The Word for Color/Yellow in Sanskrit?

"S.Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@...>" writes:
<<Yes, varn.a = colour;... haridvarn.a, `of a yellowish golden colour'>>

<varn.a, varNa> probably did not mean "color" in the modern sense of an
color, independent of a particular object or process. More probable, as a
reference to hue, is that it referred to the result of a particular process
-- "dyed, impressed, covered or painted".

In looking at the numerous definitions of <varNa>, we can get some rough
ideas about what the original meaning might have been.

Cappeller's Dictionary on the web gives "cover, lid, outside, external
appearance, colour, dye, paint, complexion; sort, kind, character, sort of
men i.e. caste; letter, sound, vowel, syllable, word; praise, glory." Words
like "cover, lid, outside" suggest no particular reference to hue -- what we
would call color. Color would be just one of many aspects of outward
appearance.

Perhaps more telling are Vaman Shivaram Apte's definitions of <VarNa> which
mention the word referred to "Cajanus Indicus", that is the pidgeon pea
plant. Along with being an important food plant, Cajanus Indicus was also
used to produced pigments for impressing images on treated skins. A web page
on Hindu Minatures describes it in this way: "Tracing paper (charba) was
prepared from deer-skin. Drawings were transferred by pricking and pounding
with charcoal powder. For fine work the charcoal was made from the arahar
plant (Cajanus Indicus)...." This process jibes with some of the definitions
given for the verb form <VerN>, "to pound, to exert onself." Applying
designs or pigmentation to materials could be done in a variety of ways, and
this appears to refer to impressing the pigment into the surface as opposed
to soaking involved in standard dyeing.

The reference to <varNa> as gold may in fact also refer to the inlaying of
goldleaf, the result of gold's ability to be hammered into extremely thin
sheets that can be applied to more rigid materials.

However, Apte also mentions that <varNa> also meant "saffron" which was used
in a variety of ways to alter dyed materials, creating an overlay or changing
the hue of the pigmentation. P. Willard, in a recent book on Saffron,
mentions that even before its use as a spice there are indications that
saffron was already being used in this way. For example, it's been documented
that the Phoenicians found that saffron dye would make earlier purple dyes
nearly the hue of the later, more coveted "royal purple".

There is also in Apte reference to <varNa> as a cloak, a covering, 'the
housing of an elephant' and 'the applications of perfumed unguents to the
body', none of which suggest "color" in the modern sense.

I doubt that an expression like "colors include blue, green, red, yellow and
black," ever occurred in ancient Sanskrit. Simply because there's no real
evidence that the modern concept of color as something independent from an
object or process existed.

As far as <hari> goes, I see that it is being described here not only as
"yellowish-green" but as "a yellowish-golden color." But this is mainly the
result of the way we reconstruct words, not what they actually once meant.

If we gather all the meanings of <hari> together we might with a number of
exceptions say that in today's language they must have referred to something
yellow, green, gold, tan, brown, etc. But that is adding up all the
different meanings of <hari> (and excluding others) as if the word started as
a generalization.

That isn't how it works. Ancient peoples very probably did not give a word
to an abstract color and then applied it to individualized items. Instead
they probably used the color of one item or process and expanded it to other
things it looked like. If "red" comes from "ruby", then the ruby word came
first. Then other things were called ruby-like, in reference to their
appearance, but not always their hue.

<hari> has a huge number of definitions, that includes everything from "a
ploughman" to "a peacock" to "a furrow" to "a frog" to "an ape", to "a horse,
especially the steeds of Indra", to "agriculture" to "wind", "fire", "sun",
"moon" and the names of five different gods. It always felt to me like
these *ghel- words may have represented standard trade words that could be
confirmed upon actual visual comparison, a way of confirming you and

People must have agreed upon a standard measure of color -- just like weights
and measures, inches or pounds -- and spread the use in thousands of early
marketplaces so that you are always comparing things to that standard. My
rough guess is that they often compared other items to a particular type of
well-known dye or, in the case of yellow, to the color of deer or horse
hides, maybe.

So, without knowing the context, let me translate a garment decribed as
"haridvarn.a" as just as likely to mean "dyed the color of a horse", "covered
in horse-hide", "impressed with a shiny, sun-like substance", "imprinted with
bright decorations", "pigmented with the hues of a peacock" or "having a
texture like a frog" -- they all seem just as likely as (or rather more l
ikely than) the suggested "of a yellowish golden colour".

Steve Long