Brahui Etymologies and Phonetic Developments: New Items

Author(s): M. B. Emeneau
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 60,
No. 3 (1997), pp. 440-447
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies
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 Brahui etymologies and phonetic developments:
new items
M. B. EMENEAU
Universityof California,Berkeley

1. Bray's excellent work (1909, 1934) on Brahui, the Dravidian language

spoken, so improbably, in Baluchistan, could not help but be used to the full
by Burrow and myself in our 35 years of work on Dravidian etymologies. My
very short contact, no more than eight hours, with Brahui speakers at the
Chanhu-daro excavation early in 1936 (Emeneau, 1937) had stimulated me
and provided a background for intensive etymological study based on Bray's
material. This resulted in my publications, especially in 1962, reprinted in part
and with some slight change in 1980a (pp. 315-49). In this latter publication
(p. 318) I ventured a statement: 'More descriptive field-work would certainly
provide [more material on the language]. Whether much more would emerge
to add to Bray's account is uncertain. Certainly it seems that vocabulary
additions would probably include no new items from the Dravidian heritage.'
This pessimistic statement resulted from the often repeated search for items
with Dravidian etymologies and the realization (not new with me, since earlier
scholars like Bray had stated it clearly enough) that the language's lexicon had
been swamped first with Iranian items (Persian and Balochi) and then with
Indo-Aryan (Sindhi, Lahnda, Urdu). That Brahui was contributing rather little
to Dravidian etymological studies is clear from mere inspection of the length
of the indexes in DED and later DEDR. The index of Brahui items in the
latter occupies no more than two pages in spite of Bray's vocabulary of 265
pages. This is much shorter than the index of any of the tribal languages on
which any considerable time was spent (in almost every case less than Bray's
four years of close contact with Brahui speakers). Even Manda, with which
Burrow and Bhattacharya had only a few weeks of contact, has a three-page
index in DEDR; Kota and Toda, with each of which I had about eight months
to a year of contact, have indexes of respectively ten and eight pages. That I
was over-pessimistic was seen as soon as new material was recorded by a later
scholar; new items with Dravidian origins were found in his material-but
indeed they were few.
This new material comes from the Iranianist, J. Elfenbein, whose work on
the recording and analysis of Balochi, with which Brahui has a long historical
relationship and a close bilingual symbiosis, led him to fresh work on Brahui.
In the first of three papers (1982) he re-examined my demonstration that
Brahui had taken on numerous traits of the phonological and morphological-
syntactic structure of Balochi; his superior, new knowledge of Balochi
sharpened and clarified my demonstration considerably.
In a paper in 1983 (1983a) he published new texts in the Brahui language
and their vocabulary, indicating (by an asterisk) those somewhat few items
that were not already in Bray's vocabulary. In a second paper (1983b) he
published a vocabulary of items not in Bray; this new material was assembled
by a speaker of the language, Abdul Rahman Brahui. In it there is considerable
indication, not of Dravidian origins, but of similarity with, and presumably
borrowing from, other languages-Arabic, Balochi, Hindi/Urdu, modern
Persian (sometimes as the immediate source of words of Arabic origin), Pashto
and Sindhi (including Siraiki/Lahnda or Jatki). I have carefully examined
those items which are not provided with some other source, using of course
? School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1997

