Bahuvrihi Compounds

[Anand V Raman]

Stephen Dubin VMD PhD wrote:

>  compounds are exocentric. The word bahuvrihi means "(having) much rice"
>  and I was wondering how I could find out whether the word is itself

I am not sure about the connection between bahuvrihi and much-rice.  I
would have assumed bahuvrihi to indicate external root or external tree.
Bahu is almost certainly connected to the root bah+ meaning
external or outside and vrihi might have been derived from the root
vrih+ for growing (as in vriksha for tree)  Thus bahuvrihi could mean
external-root or external-tree, indicating that the root of the word
is outside it's literal content!  Hope this makes sense.

- & (anand v raman)