--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:
> Marathi Koti and Hindi Karode means 10,000,000 a multiple of kentum.
If you are implying they are etymologically related to PIE *kmtom-
'100', you are far off the mark my friend.
These Indo-Aryan numerals (equivalent to Anglo-Indian "crore") derive
from the Sanskrit term kot.i- '10,000,000', attested at a very late
date (its earliest attestation is found in the Laws of Manu, c. 1st
century BCE - 2nd century CE). This word was once regarded as identical
to kot.i- 'edge, tip, point, summit' under the assumption that the
highest number, i.e. 10 million in ancient Indo-Aryan numeration, had
been conceived of as the "summit" of the numeral system.
Now, even accepting this old linguistic hypothesis, and even admitting
that the etymology of kot.i- 'summit' is problematic (Burrow compares
this word with Latin cautes, -is 'sharp, jagged rock', while others
think it to be of Dravidian origin), you can see there is no relation
of sort with PIE *kmtom-. Yet, I know that some scholars have proposed
to separate kot.i- '10,000,000' from kot.i- 'summit' with assigning the
former term (but not the latter one) an Austroasiatic etymology -- see
this page from Turner's CDIAL, citing to this effect Mayrhofer's Indo-
Aryan etymological dictionary:
http://tinyurl.com/637673
An interesting numeral indeed.
Regards,
Francesco