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 BRAHUI ETYMOLOGIESAND PHONETIC DEVELOPMENTS 441
the Dravidian etymological dictionary to the full and other Dravidian material.
The Indo-Aryan etymological dictionary (CDIAL) has been searched for pos-
sible sources. That we still lack adequate general Iranian reference books,
especially of an etymological nature, is of course a continuing reason for
lament by non-Iranianists.'
2. The present study deals with the few items from this new material for
which Dravidian etymologies are clear or can be suggested; as much annotation
has been provided as seems necessary, useful, or suggestive. Even though the
new items are few, they at times, when coupled with material already in Bray,
lead-unexpectedly and to one's pleasure-to filling in gaps in the earlier
general statements of phonetic developments from Proto-Dravidian to Brahui.
Two such serendipitous gains are the following.
2.1. Earlier (Emeneau, 1962a: ch. ii) it had been determined that in Brahui
monosyllabic words and the initial syllables of polysyllabic words the Dravidian
short mid vowels *e and *o had been replaced, under the diffusional influence
of the Balochi vowel system, by either the low vowel a, the high vowels
respectively i and u, or in the case of *o by 0. The gap *e >e is now filled by
two items already in Bray: begh- 'to knead, muddle up (and spoil)', which is
to be added to DEDR 5078 *mel(l)- (see ?4 below, and, for loss of *1, see 2.2);
bel 'large hill-torrent', which is in 5503 *vel!- 'flood, inundation' (found in
Ta.-Ma. Ka. Tu. Te.; remove query in DEDR).
2.2. Much evidence had been found (especially Emeneau, 1971b: 194-6, ?16)
in Brahui for simplification of consonant clusters with r (< *r, *r, *r) as first
member; e.g., especially in the plural of nouns, 3690 dir 'water', pl. dik,
oblique pl. dit- (<*dir-k, *dir-t-; *nir); 4764 mar 'son ', pl. mak, oblique pl.
mat- (<*mar-k, *mar-t-; *mar-). It now becomes clear that there is a parallel
loss of I (<*1, *1) in consonant clusters (but not in the plural of nouns, e.g.
1298 xal 'stone', pl. xalk [*kal]; 4096 palh 'milk', pl. palhk [*pal]; 3470 telh
'scorpion', pl. telhk [*t!l]). begh- 'to knead, etc.', listed in ?2.1 as showing
*e > e and belonging in DEDR 5078, is <*mel(l)-k- and shows simplification
of a cluster lk by loss of 1. To this are to be added: ?3 below, hogh- 'to weep'
(996 *olk-; remove query in DEDR); mux 'waist, loins' (4986 *mulk-; Kol.
mulke 'waist', Pa. mulka buila 'backbone', Go. [Hill Maria] molki 'back');
taf- 'to tie up, bind; become congealed, (clouds) gather' (3133 *tal-v/p-; remove
query in DEDR); ha-, first element in 3098 ha-tin- 'to bring' (hal(l)- 'to seize,
hold': *a!-).2
Several of the items in ?2.1 and 2.2 require more detailed treatment,
which follows.
3. 996 hogh- 'to weep, cry'; see ? 2.2 for reconstruction *olk- (and removal
of query in DEDR). Bray suggests (1934:139) that the origin of this verb is
'imit[ative]; = ho + gh + ing, "to (cry) ho" ' and cites as parallels 'Jat. [Jatki]
hufig ', which is probably CDIAL 14134 'L. [Lahnda] hunfg"jackal's howl" '
and 'H. [Hindi] h-ik', which is not in CDIAL. He also suggests (1934: 123,
s.v. -gh-) that -gh-, i.e. [y], is 'used freely to bridge hiatus' in a list of four
verbs, including along with this one saghing 'to pound', which he derives
1I am indebted to Professor Martin Schwartz for consultation on Iranian matters, and to
Professor and Mrs. George L. Hart III for advice on Tamil matters in connection with items in
?13. Abbreviations for language names are as in DEDR.
2 Several items show loss of either pre-Brahui *r or *1, there being no certainty as to which.
4312 pil 'worm', pl. puik, is an example of such loss, probably of *1, since *r in *puru appears as
1 in pul-mak(k)i (Emeneau, 1980b), even though *r more often appears as Br. r. On the other
hand, be-, the verbal prefix 'up, over, on' (5086 *m?, *mdl) appears before both vowel and
consonant, and may or may not require statement with *1.The verbal prefixes ki-, ki-, ka- 'below,
down' and the noun keragh 'bottom, low, under' are < 1619 *kir, and so far have defied
detailed analysis.

