Re: snake, naga

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "S.Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@...>"
<kalyan97@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:>
> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Hng.html
>
> Thanks a lot Piotr, Torsten and Richard for the leads.
>
> Amazing how sounds and semantics travel (crawl?) -- from Khmer to
> Hebrew.
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/7874
> I note from this message that Piotr feels that Gk. enkhos 'spear'
> may not belong here but if it does, it may contain a secondary full
> grade of a root reconstructible as *h1neg^H-. In either case the
> verbal meaning "stab, wound" is primary, the meaning "knife" is
> derived from it.
>
> And again at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/7876
> Skt. na:gá- refers to elephants as well as snakes and is supposed

to

> be a vriddhied derivative of *nogW-o- 'naked (here: hairless)'.
>
> Thanks, Torsten, http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Hng.html
> is a veritable treasure-house, e.g.,
> na:ha:sh "snake" Hebrew
> neak "snake" Khmer
> ngata- "snake, worm" Indonesia
> nguak- "dragon, crocodile" Thai

I should warn you that Richard Wordingham has warned me that the SE
Asian forms may be Sanskrit loans. If so (and the Khmer dictionary
claimed that), it might be written in a different script. But on the
other hand, this might be a later learned sanskritization of a native
word.

>
> I found another Austric root: *s-r- "flow, stream"; "arrow,
> spear" Skt. Sara `arrow', `liquid, water'
>
> Could this be the Skt. Sarpa `serpent'; sr.ka `dart, spear'
> sharu `arrow, spear'; sari- "spear" Lolsiwoi, Morouas,
> Batunlamak, Penantsiro, Narango,Mafea, Tutuba, Aore, Malo?

That's what I think.

>
> Snake symbolism is very vivid on many glyphs of the Sarasvati-

Sindhu

> civilization (so-called Indus script seals and tablets). Maybe,
> *sara was a rhebus for a chalcolithic 'arrow'.

Note the American opposites "straight arrow" vs. "broken arrow"
(conceptual loan from some Native language?). Perhaps the snake
symbolism stands for "not straight (line); not right; destruction;
snakey"? Look at the bottom of

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/austric.html

Torsten