ke;sava.m etc. verse

[Ashok Aklujkar]

 S Krishna <mahadevasiva at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>can somebody tell me more about each consonant standing for a
particular thing i.e. kam stands for water( this appears in the subhsita
where the words "kE zava"( corpse in the water) and
"kEzava"(viZNu)..i.e. something like "kezavam dr.StvA paNDava:
prasannA:(?)" or the kham standing for the sky, as in the derivation of
the word khECara for bird...what I'm interested in knowing is the
origin/derivation of the meanings....<

ke;sava.µ patita.µ d.r.s.tvaa dro.no har.sam upaagata.h /
rudanti kauravaa.h sarve haa ke;sava katha.m gata.h //
(;Saar:ngadhara-paddhati 527).

There are some ekaak.sara-ko;sas in Sanskrit which contain lists of
one-phoneme or one-syllable words. Claus Vogel's book on Sanskrit
lexicography should have their list.

That many of these ekaak.sara words have Tantrika or religious meanings is
generally known. Whether one can give truly historical etymologies of them
is something I do not know. One author, probably named ;Sa:nkaraananda,
tried to use the traditional information to decipher the Indus Valley
script.

Ashok Aklujkar
Professor, Dept. of Asian Studies, University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z2.