Etymology And Magic Yaskas Nirukta Flatos Cratylus And Riddle Of Semanticetymologies

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

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Johannes Bronkhorst
Etymology and Magic
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people went on etymologizing. No satisfactory theoretical justification was however worked out, even though the idea that constituent syllables or sounds somehow possess meanings that account for the meaning of the whole word survived in various forms.
speculations present, in a way, the Indian counterpart of Plato's primary names and the primary sounds' of the Stoics, to be discussed below. Yet there is a major difference. These Tantric speculations base themselves primarily on so-called bija-mantras, utterances which are usually devoid of ordinary meaning. The metaphysical meanings assigned to the individual sounds are not, therefore, meant to contribute to the meanings of ordinary words that contain them. No longer restrained by the shackles of ordinary language use, the Tantric authors could establish the meanings of all the sounds of the Sanskrit lan
guage.15
It will be clear that these Tantric speculations are far removed from the etymologies which form the subject matter of this study. We will not, therefore, study them in any detail. Be it however noted that these Tantric speculations have parallels in the Jewish Kabala and similar developments within Islam. Yet, though removed from etymologies, these speculations cannot be completely separated from them. They are, in a way, the ultimate outcome of the process of analysis which found its inspiration in those etymologies.
Where does this leave us with regard to the question as to how Indian thinkers explained semantic etymologies? During the Vedic period the validity of these etymologies was not questioned since they were based on the more general principle, not confined to language, that similar things are connected or even identical - with each other. During the then following period this justification fell away, but
The situation in ancient Greece is rather different from India, in that the Greeks and their successors did not look upon their language as the only the language. This complicated matters considerably, and it is not impossible that this fact is partly responsible for the relatively suspicious way in which the problem was often approached in the Western tradition. Yet there is a respectable list of thinkers who occupied themselves with it."
Plato's Cratylus is the first full investigation of etymologies that has survived. In this dialogue Socrates is engaged in a discussion with two other characters, Cratylus and Hermogenes. It is possible, but not certain, that Cratylus in real life represented an etymologist'; it seems however certain that the etymological point of view did have real supporters. Plato's dialogue, i.e. the person of Socrates in it, initially Seems to support it, but in the process of working it out in detail changes position.
The basic question discussed in the dialogue is whether "everything has a right name of its own, which comes by nature" (383a). Arguing that this is the case, Socrates is led to conclude that the initial law givers knew "how to embody in the sounds and syllables that name which is fitted by nature for each object" (389b). Astyanax 'Lord of the city for example, being the name of the son of Hector the ruler of Troy, is appropriate (392d-e) or, as he says earlier (385bf.), true. This example takes us right into the analysis of words in view of determining their
extended upwards as a continuous stream of water. (Uttering the sound), he split of a third of it-that became the earth... Uttering the sound kohe split off a second] third-that became the midregions... Uttering the sound ho he cast the last third upwards that became the heaven." (tr. Holdrege, 1994: 44). The content provides no clue as to why exactly these sound have the effect described
See Padoux, 1991): 235 if: Ruepr. 1959: 108
For the Jewish Kabala, see G. Scholem. 1983: 55.99 (Le nom de Dice ou la théorie du langage dans la Kahale, mystique du langage"), for Sufism, see Schimmel. 1975: 411 ff. "Letter symbolism in Suh literature"). Staal (1979: 7)brielly refers to the parallelism between Kahala and the Tantric speculations under consideration
Note that right at the beginning of Plato's dialogue of that same. Cratylus is presented as holding the view that there is a kind of inherent correctness in names which is the same for all men, both Greeks and barbarians" (3832)
See Kraus, 1987, Lallot, 1991 Rijluarsdam (1978: 65 .) discusses the use of the word 'name' ( MRI).