etymologies & MJ

[Madhav Deshpande]

	To speak of puns and the Vedas, here are some.  In the city of 
Pune, a generation or so ago, there was a special slang used by Brahmins 
to communicate with each other.  If one wanted to criticize someone, that 
person would be called Veda"saastrasampanna, lit. "endowed with Vedas and 
"Saastras".  Why would this be a bad word?  The Marathi shortform for 
this word was ve-"saa-sampanna, which sounded close enough to 
ve"syaasampanna 'a person who visits a lots of prostitutes'.
	Another example is the word vyaktavaacaa.  Panini has a rule:  
vyaktavaacaam samuccaara.ne.  If the priestly fee received by a Brahmin 
was four Annas (Marathi: caar aa.ne), the priest would report to his 
colleagues that he had a vyaktavaacaa that day.
	The Brahmin boys studying Vedas and other texts at an institution 
in Pune would use the words 'puu.s.no hastaabhyaam' (lit. with the hands 
of Puu.san) to refer to - you guessed correctly - sexual acts with their 
hands.
	Enough sacrilege for today.

		Madhav Deshpande