Coloxais

According to Yasht, the mythological part of theAvesta, the sacred text of Zoroastrianism, a hero named Thraetaona (the Fereydoun of the Shâh Nâmâ of Ferdowsi) divided his kingdom between his three sons, Iradj, Salm and Tour. Iradj received the Persian, Salm the western part of his kingdom and Tour the eastern part. the Yasht XVII (prayer to the goddess Ashi, 55-56) speaks of “Fast horse towers”. According to writers of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Touran stretched across the steppes of northern Persia and western Turkestan (domain of the Sogdians).

This allows them to be identified with Scythians. King Fraransyan of Turan assaulted the Persians but was defeated. This struggle is recounted in the Yasht XIX. If Thraetaona is purely mythical, there is no reason to doubt the confrontation between the Persians and the Turanian nomads. After the arrival of the tribes Turkish in Turkestan, the Turanians (and therefore the Scythians) were mistakenly considered Turks.

The name of Tour comes from an Indo-Iranian term, you ra, which means "mighty". Based on the work of François Cornillot, specialist in Rig-Veda andAvesta, we find it in the name of Targitaos, the ancestor of the Scythians according to a legend told by Herodotus, with a transformation of the u and one To peculiar to the North Scythians: this name was previously pronounced *Tar-γwitaw, title itself from *Tur-hwatawah "Mighty Sovereign". Herodotus (IV, 5-6) reports that Targitaos had three sons, Lipoxaïs, Arpoxaïs and Coloxaïs.

During their reign, three objects of gold fell from the sky, a plow and a yoke, an ax-sagaris and a cut. The first two brothers wanted to take these objects, but they caught fire. They returned to Coloxais, who then had the title of king. These three objects represent the three functions recognized by Georges Dumézil among all Indo-European peoples: the clerical function (the bowl), the warrior function (the ax) and the production function (the plow and the yoke). Having come into possession of these three objects, Coloxaïs acquired a trifunctional character, like all Indo-European kings.

Moreover, linguists unanimously consider that the suffix -xaïs reproduce the name Iranian of the king, who was xshaya- in avestic.