Updated draft of the RUSSIAN – SANSKRIT COMPARATIVE DICTIONARY (DEMONSTRATION SAMPLE) version 15 released

I have not published any new posts for several years but the work on the comparative dictionary was continuing. Regrettably, my co-author and teacher Alexander Shaposhikov died last year. However, he has finished most of his part of work and also left many comments that allow me to continue with this project and lead it to the end. Currently, the dictionary is 90 per cent complete. It contains approximately 870 completed entries out of a total of 1000 planned. I hope to publish the dictionary by September 2023.

I publish an updated demonstration draft containing only a small number (16) of entries of the highest rating 5. It still lacks some essential parts in the Introduction section. The entries have not yet been correctly re-read and we are constantly updating the comments. Compared to the previous version we added and enhanced many entries and fixed some obvious errors. The formatting was optimised to reduce number of pages. The Introduction section has been restructured and expanded. The bibliographic style has been updated to ugost2008ns which, unfortunately, does not have a Cyrillic alphabetical sorting function. This should be fixed manually in the publication-ready version.

Any constructive criticism or feedback is welcome.

dic_master_rus_sample

Russian – Sanskrit Dictionary of Common and Cognate Words

I have decided to upload a draft of my RUSSIAN – SANSKRIT DICTIONARY OF COMMON AND COGNATE WORDS which is the result of some eight years of work. This dictionary has been conceived as a practical reference book with the objective of providing factual material for researchers in the field of the Indo-European linguistics or anyone interested in etymology, semantics and the origin of the Indo-European, particularly, Slavonic languages. Compiling a dictionary is time-consuming and it is a mammoth task to do for a single person. The first draft published here is only a rough approximation. It contains only 488 entries, which is about a quarter of the planned volume, and still lacks some essential parts in the Introduction section. The entries have not yet been properly proof-read and I am constantly updating the comments.

 Index of entries

You may access the text at my page on Academia.edu

Although this work is titled ‘Dictionary’ it is neither a traditional Russian-Sanskrit dictionary nor a formal etymological dictionary, but rather a catalogue of various cognate, common or otherwise connected Russian and Sanskrit words, arranged is a systematic way with cross-references, explanatory notes, links to other Slavonic and Indo-European languages, indexes and other features aimed at making it a valuable and convenient reference book. The specific task called for employing both Cyrillic and Devanagarī scripts throughout the book because transliteration, however elaborate, cannot fully replace the native writing system. Since it is unlikely that every reader would be proficient in both scripts, each word is accompanied by a conventional transliteration.

In writing this book I endeavoured to go through all major works dedicated to this issue starting from the discovery of Sanskrit and its relation to the European languages in general, and particularly to Slavonic, covering the period from the 17th century up to the modern days. Each proposed cognate word has been carefully evaluated, checked through various dictionaries and, sometimes, re-linked or rejected. This method provided some eight hundred pairs that made the back-bone of the dictionary. The rest of the cognate pairs (about another thousand two hundred) are the result of many years of scrupulous research.

Many cognate pairs are obvious, some need more or less detailed explanations and might be difficult to apprehend without some basic knowledge of the principal linguistic concepts and terms. This is why the dictionary is prefaced by an Introduction containing some essential information about the Russian and Sanskrit languages and their phonetic and grammatical features with particular attention to the principal rules of sound correlation. This section is now in work and it is not included in this draft.

I would be grateful for any constructive criticism or comments. If you would like to support this project there are several ways of helping me with the work:

•  report any spelling or other mistakes that you have noticed
•  suggest any other cognate pairs
• check the various cognates I mention in Slavonic and other languages if they happen to be in your native language

Sanskrit and Russian cognates compared in respect of Lithuanian, Greek, Latin, Gothic and Old German.

I would like to demonstrate here the remarkable phonetic affinity between Sanskrit and Russian taking two dozen of unquestionable cognate pairs as examples.  It is well known that all Indo-European languages contain a greater or lesser number of common words but only Slavonic and, to a lesser degree, Baltic languages approximate Sanskrit to such an extent that in me instances the difference between certain Slavonic languages could be greater than between some Slavonic languages and Sanskrit.

Take the  word for `spindle’: Sanskrit  vartana, Russian vereteno, Bulgarian. vretе́no, Slovenian vreténo, Czech vřeteno, Polish wrzeciono, Upper Sorbian wrjećeno and Lower Sorbian rjeśeno.  The phonetic shape of cognates in other Indo-European languages differs considerably.

A good example is the word `alive’: Sanskrit jīva, Russian živ, Lithuanian gývas, Greek bíos, Latin vīvus,  Irish biu,   Gothic qius, Old High German quес, and English quick.

