4. Mrz 2025
Melanie Malzahn
Universität Wien, Institut für Sprachwissenschaft &
Cluster of Excellence "EurAsian Transformations"
The Tocharian Pig and Why It Brings Good Luck to Tocharian Studies
Animal husbandry played an important role in PIE society and is often seen as a key factor in the spread of the IE daughter languages. Among the animals and their (secondary) products, horses, cattle, and sheep are usually given prominence in both historical linguistics and archaeology. Pigs occupy different ecological niches than horses and cattle, in particular they are not steppe animals and do not produce secondary products. In contrast, the role of pigs as part of the Neolithic PIE domestication package is understudied, as is the pig-related vocabulary from a philological and etymological perspective.
This talk will review the etymology of pig-related terms in Tocharian and in Indo-Iranian in light of recent archaeological literature on pigs, piglets and boars in the Neolithic and Bronze Age Pontic Steppes to determine whether the PIE society only had knowledge of the wild boar, or whether there is indeed evidence to suggest that the PIE had already domesticated pigs along with cattle and sheep. Special attention will be given to the evidence for pigs in Tocharian culture and possible implications for the hotly debated question of Tocharian migration into the Tarim Basin.