[INDOLOGY] Translation of bhagavān / bhagavatī

[Harry Spier]

Thank you Hans and Lyne
Two small notes:

Hans Hock wrote:
While it is true that bhagavat originally would mean ‘endowed with bhaga
“good fortune, wealth”' and hence ‘generous’ or ‘blessed',

There was an interesting discussion on this list about the etymology of
bhaga and related words bhakti, bhagavan etc, in  March and April1999.
https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/1999-March/016398.html
and Nov. 2000 on history of bhagavan
https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/2000-November/023731.html

Lyne Bansat-Boudon wrote:

> I agree with D. Hass’ last post on the ambiguity (at least for a French
> mind) of a word as « blessed » (« béni », in French), which implies someone
> blessing someone (or something) — which is not appropriate in the case of
> the supreme deity,
>
>  I'm still wondering if "blessed" in phrases like "the blessed saint" etc.
is something different from the past participle of the verb "bless" because:
1)  In english the past participle is pronounced "blessd".  I.e. we
pronounce " The pope blessd me", but as an honorific its pronounced
"blessed". I.e. "He was as holy as a blessed saint".  (apologies for not
using proper phonetic symbols)
2)I've come across this article on the etymology of "bless" that says
something similar. (I know nothing about the author)
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/47232289.pdf
Note the highlighted sentence . By the fourteenth century the t was
dropped, and formed blessed, which looks identical to the way we currently
spell the past participle of bless. in the relevant paragraph below from
the article.

 According to the OED, bless is derived from Old English blod and
bloedsian, which is not found elsewhere in Germanic languages. Blot was
originally used to describe a pagan ritual of marking or aecting with
blood. Around the 11th century, the ds in bloedsian phonetically shifted
into a ts sound, and yields bletsien or similar spellings. By the
fourteenth century the t was dropped, and formed blessed, which looks
identical to the way we currently spell the past participle of bless.
Although this is how bless has orthographically changed throughout the
English language, bless has a longer derivational history. According to the
OED, the borrowing history of the word bless can be traced back to the
Hebrew word brk meaning “to bend,” which can be linked to Present-day
interpretations of bless in religious contexts. The word bless was used as
a semantic loan from the Germanic language to represent Latin benedicere
and Greek ε λογε ν, which meant “to speak well of, praise, or eulogize,”
but was itself inuenced by the Hebrew word brk, meaning “to bend.” The
conversion of bless into its current usage in English happened as the
Angles, Saxons, and Jutes were being converted from their pagan ways, into
the christian society within England. Overall, the function and context of
bless has changed drastically.

Harry Spier
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