Quoting Clinton

[S Krishna]

Anshuman Pandey writes:
>
>
>On Sun, 15 Jun 1997, S Krishna wrote:
>
>> Sanskrit word "Ramaneeya" misspelt and Ireland is actually a 
corruption 
>> of "Iyer"land,Morocco is a contraction of Hindi "Maaro 
Usko".....enough 
>> PJs for a whole year!



>
 Correct me if I am wrong,
>but isn't "iyer" indeed a corruption of the word "arya"? And isn't the
>root in the name Ireland a cognate of "arya", not to mention the root 
in
>Iran as well. So, in a round-about way, Ireland really would be a 
>corruption of "Iyer"land, wouldn't it?
>
>Regards,
>Anshuman Pandey


Well, I am not very sure! According to "A history of Ireland" by
Robert Dunlop, Oxford University Press,we learn that the earliest 
reference to Ireland was in the 4th century, from a Roman text,
which in turn refers to a Greek text, which in turn was based
on a Phoenician text. This refers to the island as Heiru, from which
the word "Eire"(Irish for Ireland) was derived. Heiru translates
as "sacred island"( in phoenician).
QUESTION 1. Was Phoenician related to Sanskrit?

The word "Arya" translates as "belonging to the the faithful or
loyal race, reverend, honorable, also ones senior, used in reve
rential address"( according to A Sanskrit English Dcitionary by
Carl Capeller, Ginn and Company, Boston). We again come to the same 
question as we did yesterday( Yesterdays question was "Can Sarovar(lake) 
translate as "Sea"?{ which I may remark has not been answered 
satisfactorily})
QUESTION 2. Can "Noble/Reverend"(Arya) translate into Heiru ( sacred
land)?

 The two terms are related no doubt, but this by itself is no con
clusive proof of anything. We are making two assumptions about the
meanings and derivations of the words "Eire" and "Arya", which have
no STRONG connection.


As far as this Iyer from Arya business is concerned, has this theory 
been proved? I heard that the word Iyer is related to"Aiya"(Lord or
Superior), but does the word Aiya derive from Arya? I would wait for 
some expert in Tamil lexicology to attest to this. While this may seem
true at first sight, there have been cases where certain Tamil words
were supposedly derived from Sanskrit words, but a more detailed
investigation proves that the roots were pure Tamil words i.e. as
an example, it was supposed that the Tamil words "Ilakam" and "Ilakanam" 
are derived from Skt Lakshyam and LakshaNam respectively.
But some other Tamil scholar disproved this and showed that the roots
were pure Tamil words and had nothing to do with Sanskrit.

 Further, if you assume the root "Arya" for Iyer, I would like to know
as to what would be the root for the word "Iyengar"? The word "Iyer"
to refer to a Smartha Brahmin and "Iyengar" to refer to a Srivaishnava
Brahmin seem to be fairly recent and donont seem to have anything to do 
with the Tamil Brahmins being relate to the Aryans. If one were to
consult " The private diaries of Ananda Ranga PiLLai:Dubash to
Joseph Francois Dupleix"( running into 6 or 7 volumes), one would find 
that Ananda Ranga Pillai refers to most Smarthas as Srinivasa Sastri,
Krishna Sastri etc and uses the word "Ayyan" sparingly. In the same way, 
he refers to all Srivaishnavas as "Charyan" and not "Iyengar".
Ananda Ranga Pillai was born in 1709 and passed away in 1761.
Most books on 15th, 16th or 17th century Tamil NAdu donot use words
 like "Iyer" at all. I wouldn't be surprised if these words were 
invented later( like the present day Tamil nomenclature of
Place Name followed by Fathers name followed by Given name started only 
in the 18th century). 
 QUESTION 3. I would like to know as to how it has been
shown beyond doubt that "Iyer" is derived from "Arya" and if so,
how would derive the word "Iyengar" using analogous logic?

In my personal opinion, this whole theory is as credible as the one
presented yesterday by you-know-who (about Bindusarovara etc), which
if I be permitted to say, has more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese.


Krishna

P.S: It would be interesting to see if the word "worm" as in
"You opened up a can of worms" has anything to do with the Indian
family name "Varma/Verma"? Verma=Werma=Worma=Worms, howzzat?;-),;-)



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