so ago. For me in particular, it rekindled an interest in Ukraine’s long and colourful history, one that stretches back many millennia. Unfortunately we know very little about the Scythians, mostly because they never developed a written language. Most of what we do know comes from extrapolations from the artifacts they left behind, or from second hand testimony of other peoples they came in contact with that had developed the art of writing.
The written history of Ukrainians and their predecessors is likewise limited to little more than the past thousand years, dating to the development of the Cyrillic alphabet by Cyril and Methodius some time in the late 9th century AD. The proto-Slavic language in use at that time in the area north of the Black Sea was the precursor of today’s Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish tongues.
But that language has even earlier antecedents, one that linguists categorize as the "Proto-Indo-European" language from which most European languages of today can trace their roots. That language is better known as Sanskrit. Its origins are still under debate though most experts agree that it originated some four to five thousand years ago with Aryan tribes in eastern Anatolia (modern day Turkey) or the Indus valley, which today forms part of eastern Pakistan and northwestern India.
Tracing the roots of a language can be a difficult exercise, yet the kinship of Ukrainian to Sanskrit is not hard to demonstrate. It is particular evident amongst those words that would have been the first ones developed by our primitive ancestors to deal with day to day life, namely numbers, family members, food, tools, and surrounding environment. The Sanskrit words for two, three, four, ten and one hundred for example, were "dvi", "tri", "chatur", "dasha" and "satam". Their close similarities to the corresponding Ukrainian words ("dva", "try", "chotyry", "deshiat" and "sto") are clearly obvious.
Going further, the Sanskrit words for mother, brother, son and sister were "matar", "bhrata", "sunus" and "svasar". Again, their kinship to the corresponding Ukrainian words ("maty", "braht", "syn" and "sestra") is not difficult to see.
The following list of common Sanskrit words followed by their Ukrainian equivalent offers further testimony to the relationship between Sanskrit and modern day Ukrainian:
Sunu (Ukr. "sontse")
Nabha (Ukr. "nebo")
Din (Ukr. "den")
Dvaar (Ukr. "dveri")
Nas (Ukr. "nis")
Daru (Ukr. "derevo")
Lubh (Ukr. "liubyty")
Mri (Ukr. "vmiraty")
Budh (Ukr. "budyty")
Vahan (Ukr. "vahon")
Ubha (Ukr. "oboye")
Shala (Ukr. "zalya")
Dirgha (Ukr. "dovha")
Navas (Ukr. "nove")
Vida (Ukr. "vidomo")
Zhivana (Ukr. "zhyve")
Tua (Ukr. "tvoye")
It is both fascinating, and in a way reassuring, that even after some four or five millennia we are still using essentially the same words as our ancient ancestors.
They are distant echoes from our cultural and linguistic history.