From: vidynath@function.mps.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyarath K Rao)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil,soc.culture.indian
Subject: On etymology
Date: 10 Nov 1992 16:47:21 -0500
Organization: Department of Mathematics, The Ohio State University
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: function.mps.ohio-state.edu

In some article whose reference number I have lost, 
selvakum@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (C.R.Selvakumar) writes

>I have posted in an earlier min_urai (= e-mail article on the net)
>that Indo-european languages like English, French etc. could have
>borrowed Tamil words. There are many well known words like 'ginger'
>    'rice' etc.

Ginger, rice etc were domesticated in India and/or East Asia. So it is
not surprising that their names travelled as well. It is like "Potato"
and "Tomato" being borrowed from american-Indian languages.

>Tamil 'val' 'vali' etc. are very old words; mentioned
>and extensively used at least from Tholkappiyam days ( pre 300 B.C).
>The word 'val' also belongs to an extensive set of words.

This argument has a serious problem. "balam" is used in RgVeda. So the
date-based argument will be inconclusive.

[deleted more on the same topic. I have posted in another article what
Indo-European comparative dictionaries have to say on this matter.]

>Finally Thomas Burrow is an expert in Indo European language and
>*he* says that Skt. 'bala' comes from tamil 'val, vaL'. I presume
>he must have considered indo-european sources before arriving at the
>conclusion about Skt. 'bala' being a loan.

There are two serious problems with this. First and simpler is that
Burrow does not say so in his Dravidian dictionary: In the I edition,
entry 4317 (p. 359), he simply says "cf. balam (Skt)". Cf. is the
abreviation for Latin Confer, meaning compare. So Burrow is not saying
anything about which way the loan was, or even if there was any
borrowing.

Secondly, one has to weigh what Burrow says with what other experts say.
Let me expand on this:

There is one quote from Burrow which, in my opinion, makes him unreliable.
First let me set the stage. Annamalai University has published a collection
of a few of his articles. Three of these are about loanwords in Sanskrit
from Dravidian. In the foreword, this is what Burrow has to say:
        In a few of the examples listed, an Indo-European etymology
        has since shown to be more plausible,...
        In the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary some of the more
        doubtful of the etymologies were omitted but the greater
        majority were retained.
Burrow, in the dictionary mentioned, does not indicate which are the
doubtful ones, and which are more doubtful. And what does he mean by
the phrase "greater majority" (I do hope that the does not mean the majority
of the doubtful cases). Unless there are references where Burrow's
derivation is shown to be superior to alternate explanations, quoting
Burrow's dictionary is insufficient.

Burrow's methodology is also inadequate in another respect. He considers
the existance of related words in Finno-Ugrian to be proof that a word is
original to Dravidian. There are two objections to this. Firstly,
Finno-Ugrian has been known to borrow from IE and Indo-Iranian in
particular. Benveniste has shown that the word "parshu" (pig, related to
the word "pork") must have existed in Indo-Iranian, and that Finno-Ugrian
must have borrowed from there (see his book on IE society; I don't have
the page numbers, as I am quoting from memory). Secondly, we have the
new theory of "superfamilies". I am not familiar with the technical
literature, but have seen only a few articles in Scientific American. In
the Nov. 92 issue, for example, there is a table comparing words that mean
"milk", "throat" or "chew" in various Eurasian language families.
Burrow, of course, wrote before this theory came on the scene. But any
modern day quotes from Burrow must take this into account. Thus, one will
have to show first that Finno-Ugrian or Uralic is more closely related to 
Dravidian than other families. For particular words, one must show that the 
common words exist in Uralic and in Dravidian and in NO OTHER families.

>The Occam's Razor is: Tamil 'val, vaLa' > Skt. 'bala'
>       Tamil 'val' strength > Latin 'val' strength.

>I might also add that English and latin words 'value', valorem'
>were also borrowings from tamil 'vilai' which of course need to be
>tested. We also have to remember that Roman-Tamil contact is
>significant. For example, there are 68 places within tamil naadu
>where Roman coins have been unearthed and it considered one of the
>highest number in any area at least within india. I hold the
>opinion that it is latin which borrowed from tamil based on the
>historicity of the words and the development of the word within
>Tamil.

First, read IE comparative dictionaries. For the case at hand, keep in
mind that the IE tree looks like this (no time scale implied by the
length of the branches)

               |----Italic
           |---|
           |   |----Celtic
       |---|
  IE --|   |----Germanic
       |
       |----Greek
       | [rest deleted]

So you must also consult comparative dictionaries for each branch point.
It is the responsibility of those proposing new theories to show that
older theories are inferior, not that of the readers or critics. You are
ignoring this responsibility.

Finally Occam's razor refers to the principle that, other things being
equal, the simplest theory is the best. So YOU must prove why your theory
is better or simpler than those which have been accepted hitherto.
That is the standard for all journals and referees. Authors who ignore
this point will have their articles rejected by journals. Fourtunately for
some of the those posting articles, USENET is not refereed.


-- 
Vidhyanath Rao			It is the man, not the method, that solves
nathrao+@osu.edu		the problem. - Henri Poincare
(614)-366-9341			[as paraphrased by E. T. Bell]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.tamil