Req: "dirty" words in Sanskrit

[Dominik Wujastyk]

Dear Bob,

Alankara writers say one shouldn't use the "y" word in polite poems, just
as we would talk about not using the "f" word.  The root in question is,
of course, yabh, which has very ancient cognates in inscriptional Greek (I
am grateful to conversations with Vit Bubenik in the late 1970s for this
information).  I'm afraid I can't give you text references. 

Best wishes,
Dominik


--
Dominik Wujastyk               Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine
email: d.wujastyk at ucl.ac.uk          183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, England
<URL: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/>                    FAX: 44 171 611 8545