Re: Substrate language which contributed sarSapa to Indo Ar

From: shivkhokra
Message: 71490
Date: 2013-10-30

Dear Richard,

    The initial claim  made by jyothibabu that mustard or sarSapa is a loan from Dravidian to Sanskrit is not possible because of multiple reasons:

a) As I have demonstrated that Tamil looses /s/ from the words it borrows from Sanskrit. If you look at the Telugu form of mustard: "AvAlu", you will observe similar elision of the sanskrit /s/. On the other hand Sanskrit loan for mustard into Kannada  "sasuve" and Tulu "sasive" is closer to the parent form.


b) Southern India does not have much wheat and mustard cultivation because the temperature in southern states even in winters is not very suitable for growing wheat and mustard. Here is a state wise breakdown of mustard production from Department of Agriculture, Government of India:

http://agricoop.nic.in/

agricoop.nic.in/imagedefault/trade/edible%20oil%20profile.doc


If you go to Annexure I : Page 18 of the second link you will see a statewise breakdown of mustard production in India.


Top producers are: Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Assam, Bihar and Panjab.


All these states are non dravidian states.


A linguistic analysis has limitations into what it can tell us.


Best,

Shivraj



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

In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Shivraj wrote:

" ...Tamil drops an Indo-aryan s, initial as well as medial. "

We're talking about a possible borrowing from a Dravidian language with /s/ into Sanskrit, not a borrowing into Tamil.  There's more to Dravidian languages than just Tamil.  I also like Kalyan's idea of blend of two different words, though unfortunately blends make it even more difficult to demonstrate the origin of a word.

Richard.