Karnataka/KannaDa (was: Karave caste and Kurus)

[Robert Zydenbos]

Am 8 Jan 2001, um 6:15 schrieb Swaminathan Madhuresan: 

> CilappatikAram (5th cent. ?) has karunaTar, and 
> later texts has the country name as kan2n2a- in tamil texts. 

"karuna.tar" is a variation I have not yet seen! But the Sanskritised 
"kar.naa.ta" seems to have existed already before then, and the 
question 
arises from which source the Cilappatikaaram word has come. 

> Do we have other examples where -mn- become -nn- in Kannada? 
> as in kam-nADu to kannADu. 

Not many, but they exist: e.g., words in which the first element is  
'kem-' ("red"), such as ken-niiru "red water, blood", ken-nettar "red 
blood", ken-naalige "red tongue". In Kannada the treatment of the 
final 
nasal in such short units of meaning in general seems somewhat 
flexible, 
and this also shows in Old Kannada orthography: e.g., an anusvaara at 
the 
end of a word may stand for an n or m, cf. e.g. Old Kannada manu.sya.m 
=
Modern Kannada  manu.syanu (the modern language demands a euphonic 'u'
at the end, because  final consonants are no longer tolerated), and 
then
the anusvaara turns  into n, as we also see in the accusative: OKa
manu.syana.m (note the n) =  ModKa manu.syanannu. 

Robert Zydenbos
Institut für Indologie und Iranistik
Universität München
E-mail zydenbos at gmx.li
Tel. (+49-89-) 2180-5782