Yajñopavīta: A Test Case for Text-book Etymologists

 

Yajñopavīta: A Test Case for Text-book Etymologists

Shrikant G Talageri

 

This is not a long article: it is only about a question on which I have ruminated for long, and which has continuously haunted me. I now realized that it is also a question which should be answered by etymologists and linguists (and their countless sepoys on the internet) who wax eloquent on exact phonetic rules of derivation when discussing the origins of words, and argue against certain words being Indo-European or Indo-Aryan simply because, as per their textbook dogmas, these words do not follow the rules of phonetic derivation which they believe to be immutable laws of nature.

Of course, they always completely forget these immutable laws when convenient to them! I have pointed this out countless times in my articles. Most especially in the following one:

https://talageri.blogspot.com/2022/08/indian-fauna-elephants-foxes-and-ait.html 

The above is not a single instance. All opponents of the OIT follow this kind of selective faith in immutable phonetic laws when they do not want to accept clear connections between PIE roots and certain Indo-Aryan words which they want to brand as “non-Aryan” (non-Indo-European) – and ignore these laws when inconvenient to their anti-OIT arguments. And I have had occasion to refer to these fraudulent arguments countless times in my articles.

 

No, I am not going to go into old cases repeatedly discussed. I only wish to place this one single test before whoever chooses to think about it, and not merely in continuation of arguing it out but because I am genuinely interested in knowing the answer:

The word for the “sacred thread” in Sanskrit is “yajñopavīta”. The words in some other prominent modern Indo-Aryan languages are:

Hindi:   janeū.

Marathi:   zānve.

Gujarati:   janoī.

Sindhi:   jānyā.

 

Even the Dravidian languages have some related words:

Kannada:   janivāra.

Telugu:   jandhyam(u).

 

What exactly are the exact immutable rules (different for each language) of phonetic change which transform the Sanskrit yajñopavīta to janeū in Hindi, zānve in Marathi, janoī in Gujarati, and jānyā in Sindhi? I will not ask the same question for the Kannada and Telugu words since of course they cannot be claimed to be genetically derived from the Sanskrit word and can only be adopted from Sanskrit.

That the four words are derived from the Sanskrit word is undeniable and is not being denied. The question is: are there really immutable phonetic laws of sound change which govern these derivations. What are those laws in each case? And are they regular laws: i.e. do they apply in every case where the Sanskrit sound becomes a Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati or Sindhi word? Are the Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati and Sindhi words for yajña then jan, zān, jan and jān respectively?. And how (i.e. on the basis of which exact and immutable phonetic rules) does upavīta get converted every time to eū, ve, oī, and yā respectively?

 

If even words, about whose derivation there can be no doubt, fail to follow immutable rules, how can allegedly immutable rules of phonetic derivation be used as clinching arguments, as people always do when discussing IE issues?

I do not want to indulge in arguments and discussions on this. I am merely musing about it. Idly.