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442 M. B. EMENEAU

from Balochi sa-, Persian sa-, of presumably the same meaning. Of the other
two listed verbs one is without etymology, viz. shaghing 'to put in, put (ring
on finger, handle on knife), spread (carpet), etc., etc.'; beghing 'to knead,
muddle up (and spoil)' is treated in detail in ?4 below. For h6ghing and
shaghing this explanation of -gh- may seem somewhat persuasive in that
imperative and prohibitive forms of both verbs occur both with and with-
out -gh-: imperative 2sg. hogh/ho, 2pl. hoghb6/h-b6, prohibitive 2sg.
hoghpa/h-pa; similarly shagh/sha, etc.
On the other hand, since there is nothing conclusive in any of these
suggestions, in DEDR 996 there was noted, with a query, the possibility that
Br. h-gh- might be derived from the verb (DED 837) *l1-, *ol-V- (e.g., Ta.
ol1-,oli-, Ta.-Ma. ulamp-, Ka. and Te. uli-), the meanings of which include 'to
make a noise (of various kinds, such as roaring, thundering, a jackal's howl,
lamentation)'. Especially noteworthy already in DED 837 (= DEDR 996) were
the NDr. items Kur. olx-, Malt. olg- (g = [y]), both meaning 'to weep, lament'.
These last were included in my stuidy"of 'plural action' verb stems (1975:13,
no. 137) as plurale tantum in these two languages, and not found with plural
action formations in any other of the languages. Like numerous others (but
not all) of the Kur.-Malt. formations they present a problem since they look
to reconstruction with *-k- (Kur. x, Malt. g) rather than with *-kk-; this
problem has been discussed but not solved (1975:15-16).
P. S. Subrahmanyam in his 1971 work on Dravidian verbs was not yet able
to utilize my 1975 study of plural action stem formation, but in his volume on
phonology (1983:27-30, ?2.3.5) he summarized it and used as one example this
DED entry 837 with its Kur.-Malt. items. The addition in DEDR 996 of Br.
hogh-, with specific reference to Malt. olg-, recognizes that, neglecting h- (as
we must, Emeneau 1962b:61-3), the remaining two phonemes 6 and gh [y]
correspond to Malt. o and g, and of course to Kur. o and x; Br. 6 should be
taken as agreeing with Kur.-Malt. 6 (and *6 of the other languages Ta.-Ma.,
Kod., Ka., and Te.) rather than with *6 in some Ta.-Ma. forms (Emeneau
1962a:17-20, ??2.23-7). If Br., like Kur.-Malt., has in this form a plural action
formation, it joins the only two others that have been identified in this language,
viz. DEDR 2189 x-shk- 'to rub' and DEDR 1513 kishk- 'to pluck, break off'
(cf. Kui kis- 'to pinch, nip', plural action kisk-); these two have -k- < *-kk-,
while (h)6gh- has -y- < *-k- as do the Kur.-Malt. forms.
This etymological solution ignores the fact that, as was noted in the first
subparagraph in ?3 above, there are alternative forms with and without gh in
the imperative and prohibitive of this verb. Pending further study of the
occurrences of gh, we can hardly suggest more than that the phoneme has
been lost, perhaps in final position in ho, which alternates with h-gh in
imperative 2sg.
4. bzgh- 'to knead, muddle up (and spoil)'; to be added to DEDR 5078
*mel-, with reconstruction *mel-k-. The basic meaning in 5078 is' to be softened
(e.g. by soaking), be gentle, weak'; (transitive) 'to soften (by soaking or heat)'.
However, in Tulu the verbs are meliyuni 'to become well-mixed, be reduced
by sickness' and melipuni 'to knead (as dough), tread into a well-mixed mass
(as earth)'; the Brahui meanings are those of the Tulu transitive. Phonological
developments are those seen in:
(i) Krishnamurti's formulation (1969:71-4; also Subrahmanyam 1983:386,
n. 1) that *m- before a Proto-Dravidian front vowel > Br. b-, as in 4841 bash
[bag] 'up' (add now batt 'heaven' [Elfenbein, 1983a:124]): Malt. mece; 5086
be- 'up, over': *me; 5093 bei 'grass for grazing': *mey- 'to graze';
(ii) the development of *e > Br. e, as stated in ?2.1;

