Re: [tied] Re: Parvati

----- Original Message -----

From: Glen Gordon

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2000 9:35 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Parvati

Glen,

The element -vant-/-vat- is not a 'water' word, as you seem to believe, but an exceedingly common and higly productive Indo-Iranian suffix (< -*w(e)nt-) meaning 'having a lot of, rich in' (there is also a variant with initial m-, -ma(n)t-). It's saras- itself (< *ser-es-, an s-stem neuter) that means 'waterflow, stream'. Saras-vat-i: is the feminine form of the adjective saras-vant- 'rich in flowing water', with the suffix in the nil grade. Got it?

 

Hope you can see now that the name Pa:rvati: has nothing to do with water. As I pointed out last time, it has nothing to do with fire either. The word does not have the same morphological structure as Sarasvati:, since the base here is parvata- 'mountain, boulder', a thematic stem (< *perwnto-), not **par-vant-. As for *perwnto-, one might cut it up morphologically in several ways. But since Hittite has this very nice stem perun-a-, maybe it's simply *perwn-to- like Latin cornu:tus from cornu:.

 

I think I'll pour myself some Fire Water. Cheers,

 

Piotr

 

Isn't that assumptive, Piotr? How do we know whether the name isn't from a 
neighbouring dialect? What about Sarasvati then? In a same book, I saw 
Parvati meaning "She of the Mountain" and then Sarasvati meaning something 
different, "Flowing Water". What's up? Using the same analogy as Sarasvati, 
we would get Par-vati meaning "Fire Water". Speak to me.

- gLeN