Nose-wrinkling, Head-scratching, and Sleeve rolling:

1. Umbrian erus ≈ Old Indic iṣudhyá-

2. Old Indic pṛkṣúdh-)

v. 0.2
Sapienti

Perhaps it is naïve of us, but we share THIEME’s (1985: ??) “recht nüchtern
erscheinende[] Überzeugung, daß Wörter nicht fertig vom Himmel fallen”. Moreover,
the present essay is offered as an exercise in testing the productivity of this
methodological stance as opposed to the “Nasenrümpfen” (a most useful methodological
term introduced into IE linguistics by THIEME as well, p. 538) that has often prevailed
instead and so embittered Thieme himself, who in particular could never bring himself to
accept that “eine etymologische Analyse erst dann akzeptabel [ist], wenn sie nicht so
recht stimmt”.1

But of course it was not really Nasenrümpfen at all (which has its rightful place in
the defensive arsenal of any science given the vast amounts of material constantly
published that has little or no merit, as discussed by Ioannidis (2005) in the insant succès
de scandale entitled “Why most published research findings are false”, which deals with
medical research, but might it not be relevant to some other fields of study too?). The
issue is actually that of Nase-nach-oben-drehen, an attitude that leads, among other
excesses, to what we have ourselves witnessed at UCLA, where graduate students
snigger, giggle, titter at the very mention (not by us, of course, we would not presume) of
Thieme’s name—and roll their eyes. Whereas we prefer to roll up our sleeves.

The purpose of the present essay is to compare the productivity and validity of
these two opposite methodological approaches to … well … to anything really but
specifically to science, and more specifically to historical linguistics. This we propose to
do by revisiting a set of etymologies that were elaborated and defended by THIEME
(1985:540 n. 27) himself (though actually going back to HUMBACH) and that have not
been notable for their wide acceptance over the past quarter-century. We will end up
proposing an etymology of the same general type yet different in certain respects, which
became clear to us in light of WEISS’s (2009) study of Umbrian erus, which turns to be
*((h 2 ais(H )-u)-dh)-, thus matching in every respect, except for the full grade of the
prepound, the *((H)is-u)-dh)- that could apparently underlie the first Old Indic form
(and suggest a solution to the other one as well).

All this in turn presupposed taking seriously the idea, which does go back to
Humbach and Thieme, of analyzing the OI forms as compounds with this very prepound,
though they (apparently incorrectly as it now turns out) identified the postpound as
*udh- < *u̯edh- (no one had any idea of an u-stem for the prepounds and so it seemed
natural to take the *–u- vowel as part of the postpound). The details would have to be
different, but the basic idea that words like this can, and should, be analyzed rather than
left mysterious, that they must be complex, and their pieces can, and should, be identified

1
For those who do not get the allusion, it may be useful to recall that many of THIEME’s own simple and
elegant proposal (as most of his work was) have historically been rejected, sometimes explicitly so, precisely
because it was felt that they were just too good to be true. In our work, we have found that many of his
proposals were not quite good enough, but that of course just goes to show you the radical difference
between the prevalent approach (led by those who have tended to dismiss or doubt his work) and our own.
with known elements of the language, and finally that these pieces are stems and the
wholes compounds—in all this Humbach and Thieme were right, whilst those who, as we
will see, vacillated between dismissing their ideas with near-disdain and ignoring them to
the point of not even citing them at all were, well, perhaps not entirely cricket.

To begin with, then, OI iṣudhyá- ‘[…] to implore, request, crave for […]’ (MW),
more specifically “etwa: erstreben, erbitten, Kraft erstreben, einfordern” (EWA I 200 s.v.
iṣudhy-) is recognized by MAYRHOFER as “Trotz der interpretatorischen Schwierigkeiten
… wohl nicht von i ṣ- zu trennen” (ibid), 2 explicitly rejecting Thieme’s work as a solution
to the various difficulties. Now, according of THIEME, a hypothetical *iṣúdh- as well as
pṛkṣúdh-3 are parallel and essentially synonymous nomina agentis based on the virtually
synonymous íṣ- and pṛ́kṣ-and meaning “… „die Labung … [zu dem Himmlischen]
führend“, substantiviert „Gebet“, oder dergl.”, the second part being the zero grade of
the root *√vadh (= PIE *√u̯e d h -) ‘to lead’, whose lack of synchronically recognizable
attestations in Old Indic is presumably a big part of the reason why this etymology keeps
encountering resistance.4 However, MAYRHOFER’s conclusion that “die Analyse *iš-
udh- … begegnet begründeten Einwänden” is and was at the time, as we are about to see,
completely groundless.