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 BRAHUI ETYMOLOGIES AND PHONETIC DEVELOPMENTS 443

(iii) simplification of consonant clusters with *1 or *! as first member, by

loss of 1, as stated in ?2.2.
There remains the point of morphology that, just as in ?3, the suffix -gh-
of begh- may, with semantic plausibility, be taken the same way. The verb
would then be an example of plurale tantum, unparalleled elsewhere in the
record in 5078. It is hardly likely that Ta. melku 'to become soft', with its
intransitive meaning, is a direct congener of the Br. transitive begh-.
5. A number of new items contain sibilants, either initially in the word or
internally, and since our knowledge of the origins of the various Brahui
sibilants is still meager, some discussion is required. For several items, in ??6
and 8, it seems rather clear that variation from the expected norm (*c- > Br.
c-; *-c-, -cc- > Br. -s-) is due, in part, to the items' membership in an 'expres-
sive' class.
6. ku-iing 'to shrink in fear' (Elfenbein, 1983b:199). The sound 2 (Bray:
zh) is found rarely in Brahui and when it is found, the word is sometimes
provided with an origin in Persian (e.g., zhala 'hail'), Balochi (e.g., hizhing
'to whiz, [ear] to sing'), or Pashto (e.g., zhall 'gravel, pebble'). Br. pukia
(Bray: puzhzha) 'human hair' might belong in DEDR 4477: Ta. poccu 'quant-
ity of hair', Ka. boccu 'wool', Te. boccu 'hair, down, wool', Nk. bucura 'a
knot of hair', Pa. bocca 'eyebrow'; *o > Br. u is correct (Emeneau, 1962a:18),
even though DEDR 4476 has for Br. pos 'vulva' a clear etymology with Ta.
poccu, Ma. pocca, pocci, Ko. poj, Ka. pucci, pucce id., with a correct change
*o>Br. o (Emeneau, 1962a:17) and a rather certain change *cc>Br. s (the
equivalence given in DEDR). For kii- we find a tempting etymology in DEDR
1876: Ta. kiicu 'to be shy, recoil, shrink back', Ma. kucu- 'to be shy, dread',
Tu. kusur- 'to be afraid', kuir-'to hesitate', Te. kosaru id., Kui kuja 'shyness'
(reconstruction *kuc-, *kucVr-). Whether we may posit *-c- as the origin of
Br. -4- on the basis of this one example is problematic, the relations of Br. c,
s, sh to the PDr. palatals being as uncertain as they are. Moreover, *k- before
i should yield Br. x- rather than k- (Emeneau, 1988:256); but again there are
uncertainties, and a query is required for this suggested etymology. A connec-
tion with DEDR 2687 *cur- + extensions *-ufik-, *-u!-, *-unt-, etc. 'to shrink,
shrivel, etc.' would be possible semantically; Kannada has for suru! the mean-
ings 'to shrivel, shrink, fear'. Brahui already has in 2687 kurring 'to shrink
from, etc.', Br. k- being found in a number of good etymologies for *c- before
u and ui (Emeneau, 1988:256). kuii- might, on account of the initial k, perhaps
be better connected with this (rather than with 1876), but the origin of i would
be quite obscure, and a query is still required.
7. pisfing 'to squeeze air out of an inflated skin, football, etc.' (Elfenbein,
1983b:202). Of the two DEDR entries with the meaning 'to squeeze, squeeze
out, etc.', 4135 and 4183, the latter is basically *pir-+extensions *-i-, *-Vfic-,
etc. Since *r is not represented in Brahui by -s-, connection of pisf- with this
set of forms could be made only by positing simplification of *-rVfic- or the
like. Brahui already has forms pilh- and princ- id. in 4183, with fairly straight-
forward developments from *pir- and *pirific- respectively. For pisf- it is
altogether simpler to think of 4135, which is basically *pic- with several
extensions, including *-kk- (or *-Vkk- or the like) which I have interpreted as
a plural action formation (Emeneau, 1975:10, no. 52). In North Dravidian,
Kurux has the plurale tantum picka9-. Brahui's -f- is so far uninterpretable,
but would seem to be somehow related to Bray's 'causal' formative, usually
-if-, but -f- in a very few verbs (e.g., kasf-/kasif- 'to kill': ka(h)- 'to die'; Bray,
1909:177-9).

