[INDOLOGY] Brahmin?

[Jean-Luc Chevillard]

Yes,
a spelling ending in "in"
could be a trace of French influence,
as in the case of "Pattabiramin",
(பட்டபிராமன் = paṭṭapirāmaṉ)

(see:
http://www.efeo.fr/biographies/notices/pattabiramin.htm)

However,
I cannot quote any French source for "brahmin" ...

Going further,
I remember a similar discussion,
on the reasons for the presence of a final "n"
[is it due to Portuguese influence?]
in the words "Comorin" (Cape Comorin)
and Tuticorin (name of a city),
because there is no final "ṉ"
in Kaṉṉiyākumari (கன்னியாகுமரி)
or Tūttukkuṭi (தூத்துக்குடி) [Thoothukudi]
but I don't find it inside the (Liverpool) INDOLOGY
list archives
(it must have been on some other mailing list
[I hope it is not the beginning of Alzheimer disease ...]

Coming back to the spelling "Brahmin",
when V.S. Rajam mentionned the spellings found
in Henriques' 16th cent. /Arte da Lingua Malabar/ (HOS 76, 2013),
I thought it might also be useful to have a look
at Antao de Proença's Tamil Portuguese Dictionary (A.D. 1679),
since that book did not seem to be part of the sources consulted
in the various messages.

There are two entries on folio 31,
which are relevant to the discussion

பிறமமததி [pi-ṟa-ma-ma-ta-ti]. Homicidio de bramane.

பிறமணன [pi-ṟa-ma-ṇa-ṉa]. Bramane, quasi ſabio.

I hope this negative evidence is useful

Best wishes to all


-- Jean-Luc Chevillard (Pondicherry)



On 24/02/2014 07:34, Allen Thrasher wrote:
> Debabrata Chakrabarti says, "In fact, each and every place name was
> anglicized by the the British. For some years now the government is
> replacing the exact transliteration of place names."
> That place names and other Indian words were anglicized by the British
> is no doubt true, for every language is likely to modify foreign words
> when it takes it into itself.  But it does not follow that in every case
> they (1) took it into English directly from an Indo-Aryan or Dravidian
> language rather than from some other, such as Portuguese, Persian, or
> Arabic, which might already have made its own changes. Nor (2) does it
> mean that the British or speakers of other languages from outside the
> Subcontinent came in contact directly with the word as it might be in
> Sanskrit or some other highly standardized or regulated form of speech.
> The spelling might represent more closely than some might assume the
> actual spoken form for a place or concept as they encountered it in
> speech.  Moreover, the forms being insisted upon by the GOI or others
> may possibly in some cases be recent _changes_ by way of
> hypercorrection.  Individual cases have to be investigated.
>
> Allen
>
>
> On Saturday, February 22, 2014 11:09 PM, Dr. Debabrata Chakrabarti
> <dchakra at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>
> Dear Sir,
> What I assume from the word ''Brahmin' is that it is purely an
> anglicized form of 'Brahman'. Whether it was Francocized is difficult to
> determine. 'Bragmen' may arise for listening to North Indian
> pronunciation/dialects, which emphasizes 'h' , and ‘in’ might arise for
> pronouncing cerebral ‘n’.
> In fact, each and every place name was anglicized by the British. For
> some years now the government is replacing the exact transliteration of
> place names. Thus ‘Burdwan’ has become ‘Bardhaman’, etc. – all names
> ending in ‘pur’ were pronounced ‘pore’ by the British.
> Regards
> Debabrata Chakrabarti
>
>
>
> “This body is like a musical instrument; what you hear depends upon how
> you play it.” – Anandamayi Ma
> “Inside every human being there exists a special heaven, whole and
> unbroken.” - Paracelsus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 17:36:37 -0800
> From: alanus1216 at yahoo.com
> To: whitakjl at wfu.edu; indology at list.indology.info
> Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Brahmin?
>
> No one seems to have addressed Jarrod's query whether the *in comes from
> Persian or Arabic.  Can anyone address what the possible words for
> brahmana are in these?
>
>
> Also, Hobson-Jobson s.v. Brahmin cites early Portuguese examples with
> *en: in the lural Brahmenes (Camoes, 1572) and in the singular Bragmen
> (Acosta, 1578).  See the online H-J at *http://tinyurl.com/mmodvxs*
>
> Allen
>
>
> On Thursday, February 20, 2014 3:09 PM, Jarrod Whitaker
> <whitakjl at wfu.edu> wrote:
> Dear Colleagues:
> When does the word "B/brahmin" ("priest, priestly class") with a final
> "-in" begin to be used/appear? I have always assumed that it appeared
> with the colonial encounter and thus it was a Anglocized (perhaps
> Franco-cized?) way of representing the final short schwa sound of
> "brahman". Does it have an older history in Arabic/Mughal writing? It
> surely is not a final Sanskrit "-in" stem (I have never heard of a
> Brahmii priest), but perhaps it has a regional/dialect use somewhere in
> India...
>
> Silly question but frustrating nonetheless when trying to unpack the
> complex use of the term brahman and its various meanings to students and
> the fact that textbooks are not uniform in how they represent the term
> and its derivatives (B/braahmaan.a [and more rarely Braahman. with final
> retroflex "n," which is curious in and of itself], B/brahman, or, of
> course our current Brahmin....[throw into the mix lower case, sometimes
> italicized brahman from Upanishads and god Brahmaa and students think
> you are just messing with them]).
>
> Cheers
> JW
>
> Jarrod Whitaker, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor, South Asian Religions
> Zachary T. Smith Faculty Fellow
> Graduate Program Director
>
> Wake Forest University
> Department of Religion
> P.O. Box 7212
> Winston-Salem, NC  27109
> whitakjl at wfu.edu <mailto:whitakjl at wfu.edu>
> p 336.758.4162
>
>
>
>
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