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SUPPLEMENT TO VOLUME 10
THE SECRET OF THE VEDA be an earlier one. It was found in this incomplete form in
Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts. 2. "A System of Vedic Psychology" is an incomplete study written
probably in the early days at Pondicherry, 1910-14.
The Origins of Aryan Speech Page-163 towards a science of languages. Even the classification of tongues as Aryan, Dravidian, Semitic cannot be called scientific; it is empirical and depends upon identities which my not be fundamental. We must go deeper. European philology has started from word-identities and identities of final word -meaning. I propose to start from root-identities and identities of original and derivative root -meaning and even from sound-identities and identities of fundamental and applicatory sound -meaning. It is, I believe, possible in this way to establish the unity of the Aryan tongues and some at least of the laws governing the birth and development of Aryan speech. My enquiry does not carry me farther. I do not pretend as yet to make out the laws of speech – but only to establish from data, some facts of Aryan speech which may eventually help in solving the wider problem. In another respect also the philologists seem to me to have misunderstood the conditions of their enquiry. They have been not rigid enough and yet too rigid. They have been too rigid in not allowing for the flexibility of mind movements. They have sought for the same invariable sequence which we observe in the physical world and admitted a law only where such sequence seemed to occur. The laws of physical formation follow a fixed line and their variations even are…a fixed fashion. But with the growth of life in matter there comes a growing element of freedom, of a more elusive principle and a more elastic variation; for this reason science has found life more difficult to fathom and analyse than matter and her triumphs here have been far less notable than in the pure physical domain. Mind brings with it a still freer play, a still more elusive principle and flexible application. A general law always obtains, but the application, the particular processes…. .more subtly and are more numerous. Science, not taking into account this law of increasing freedom, has in the domain of mind accomplished little or nothing. When we deal with the laws of speech, we must remember this flexibility of all mind processes. We must ourselves keep a flexible mind to follow it and an open eye for all variations. It is for regularity in irregularity that one must always be on the watch, not for a fixed or a continuous regularity. On the other hand the few laws which Philology has admitted have been, by a sort of false com- Page-164 pensation for their original narrowness, used with too free and even lax a play of fancy. Often indeed instead of working as a law, the philological principle presents itself as an ingenious means for inventing word-identities. I have disregarded as any other error of imperfect enquiry the rigid philological divorce of the Dravidian and Aryan languages. Whether there be a separate Dravidian stock or no, it is to me a certainty that Tamil owes not only many of its most common terms but whole families of words to the original Aryan speech. Its evidences cannot be neglected in such an enquiry as I have undertaken, for they are of the greatest importance. Indeed the theory worked out by us took its rise originally not from any analysis of the Sanscrit word-system, but from an observation of the relations of Tamil in its non-concretised element to the Greek, Latin and North Indian languages. At the same time it is on an analysis of the Sanscrit word-system that I have chiefly relied. I have omitted from that system most of its Vedic elements. The meanings of Vedic words are often extremely disputable and it would be unsafe to rely whether on the significances fixed by the European scholars or on those fixed centuries ago by Sayana or even by Yaska. It is better, and quite sufficient for the immediate purpose, to rely upon the classical tongue with its undoubted and well-ascertained meanings. These are the lines upon which I have conducted my enquiry. The full proof of the results arrived at depends upon a larger labour of minute classification both of root-families and word- families in all the greater Aryan tongues, – a labour which is already in process, but is not yet complete. What I have written in this book, will, I hope, be judged sufficient for a secure foundation. If it does no more, it may possibly lead to a deeper and freer approach to the problem of the origin of speech, which, once undertaken in the right spirit and with an eye for the more subtle clues, cannot fail to lead to a discovery of the first importance to human thought and knowledge. Page-165 CHAPTER II
