Parallel words

[Guest guest]

S. Vaiyapuri Pillai in his book, 'tamizc cuTarmaNikaL' lists

some 125 words in TirukkuRaL as coming from Sanskrit. While

some are obviously Dravidian (eg., nIr), the list needs careful

study.

 

In the list, 3 interesting words are 1) mayir 'hair' 2) takar

'ram, male goat, sheep, aries etc.' and 3) amar 'battle'.

I could think of amar < skt. samara 'war' (Cf. avai < sabhA)

what are the corr. words for mayir and takar? Tamil orthography

and grammar will make 'mayir' from 'mayira, macira, masira, mazira,

mazra, masra etc.,' and takar from 'takar/takara, tahara, tagara,

taghara, dahara, dagara, daghara etc.'

 

Other words ending in -r in tamil and -ra in Skt. are:

DED 1920 lists catur/catir and skt. catura. In tamil,

catur 'skill, dexterous, clever, cunning' etc.,

catirkkaLLi 'cunning woman', catirkkAri 'devadAsi dancer' etc.,

 

CT has vayiram 'gemstone, diamond' some 17 times. Obviously,

vayiram and skt. vajra are related. It is of interest to note

that vayir comes from hard wood (tirumuruku lines: 119-120),

and it radiates out lustre (CT commentators say this

"vayaGku katir vayir" is perhaps due to the polish gotten

by turning the adamantine wood in a lathe). The musical instrument

vayir and vayiram (Cf. skt. vajra) invite comparison.

 

Does MTL give possibly the Sanskrit words related with mayir

and takar?

 

Regards,

N. Ganesan

 

PS: Can the listers check M. B. Emeneau, Dravidian borrowings

from Indo-Aryan, 1962 for skt-drav. word pairs like samara & amar

etc.? Please note that in the list of tamil words with -r &

parallel -ra skt. words sought, the direction of borrowal need not

be well determined.