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444 M. B. EMENEAU

8. 'upping 'to drink a thick liquid' (Elfenbein,

' 1983b:205); 'urofing 'to
smack the lips' (ibid.). The sound (? phoneme) (Bray: sh) is fairly rare; most
of its occurrences are in words from foreign sources. In most of its occurrences
with Dravidian etymologies, its history is unknown (e.g., 4742 mas 'hill,
'
mountain': *mal-; has probably been produced by contamination with ba'
'up', for which see ?4.i above). In a few transparent instances it derives from
*-c- or *-cc-; e.g., 1513 ki'k- 'to pluck, break off': *kic/cc ... kk-; 4632 magax
' scarred': *mac/cc- 'blemish, mole, etc.'; 4634 maging 'to wash the head, clean
the head with fuller's earth': Pa. mac- 'to rub the head with earth'; 4191 pri'k
'spark': Pe. priski, Mand. prihe, prihki, Kuwi id. (*piric/cc ...
' (Israel) prisi
kk-). DEDR has no Brahui forms in which is initial; *c- is represented by
Br. c- (see items indexed at DEDR, p. 756).
8.1. 'upping, in meaning, seems as if it should go with DEDR 2621b in
which the meaning is generally 'to suck' (also 'to kiss') and reconstructions
are *cupp-, *cump- (both represented in Tamil) or with extension *-kk- (as in
Ga. cupk-, Go. suhk-, u9k- 'to suck'; Kur. cufik-, Malt. cumq- 'to kiss ').3 In
this entry in DEDR Brahui is already represented by cup- 'to suck'; Bray
compares 'Jat., Si. chup-', i.e. Lahnda and Sindhi (his spelling ch equals our
c), which Indo-Aryan forms are not in CDIAL (cf. CDIAL 4870 cfimbati
'kisses', where all the NIA forms retain the nasal). Bray's Indo-Aryan compar-
ison is to be considered, but until we have more IA comparative material to
add to these items, Dravidian origin for Br. cup- should not be ruled out.
Expressive (usually called 'onomatopoeic') nature for the items in DEDR
2621b cannot yet be ruled out; it may be that '- (instead of c-) in 'upp- is of
this nature.
8.2. Similarly, 'urifing 'to smack the lips' must surely go with DEDR
2712, in which the basic meaning is 'to eat or drink noisily'. The whole group
of forms is expressive (with reduplication, etc.); the initial is *c-, as attested
by Nk. curpip-, Te. jurr-, and Ka. (coll.) juru juru. Some of the forms have s-
instead of the expected c- (e.g., Kur. surp-; Pfeiffer, 1972:197), or, in Kuwi
surpu, s- instead of h- (<s- < *c-; Emeneau, 1988:245). Brahui '-, instead of
c-, is then 'expressive'. Explanation of -uf- seems so far impossible.
9. Four more items (?10-13) derived from Elfenbein are of a miscellaneous
character.
10. kirrefing 'to turn a hand-mill', caus. <*kirreng 'to turn' (Elfenbein
1983b.199). This is an item provided by the Brahui speaker, exactly as recorded
in Elfenbein's list. DEDR 1595 *kir... contains mostly expressives denoting
'whirling (of mechanisms), giddiness ', but there are some derivatives denoting
wheels or pulleys; the Brahui verb belongs here without semantic difficulty.
The reconstructed *k- yields Br. k- before the vowel i (Emeneau, 1988:256).
11. tarifing 'to be slaughtered' (Elfenbein, 1983b:206). Elfenbein's listing
is misleading: '(1) to be slaughtered (2) to turn sour (of milk); caus. <taring
(B.)'. The second meaning is so far without etymology, and taring (in Bray)
finds its place in DEDR 3029, with meanings 'to cut, cut off, cut down,
slaughter' and etyma Ta.-Ma. tati- 'to cut off, kill'. The new item is to be
entered in DEDR 3029, but hardly as a causative of taring, in spite of the
suffix -if- which is usually causative. Bray (1909:179, ?288) lists a few verbs
with -if- or -f- which are not to be explained as causatives, but they seem not
to be in any way parallel with the present item.