IN AN ordinary language which has not preserved the evidence of its origins, we are compelled to start with the full formed word as our first and earliest document. We then find words existing in very small, unconnected families, little individualistic groups which seem to have started life on their own account without any observable growth from a common stock with other words that have, physically, a race-resemblance to them. We can all see that doceo, doctrina; doctor, docilis, documen, doctus, docte are one family. They acknowledge their kinship openly. From this acknowledged kinship we can draw certain important conclusions, – especially the law of development from a common root and certain fixed forms by the accretion of which to the root this development was effected. It is a beginning, but it does not carry us beyond the surface-strata of our subject of enquiry. For when we look farther we are confronted with a serious difficulty. We find a certain number of words which, in their formation, would seem to be connected like the family we have glanced at above, though not so strictly connected – doleo, I grieve, dolenter, painfully, dolor, grief, are obviously so inter- connected; dolus, fraud, dolosus, deceitful, dolose, deceitfully, are so interconnected; dolo, I hew, cut or break, dolabra, an axe, are so interconnected. But between these three families we have in Latin itself no proof of any connection. In languages which have so far worn away their original phonetic moulds that entirely unconnected words wear the same or a similar dress, this want of connection would not lead to any farther conclusion beyond our mere inability to establish a connection. But Latin is a language which has preserved its phonetic moulds to a considerable extent. If then these three little families are entirely unconnected, then any hope of establishing or effecting Science of Speech-Origins or even a science of Aryan Speech-Origins, must be abandoned. For by the supposition to which we would then be inevitably led, there must have been three original roots, dol to grieve, dol, to cut or split, and dol to deceive, unconnected Page-167 with each other in origins. How then did their significances come to be attached to them? By chance? by caprice? by arbitrary choice? by some obscure psychological law we cannot trace? We can no longer hope to decide. The hypothesis I shall start from, – and my attempt to connect the superficially unconnected without which there can be no science must start with hypotheses, – is that there can be no such want of connection, that dol, to grieve, dol, to split and dol, to deceive must have been and are one root and not three, and the three different significances attached to them, have been developed not by caprice, chance or arbitrary selection but have a natural connection and were developed in intellect by an intelligible psychological movement behind intellect from an original common meaning or mind-impression created in the Aryan mind by the sound dol. For I hold it to be obvious that speech must have started from what we in India would call the Guna of sound, some natural property of particular sounds to create under given conditions a particular kind of impression on the mind which constantly associated with that sound, became the basis of a number of special intellectual significances, called by us the meaning of words, much more variable, much less fixed than the basic mind-significance. Afterwards the intellect playing consciously with the sound by association, by analogy, by figure, by metaphor and simile, by transference, by a number of means, may carry the intellectual significance far outside the bounds of the original mental impression. Still if we have some evidence, clues may be found and then the vagrant word may be traced back to its parent mind-impression. For this reason we have to catch a primitive language when it is young or else find one which even in its maturity is more faithful than others to its primitive mould and preserves on its face much of its ancient history. Such a language is Sanscrit; it is, in fact, almost the only language which at all answers to our need. But a sound like dol is not and cannot be a pure, primary and isolated sound. It has congeners, at least in form, brothers, cousins, more distant relatives. Does this kinship in form involve an original kinship in mind-impression and therefore in history of significance? If the theory of Guna is correct there must be some Page-168 such kinship. Turning from Latin to the more fruitful field, the more copious evidence of Sanscrit, we find this root dol in the form dāl (a sounded like the English u in ‘dull’ and represented both in Greek and Latin by either ā, ū or ŏ) meaning also to split, break and then to bloom, open. We find dala, a fragment; a blade, petal or leaf, or find dalapa, a weapon, that which splits, just as we have dalbra, an axe from dolo; dalmi, Indra’s thunder- bolt, also the god Shiva, dalika, a piece of wood, that which is split. We find also dalbha meaning fraud, dishonesty, sin, and we have thus established that in Sanscrit also, the root dal meant to deceive as well as to split. We find also the reason why dal came to mean to deceive, for the word dala means, not only the blade of a weapon, but the sheath of a weapon. In other words, dal must have borne the significance, to cover or to contain. We find from other Sanscrit instances that the idea of covering or hiding leads naturally in the Aryan mind to the idea of fraud or deceit, as in chad, to cover, chadman, a disguise, pretext, fraud, dishonesty, trick. But how are the two significances, cover and split, connected? That they are connected, is established, as a strong probability at least by the word, cha, cutting, dividing, a fragment or part, which in its feminine form cha means covering, concealing and the neuter cham, a house, that which covers. If they are connected, the idea of cutting must have led to that of cutting off, separating, screening and thence to the significance we find in chadman, covering, disguise, fraud. There is no distinct significance of pain attached to the root dal either in Sanscrit or Greek; but we do find that the word dabdha in Sanscrit meant crushed, oppressed, trampled, and more curiously and significantly we find dalanam in the sense of tooth-ache. It is easy to see how the idea of cutting, tearing, rending must have led easily to the sense first of a special kind of pain and then by detrition of force to that of pain generally. But we find more. We find not only dal, we find other words kindred in sound, having something of the same history. For instance, dambh means to kill, destroy, strike down; but dambha, the noun proper to this verb, means deceit, fraud, trickery, sin, ostentation, pride (we see how starting from the idea of fraudulent intention or hypocrisy we come to the very different idea of ostentation without fraud or pride, Page-169 -
