Braindroppings

Anthony seems to enjoy playing cannibals. :) I have not seen the Titus movie, so I am making an assumption regarding the meat pie ingredients. Actually, I was so grossed out by the preview of the second Hannibal Lecter movie that I have never seen it. Perhaps I should avoid Titus as well!

Interesting that you mention Sanskrit. I am trying to pick up Farsi (as the construction is quite similar to the Indian languages which I am familiar with), and I do find a lot of words in Farsi which perhaps were borrowed from Sanskrit/Prakrit. Similarly, a lot of words in the Indian languages have Farsi roots (which perhaps is not that surprising). I wonder if you have done any comparative study of Farsi and Sanskrit.

This is my first comment on this site.. I hope to drop in from time to time. You have a great site :-).

David: the ingredients of the meat pie was exactly what you assumed, although this time, Anthony was the chef and Jessica Lang was the consumer! Shakespeare had some imagination!

Sray: thanks for the comment. I appreciate it, and I wish you luck in learning Persian. By the way, please, when speaking English, refer to the language as Persian. You would not say "I am learning Deutsch", would you? Languages have names in English, and the name of the official language of Iran in English is Persian. Farsi is the word to be used when you are speaking Persian.

As for Sanskrit-Persian relation. Actually, the number of direct Sanskrit words in Persian are quite rare, however, as you might know, Sanskrit and Avestan were closely related and probably mutually understandable. Avestan, the language of the Avesta, was an Iranian language, and many Persian words are borrowed from Avestan. Persian itself is the descendant of Old Persian, which again was an Iranian language, closely related to Avestan and Sanskrit. So, naturally, many words in Old Persian were similar to Sanskrit as well.

As a result, you might find many words that are similar to Sanskrit in Persian, but are actually mostly OId Persian and Avestan. As far as I know, other than a few specific names, there are not a great deal of Sanskrit words in Persian.

In India, whenever we refer to Persian, we call it 'Farsi', as that is how it is known in India. But yes, your point is well taken.

About words common to Sanskrit and Persian. I have found that many nouns which were important to the (Indian and Persian) peoples of ancient ages, are quite similar in both Persian and Sanskrit. Some such words in Sanskrit were primarily used during the Vedic times, and were replaced by other words later (which are not in Persian). I give a few examples below (English - Persian - Sanskrit).

1) Male - Nar - Nar
2) Water - Ab - Ap
3) Rain - Baran - Barun
4) Air - Vay - Vayu
5) Sun - Xor - Surya
6) Cow - Gav - Gaabhi
7) Fire - Atas - Huta-asah
8) Work - Kar - Karma
9) Eye - Casm - Chokshu
10) Hand - dast - hasta
11) Leg - Pa - Pada
12) Finger - Angost - Angustha
13) Adolescence - Boluq - Balaka (Sanskrit: Little child)

These were just from the top of my head. I am sure there are others. Some of these could be because of the similar roots... others might signify a deeper connection.

All of these are cases of similar roots. Not a single one is a borrowing from either one. The root word for "work" is "kr" in both languages. All of these can be taken back to a commong IE root.

The only exception is "bolugh". It has nothing to do with Balaka. Bolugh is an Arabic word, a substabtive of "blgh" root, meaning to grow.

Thanks a lot. Perhaps I was going about it in a superficial sort of way... more rigorous studying of the underlying similarities is necessary (which in its own way I find to be quite fascinating). I would really appreciate if you could suggest some book that explores the roots of both these languges.

I was also wondering what the language of the region during the reign of the Chandraguptas was. Was Persian at all affected during those days, especially with Seleucus and the Greek reign? What does Iranian history say about Chandragupta and Kautilya for example?

Sadly, Persian histories of the region which might have mentioned important matters such as the reigns of Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka have not survived various attacks on Iran. Traditional, pre-Islamic histories of Iran do not mention the Indian dynasties much. They come to the attention of Iranians via a very few royal correspondences which survive from later contacts beween Iranians and the Kushans. The only source I can point to is "That of India" (Maalel Hend) by Abu Reyhan Biruni, the Khwarazmian scholar of the 11th century AD who lived in India and learnt Sanskrit and composed an interesting encyclopaedia of Indian customs and history.

As for Persian during this time. I think Persian was not yet the lingua franca of all of Iran at this point and thus the languages of the region that were in contact with Sanskrit were more affected than Persian. In Eastern Iran, languages such as Bactrian and Khotanese Saka (both part of the Iranian Language Family) came into contact with Indic languages such as Ghandhari and Pali and Sanskrit, and they were heavily affected by them. Bactrian has a large amount of Sanskrit and Pali words (mostly in Buddhist contexts) and Khotanese Saka even adopted the Devanagari alphabet.

The translations of Indian work into Middle Persian, like that of Pancha Tantra, were done through intermediary languages (Pancha Tantra was translated from Sanskrit to Kafiric and then to Middle Persian). The direct Sanskrit words that exist in Persian probably entered in this way (words like kermes "red" etc.).

I am not aware of any good work that has studied the relation between Sanskrit and Persian in general, but the subject is studied by Indo-European comparative linguists in the larger context of IE studies.

Hi, thanks for your response! A lot has been lost in India too. Very little exists about the Kushanas, for example. Lots of invasions and apathy have taken their toll.. and even now many of the old documents/manuscripts are not well protected :-(. I would like to hope that such old gems are kept much more securely in Iran, but I am not sure.