Req: "dirty" words in Sanskrit

Bijoy Misra bmisra at husc.harvard.edu
Sun Nov 3 03:35:09 UTC 1996


The question would be what's dirty.  The sex related materials,
either the description of it or the elaboration of human sexuality
do not go as "dirty" in  a literary sense.  Some of them might
turn out to be obscene depending upon the social attitude.
This is again different than the metaphorical use of phrases
with their possible meanings to the purviewer.

The cursing or expression of anger and frustration in words 
results in "dirt".  These seem to be less in number in common 
knowledge.  At least there is no obvious word usage as used 
in modern day slangs.  It's possible that the slangs existed, 
but were not much written down as is the case with the present 
day use of the languages. One keeps the "dirt" out when writing!!

Is there merit to this hypothesis?

- Bijoy Misra.







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