again by detrition of special force); we find dambha and dambholi meaning
like dalmi Indra’s thunderblt, and dambha means also like dalmi,
the god Shiva. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that to the Aryan mind dambha
and dalmi were words so closely akin that they carried easily the same
impression to the mind and the same significance to the intellect. But what is
there common to these two roots? It is the sound do, which must, therefore, by
my theory, have had a Guna or mind-impression which naturally adhered in common
to the two roots dal and dambh. Page-170 dama, damathu, damana, damya the kindred sense of punishment, and we find in the Vedic sense of dama the sjgnificance house, as in Latin domus, Greek domos, doma (again we notice , the lengthening of the vowel), from which at once we return to the idea of covering which we had to infer in dol. All these are evidently kindred roots belonging to the labial variety of the da family, formed that is to say by accretion of the sounds p, ph, b, bh (labionasal) or any combination of which they are the base to the simple sound. We turn to other subfamilies. We find in the guttural sub- family daks, to hurt or kill, daksayya, a vulture (tearer of carrion); dagh, to kill, hurt, dagha, burning; dangh, to abandon or leave, which I trace to the sense of cutting off, separating, casting away, an association of ideas we shall find again in Sanscrit. We find in the cerebral subfamily, dand to punish, fine or chastise, dand, a cudgel, staff or sceptre, - afterwards, any trunk, stalk or thing standing; fine, chastisement; as in dama, damathu, damana; assault, subjection, control, restraint, as in dama; pride, as in dambha; a corner or angle, apparently from the sense of cutting off, separating and so containing which mates it in its root to dama, a house, and dolo to feign or deceive. A number of derivatives from the dand and danda repeat the same sense. We find also dadaka, a tooth or tusk and dadha, a large tooth or tusk. We find in the dental subfamily danta, a tooth; also bower, arbour (to cover), screen, shelter; dan, to cut or divide, and its derivatives danava a Titan, danu, a demon, also supposed to mean conquering or destroying, like damana, dadhi, a garment (to cover). We find in the liquid subfamily, along with dol, day, to hurt, and in daya,loss, destruction, a part, share or gift. We find in the sibilant subfamily das, to destroy, bite, overpower (dam); to decay, waste, perish; to cast away (cf. dangh, to abandon); and its derivatives, notably dasyu, an enemy; dasana, tooth and dasta, bitten; dans, to bite, sting; dansa bite, sting, cutting, tearing, tooth, pungency; a limb or joint; dandasa, a tooth; damstra and other derivatives varying these senses; ,dasa a division, or period of time, afterwards a state or condition, age, etc. I but we find also dansana, dansa and dasana in the sense of armour; dansita, mailed or pro- Page-171 tected, - dantura, covered, overspread; which bring us back to the sense of covering. The idea of protection once ascertained and traced, we turn back and find it recur in dagh, dangh, in danam, protection (as well as gift), day, to protect, have pity, with its derivatives. The sense of giving which we find in daya and can trace to the idea of cutting up, distribution or casting away, abandoning, handing over, but it can be shown to result really from the former; we get in da, to give, danam, a gift and many other derivatives; daksina a gift; in dad and dadh, to give, dasma, a sacrificer, and in day, to grant, divide, allot. We have, in addition, dah, to torment, grieve, burn; and its derivatives in the same sense; dahara, small, fine, young (cf. dabhra), a mouse or rat (the former), dahra, small, fine, thin, a fire. Lastly we have proven the previous existence of an obsolete root do, the adjective da in the sense of giving, destroying, cutting off, the noun da a gift or donation and the feminine da in the sense of heat (dah) and of repentance (dolor). The evidence is almost of an oppressive inclusiveness. It is a family of words which bear the same or kindred meanings and seem all to go back to the root-meaning, to divide, usually with some idea of completeness, force or even violence. Page- 172 (also to speak?); dakam, water (to flow), daks, to go or move; dagh, to go, leap, flow, attain; danu, a fluid or drop; dabh, to go, push, impel; dabhram, the ocean (to flow); das, to shine, dasma, beautiful (bright, shining). These dissociated meanings are very few in number and rare, in occurrence. Such as they are they occur in different parts of the family, guttural, labial, dental and sibilant, and their presence and distribution proves yet more powerfully the now apparent and established truth that all Sanscrit words having for their basis the sound da are of one family, go back to the simple sound da as their simple root of being and derive from it all their varying senses. We have to add this important fact, important for the particular root family and as we shall see for the whole theory, but not affecting our general conclusion, that we must seek in the original mind-impression of the sound da some force of Guna which gives rise directly to the idea of dividing with force or completeness and also can enter into ideas of motion and shining.
