Kanchi Periyaval, the sage of Kanchi Matam for most of the
20th century, is my hero and inspiration. His talks were backed by scholarliness and were full of
rational arguments. One of the many areas he inspired me to delve into is the
field of languages.
I have always been interested in languages from the semantics
point of view. Now that I have time, I am deep into four languages – Tamizh (my
mother-tongue), Sanskrit, English and Italian. It is interesting that two of
these languages (Tamizh and Sanskrit) are classical languages. English and
Italian are not classic languages, but have deep roots in Latin, another
classic language.
Latin and Sanskrit have common roots and grouped under
Indo-European languages. Tamizh belongs
to a separate class of Dravidian languages, of which there are more than 80.
The relationship between Tamizh and Sanskrit seems to be due to the influence
of the latter on the former after the first 400 years or so of the first
millennium.
When I read, I am always looking for words which sound
similar in two or more of the four languages I am familiar with. The
relationship becomes so evident once we get the phonetics right. I started
keeping notes on as many words as possible with similarities and the list is
growing longer every day. Here are a few of them. These are, by no means,
complete. It is also possible that experts in languages will find errors in my
list. But, as a novice, I could not help notice the similarities.
First, Tamizh provided several words to the Latin language
during the trade relationship between the Roman Empire (approximately 200 BCE
to 200 CE) and various kingdoms in India, particularly in the south of India. Subsequently
these words entered almost all the European languages. These words are: inji in Tamizh becomes ginger; sarkara becomes zucchero in Italian and
Sugar in English; arisi becomes riso
in Italian and rice in English and pippala
becomes pepper.
You might have known an island called Sucotra (Suqutra)
belonging to Yemen, located at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. There is a
suggestion that this name is a modification of Tamizh word (sugathara theevu, meaning a pleasant island ). (Basham AL
The wonder that was India. Rupa and Co Calcutta 1967). The Tamizh word neelam for the color is part of the
English (chemical) name for the aniline dye.
Mango (mangai )
and betel leaf (vetthilai) are imports from Tamizh. More modern Tamizh imports
include: catamaran (Tamizh: kattai
maram) and mulligatawny (Tamizh: milagu thanni) soup.
There are many other connections between Tamizh and English,
but mediated through the relationship between Sanskrit and Latin and the
infiltration of Sanskrit into everyday spoken Tamizh. A perfect example seems
to be the word, Widow. In Sanskrit it
will be vidhava and in Tamizh vidavai. The root word is dhava which in Sanskrit means husband and
one without a husband is vi-dhava. In
Italian, the word is vedova.
Names for the parts of the body in English and Sanskrit are
easily identifiable as coming from a common source. Examples are endless. Here
are some. Nose is naasika. Finger in Sanskrit is anguli
and in Latin ungula as in ungulate. Kapaala for skull in Sanskrit becomes
cephalic in Latin and in English. Hrdaya
of Sanskrit becomes heart. Pada in
Sanskrit is the foot and in Latin there are several words related to foot
with the prefix ped such as pedal and
pedestrian. Anghri in Sanskrit also
means the foot; but seems to have been modified to ankle in English. Brow of
English is bru in Sanskrit and puruvam in Tamizh. The knee is janu in Sanskrit and genu in Latin, ginocchio in Italian. All these words sound similar.
Tooth is dantha in
Sanskrit and dentalis in Latin. There
is some suggestion that the word amba
that denotes Divine Mother is related to the word womb and the word astthi for bone is related to the word osteo in New Latin. Tendon is called
sinew in Latin and snayu in Sanskrit.
Pus in Sanskrit is puya
and the Latin adjective is pyo. Thirst
in Sanskrit is tharshah. Sweat is swedah. Naked is nagna in Sanskrit. Vaanthi or vamatha
is to vomit. Mishram of Sanskrit is
nothing but mixture. Soopah in
Sanskrit stands for something to sip, which, as you can guess is soup. Chatu in Sanskrit means to argue and is
similar to the word chat. Gravaa is
the same as gravel.
Makshika of
Sanskrit stands for mosquito. Mooshika
is for mouse. Alooka means an owl.
And most all numbers use words with similar sounds,
particularly in Sanskrit and Italian. The most important is, of course, dasha in Sanskrit and dieci in Italian which is related to deci, as in decimal.
The word genetics has common roots with the Sanskrit word
for birth which is jananam. Rajyam is Sanskrit for a territory and
it will be regione in Italian, and a queen in Italian is Regina.
The English word ignite is related to the word agni (fire) in Sanskrit. Gnana in Sanskrit means knowledge and
even the word knowledge sounds remotely similar to gnana. How about the corresponding root in Latin of Gnosis (to know) from which originate
words like diagnosis and prognosis? Ignorance in Sanskrit is agnana.
Cenare in Italian
means to eat. In Sanskrit the word is ashanam.
In Tamizh when we refer to the cow’s habit of ruminating as ashai podarathu. Videre in Italian is to see (ci
vediamo means “will see you later”) The root is related to the modern word video and to the ancient Sanskrit word veda (vid means to know). In Tamizh it is related to the word viddai.
I was also surprised to find
that the word nabha in Sanskrit means
cloud and is similar to the Italian word nebbia
and the word piove of Italian which
means rain is similar to the Sanskrit word payah.
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