Jamshid

[Toke Lindegaard Knudsen]

On 14 Jun 99, at 13:41, Lars Martin Fosse wrote:

> > I asked my wife about "Hari-dyut-astra" and "Zarathustra."  She
> > also failed to see the connection and made similar comments
> > about Frawley's etymology as you did.  Can the word "astra" even
> > be taken to mean "star" in Sanskrit?  "Astra" meaning "star"
> > seems Greek to me.  My wife said she had never seen any
> > connection where the word "astra" meant "star" in Sanskrit.  In
> > Sanskrit "astra" can be translated as "weapon."
> Astra is quite correctly "weapon" in skt. Star could be several things, one of
> which is star-. Astra is based on the verbal root as- which means to throw, -tra
> being a suffix.

-tra means "to release" as in the word "mantra" being something
that "sets free the mind (mana)."  Also this is found in the word
ksatriya.  Does the word "astra" (weapon) coming from "throw,
release" refer to the releasing of a mantra?


> Is your wife a sanskritist?

Not by profession but she has for the last 10 years studied different
Sanskrit literatures and from this gained quite some knowledge of
Sanskrit as a language.

Sincerely,
Toke Lindegaard Knudsen