But we have not
yet finished with this sound da. For just as the derived sound dal
had its congeners, sounds kindred to it in form, so has the simple sound da
other simple sounds by its side which are kindred to it in forms and ought
therefore to be congeners. These
sounds are da di, di, du, du, dr, dr. The vowel sounds e
and 0, ai and au are in Sanscrit merely modifications of i
and u, so that these seven roots with the lost root da form the
whole original family of simple sounds depending on and having for their common
base and element, the consonant sound d. If these roots are found to be one
original family, we have gained another step and come yet nearer to the
foundations of speech. My third step in the hypothesis is to accept this
supposition and to lay down the rule that all simple roots, formed in sound by
the accretion of a vowel to the consonant sound d are one family having the Guna
of that sound as their seed of meaning, just as they themselves are separately
the seed of meaning to their own descendants. We get therefore a seed-sound in
addition to the primitive root-sound and their descendants the secondary and
tertiary root-sounds. Page-173 da and da are the same root, one a short form, the other the long form. Da has the same sense as da, das, like das, means to hurt, kill, it means also to give. There are no senses of the da root which are not shared by or traceable to the da root. We must therefore proceed to the other vowels as forming three and not six classes of roots; we may treat in the absence of any opposing facts di as a lengthening of di, du of du, dr of dr. From the da family I have omitted the words which have for their bases the syllables dar and dar, yet these words are of great interest. For we find dara, the sense of tearing, rending; and also, like dabhra and dahara, of little, small. This sense of tearing, breaking, hurting we get again in daravam, darani darita, dardara, darma, darva (injury, mischievous person, goblin, as in danu), in dora, a rent, hole, ploughed field extending itself to darab, a wife, daraka (also a child, infant, young animal, sense belonging also to dahara), daranam, darika, dari, dari, darita, darin, darbha, the sharp Kusha grass, dardura, a district, province; daru, tearing, rending, also a piece of wood, wood or pine tree, and daruna, terrible, rough, cruel, frightful, sharp, severe, violent or agonising (of grief and pain), a word of great interest as it shows us how moral senses developed from the physical idea. We find too dara, a cave, daratha and dari (also a valley) in the same sense from the idea of cleft or hole which we have already had in dora, daraka. Again we have the same word dara in the sense of a stream, darani, an eddy, current, or surf, daratha, fleeing, flight, scouring for forage, dardura, water. Connected perhaps with this sense of flight, but really expressing the oppressive troubling feeling of fear we have dara, darad and dorado, fear, daratha, darita, timid, frightened. We have daridra, to be poor or needy, with its derivatives connecting the family with the sense of suffering, oppression, distress, wretchedness, burning (cf. dagdha, distressed, famished, dry, insipid, wretched, vile, accursed) we find in the da family. We have again daru in the sense of liberal, a donor, kind (cf. daksina, also meaning kind). There are more curious identities. Darad means among other senses, heart; now dahara and dahra also mean the cavity of the heart or the heart itself. Darad means also a mound, mountain or precipice; dardura likewise means a mountain; but in the da family we have also Page-174 da, a mountain, dasana, the peak of a mountain; danta, the peak, side or ridge of a mountain. The identification in sense of this dar basis in its stock with the da family is complete. Their only senses, not traceable to the common original meanings, which find no parallel in that family, are those which spring from the idea of sound, dardara, dardarika, a musical instrument; but we have in the Aryan vernacular the word damaru, a kind of drum, which may represent an original Aryan word not preserved in the literary language. Now the question arises; do all these words belong to the roots dr and dr, or are they from an original root dar? There can be no doubt as to the answer, nearly all, if not all, are avowedly children of the dr stock. It follows then that the roots of the dr family are one race with the roots of the da family, cousins perhaps, but members of a joint family who hold the same property in common and use it with a more than socialistic indiscriminateness. Dr itself means to hurt or kill, dr means to