Re: Possible sandhi in Indo-Iranian "drauj"?

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 65155
Date: 2009-09-30



--- On Wed, 9/30/09, bobbyisosceles <nervous@...> wrote:

From: bobbyisosceles <nervous@...>
Subject: [tied] Possible sandhi in Indo-Iranian "drauj"?
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2009, 12:21 PM

 
The "hu-/du-" opposition meaning "good/bad" appears in a number of compounds. Most of the time, these compounds are appended with š - as in "hušiti-", "good dwelling" or the Modern Persian word "došmand", "enemy."

However, I've seen in Sanskrit a potential sandhi combination H->r, as in "Duryodhna" < (duh: + yudh-) meaning "bad/dirty fighter."

With that in mind, is the word "draoj-/draug- ", meaning "lie," really a combination of duH + aoj/aox to mean "bad word/bad utterance"? Looking only at the Modern Persian "durugh" would lead one to that conclusion, but the Avestan and Old Persian forms didn't have that epenthesis. Is there such a thing as a "zero grade" version of duH that became "dr"?
 
It's interesting how that word seems to have permeated the Balkans, e.g. Serbo-Croat, Turkish, etc. How far north did it go into Slavic? Is it also in Hungarian?