River Krishna

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

In a message dated 3/18/99 11:28:14 AM Central Standard Time,
witzel at FAS.HARVARD.EDU writes:

> But what would be the Dravidian etymon here? Certainly not DEDR  4449 pEN
>  'louse'!
>  Hardly  DEDR  4436 pEN 'protection', DEDR 4551 poru 'to unite'... And no
>  palm trees.
>  Any ideas among the Drav. linguists?
>
>
>  >In medieval times, it looks "karum peNNai/peNNaar" was rendered as
>  >KrishnaveNi,
>
>  Note again peNNAi ~ veNi  (perhaps additionally influenced by Skt. veNI)
>
>  >and later shortened to Krishna.
>

DEDR 4449 is pEn2 with the alveolar n2. So it does not relate to the river
names with retroflex N.

Traditionally peN (female) is explained as being derived from peL- to desire,
to love, etc. (see DEDR 4436). DEDR entry does not give all the meanings. See
Cologne's On-line Tamil Lexicon for "peTpu".

However, in my opinion DEDR 4194 piL- is the basis for river names and female
names. The items in DEDR 4194 clearly show what the connection is.

As for river Krishna, Vedam Venkataraya Sastry says, "It will be a very
interesting and a surprising pointer to the southern influence that the
original name of the river Krishna  was Pennar and not Krishna. Early records
call it Kanna-Penna, Kanna-Benna, the black Pennar, as against the other two
southern Pennars. Krishna-Venna got Sanskritized as Krishna-Veni  and we have
now dropped the Veni and retained Krishna." ('The Influence of Tamil on
Kannada and Telugu' in the Proceedings of the Vth International Tamil
Conference-Seminar, 1981, p. 8-63)

Regards
S. Palaniappan