Hydronomy of Tamil rivers (Re: Again, SANSKRIT broadcasts)

[Periannan Chandrasekaran]

--- Lakshmi Srinivas <lsrinivas at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
..
>
> > Laxmi your considerations may be deemed equally
> > atmospheric.
>
> Mr Chandrasekaran,
>
> If you are an expert on Udayana and his works, plse
> contribute to the thread on Udayana. In any case I
> don't see the propriety of commenting in this manner
> on an unrelated  conversation between Kellner and
> Chandran.

Laxmi,
I was only trying to borrow the word "atmospheric" to apply to your assertions
vis-a-vis Tamil hydronymy and my reproducing the relevant portion from the
udayana thread was only to give "credit" to Kellner for that usage and it ended
up misconstrued as a commentary on the subject matter of that thread. A case of
philology overdone. In any case apologies to the forum for any unintended
consequences.

>
> Now for the merits of your arguments:
>
> > What exactly is the basis for suspecting that these
> > hydronyms are
> > of alien origin?
>
> Because there aren't any etymologies in the scholarly
> literature. Sure you had offered one or two but imho
> none of them is convincing. At any rate not one of
> them addresses *both* stem and affixes.
>
> If I were to consider your proposed etymology for
> noyyal, it still doesn't address the issue of the
> suffix *al. This is typically an infinitive ending and
> a  verbal noun forming suffix so I wonder what it's
> doing in a river name.
>

Not so. -al is very commonly employed in simple noun formation also; it is a
very easy to way to coin new words in Tamil by extending existing ones.

e.g.
DEDR 1418.
Ta. kA = forest; kAn2 = jungle; kAn2am = woodland, forest;
kAn2al = grove or forest on seashore.

-al has been added to kAn2 (which obvioulsy is not a verb) resulting in kAn2al
which is neither an infinitive nor a verbal noun.

DEDR# 4666:
(a) Ta./Ma./Ko. maN = earth, soil, dirt...
(b) Ta./Ma./Ka. maNal = sand, gravel

Here again -al is employed to form a noun by extending an already existing
non-verb.

Another example is from the Madars Univ Tamil Lexicon:
Ta. nolai n. = (see nolaiyal)
Ta. nolaiyal n. = A kind of unleavened cake.

Again, nolai a noun is extend with -al to form yet another noun.

We can go on.

Hence to form a hydronym "noyyal" by extending "noy", a qualitative noun, with
-al is perfectly in order.


> > Given the classical nature of Tamil meanig that a
> > whole lot of linguistic
> > elements would have fallen out of favor over the
> > millenia,
>
> So all I understand from your "classical nature of
> Tamil" is that there is a Tamil etymology but it is
> hidden from you. Everyone should accept that in all
> humility, is that it?
>

A bit of humility, yes.
Given the classical nature of Tamil you would find many
linguistic features fallen into disuse and, phonetic features
found in hydronyms, as old as they are, can indeed be quite alien even to a
well informed modern researcher.
So we must first seek to explain the river names within the realm of
Dravidian phonetics, to paraphrase Witzel.

And anybody embarking on such a mission must make sure in their due diligence
that they do not miss such obvious and common linguistic features of Dravidian
as usage of -al.


Rest in a separate post.

With thanks and warm regards,
P.Chandrasekaran.



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