Re: [tied] Sanskrit question

A. wrote:

> Surely the meaning fits, but interestingly, Tvastr's daughter gives
> birth to the first truly mortal twins Yama and Yami. With that in
> mind, I couldn't help but ponder the similarity between the Vedic
> Tvastr and the Old Swedish term Tvistra - does anyone know if there
> is a Vedic term which means twin or seperate or some such thing,
> which may be linguistically related to Tvastr???

Germanic *twista- is a likely cognate of Skt. dvis.t.Ha- 'standing in
two places, ambiguous' < *dwi-sth2-o-.

Skt. tvas.t.ar- 'carpenter, builder' is an agent noun, IIr. *twarc'-tar-
< *twerk^-tor-, from a verb root meaning approx. 'cut, divide' (Av.
Tvars-). The first *r was dissimilated out of existence in Vedic.

PIotr