Re: [tied] What is *IE for Soma?

How can molten metal be potable? My Sanskrit resources are rather limited, so I can't find a translation for "soma", but in the glossary section of "A Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language" by Jan Gonda, there is a translation for "rasa" -- it's "juice". Is comparing Modern Tamil, a Dravidian language, with Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, really practical?

Andy Howey

"S.Kalyanaraman" <kalyan97@...> wrote:

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:> 14-12-03 00:14, S.Kalyanaraman wrote:>> > Soma, hauma are attested. > > > > This was a commodity, a product (since soma was purchased in > > cartloads). Are there cognates in other IE languages? > > > > What could be *IE? > > Skt. soma-, Av. haoma-, etc. < Proto-Indo-Iranian *s�uma-, a derivative > of {su-} as in Skt. sunoti '(he) presses'. The root *seu- 'press out, > extract liquid' is IE with a number of cognates outside IIr. (cf. Gk. > huei 'it rains'), and *s�u-mo-s is an expected derivative meaning 'that > whis is pressed out, juice' (it could of course be applied metonymically > to a juice-giving plant). Thanks, Piotr. It could also be applied metonymically to a potable 'rasa', molten metal. In Tamil, veda-iyal means 'alchemy' (the chemistry of vedi, the fire- altar). In Samskr.tam, rasa_yana is the word for 'chemistry' and early rasa va_da meant 'transformation of base metals into gold'. Hence, the compound: soma-rasa.

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