taxonomy question

[George Thompson]

Dear List,

I am obviously not able to do email correctly these days.  I had
intended to forward to the list a note that I had sent to Artur three
days ago, but once again I have failed to do so.  Let's see if I can
get it right this  time.

What I had sent to Artur was a note about the Vedic "merism" dvipad
and catuSpad:

Here it is [I hope]:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The trope "both two-footeds and four footeds" is very old in Vedic.
It is frequent in the RV, mostly in this order [bipeds first], but the
opposite order is not uncommon.  This is a very ancient Indo-European
trope found in many Indo-European languages.  As far as I can tell,
from a quick glance at the literature, there is no clear preference in
Indo-European for one order over the other.  In Avestan and Latin
examples of the formulaic idea "two-footeds and four-footeds," the
more common order has the quadrupeds before the bipeds.

This is confirmed also in Avestan and Latin where we find the variant
expression pasu-viira [a dvandva compound] in Avestan, and pecudesque
virosque in Ovid.

There is an extensive literature on this "merism" [see Calvert
Watkins, *How to Kill a Dragon* and the earlier literature cited by
him].  I don't think that the word order is significant [maybe just
metrical, but I haven't been able to look at the meters].

Hope this helps [family health issues prevent me from being more
thorough right now].

Best wishes,

George