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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY 5, 1872.
refer to any era, still the expression may mean 98. fore beg to point out that Bopp and other philoloAltogether the supposition that the expression gists agree in assigning to the original meaning represents the date appears to be extremely impro- of "to burn." bable. The grammatical difficulty the Babu thinks Bopp quotes na tatra súryas tapati from BhagaI have myself solved, when I admit the alternative vad-gita 11-19, and similar passages. The next interpretation that "the temple took the 888th year meaning is that of pain in general. to be constructed." But what one would naturally We can readily conceive that to the Aryan race, expect to find in an inscription is that such and such natives originally of a cold climate, the excessive a building was constructed in such and such a year, heat of the plains of India would be very distressing, and not that it took such and such a year to be and the idea of heat and pain would thus grow out constructed. And the phrase that a temple took of the same root. In the other Aryan languages the twentieth or any such year to be constructed the Latin gives us tepeo, tepidus, the Greek Bartw is not Sankrit as it is not English. I admitted which originally meant to burn dead bodies, but, as the interpretation only so far as the grammar was the practice of burying gained ground, was applied concerned. The writer has not sinned against
to it, and so lost its first meaning. The Greek TUTTW grammar in using bh shapa as masculine,
means 'to beat,' and is connected with a different for abstract verbal nouns ending in ona, only are
Sanskrit root . Tapas therefore, like penance, is necessarily Deuter, but others signifying the
originally merely" pain," subsequently self-inflicted instrument or place of an action, generally take
pain in hope of expiating sin; or, in the case of althe gender of the noun qualified. This is clear
ready sinless beings, of adding to their merita. And from the lingênus'ksana (Sid. Kaum. Calc. edn.
there is therefore no word which so accurately renVol. II. last page). This appears to be more
ders the Sanskrit tapas as the Latin-English penance especially the case when the verbal noun has what
from poena. may be called an Upapada, or another noun de
Balasor, June 11, 1872. JOHN BRANES. pending on it. In the sid. Kaum. under Pan. 3-3-113 and 3-3-117 the instances given are rájabhojanth, Salayah, idh ma-pravrascbanah kutha
Query 9-Derivation of Elephant. rah and gotohani-Stbali, in which nouns in ana take the gender of the nouns they qualify. Bhu- Is the word elephant of Dravidian descent ? shana as an abstract noun is neuter, but in the Professor Bopp in his Comparative Glossary seems sense of Bhushyate anena it may take any gender. inclined to think that it is composed of the Many verbal nouns in ana are used by Sanskrit Semitic article and Sanskrit ibha. Professor Weber anthors in this way. In the present case bhabh- in his Indian Sketches favours the view of its being shana qualifies präsåda, and hence it is masculine. aleph hind, i.e. Indian ox. Of further guesses I do
Babu Rajendralal supposes a double entendre on not know; but my own impression is that the word the expression in question, but such a double en- is Dravidian as regards its first part. In the South tendre appears to be purposeless. For the syntac- Indian languages ane (often pronounced yene, tical counection of a word on which & play is sometimes changed into ale) means elephant. This intended is generally the same in both senses, but ane I consider to be the ele. Do we find this in here in the one sense the compound becomes Sanskrit ? I believe it is the air& in air&-vata an epithet of Gaudopatina, and in the other it stands The interchange of the liquids n, 1, r (cf. Sanskrit independently,
id 4, il 4, ir 4) is not uncommon. Initial yd is not Babu Rajendralal calls the compound awkward | seldom changed into è in Dravidian, and in the when interpreted in the way I have done, but he middle of words the vowel é is generally pronounced takes it to be a babuvrihi, which it is not. It as yå. Further, the Sanskrit eda, sheep, for inis what may be called an Upapada compound ; and tance, is derived froni Dravidian &du (y & du). The is to be dissolved thus :-Kunjaranám ghade
vriddhi vowel in air & ought to raise no serious obKunjara-ghata ; kunjara-ghatâın varshatîti, kunjara- stacle. Initial vowels are sometimes changed withghaça-varshah, Pan. 3-2-1. Neither is it farther out any apparent necessity. Thus air a-vata means from the nout qualified than such epithets are even also"an orange tree"; here the air & is the Dravidian in such a simple kávya as Raghu.
ile, orange. When air&-vata conveys the mean R. G. BHANDARKAR.
ing" lightning," the air & is probably the Dravidian idi(ide), thunderbolt. The vata, vant (phant)
would be a secondary addition, and from the secondNote on Tap.
ary coinposite form airåvata (air & vant) eleALLOW me to point out a little slip of the pen in phant may have been introduced into the Western the Rev. K. M. Banerjea's article " Bhavabhuti in languages. To me it would be most strange, if Ane English garl." On p. 145a the learned writer con- had not entered the Sanskrit language at a remote nocts the Sanskrit root tap with the Greek TUTTW. time ; and I have not been able to discover it in Mr. Banerjea specially invites discussiun," I thure- another word but air 4.
F. KITTEL.
