Dear Jürgenji,
Thanks for your response. Narbada (नर्बदा) and Narvada (नर्वदा) have been used as proper names in Central and North India for long.
Come to think of it, the transformation of /m/ > /v/ (actually, /w/) is not only common in Dravidian, it is found in Middle Indo-Aryan as well. For example, intervocalic /m/ getting weakened to a nasalized /ṽ/ can be seen in: OIA grāma, 'village' > Pali/Pkt gāma > Ap. gāṽa.
So, now I feel more confident about the derivation of narbada from narmada as: *narmada > narvada > narbada.
Does anyone have an etymologies for the hydronym Narmada? What about the derivations for the other name of this river: Rewa?
Regards,
Suresh.
On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 7:25 AM, Jürgen Neuss
<juergen.neuss@fu-berlin.de> wrote:
Dear Sureshji,
Interesting question. I am aware of the use of the 'b' only in colonial, british sources ('Nerbudda/Narbada'). All the original texts (Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati) I have seen in the course of my research on the Narmadaparikrama uniformly have the 'm'. In case you find the 'b' in any (South) Indian source, please let me know.
Jürgen
On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 12:00:45 +0200, Suresh Kolichala <
suresh.kolichala@gmail.com> wrote:
Does anyone know the phonological reasons for the alternation of the river
name 'Narmada' as 'Narbada'? I also see this river name sometimes being
spelled as Narbedda.
It is surprising to see a labial nasal winding up as an oral stop. Is there
any historical evidence to believe in a transformation of narmada > narvada
narbada? /m/ > /v/ is very common in Dravidian, and /v/ > /b/ is common
in the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages of East and Central India.
I appreciate any responses.
Regards,
Suresh.
Atlanta, GA.
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Dr. phil. Jürgen Neuß
(Independent scholar) | email: juergen.neuss@fu-berlin.de
Berlin, Germany | http: www.central-india.de
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