nAraNa_n, the tamil word for nArAyaNa (was: Vishnu)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Bhadriah Mallampalli wrote:

>chAndogyA says ana is the conceptual eater, and the food of ana is its
>derivative annam. I also saw aNNam for food, does this lead to aNa for
> >prANA?

????? Where is aNNam with the retroflex given as a word for food?
And where in the chAndogya text is "ana" the eater?

The base Ana, relating to nose/breathing, gives rise to apa-Ana,
vy-Ana, ud-Ana and sam-Ana. The retroflexion in pra-ANa is because
of the r in the prefix pra. Generally, I would like vAyu, but not
anna, to enter my respiratory tract. The former sustains life, but
the latter sometimes calls for the Heimlich manoeuvre.

------------------

N. Ganesan wrote:

>nAL-/naL- with the corresponding long -A- and -a- has two meanings:
>Well attested in Tamil as a) black and b) center.

The case for (b) seems good, but (a) looks like your speculation.
Every case you cite is only "probably" black. Too iffy.

...
>is krishNaa and nala (husband of damayanti), probably have
>to do with 'black, dark'. -l-/-r- alterations are common

nala, the nishAda king, may have got his name from the occupation
of his tribe, that of weaving reeds into articles. In fact, if you
look up Monier-Williams, nala is the name of a tribe that made grass
bracelets. So, given that Dravidian naL and Sanskrit nala both mean
"reed", this is at least as good a notion as nala meaning black.

...
>in any Indian langauge. Naalika 'crow, water buffalo' is

naalika = crow, is new to me. Reference? The word also means the
following - lotus flower, reed, tube, myrrh, a wind instrument. Now
where on earth is the black colour in these? But note tube and reed,
in relation to the Dravidian word.

>related to black. I think 'naraka' contains this nal- meaning
>dark/black also, and naaraayaNii for zyAmaLaa (Paarvati).

nArAyaNI is simply the sister of nArAyaNa, so this is not a separate
case that supports your contention.

The fundamental issue is that different names given to a thing can
refer to different attributes of that thing. nArAyaNa may be kRshNa,
but that does not automatically indicate that nArAyaNa also refers
to the black colour. Otherwise, one could start looking for such
meanings in words like padmanAbha and purushottama and AdityavarNa.
For that matter, why not the 1000 names from vizva and vashaTkAra
to akshobhya and sarvapraharaNAyudha, and also the word yogezvara
in the Gita?

...
>Kannada "aNa" has cognates in tamil such as aNNan, aNNal, aNNam
>(For the meanings, consult Madras university lexicon).
>Does Emeneau give -aNa in sAyaNa as coming from Sanskrit?

Emeneau and Gowda derive it from Dravidian -aNa < -aNNa. I have a
little problem with that, because as far as I know, Kannada and
Marathi do have the word aNNa, but aNa seems less well attested.
Perhaps some Kannada expert can take this up.

As for sAy in sAyaNa, the proposed root is the vernacular sA(y)i
standing for the Sanskrit word svAmI, as seen in words like gosAin
for gosvAmin. Of course, today there is a Sai Baba too, an example
of how svAmi becomes sAi.

Vidyasankar

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web.  FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com