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 -----
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?