Transliteration notes

Sanskrit: ā, ī, ū – long sounds; ṛ = ri (a short  i  similar to Rus. soft рь/r‘); c=ch; j similar to j in “jam”;  ṣ  similar to sh; ś  a subtler sort of sh, closer to German /ch/  as in  ich.

Russian:  š  similar to sh; č = ch; ž = like g in garage , the vowel y  is a sort of  ‘hard’  i  sounding somewhat similar to unstressed i   in Eng. it .  the  sign ‘ indicates softness and stands for a very short i . Vowels with  j are iotated so ju would be similar to Eng.  you and Skr. yu  etc.

Skt.	Rus.	Lith.	Greek	Latin	Goth.	OHG/Ger.	Eng
bhrātṛ	brat	brólis	phrátēr	frāter	brōþar	Bruder	brother
bhrū	brov’	bruvis	ophrus			brāwa	brow
vidhava	vdova			vidua	widuwō	Widuwō	widow
vartana	veretenò					Wirtel	spindle
viś	ves’	viešė	oikos	vīcus	weihs		abode, village, home
vātṛ	veter	vėtra					wind
vṛka	volk	vilkas	lýkos	lupus	wulfs	Wulfs	wolf
dvār	dver’	dùrys	thýra	forēs	daúr	turi	door
dvaya	dvoe	dvejì			twaddjē		two of smb.
devṛ	dever’	dieveris	daḗr	lēvir		zeihhur	husband’s brother
dina	den’	dienà		diēs			day
dam, dama	dom	nãmas(?)	dō̂ma	domus			house, home
janī	žena		gynḗ		qino		wife
jīva	živ	gývas	bíos	vīvus	qius	quес	alive
jñāna	znanie	žinios	gnōsis				knowledge
kada	kogda	kada					when
katara	kotoryj	kuris	póteros	uter	ƕаþаr	hwedar	which
kumbha	kub		kýmbos	cupa			pitcher
laghu	ljogok	leñgvas	elaphrós	levis	leihts	lungar	light
roci	luč		leukós	lūх	liuhaþ		light, ray
madhu	mjod	medùs	méthy			metu	honey
mūṣ	myš’		mŷs	mūs		mûs	mouse
mās	mjaso	mėsà			mimz(?)		meat

Note that we compare the attested languages and not hypothetical `reconstructions’ however, according to  Antoine Meillet:

“[..] Baltic and Slavic show the common trait of never having undergone in the course of their development any sudden systemic upheaval. […] there is no indication of a serious dislocation of any part of the linguistic system at any time. The sound structure has in general remained intact to the present.  […] Baltic and Slavic are consequently  the only languages in which certain modern word-forms resemble those reconstructed for Common Indo-European.” ( The Indo-European Dialects [Eng. translation of  Les dialectes indo-européens (1908)], University of Alabama Press, 1967, pp. 59-60).

See also my other posts:

https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/russian-sanskrit-verbs-3/

https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/russian-sanskrit-nouns/

https://borissoff.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/sanskrit-russian-lithuanian-and-latin-conjugations-compared/

See all posts

Archaeology and Linguistics

I would like to recommend this  popular article “Making Archaeology Speak – Archaeology and Linguistics”  by  Maciej Mateusz Wencel  (born in Gdynia, northern Poland, currently reads an Undergraduate Course in Archaeology and Anthropology at Oxford University). It is very well written  and well balanced. I have arrived to very similar ideas  and agree with  most of what he has written.

Here are some  extracts:

Sanskrit, Russian, Lithuanian and Latin conjugations compared

In my previous post I gave a list of  some Sanskrit-Russian cognate verbs which  showed a remarkable phono-semantic affinity. This closeness  also extends to grammatical endings. I would like to demonstrate it here taking as an example one Sanskrit verb jīvati ‘lives, is or remains alive’.   For Russian I chose a less used  form живать živat‘  which  in modern Russian is predominantly used  with prefixes  e. g. про–живать pro–živat‘.  It is an exact analogue of Sankrit  jīvati  and Avestan  ǰvaiti.    To make the comparison more obvious I also included  Lithuanian and Latin cognates. Hopefully,  this comparison is self-explanatory.

Some notes:

There are many theories  on the nature of  verbal systems in  the ancient dialects that are commonly referred to as  ‘Indo-European’ and ‘proto-Indo-European’.  As I have already written in the comments,  I do not accept the idea of a  uniform ‘proto-language’. I do use these terms but  only as  ‘umbrella terms’ meaning a certain simplified  generalisation.

