From: vishalsagarwal
Message: 12287
Date: 2002-02-06
--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
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.
VA: A consideration of all the occurrences of the word in RV shows
that it is used practically always for Puru-Bharatas and their
allies. Never for the other Vedic tribes. Talageri has actually done
a good job in showing the political implications of this word in his
book published in 2000.
There are books dealing with the grammatical derivations, traditional
definitions and other aspects of Vedic grammar in relation to this
word, but they are in Hindi/Sanskrit and so I am leaving out these
references.
>
> 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'
VA: For 'ari' the following work is an excellent analysis -
Enric Aguilar I MATAS. 1991. Rgvedic Society. E. J. Brill: Leiden/New
York/Koln
This book will lead you to many other references.
Sincerely,
Vishal