Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Languages used in Carnatic Music & Literature
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vasanthakokilam
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Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

There was a talk of starting a thread on this topic of common root words of Sanskrit and European Languages. We have discussed this in different threads and let us consolidate them and continue the topic here.

I think it will be more fun and relatable if we consider English and Sanskrit. Like the relationship between 'dantam/dental' and the more commonly known ones like nAm/name, pitha/father, 'mAtr/mother' and the various numerals like 'dwa/two', 'tri/three' etc.

To relate as many words as possible quickly, let us first consider English words with Latin and Greek roots.
They are listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_and_ ... in_English

We can start small and slow with some low hanging fruits first.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

For Sanskrit roots ( dhatu ) with english meanings, someone seemed to have made a start here on the dhatupatha: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... hv%C4%81di .
If anyone of you have or find a more complete list of Sanskirt roots with Engish meanings, please provide that. It will be very useful for this topic.
The dhatupatha in Devanagari is available here: http://www.archive.org/details/TheDhatupathaOfPanini

From these lists, we can try to relate these Latin and Greek roots to Sanskrit roots and then to commonly used words in Indian languages
that are Sanskrit based or those languages which have imported words from Sanskrit.

Someone told me that there are some standard transformation rules that can be applied between the two root systems.
srkris may be able to shed some light on this. That is, the commonality of the dhatu/root between Sanskrit and Latin may not be apparent at the surface level
but a few well known transformations applied to either root will reveal the relationship.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

The process we can follow is this.

The resource material needed are basically three

1) English words with Latin and Greek roots and meaning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_and_ ... in_English_
2) Dhatupatha ( lexicon of Sanskrit verbal roots) and Ashtadhyayi with english meanings of the roots (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... hv%C4%81di )
3) A few transformation rules that are needed to transform the Dathupatha roots to the Latin/Greek roots

Then we are in business. The following sequence in both directions can be applied: English to Sanskrit and Sanskrit to English

English words <-> Latin/Greek Root <-> Transformation rules <-> Dathupatha roots <-> Sanskrit words

If such mappings have already been done, it will be great to read up that info. If you have it or seen it, please post the info on that. Even if so or otherwise, I think it will be fun and educational to do this ourselves in this thread.

srkris
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by srkris »

The wiktionary page above contains only the roots of the bhvadi gana (that too only about a hundred or so). Here is a more comprehensive list of Sanskrit roots:

http://www.warnemyr.com/skrgram/grammar ... roots.html

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Thanks srkris for that link. Where can I find the meanings for those words?

Thx

srkris
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by srkris »

you just need to click the root name to find the meaning.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Got it. That is indeed a great resource. Thanks srkris.

srkris
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by srkris »

Well, the comparison has already been made by linguists, and the cognates have already been listed down.. these can run into the hundreds or thousands.

I usually use Pokorny's Indo-European lexicon.

For example: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/centers/lrc/ ... P1224.html

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Nice. I am going to read this with interest. Thanks.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris, the link you provided proved to be quite scholarly and I could not keep up. I have to get back in there at leisure. But that led me to a few other resources on cognates. That was lot of fun.

Here is what I collected about the words that we can relate relatively easily.. .which is what I was after. Quite fascinating.

Here are the cognates of Sanskrit and English. That is, the corresponding words below have a common root.
Do not necessarily read the right hand side as the direct meaning of the left hand side though they indeed are in many cases, not surprisingly..
as in tarshita - thirsty .

Corrections welcome. I probably messed up a bit in sanskrit transliteration.

panThan - path
nakha - nail
gRdhnu - greedy
vaata - weather, wind, window, weather, ventilate
dantam - dental

pitha - father
mAtha - mother
bhrā́tā - brother
duhita - daughter
svasR - Sister

bandh - bind
sthita - status

bhruu - brow - eye brow
yuva - youth, rejuvenate, juvenile
pAdam - foot ( pAdam->greek podOs->FOts->foot )
nakta - night
vAhanam - Wagon

agni - ignite ( thru latin ignis )
raja - regis
dyaus pitā - Jupiter ( Gk. Zeȗ páter, Lat. Jūpiter )
krAtu - krAtOs ( greek, strength, power etc. )