There is a general consensus that ‘Indo-European’  verbs were conjugated  (at least in the present tense) by  person (First, Second and Third) and by number (Singular, Dual and Plural). These grammatical  categories were expressed by means of  special endings which were added to the  verbal stem .  It should be noted that  ‘verbal stem’ as well as ‘verbal root’ are  abstractions. For example, ancient Sanskrit grammarians did not  single out the root. Instead they  operated with  dhātu  ‘constituent part, ingredient, element’. The notion of a verbal root  was  brought in by Western scholars  inspired by Semitic monosyllabic  CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) roots. So when we see in a modern dictionary  a root  jīv,  according to Pāṇini, this would be a  dhātu  jīva ‘living, existing, alive’.  From the point of Western linguists it would be viewed as  a  CVC root  jīv + a so-called ‘thematic vowel‘ –a. Together they would form a ‘stem’ which may be taken as an equivalent of dhātu.  For convenience I mark the  root in italic, thematic vowel in blue and the personal ending in red. I also added  hypothetical (reconstructed)  thematic vowels and personal endings based on a more traditional interpretation of Fortson (Indo-European Language and Culture. Blackwell Publishing. 2004).

Transliteration:

Sanskrit  j is  [ɟ͡ʝ] (similar to j in jam],  ḥ  is  a visarga ‘sending forth, letting go, liberation, emission, discharge’. It is a voiceless ‘breath out’  like an energetic [h]. In certain positions at  words conjunctions  visarga  becomes /s/ or /r/.  Long vowels are marked with a bar above so ī  is  [i:]. Because Russian stressed vowels are primarily characterised by length,  I transliterate them in the similar manner so ā  is a stressed a . By the way, Sanskrit  a  अ should be pronounced as [ɐ] or  [ə]  which exactly corresponds to the Russian unstressed a.

I transliterate here Cyrillic using the same system of Latin  transliteration  as  commonly used for  Devanāgarī  so  Russian ш [ʂ] commonly transliterated as š  or sh,  appears here as  ṣ. This is particularly justified because Sanskrit  ṣ is also a retroflex sibilant.   Also I transliterate here  ж [ʒ] (ž or zh)  as j. However,  Lithuanian  j   is [j]. Lithuanian g is [g]  and y is [iː].

		Singular	Hypothetical “IE”		Plural	Hypothetical “IE”
1st (I)	Skr.	jīvāmi	*-oh₂	1st (we)	jīvāmaḥ	*-omos
	Rus.	jivāyu			jivāem
	Lith.	gyvoju			gyvuojame
	Lat.	vīvō			vīvimus
2nd (you)	Skr.	jīvasi	*-esi	2nd (you)	jīvatha	*-ete
	Rus.	jivāeṣ			jivāete
	Lith.	gyvuoji			gyvuojate
	Lat	vīvis			vīvitis
3rd (he/she/it)	Skr.	jīvati	*-eti	3rd (they)	jīvanti	*-onti
	Rus.	jivāet			jivāyut
	Lith.	gyvuoja			gyvuoja
	Lat.	vīvit			vīvunt

See other posts

 

Perspectives on the Origin of Indian Civilization – New book announcement

I recommend this new book as a fairly balanced introduction into the argument on the origins of Sanskrit and the Vedic culture.

“The earliest Indian inscriptions date from the third century before Christ.  Archaeological and palaeo-anthropological evidence, as well as the Indian oral tradition, consistently  point  to the ‘continuity’ of the Indian Civilization back to a much earlier date. However, the question of the origin of Indian Civilization prior to that period remains open. There are three main schools of thought in this regard. Proponents of the Indo-European theory suggest that the Sanskrit language and civilization were an intrusion into India from the West. Proponents of the continuity theory, on the contrary, believe that they arose locally. The third school of thought proposes that the current scholarship is insufficient to trace the Sanskrit language and civilization back to pre-historical times, and that further research is required to develop a fair comparison between the European languages and the Indian languages. Published literature  in the field often reflects one or the other of these perspectives, rather than offering an integrated view.

On ‘Iranian loans’ in Slavonic

The topic of Iranian loans into Slavonic has become a common place in Slavistics reflecting, to a considerable extent, the stereotype view on Slavonic mainly as a target language for borrowing. In reality, the number of truly attested Iranian loans is confined to a rather short list of words. Strictly speaking, the term ‘iranism (иранизм)’, widely used in Russian linguistic literature, stands for a direct borrowing from one of the attested Iranian languages.  However, according to the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Nikolajevič Trubačev, such loans are limited to a few cultural terms such as *kotъ ‘stall, small cattle shed’, *čьrtogъ ‘inner part of a house’, *gun’a ‘shabby clothes, rags’, *kordъ ‘short sward’, *toporъ ‘axe’ etc., plus a separately standing group of religious terms and names of gods. However, even if any of these words are indeed borrowings they may not  necessarily be ‘iranisms’ in the true sense (i. e. direct borrowings from one of the attested Iranian languages).

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