[INDOLOGY] Brahmin?

Mon Feb 24 04:53:23 UTC 2014

There is a mistake in my post.

Read
பட்டாபிராமன் = paṭṭāpirāmaṉ

Thanks to the corrector!

-- jlc

On 24/02/2014 09:31, Jean-Luc Chevillard wrote:
> 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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