antar - inter
asti - is
vayam - we
asmAn - us
yUyam - You
dhaaman - domestic, domicile, domain
dru - tree
smar - mourn, memory, remember, memorandum
asthi - ossify,oyster
dvárah - door
bharati - birth
budhna - bottom
jiva - viva, zoo
gharma - thermal, warm
gurutha - gravity, grief, aggravate
gRhiita, gRhNaati - grab
samah - same, similar,assimilate , simultaneous, assemble
svap - sleep
hamsa - goose
mAsa - month, moon
mRta - murder, mortal
mUshika - mouse
madhyah - middle, mid, medial
navah - new,news
sidati - sit, sedentary, reside,
pakva - cooked
parayati - port, portal
patram - feather, petition,pen

sravati - stream
rocate - light
tiShThati- stand, station, statute
tarshita - thirsty

vakthi - voice, vocal, vowel
var ( water ) - Urine
svana - sound, sonic
upari - super, hyper, superb

jna - know, gnostic, agnostic
jaanu - knee, kneel

hiraNya - Gold ( seems like a stretch but linguistics have a reason/derivation for these two to be cognates: zer: from PIE base *ghel- "yellow, green." )
há¹›daya - heart, cordial, core, record, concord, accord, discord, cordiac, courage
jihvaa - lingua->dingua->tongue , language,

vgovindan
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vgovindan »

vidhava - widow

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

kOkilam - cuckoo
gO - cow
makShikam - mosquito
prashams - praise
..

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

In fact the publication
Sanskrit Vocabulary -arranged according to word families with meanings in English,German and Spanish
by Bernfried Schlerath
Leiden, E.J. Brill 1980
Lists many words which are useful for this investigation...

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Just FYI.

For some reason, I was looking up the origin of the word ‘Vector’ which led me to look up the Latin word Vivo (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vivo#Latin)

which led me to this proto-indo-european root http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... 83w%C3%B3s

And then to the cognates in various languages

Russian http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B6%D0 ... B9#Russian
Ukrainian: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B6%D0 ... #Ukrainian
Czech: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C5%BEiv%C3%BD#Czech
French: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vif#French (not as close but it is there )

There is an audio link for how to say this word. It is fun to listen and hear for myself how similar they sound to Sanskrit jIva (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9C ... F#Sanskrit ) . Not a surprise but still cool.

This wiktionary has good stuff with cognates and audio links. It is a big candy store for the linguistics geek in me.

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

Interesting.
The word 'vector' is Latin meaning 'carrier'
It is derived fromy the root vehere
In sanskrit the root word वह्‌ (vah) has exactly same meaning 'carry'
from which is derived the word वाहनम्‌ (vAhanam) used in all our SI languages meaning 'vehicle' which is a cognate word!

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

As per this link, one meaning of vector is indeed in this vAhanam sense in epidemiology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_%28epidemiology%29
"..In epidemiology, a vector is any agent (person, animal or microorganism) that carries and transmits an infectious pathogen into another living organism.."

I was trying to get to the bottom of the much overloaded word Vector in various disciplines from LInear Algebra ( vector spaces ), the usual high school sense of something with a magnitude and a direction ( velocity vs speed difference ), graphics ( as in vector graphics maps in contrast to the bitmap tiles ) and programming ( to refer to an array ). I started here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector
and ended up with discovering all these other connections ending up with you establishing the cognates Vector and vAhanam. Nice.

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

VK
The root 'vah' has no less than 14 meanings attached to it, listed in the dictionary. If you add उपसर्ग (prefixes) to it no less than a hundred. For exanple if you add upasarga प्र you get प्रवह्‌ (pravah) which indicates a directed flow of any thing. The common word 'pravAham' in SI languages comes from that. It rquires lot of ingenuity to understand the connection between the root and a derived word. For example the word वह्नि (vahni) meaning fire is derived from 'vah' with the 'ni' pratyayam. It is difficult to understand the connection until you realize that Fire (agni) is the carrier of all offerings to the Gods (cf. Rg veda hymn 1). The same word also means digestive faculty. The assumption is that there is fire in the stomach (jatarAgni) which digests food. Sanskrit is very poetic and hence imaginative....

