Re: Mitanni and Matsya

At 11:21:46 AM on Saturday, April 5, 2008, Francesco
Brighenti wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson"
> <liberty@...> wrote:

>> By the way last night I came across another etymology for
>> Varuna, from 'The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-
>> European Roots':

>> wel-¹. To see. 1. Suffixed zero-grade form *wl-id- in
>> Germanic *wlituz, appearance, in Old Norse litr,
>> appearance, color, dye, akin to the source of LITMUS. 2.
>> Suffixed form *wel-uno- perhaps in Sanskrit Varuna,
>> "seer, wise one", sovereign god: VARUNA. [Pok. 1. uel-
>> 1136.]

[...]

> But there's something even odder in your American Heritage
> Dictionary etymology. The quote (copied above) you
> reproduced in your message is *not* from the current
> online version of Calvert Watkins' IE roots index at

> http://www.bartleby.com/61/IEroots.html

> Where is it from?

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots,
revised and edited by Calvert Watkins, 2nd edn. 2000.
According to the front matter, it contains about twice as
many entries as the appendix to AHD4, which is what's
available online.

[...]

> Is this entry from an older version of Watkins' index of
> IE roots, or what?

A more extensive version.

> Moreover, I am puzzled by the fact that the entry,
> supposedly written by Watkins, you quote in your message
> directs to Pokorny's entry <*u_el-1> 'to see', whose link
> is given by me above, and which doesn't mention at all a
> "suffixed form *wel-uno-" (= *u_el-uno).

If at least some of the material in an entry, or the root
itself, is treated in Pokorny, Watkins includes a pointer;
this doesn't mean that his treatment is the same. Sometimes
he assigns to one root items that Pokorny assigns to two
different ones, in which case there are pointers to both.
Some entries are for items -- suffixes, for instance -- for
which Pokorny has nothing comparable, and then there's a
note to the effect that the root isn't in Pokorny.

> What a mess! *Who* is exactly the proponent of this
> etymology for the name Varun.a?

Watkins apparently supports it, but there's no way to tell
from the book who originally proposed it.

Brian