tear, rend, split, separate, disperse, and to fear; drti, a skin, hide, or bag; drka, a hole or opening; drnphu, a snake, thunderbolt (dambha, dambholi, dalmi), wheel (dalbha also means a wheel); the shining or burning sun. Drp is to inflame, kindle or to pain, torture; drmp also means to torture, afflict, distress, drbh, to fear, and drbdham, fear; finally drs, to see with all its derivatives. That this sense of seeing which we find also in drp (darpana, a mirror, darpalnam, the eye) comes not from the idea of light in reflection but from the original physical idea of discerning, separating with the eyes, is evident from the fact that das also means to see. There are two sets of associations in this word which are of considerable help to us in. fixing the exact history of certain developments in this family. The word drp expresses only violent trembling emotion; it means to be greatly delighted, wild, extravagant, mad or foolish, proud or arrogant (without any of that idea of ostentation attached to dambha); darpa means pride, insolence, haughtiness, heat, musk (from the strong oppressive scent); drpta means proud. Dr again means to care for, mind; desire, and so to worship or respect, – its root-sense is evidently care, anxiety or excitement of love or other favourable feelings. We see more clearly now why words of this root bear the sense Page-175 of grief, fear, pain. The mind-impression of the seed-sound carries with it this possibility of expressing any emotion or sensation, which is oppressive, troubling, disintegrating to the peace of the mind. To the pervasive root-idea of strong division, we have to add the idea of oppression tending to division which is thus revealed to our observation.
But drpta also means strong and this sense is found again in drmh, to strengthen, fortify, fasten, be firm, grow or increase;
drdham is
firm, fixed, solid, dense, strong, hard; drdham means iron, a fortress or
abundance; drbh, to tie, fasten, arrange, string together; drsad, a
stone or rock; drh, to be fixed or fasten, to grow, increase or prosper.
We have met some of these meanings in the da family. We have found words
there which.mean a mountain, and these may now be attributed to this
root-meaning of firmness, solidity, size and density. We may notice a group of
words which we have hitherto omitted; daman, string, thread or rope, a
bandage, a girdle, which also means a line or streak (from the idea of cutting);
damini, a foot-rope, dama, a string or cord and damini, lightning,
from the idea of shining. We may also note, as it now appears, that the kind of
light indicated by this family is only an oppressive or a sharp piercing light
as in damini, drnphu, dos, to shine, and the words which mean fire or to
burn. I have to suggest that this idea of firmness, solidity, compactness, comes
primarily from a sense of close heavy contact, pressing things together into
firm cohesion. Again, there are a certain number of compound roots with a base combined of d and which it would be as well to examine here as possibly kindred to the dr roots. We find drakata, a kettle-drum, dranks, to croak; druna, a scorpion (to sting); dru, wood, tree or branch (daru); druma, a tree; druha, a deep Page-176 lake; dragh, beat, torment, to exert oneself, be weary, stretch, also to be able (cf. daks, दक्ष्), drakh to be able, to become, dry (dagdha; dal to wither), to adorn, grace (to shine); drd, to split, divide or be pulled to pieces; drapa, mud, mire (which is really a meaning of dama, mud, mire), a small shell (dara also means a conch-shell); (द्राव , heat) drava, heat; drud, to sink or perish; drun, to hurt, injure, twist, bend; druna, a scorpion, or rogue; drunam, a sword or bow; druh, to hurt, bear malice; dru, to hurt or injure; dru gold, from the idea of brilliance; drek, to sound (originally, a discordant sound as in dranks), to grow or increase, to be exhilarated (drp); drona, a scorpion, a tree, a bucket. We have the idea of desire, wish or longing in dravinam, wish, desire;… We have the idea of solidity or density in dravya, substance, material, wealth, strength, dradhiman, tightness, firmness and heaviness in drakh, to obstruct. All these form a goodly array of evidences, showing the family-identity of these roots with the da and dr groups. There are a few isolated meanings whose connection is not so immediately clear, such as dra or drai, to sleep, dranam, sleep (cf. nidra); but this is probably connected in sense with dragh to be weary or heavy from exertion, and will then contain the common idea of heaviness or oppression; drah, to wake; drapa, heaven, either from shining or from the idea of covering; and one or two others