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

CML: yes, indeed. Quite fascinating.

To wiktionary's credit ( whoever put that entry in ), while providing the various meanings of the verb vahati
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B5 ... F#Sanskrit
they do provide a direct link to the Monier-Williams page for this word and root.
http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.d ... stuvat.jpg

So even a newbie like me can pretend to know stuff ;)

While looking at the various meanings in M-W, I wanted to ask you. There is a connection to 'wife' since there seems to be a 'carry' connotation to marriage.
So is vivAham ( marriage ) derived in that sense of 'vah - carry'?


Thinking aloud and taking some liberties, I am beginning to ponder that Sanskrit is more akin to Chinese at a core abstract level than any of the modern languages. Not that they are equal in their expressive power, I do not know enough to even think along those lines. But the similarity is at the level of syntax and semantics ( structure and meaning ) being interwoven so tightly.

The Chinese script is an ideographic writing system, in which the graphic structure is directly related to the meaning. Hence the first step toward mastery of Chinese characters is to learn the characteristics of their composition. In Sanskrit, instead of the graphic structure, there is this root plus derivative rules scheme serving a similar purpose. In Chinese, the composition is graphical instead of root/phoneme based. It affords one incredible feature. Chinese have this amazing ability to take a shot at the meaning just by looking at the writing. Interestingly, at the practical level, the effects seem to be quite similar. The creation and evolution of Chinese characters are in concordance with the development of Chinese culture. Chinese characters are the basic carriers ( ah. that vector/vAhana again ;) ) of the traditional Chinese culture. As you were saying, to understand Sanskrit, one needs to understand the cultural context like how you explained why fire is called vahni. But in both cases, once you know the rules and the cultural context, you can take a pretty good stab at the meaning without referring to a dictionary. In fact, one Chinese office mate of mine jokes that he is astonished that how the world can put up with the deficiency of English that he can not infer the meaning of a word just by looking at it ( say a shop sign ) that he has never seen before. I told him that I am aghast that he even expects to do that :) But I know he was only half joking.

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

yes VK
the root vah with the upasarga vi -> vivah means to marry from which is derived the word vivAham. This is probably due to the woman being separted (vi) and carried away (vah) by the bride-groom. Many of the sanskrit words are formed logically. One should first know the 2000 and odd roots for word formation. I beleve same rule exists in German and to some extent in our Dravidian Tamil...

Complex words are formed in sanskrit by combining simple words through 'samAsam'. These words are broken up ('vigraha') to get at theeir actual meanings. The breeak-up itself follow rules and context which have to be learned. But it is all logical.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

Is Sanskrit easier to write to communicate something than reading and understanding someone else's writing? ( relatively speaking ). We make fun of our dear Perl, a programming language, that it is a write-only language since it has such a characteristic!

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

IMHO sanskrit is a language for the arts and not for ordinary communication...

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

CML, that aspect aside, the producer/writer seems to hold all the cards in producing a word, borrowing liberally from the cultural context in that construction to mean a certain thing. What about the consumer/reader? How are they supposed to make sense of that?

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

VK
I found this technical dictionary site (limited words) at
http://seit.unsw.adfa.edu.au/staff/site ... ani/td.pdf
For vector the word according to them is
'sadisha' meaning one with direction which makes sense...

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

CML, thanks. As we discussed Vector has many meanings in the technical fields. The various technical meanings are sort of related though one has to look hard and make the proper connections to justify using this word in those contexts. But in Sanskrit, I assume there will be several words for Vector one for each meaning. Like 'vector' of diseases will be a different word, possibly a word to mean vAhana-of-rOga.

Answering my own question whether Sanskrit is read-friendly or write-friendly, or both or neither, I think the answer lies in the fact that these sanskrit words are not really words in the typical sense but fragments of a sentence ( like, 'carrier of disease'). Just like to understand a sentence, you need to have some basic knowledge of how the various words fit together to convey something which itself is not in the word dictionary, similarly, to understand a Sanskrit 'chunk' which is a strung together roots,modifiers and connectors in a highly logical fashion, one needs to know those lexical rules to separate them in to tokens and then parse them to understand them. Compilers indeed go through those two steps. In that sense the latter part is not too different from what we are used to in other languages. But the tokeni-zing requirement is an added thing. The thing that takes some getting used to is there are indeed 'white space' separators between such aggregate 'things which give an illusion of word structure similar to other languages.