3
Ga. (Bhaskararao) cikap- 'to lick, suck' is to be added in DEDR 2621a, undoubtedly a
borrowing from Te. cik- 'to suck'.

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 BRAHUI ETYMOLOGIESAND PHONETIC DEVELOPMENTS 445
12. ta-ring'to screen coal' (i.e., more simply,' to sift'; Elfenbein, 1983b:206).
This is to be entered in DEDR 3195, *tar- (cf. Ta. tari-, ta-rru'to sift, winnow',
Tu. sar-, Te. tal(u)cu). There it joins Br. dranz-/dr z- ' to winnow' (< *tarafic-)
which is already entered there with a query which hardly seems justified. The
metathesis and vowel development seen in the latter are well taken care of in
the statements in Emeneau (1971b:192-4); the reservation about the meaning
there in n. 12 is hardly necessary, and the attempt there to justify entering
dranz- in DEDR 3402 (*tuir-) rather than in 3195 (*tar-) neglects the need to
adopt the more economical solution.
13. allal 'long winter nights' (Elfenbein, 1983b:191); an item provided by
the Brahui speaker. Even though -ai suggests that the locative suffix (Bray's
-ai) might be found in the form, without further evidence (use in a sentence,
etc.) we cannot pursue this but must restrict our study to investigation of the
first syllable. No foreign source is suggested (in Elfenbein), nor has an Indo-
Aryan origin been found (e.g. in CDIAL). A Dravidian origin is at hand in
DEDR 235 (DED 199).4 Burrow (1945b:602), in his treatment of initial y in
Dravidian and of the possibility of finding occurrences of *yi- in groups of
etyma in which initial e and a alternate, had already listed the Tamil items al
and el, both meaning 'night' and occurring in old texts, and Malayalam al id.
as looking towards *yi-. He also listed a Kolami item from Haig's old word
list, ale id., but my more modern recorded items in this language and the final
solution in DEDR put these Kolami items in DEDR 3621 (*na!-). DEDS,
however, added to the Tamil items of DED 199 the Kurux verb ell- (Grignard)
'to be night-blind', (Hahn) id., 'to be very dark'. The vowel e in this form is
parallel with 6 as the resultant of *yai-in the Kurux 1st sg. and Ist pl. exclusive
pronouns (DEDR 5160, 5154), and makes it highly probable that the items in
DEDR 235 require a reconstruction *yal. Whether the old (but not very old)
nighantu (i.e., dictionary) form yalam 'night' which is listed in Tamil lexicon
represents a really attested form in old literature (but none has been found so
far in indexes of the old literature) or is merely a scholar's attempt to reconcile
Tamil al and el (as Burrow would do), is still unknown. Be that as it may, Br.
allal 'long winter nights' would be a perfect continuant to be matched with
Kur. ell-; pre-Brahui *6, corresponding to Kur. 6, does not remain as such in
Brahui, but yields either a or i (Emeneau 1962a. 10f.; cf. 2.1 above).
14. Burrow's 1972 paper on Indic words for 'horse', important as it was
in its treatment of some of the items, proposed (pp. 24f.) an etymology for
Brahui (h)ulli 'horse' which must probably be abandoned, on phonological
grounds, in favour of a different one. His suggested connection was with Tamil
ivuli 'horse'; DEDR 500 contains these two items. The phonological difficulty
(Ta. ivu-: Br. u-) is of course obvious. Burrow noted it, but attempted to slide
over it easily by pointing to the contraction as 'not unexpected' in view of
the very long period separating Brahui from 'primitive Dravidian'; he might
just as well have cited the long period between the Tamil Sangam and later
literature in which ivuli commonly occurs (it is not modern colloquial) and
the modern Brahui. Unfortunately, such a contraction, either in general or of
this particular type, is rarely to be cited as having occurred in Dravidian
phonological development.
4 More items were suggested in DEDS 199. In DEDR considerable second-thinking sorted out
the three separate numbered entries 235 (DED 199, plus Ta. [lex.] yalam and Kur. ellna), 3613
(items with reconstruction *nal- in Ta. Te. Ga. Go.), and 3621 (items with reconstruction *nal-
in Ta. Kol. NkCh. Pa. Konda Pe. Mand. Kui Kuwi Br.). Whether DEDR 235 and 3613 can be
connected is still doubtful and perhaps in the last analysis will be improbable. The problem of
*yd- and *ya- has been touched upon in 'Dravidian initial nasals and palatals: some notes', ?7
(still unpublished).

