Einiges zu den Skythen, ihrer Sprache, ihrem Nachleben

Einiges zu den Skythen, ihrer Sprache, ihrem Nachleben (Notes on the Scythians, their language and their legacy) follows the tradition of the nineteenth century Austrian founder of Old Iranian studies on the Scythians, Wilhelm Tomaschek (1841–1901), whose vast work, Kritik der ältesten Nachrichten über den skythischen Norden (Account of the Oldest Information about Northern Scythia), was published by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1888 and 1889. On one hand Mayrhofer's book deals with the Scythian topos of the Middle Ages (up to Grillparzer), but argues, on the other, for the separation of old Scythian in the narrower sense (cf. Herodotus) from later languages like Sarmatian and Alanian. The volume offers a critical examination of secondary sources on Scythian from nearly two centuries, resulting in a small "etymologicon of the Scythian language". Scythian is one of the four Old Iranian languages that are currently certain. The other three include the two corpus-languages Avestan and Old Persian, and "Medan", reconstructed through its influence on Old Persian.