How *parna (or Greek parnoi) could be paNi?

July 9, 2001

INDOLOGY, Narayan R Joshi <giravani@J...> wrote:

>Are there any linguistic criteria to connect the name *parna to

>paNi?

Ancient Dravidians had few levels of meaning while naming things

important to their cultural universe: One example is the name

for planet. The Sanskrit "graha" (related with english 'grab')

is a translation of a tamil word, "kOL/kOLam" from the verb

meaning "to grab, to afflict" etc., The skt. graha has no cognate

in German with the meaning, planet. In addition "kOLam" means sphere

also. (see Parpola, Deciphering the Indus script for a discussion

on the word, graha). Similarly tamil "mIn" means fish as well as star,

scholars from H. Heras onwards point to Indus seals having fish

sign should be read as "star". Sangam texts reveal ancient Tamil

religion based on magic spells, spirit possession, animal sacrifices,

sacred dance, ... and an important aspect is the blood sacrifces

to drums musical instruments. The native priests were called after

"cooling/quenching" spirits and exorcism. Pl. refer to my post:

The tamil verb, "paN-" to do, to trade, etc., gives name to the

rich merchants, vaNij (drav. vaNiya) and paNam 'money'.

Another use id pANi 'hand', while hasta (Hindi hAth) is IE,

paNi is dravidian. (Cf. tamil kai/telugu cey 'hand' from 'to do').

Greek parnoi, Iranian *parna may have to do with the handling of

the retroflexion in the word, paNi/paNa. Since immigrating IE

lacked retroflexion, it changes drav. paNa/paNi into parna.

Regards,

N. Ganesan

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