Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute

AN INDIC ETYMOLOGYAuthor(s): M. B. EMENEAUSource: Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. 48/49, Golden JubileeVolume 1917-1967 (1968), pp. 55-57Published by: Bhandarkar Oriental Research InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41694223 .

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AN INDIC ETYMOLOGY

BY

M. B. EMENEAU

Several reviewers have asked questions as to the principles on which Manfred Mayrhofer, in his Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen , relied in including or omitting Sanskrit words. The principles have not yet become entirely clear, but human frailty is probably the most inclusive reason that could be alleged.

Some items included in our léxica might well be omitted entirely, as being words with no real existence ( voces nihili ). Such a one is màghamà ' a female crab ', which Mayrhofer listed ( with no etymology ) as an epic word; in my review of the pertinent fascicule in Language 39. 102 f., I exa- mined the word philologically and showed that it, and segava- ' young of crab ', are creations of the commentators, who failed to understand several epic passages.

Other words are registered in Western dictionaries as only lexical, but since many of these are in fact taken from the léxica for use by late Sanskrit authors, they achieve a certain type of life. For them etymologies should be provided. The members of one very small subclass of lexical items ( with or without late literary use ) have good Indo-European etymologies and live on in later Indie ( Middle Indo-Aryan or Modern Indo-Aryan or both ). A number of these have meanings of the ' vulgar

' sort that make them unsuita- ble for use in Sanskrit literature. In a review of Mayrhofer in Language 34. 416 f. , I mentioned gotha- as one such word, and might have noted also pardate ( both these are treated by Mayrhofer ) ; hadati has literary, though fairly late, attestation ( Mayrhofer has not yet reached this word ). But the great majority of ' lexical ' items are without Indo-European etymologies. Perhaps in principle no such lexical item should be omitted, since in principle every one of them may achieve limited literary life. It is for this reason that I record an etymology for taravata-, the name of the plant Cassia auriculata .

The major St. Petersburg lexicon quoted taravata- only from an early 19th century Sanskrit lexicon, Bàpû Gañgadhara's Nighantuprakãka (Bombay, 1839). The minor St. Petersburg lexicon added a reference to the 13th century Kashmirian Narahari's medical dictionary Räjanighantu (dates given by Keith as 1235-50).

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56 M. B. EMENE ATT

Sit R. L. Turner, A Comparative Dictionary of the Indo- Aryan Lan- guages , entry 5705, under the head of this Sanskrit word, lists the Prakrit word taravatta-, for which Sheth's dictionary gives as meaning Hindi cakwar, i.e. Sanskrit cakramarda- Cassia tora. The Prakrit references are two léxica, the Pàialacchinamamàlà of Dhanapàla ( A. D. 972 ) and the some- what later De'sìnàmamàìà of Hemacandra ( 12th century ). Turner quotes from the modern vernaculars Hindi tarwar, tarwar ( Platts tarwar, tarwar ) Cassia auriculata and Maràthì tarvad, tarod Cassia auriculata or tora.

Since the Prakrit references are earlier than the Sanskrit, all being lexical only, and since neither is earlier than the early stages of the vernacu- lars, it is at least possible that we are dealing with a medieval vernacular word which was Sanskritized and Prakritized by lexicographers.

Burrow and Emeneau, A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary ( D ED ), entry 2433, has numerous forms, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, and Telugu, all apparently non-literary, with meanings C. tora and occidentalis. The forms almost all begin with tak/gar-. E.g. Ta. takarai, Ka. tagarce, Te. tagirisa. A Dravidian Etymological Dictionary : Supplement ( DEDS ; forth- coming in 1968 ) adds from Burrow's collectanea Kannada taragasi and taruvasa, which arise by metathesis of g and r. It is in all probability from some such Kannada form that the vernacular Indo-Aryan forms arose.

It would be pleasantly simplistic if we could posit that the numerous well-attested Kannada-Maràthî borrowings were the matrix within which this Dravidian word penetrated into Indo-Aryan. r However, this becomes less than certain when we attempt to find an explanation for the ending ( Skt. -vata-, H. -war, Mar. -vad. ) of the Indo-Aryan words. If we were to assume that this element is due to contamination with the ' banyan

' words, Maràthì vad, Sanskrit vata-would look in the direction of Maràthì as the source of the form ; the Hindi element -war is less close to its ' banyan *

word bar. But this seems botanically less than probable ; the Cassia species and the banyan are not closely similar. We should notice again Sanskrit cakramarda- Cassia tora ( in Susruta ), which also is based on the words in DED 2433, specifically on Kannada forms with initial c- (Burrow, BSOAS, 12.378, derived -marda- from the Dravidian ' tree ' words of DED 3856 ). For this word Turner records in Modern Indo-Aryan only Hindi forms with considerable minor variation, e.g. cakwàd, cakwar, cakõr. Sheth ( as was noted above ) uses cakwar as the Hindi equivalent for Prakrit taravatta-. It seems more reasonable to assume the element -war, ? -war in these Hindi forms as the contaminating factor that produced the second element of the taravata- words, even though this destroys the possibility of regarding Maràthì as their ' port of entry

' into Indo-Aryan.

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AN INDIO ETYMOLOGY 57

We have probably postulated the correct direction of the borrowing, i.e. Dravidian to Indo-Aryan, rather than the other way around. On this theory we arrive at an explanation of more details than if we should start with Indo-Aryan taravata- or tarwar and attempt to reach the Dravidian common element tak/gar- and the Kannada forms with c-. No trace of -vata- is to be found in any of the Dravidian forms, but our hypothesis goes a considerable distance towards explaining its origin in Indo-Aryan.

It should be noted that Turner lists also Prakrit tadavadà ' a small kind of myrobalan '. This, which denotes something that is rather far bota- nically from a Cassia species, hardly belongs here.

A90BI 8

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