Amrita Collected Papers by A M Ghatage

SR No.: 006968
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad
Total Pages: 530
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

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According to him the son is so called because he protects his parents from falling in a hell called put. Thus the word is made up of put + tra- 'to protect'. The commentators have nothing important to say except that Raghavananda wrongly calls the hell pum which could not explain the word
putra.
The Unādisūtra (IV. 164) puvo hrasvaśca explains the word as pū'purify' = tra (nominal suffix). The difficulty here would be the gender of the noun which should have been neuter as in case of mitra and kalatra in spite of their meanings.
Here again the word is old. We have parallels like Avesta puthra, Lat. puer 'boy' Gr. pais 'child'. The Latin word pullus (from putslos) means 'a young one of an animal', so also the Lith. putytis. This may suggest an IndoEuropean base like putlo which would become putra in Sanskrit by the usual change of -- to -. That this was a diminutive of the word pum 'man' is also probable and would naturally explain how the word came to mean 'a
son'.
Amrita
From this review of the few etymologies offered by the Manusmrti it should become clear that the contention that whenever the material in the Sanskrit language was insufficient to arrive at the correct source of the word the Indian etymologists have simply satisfied their desire for derivation in a fanciful manner with obviously wrong explanations. But when the language afforded them the slightest help as in the case of atithi and jāyā they have rightly hit upon the real source of the word.
Annotatios :
1. Nirukta, I. 13.
2. Mandlik's Ed. p. 18.
3. Vyakhyasudha on Amarakosa, p. 13.
4. Cf. GELDNER Rigveda in Auswahl, I. p. 209.
5. Lindo-Aryen, p. 45.
6. Ibid., p. 57.
7. BRUGMANN; Kurze vergleichende Grammatik, p. 111.
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Some Etymologies in Manusmrti
BV. W. 1. 1942
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