Rig Veda, ta'ntra, nUl, and sUtra

[Palaniappa at aol.com]

If I am not mistaken, in the looms I have seen in Tamilnadu, the movement  of
the shuttle is sideways with respect to the weaver, and not towards and away
from the weaver. The width of the cloth is fixed by the size of the loom and
it is the length of the cloth which is variable. In fact, it is because of
this nature of looms, all the words for cloth in Tamil/Dravidian are derived
from words meaning 'to cut'. Cf. words 'tuNi', 'tuNTu', 'kURai', 'aRuvai',
etc. Is the Indo-European loom conceptually different?

Regards.

S. Palaniappan