From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2888
Date: 2000-07-27
----- Original Message -----
From: <kalyan97@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 27, 2000 4:42 AM
Subject: [tied] (unknown)
Zupanija (Z = "zh" or "z^") is derived from Zupan 'the
supervisor of a Zupa (a salt mine, sometimes also a salt or
silver depot)' -- a very important function in early Slavic
states, as salt production was an extremely lucrative
business, usually monopolised by the ruler. Zupan eventually
came to mean something like 'alderman' or 'sheriff' in
Anglo-Saxon England -- a royal official responsible for an
administrative unit. As characteristically Iranian agent
nouns in -pa:na- (cf. Indic -pa:- < IE *pax-) mean
'guardian, supervisor, protector', an Iranian connection
used to be proposed for Zupan as well, but the idea has been
abandoned by most scholars: the morphological division is
after all Zup-an rather than Zu-pan. However, Zupa itself is
a mysterious word and I'd like to see a convincing etymology
of it myself. Slavic *Z comes from earlier *g(W) palatalised
before a front vowel (that is, Zupa < something like
*geup-a:), which seems to rule out any connection with the
Tamil word.
The West Slavic word *(gU)panU (Polish pan, Czech & Slovak
pán, Old Czech hpán) meaning 'lord, master, sir, Mr.' is in
all likelihood independent of Zupan, though it was once
regarded as its abbreviation. It may be a genuine Iranian
loan, as *g(a)u-pa:na- 'cattle-guardian, cowherd' is a very
plausible Iranian compound (attested e.g. in Pashto as
Go:b@, G = "gh", cf. also Sanskrit go-pa:-). Perhaps the
Slavs retained a memory of their powerful Scythian or
Sarmatian neighbours as cattle breeders and cowboys.
An alternative etymology (less convincing, as far as I'm
concerned) connects pan with IE *pot- 'host, master'
(surviving in Lithuanian patis = Sanskrit pati- < *pot-i-)
via the feminine form *pot-ni: > *po:ni: > (West) Slavic
pani, yielding pan through back-derivation. This etymology,
though beguiling, doesn't work without some ad hoc tricks
and fails to explain the Old Czech form.
Old Indic sabha: 'house of public meetings (+ secondary
meanings)' is not connected with any of the above. I'm not
sure how to etymologise it, but since it was used with
reference to assemblies, social gatherings, etc., sa- must
be the 'together' prefix. We'd need an Indologist to
explain -bha: in this context (< *sm-bHw-a: 'being
together'??).
Piotr
> http://www.croatia.hr/counties.html
> The Zupanija (county), appeared in the 10th century as a
more
> advanced form of the territorial and political
organization of the
> Croatian state.
>
> I would appreciate info. on the etymology of 'zupanija'.
In Tamil,
> 'cupai' means a district or province. Can this be related
to
> sabha_ (Rigveda)?
>
> Regards, Kalyanaraman