Talk:Nart saga

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"Modern peoples in the area are mainly Muslim, meaning that the Nart sagas are not remembered as well as they used to be." What's that supposed to mean? I presume it's saying that the native people have been replaced with muslims (or have turned to Islam), but it almost sounds like the author's implying that Muslims have bad memories. -- Darac Marjal 11:05, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I wrote this article, and I think you're reading too much into what I wrote. What I meant was simply that most native peoples of the area are now Muslim, so they're not going to believe in Sosruko and Satanaya, and those old myths will eventually be forgotten. This is already the case among the Ubykh people, few of whom can remember more than fragments of their Nart stories. It wouldn't have mattered if they had taken up Christianity, Islam, or Shinto. Why would I imply that Muslims have bad memories? That would be a stupid and biased fiction that doesn't deserve to be on Wikipedia. thefamouseccles 01:53, 02 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am from North Ossetia-Alania. Every family has at least one book about the Narts at home. Children also study them in schools as part of literature classes. They won't be forgotten. Timur.

I'm glad to hear that. Unfortunately, among the Ubykh people and most other Northwest Caucasian people the Nart sagas are not known very well at all any more; I'm glad that they survive at least in the Ossetic regions. Thefamouseccles 12:34, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Narts have no relations or conection to ossetian people, it is caucasian nation mythology, the ossetians embraced it after years of living in the caucasus and their origin is not caucasian so their language, i am circassian and i know that every name in nart sagas has a meaning in circassian language, and we have songs about nart heroes. ossetians are indo-europinas, the ancient narts were not indo-europians, they were pure caucasian tribes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andynapso (talk • contribs) 12:36, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Doesn't make much sense

"(Implicit in this argument is the assumption that this aspect of the Nart sagas was derived from the Ossetians, as the other peoples among whom the sagas are shared are non-Indo-European.)"

Why is that? The most widely-accepted Proto Indo-European homeland is in the Ukranian and Southern Russian Steppes, just a few miles away from the ancient Adyghe lands, for example. These similarities could derive from early contacts and cultural diffusion, and clearly have nothing to do with a shared linguistic history. Therefore, if this sentence is a mere assumption and not a direct quote from Dumézil, it shouldn't be there, as it seems a rather faulty assumption.KelilanK 00:20, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

A simple check shows that it is not a mere assumption, and that that was precisely what Dumézil's position was. I've added some details with a source (which is not very enthusiastic about the IE origin in any case). --91.148.159.4 03:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

And BTW, that PIE homeland reasoning was very far-fetched in any case.--91.148.159.4 03:33, 18 June 2007 (UTC)