Dravidian golla and Hindi gvAla

[Lakshmi Srinivas]

--- "N. Ganesan" <naga_ganesan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
> In South India even powerful landlord caste names
> do not come from Sanskrit. In Andhra, the landed
> castes kApu, kamma and the titles nAyuDu, nAyAka,
> Reddi have clear Dravidian roots. Then, how come
> a tribe of *low* social status called "golla"
> come from Sanskrit? As you derive golla from
> skt. gopAla, but the problem I see is their
> position in social hierarchy and low amount
> of sanskritization. Also, note that mostly
> they tend sheep and goats, and not cows.
> So, shepherd gollas naturally connect with
> goRRi 'sheep', rather than IE go, gau 'cow'.

I think it'd be a hard sell to insist that *low* caste
names have to come from Dr roots.
>
> It is far easier to go from Dr. golla to
> Hindi gvAla than the romantic idea of
> skt. gopAla roots.

Hey, I'm not romantic about shepherds (most of them
are men :-), sheep or their woolly by-product :-) Nor
am I romantic about Skt or Dr roots :-) In fact I'm
not even romantic about etymologies ... plse look up
my post in Indology in which I had sent the url of an
interview with D Shulman. Plse review his comments on
the obsession with etymologies in the South Indian
context. I fully subscribe to his views.

Yes, I do sometimes react to posts on etymologies.
Especially when I find something far more obvious ...
as in the case of a suggested etymology yamuna <
tozunai etc

I hope you understand.

LS

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