of the kind. But these may all be traced with a little difficulty to the common significations and are extraordinarily few in number. One would expect in so ancient and long-lived a tongue as Sanscrit a far greater number of meanings which have wandered too far outside or too near to the farthest permissible verges of the country occupied by their race to be easily identifiable or exactly paralleled among their kindred. Then we have a number of significations resulting from the root-sense of motion which are of some importance to us. They start mainly from the two ideas of running and flowing. Dru means to run, flow, rush, attack, melt, ooze or simply by detrition of special force, to go or move. This root also means to hurt and to repent. We have also drun, to go, move, dru in the same sense, dram, to go or run about (Gr. dramos); drapsa, a drop; dravah, speed, etc., the noun proper to dru, but meaning Page-177 also play, drava, liquefaction, melting, running, flowing, flight, speed, and dravinam, wealth, amusement (cf. div, lake), dravanti, a river; dra, to run, make haste, fly (the same word which means to sleep), drutam, quickly, instantly, dragh, to wander about. We shall find that the idea of motion is common to all Sanscrit root-families but that in each case there are certain special significances kept in the words, where their special form has not suffered detrition, which tend to show that they originally indicated a particular kind of motion. It is possible and probable that swift overcoming forceful motion, "darting, dashing" kindred to the idea of pressure and division, is the proper sense of motion in the roots of this family. It is even possible that the words drava and dravanam from dru, distilling, liquefaction by heat, etc., daks, to do, go, or act quickly, keep the original force, and treat the other shades of sense under this head, show the gradual force of the influence of detrition, a phenomenon whose study is of as great importance in the history of language as the study of detritions of sound rightly so much insisted on in Comparative Philology. After such consistent and conclusive results a very cursory examination of the di and du families might be held sufficient. Nevertheless, in order that the full force of the evidence may be appreciated, I shall devote an equal care to these two households, fortunately not very numerous in their population, as well as to the compound bases, dy and dv, and the modified forms de (dai) and do (dau). We start as in the dra roots with dindi, a kind of musical instrument, and then come to dita, cut, torn, divided; diti, cutting, dividing, liberality; ditya, a demon (also daitya, cf. danu, danava); dinv, to gladden, please (drp); dimp, dimbh, to accumulate (dambh), also to order, direct; div, to shine, play, sport (cf. drava); squander (from the sense of waste, scatter); to throw, cast; be glad, be sleepy (dra, drai); be mad or drunk (drp); to wish; to vex, torment, lament, suffer pain; and two new meanings, to sell and to praise, – the one associated with the idea of giving, delivering, distributing; the other with the idea of love, respect, homage (dr). Proceeding we find div, diva and divan, heaven, sky (which helps perhaps to solve our former difficulty drapa, though I believe that to be connected with Page-178 Vedic drapi, a cloth or robe), dy (also divam) light, brilliance (the original meaning); divya, divine etc.; deva, divine, a god, quick- silver, a sense we have also in…a lover; sport, play; div to sport, gamble, lament, shine, throw or cast; devanam in connected senses, but also meaning praise; motion, beauty, and an affair or business which connects it with daks and daks perhaps with the Gr. drasso, I do[?], drama; dih, to increase, augment, and to smear, from the idea of rubbing, pressing; de, to protect, cherish; deha, anointing, body (to.. . .); dehi, rampart, wall, to cover or to strengthen; dai, to protect, brighten, cleanse, purify; di, to perish, waste; dih, decay, ruin; diti, diditi, splendour, lustre; dina, poor (daridra), distressed, wretched, sad (dagdha), frightened, timid (dara, darita); dip, to shine and its derivatives; dirgha, long (cf. dragh), dirghika, a lake, big pond or well. Finally we have dis, to give, grant, pay, assign, allot, show, point out, teach, direct or order (cf. dimp, above) daksa, desa, disa, direction, quarter. The last root, identically with Gr. deiknumi, at once throws a light on dasa, understanding, daksa, Gr. doxa, dokeo, Latin doceo, I teach. It is the same idea of discernment, discretion or explanation, allotting things to their place, showing, teaching… (Incomplete) Page-179 |