Sememe: ayana; sun and property

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Dear Dr Kalyanaraman, 

I am not an etymologist, and my interests in Sanskrit are more to do with 
post-Vedic literature.  But I find your messages about etymology
extremely puzzling.  It may be my ignorance, but as far as I can see,
you are connecting together words from completely different languages,
with completely different meanings, without reference to the actual 
history of usage.  I cannot see the organizing principal of your thinking
about words.

Your recent message about "ayana" is a case in point.  The Arabic and
Dravidian words that you cite have no known historical phonological
links with "ayana" and "i" whatsoever.  Why do you ignore historical
phonology? It is the only key to the history of language change.  

You also seem to accept some kind of interpretation of the Indus seals,
which is not a matter of general agreement.  You also mentioned the
"Indus/Saraswati civilization", which is, as far as I know, merely 
code for a right-wing Hindu fundamentalist revision of early South
Asian history, and has no referent to any proven or accepted 
civilization.

In other words, I find your postings linguistically perplexing, to say 
the least, and having unpleasant overtones of Hindu fundamentalism.

I doubt if this is the impression you wish to convey about your work.
If you want to make headway with your enquiries to this group, 
I believe you should make use of the existing scholarly tools
in the area, such as those created by Burrow, Emmeneau, Turner, and
Mayrhofer.  I recall that you had some critique of the Burrow+Emmeneau
dictionary, but if you disagree wholesale with the substantial body of 
historical phonological scholarship that has been developed over the
last couple of centuries, you have to give your reasons at every
step, for every phonological change you mention.  It isn't good enough
to throw every word that reminds you of anything similar together in a heap
and call it an argument.  And your current posting seems to me --
an ignorant outsider -- to be just like that.

Another valid line, if you wished to eschew western scholarship for some
reason, would be to adhere to Paninian grammatical
derivations for an understanding of at least the Sanskrit words.

Dominik