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446 M. B. EMENEAU

A much easierphonologicalequationis seen if we compareBr. (h)ulliwith

Ta. ulai 'mane of horse or lion, man's hair' (found in Sangam and other
literature;not modern colloquial), which is recordedin DEDR 701 since
Malayalamhas ula id. This impliesthat Br. ulli is a derivation('that which
possesses/ischaracterizedby a mane') from a base *ul- found (so far) only in
Ta.-Ma.WhetherBr. -I could be such a derivativesuffixis still unknown,since
there has been little investigationso far of such suffixes;the small amount of
Dravidian surviving(and recorded)in the Brahui data contains only one
possibleparallel,viz. 4505 puden'cold, cool', pudi 'coldness,frost'.' The Br.
item should be shiftedto DEDR 701; DEDR 500 disappears.
15. The final item is a long-soughtetymology,Indo-Aryanas it turnsout,
for Br. di 'hand, arm'. Braysuggested,with a query,connectionwith Persian
dast and other Iranianforms, all beginningwith d or 6 and endingin s or st,
some with vowels Aior o; searchin the related CDIAL 14024haista-'hand'
finds severalformsin Kafirlanguageswith initiald and vowelsa, u, or o, but
all with final sibilant,st, or 't. The survivingfinal consonantelementin these
Iranianand Kafir forms makes this origin unlikelyfor the Brahuiword. On
the other hand, inspectionof CDIAL6586 dos- 'forearm', also 'arm' in our
Sanskritdictionaries,finds dui 'forearm' in two northwesternIA languages,
viz. Kati and Prasun. When we consider an earlier finding (Emeneau,
1980:294-314,chapter' "Arm" and "leg" in the Indianlinguisticarea') that
in generalIndic words definedin our dictionariesas 'hand, arm' reallyrefer
to the whole of the upperlimb, from shoulderto finger-tips,with occasional
restrictionin some languagesof the ,generalword to some part of the limb (cf.
in CDIAL 6586 continuants of dos- meaning 'upper arm' in Sindhi and
Lahnda),it is highly probablethat we have found the originof Br. dii in the
north-westernIA area.6

AND ABBREVIATIONS
REFERENCES
Bray, Denys deS. 1909. The Brahuilanguage,part I. Calcutta:SuperintendentGovernment
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Scf. DEDR 83, 260, 3376, 4395, 4722, 5020, 5051, 5511, for Br. -1with other derivative uses.
6 Repeated search has not yet found an origin, Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, or Iranian, for Br.
diii, duwi 'tongue'. Tempting as would be some connection with CDIAL 5228 jihva-, juhui-,
reconstructive details and an immediate borrowing source still elude one.

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions