Monday, September 11, 2017

Soil and smell

Soil is മണ്ണ്. Smell is മണം. Is there a common etymology?

It turns out that both words come from the same root, മണക്കുക to smell.

മണമുള്ളത് മണ്ണ് = Soil is that which smells.

It sounds artificial - until you look into Indian Rhetoric theory (തർക്കശാസ്ത്രം).

Accoring to തർക്കശാസ്ത്രം,  earth (പൃഥിവി) is chrarcterized as the substance or material that is differentiated by means of smell: തത്ര ഗന്ധവതീ പൃഥിവി.

I am not sure which came first - the word മണ്ണ് that inspired the characterization or the characterization that inspired the name.

What do you think?

2 comments:

  1. The word 'mana' appears only in Tamil and Malayalam according to this dictionary which is interesting. But I think there are many noun-verb pairings in Dravidian languages. I'm comfortable only with Kannada so I'll restrict myself to that language.

    kannu -> kaanu (eye - see)
    kai -> key (hand - do) => this is observed in archaic Kannada, now 'maadu' is used instead. Malayalam/Telugu have 'chey'. The verb form shows k>ch sound change between Kannada and Malayalam. Wonder, why the noun didn't change similarly.
    Probably,
    moogu -> moosu (nose - smell)

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  2. Sorry for the late response (I didn't see this comment was queued up for moderation.)

    Thanks for the info. I am curious, what is the Kannada word for smell? I don't know Kannada but I would guess 'gandha' or similar would be one, but what I am curious is if there is a more native Kannada word.

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