Re: [tied] Re: Names of god

The vowel is short both in the "libation" word and the name of the goddess (who is a personification of the former). We also have the root noun <id.-> 'libation' (with few case forms attested), and id.a- as an epithet of Agni. The fact that the word occurs in Avestan (to tell the truth, on the available data I'm not sure at all if the vowel is etymologically long in Iranian) militates again Dravidian origin, but it could be an older loan taken from some Central Asian source. There must have been a good deal of folk-etymological confusion between <id.-> and <i:d.ya-> 'raiseworthy' and the rest.

Piotr

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From: liberty@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, September 19, 2001 12:41 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Names of god

What? I'm confused! How can the "i" not be long? Doesn't Vedic -l.- < -d.- < *-z.d.- < *-z^d- with compensatory lengthening on the loss of the *z.? Is the "i" short only in the name of the goddess or is it also short in the term for a libation? If it's short only in the name of the goddess then might it be of Dravidian origin and unrelated to the Avestan and Sanskrit words for libation? And what happened to the "d" in Av. i:z^a:? -David