Etymology of 'tanU'

[Paul Kekai Manansala]

> From:          Palaniappa at aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 97-07-11 20:28:13 EDT, mahadevasiva at hotmail.com (S
> Krishna) writes:

> But in the present case, my theory is based on semantic similarity in a
> number of related words which militates against chance. For instance,
> 
> Tamil/Dravidian                                 Sanskrit/Indo-Aryan
> ------------------------------------------
>             -----------------------------------------
> pA - root  meaning 'to extend' etc.      tan- root meaning 'to extend'
> pA/pan2uval - warp                            tantu/tantra - warp
> pA/pan2uval - text                             tantra - text
> pAvai - figurine, female, goddess        tanu - body, person, used in Tantric
> worship
> 

I agree that the above method of comparison is the best
way to rule out  chance resemblance.  If you have
enough semantic groups like this with basic vocabulary
it would also tend to rule out mass borrowing.  The
most important comparisons are those of grammatical
particles like prefixes and suffixes, which are very
rarely borrowed.

Regards,
Paul Kekai Manansala