abhi/abhIh - Interesting Word/s in Sanskrit - an Analysis [Long]

[Vidhyanath Rao]

Lars Martin Fosse <l.m.fosse at internet.no> wrote:
> [...] abhi is related to the
> Greek preverb/preposition amphi < *(a)mbhi, compare Latin amb(i)Gallic ambi,
> Old High German Umbi and the Albanian preposition mbi. The Sanskrit abhi
> comes from a form with another accent pattern than the one in Greek and
> Latin, .mbh'i, which in the regular manner of Sanskrit sound change becomes
> abhi. (The .m is a vowel in Indo-European). The original concept related to
> the word is "on both sides".

Beekes, in his book on IE, reconstructs two different words, Hebhi
and mbhi. Is this an idiosyncrasy or does it find some agreement among
ohters? [I don't have Beekes' book at hand, so I am not sure what
words he gives for Hebhi. I guess he does not like the same word to
come out to mean `towards, against' as well as `on both sides'.]
Nath Rao (nathrao+ at osu.edu)		614-366-9341