A Story of Blood: Remarks on Yaghnobi waxn and Avestan vohu-, vohunı̄̆-/vohuna-*

The present article analyses the etymological history of Yaghnobi waxn “blood” in the framework of the Sogdian background, and offers a new investigation of the pertinent Avestan Sprachgut with close reference to the stem vohu-, n., “blood”, its derivatives (vohunı̄̆-/vohuna-) and compositional forms, considering their textual occurrences and literary implications. This investigation revises old and new etymological hypotheses (e.g., Bartholomae, Henning, Gershevitch, Schwartz, etc.) about the origin of the word for “blood” in Iranian, finally suggesting a derivation (with some further alternatives) from *su̯asu̯an-/*su̯asun-, explained as an -n-derivative (or even -n-/-r-) from *su-asu-, “good life”. In particular, the author discusses the possible interferences with similar Avestan stems meaning “good” (vohu-) on the steps of Schwartz in the framework of a very complex semantic area as the one covering the image of “blood” and “bleeding” in Indo-Iranian after the progressive collapse in the linguistic Iranian area of an ealier inherited word as *ahr(a)- “blood”.