Re: [tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 12286
Date: 2002-02-05

Benveniste is actually sceptical of such a connection: "... the idea of mutual behaviour (whether friendly or hostile) is more strongly felt in the uses of <ari->, <arya-> than any suggestion of eulogy" (it is page 304, as a matter of fact). I agree with him. There is a lot of evidence that the Indo-Aryan meaning 'noble' is secondary, and that the term originally expressed some kind of ethnic, religious or socio-political solidarity among the Indo-Iranians.
 
The etymology of the prefix(es) <ari-> is uncertain, but 'excellent' is a somewhat stretched interpretation. Greek ari- means things like 'very', 'super-' or 'extremely', as in <ari-ze:los> 'conspicuous, outstanding' ('well visible'), <ari-gno:tos> 'easy to be known' (also 'notorious'), <ari-dakrus> 'very tearful', but there's no evident association with great merit, social superiority or anything of the sort. I have no Greek etymological dictionary to consult, but a connection with <aristos> seems a priori likely, so the whole group could be derived from *h2arh1-i 'well, perfectly, fittingly' (a figurative extension of '(as) in a joint'). Skt. ari-, as in <ari-gu:rta->, <ari-s.t.uta-> 'devoutly praised' or <ari-dHa:yas-> 'easy to milk' may or may not be related, for all I know, but 'excellence' does not seem to be its semantic centre of gravity either.
 
Piotr
 
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: kalyan97
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2002 11:42 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Accepted cognates of Arya?

--- In cybalist@......, "caraculiambro" <gpiotr@......> wrote:
> <aryá-> meaning 'hospitable lord' (from <ar-í->) is quite often
> considered as possibly related to *h2al-jo- 'other' (in which
meaning
> Sanskrit utilises its IE competitor, *h1on-jo- > Skt. anya-), the
> semantic process being parallelled by the relation between <hostis>
> and <hospes> in Latin.

How about the point made by Beneveniste (p. 314 in the attachment of David's earlier message) about prefix ari- in Sanskrit and Greek, meaning, perhaps 'excellent?' Are there similar prefixes in other IE languages?