Is the white space word separator itself optional and it s there just for convenience and readability?

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

That is the crux of the problem in Sanskrit.
The language hates white spaces. But there are sandhi rules some of which require white spaces. One has to decompose the compounded words, provide the missing grammar (vibhakti) and then interpret the sentences. Modern sanskrit however keeps the words separate and simple, not so the classical language. The decomposition of fused words is context dependant and require 'human intelligence'. Hence it is unlikely that automation through computers be effective until AI reaches an advanced state.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

>The decomposition of fused words is context dependent

We keep hearing that Sanskrit is context free, at least much more so than other languages. The often cited characteristic is that the word order in Sanskrit is not important, one can jumble them and it will still be unambiguous. Is that all true?

You are specific to state that the context dependency is in the decomposition of the fused words. ( Is it context free in other areas? )

Can you share an example or two of such context dependent decomposition of compound words? That will help us understand better. Thx.

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

Take for example the word (samAsam) rAjaputraH. This can be dissolved as 'son of a king' or as one who is a son as well as a king (not necessarily the father being a king)! The context determines it. The words of simple sentences with white spaces are allowed to be in any order within limitations. Another example is krishnasarpaH this may be dissolved as black snake or a snake which is black or even a snake belonging to Krishna; but it is illegal to do the dissolving here since the word is a nityasamAsa or one which ought not to be dissolved since it denotes the name of a particular caste of snakes...It all depends on the context.

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

CML, interesting. How does a human disambiguate between the two meanings? ( this goes back to the writer vs reader problem ). For example, if all I have is 'vIrasimhA is a rAjaputraH' which then goes on to tell a story of his old age without referring to either his youth or kingdom, both meanings can fit here and a human can not do anything with it either.

In your second example, how does one learn that it is illegal. Is there a rule for it? I thought in Sanskrit everything has a meaning, including names, since they are in fact put together with that goal. Why would a caste of snakes be an exception? In other words, if it should not be split, who came up with that name and why?

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

It is like a name like Coppersmith of a guy who has nothing to do with copper nor is he a smith!
It makes no sense to split the word and analyze the parts.
Just as Vasanthakokilam is not vasantha +kokilam =Spring cuckoo :D
I guess humans will be stumped too! But machines 'without intelligence' are more likely to get lost!

vasanthakokilam
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by vasanthakokilam »

I see.

But if parsing rules clearly can identify a noun, then one can instruct the machine ( or us ) to not make sense of the tokens and de-tokenize it and put it back and use it as an indivisible chunk and treat is an 'opaque' id for that thing the noun refers to.

But I can see where that may not always be possible. One example I thought of is the question "vasanthakokilam, what is the meaning of your name"? Here the first use of vasanthakokilam is an opaque id, but it needs to be split apart when 'your name' is replaced with 'vasanthakokilam'. Thinking through this, even this seems to be context free. The big difficulty is to properly infer that the tokens 'your name' refers to 'vasanthakokilam' but I think Sanskrit may provide proper declensions to disambiguate all that. May be there are other examples.

In many of these cases, Humans tend to make sense out of such seemingly ambiguous things by going over the sentence multiple times when the first pass through the sentence does not make sense. This is an attempt to resolve a lot of those backward references. Machines do this too, appropriately called multi-pass parsing' which is needed to compile some languages. In addition, from one pass to the other, some 'context' can be passed in but that gets complicated very quickly. If it is limited to specific domains, it is indeed possible. For example with Apple's Siri, she can do wonderfully when you ask her questions about sports in a free wheeling fashion since a lot of rules about such contexts are programmed in but it fails miserably when similar questions are asked about other fields even if she has access to all that information.

cmlover
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Re: Common root words of Sanskirt and European Languages

Post by cmlover »

Now we are creeping into the territory of 'Turing test' :D
With that kind of intelligence your machine will interpret
Sanskrit songs as Sans (without) krit (corrupted form for kriti) = songs without a kriti
and after fumbling may realize that Sanskrit is a language and after all it is a song with lyrics in the sanskrit language!

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