We must begin by recalling that THIEME’s analysis was itself a slight but crucial
modification of HUMBACH’s (1959 II:28)5 idea of nomina actionis signifying “Zuführung
von Kraftspendung” (endorsed by KELLENS 1974:18-19, who cites Johanna NARTEN as
concurring). However, MAYRHOFER omits all mention of the BARTHOLOMAE,
HUMBACH, and THIEME proposals for pṛkṣúdh-, treating this word as unanalyzed though
listed s.v. pṛ́kṣ- (EWA II ??). Never mind the evident parallelism between these two
words that was a big part of the appeal of HUMBACH’s and THIEME’s analyses, this
omission (both s.v. iṣudhy- and s.v. pṛ́kṣ-). Next, MAYRHOFER rejects the one THIEME
proposal that he does mention (for iṣudhy) on the basis of two arguments published
before 1985 and directed at the earlier (HUMBACH and other) work. Both of these were
irrelevant by the time Mayrhofer wrote his verdict because their specifics arguments had
either been rendered anachronistic by the publication of THIEME (1985) or were invalid
to begin with.

Now then, first, the original (HUMBACH) formulation was justly criticized by
SCHINDLER (1979:57b) on the grounds that such nomina actionis are rare. However, as
we just mentioned, THIEME’s revision obviates this difficulty by positing agent nouns
instead. MAYRHOFER does not discuss these details, but simply invokes SCHINDLER’s
magic name, without pointing out that this argument had become moot.

Second, MAYRHOHER cites CARDONA (1968:71 n. 40), whose objections were

ALSO directed at HUMBACH’s formulation and again do not apply to THIEME’s work, in
addition to having other weaknesses. Specifically, it seems (though CARDONA is not very
2
BARTHOLOMAE (1890-1891 I:123) had proposed a rather different analysis involving the same
segmentation of iṣ-udh-, but with an underlying sense of *‘schuld’ and with iṣ- as a prefix that he also
believed occurred in OInd. iṣ- √ KAR - and –udh- as a reflex of the (the zero-grade of) of a root √U ̯A DH -
that underlies Lat. vas ‘bail, security, surety’, Goth. wadi ‘guarantee’, Eng. wed, etc.
3
Hapax at RV 1.141.4, left unglossed and untranslated by most authorities.
4
In agreement with THIEME, we regard this attitude, common among many historical linguists and philologists, as
completely contrary to the most basic methodological principle of these field, the COMPARATIVE method, which as the
name suggests compares forms from different languages and branches.
5
Reiterated (HUMBACH 1991 II 69), significantly without the reservations (“vielleicht … wären”) that accompanied the
1959 proposal.
clear) that he is concerned that the evidence for compounds in *–údh- is really limited to
*iṣúdh- itself because

(I) pṛkṣúdh- is a hapax which he says (not quite accurately) OLDENBERG

(1909 144) had said “may well be a nonce form after vīrúdh- ‘plant’”
and
(II) “[f]urthemore, śurúdh-, another supposed –udh- form, probably has
nothing to do with Gk. korénnūmi ‘fill, satiate’ (suggestion made in
Debrunner [AiGr II2] 1954:§ 301); see Thieme’s explanation (1941) of
śurúdh- ‘das Vieh mehrend’ < *(p)ḱu-rudh- and cf. Debrunner 1954
[AiGr II2]:Nachträge 936)”.

Of course, CARDONA had written this some years before THIEME (1985) would
come out in defense of the analysis of *iṣúdh- and pṛkṣúdh- as precisely “-udh- forms”.
But MAYRHOFER, writing AFTER 1985, was in a position to realize that CARDONA’s
argument NOW no longer had any force, since it was precisely THIEME who showed that
śurúdh - was NOT an “-udh- form”. In any event, the whole idea of damning HUMBACH’s
(and a fortiori THIEME’s) analysis of *iṣúdh- and pṛkṣ́udh- on the grounds that
DEBRUNNER’s analysis of śurúdh- is wrong (and inferior precisely to THIEME’s) verges
on the grotesque.

Next, we must realize that, at the time when OLDENBERG was advancing the idea
of pṛkṣúdh - as an “Umformung von pṛ́kṣ- nach dem Vorbild vonr vīrúdh (das ja gleich
daneben steht) und śurúdh”, he could not have known of the superior alternative that
HUMBACH and THIEME (who were respectively -12 and +4 years’ old at the time) would
one day proffer. And, again, once we have their alternative analyses available,
OLDENBERG’s own, essentially desperate, idea loses most of its (anyway limited) appeal.
Moreover, we have still after all these years not heard any explanation of exactly what
kind of nonce formation this would be or how it would have arisen. In particular if
pṛkṣúdh- WERE based on vīrúdh-, wouldn’t this proposal actually imply a nonce,
perhaps punning, (re)analysis of the latter as xvīr-údh-, on the basis of which a nonce,
etymologically spurious, element *-údh- would have been extracted which would then
have been added to *pṛ́kṣ- to produce the attested hapax? Which is to say, would this
whole proposal not yield precisely the very analysis *pṛkṣ- + -údh- whose reality
CARDONA was trying to deny?

Nor is it clear how any of this makes any difference anyway: supposing that
*iṣúdh- WERE the only OI compound ending in –údh - , would we have to reject this
analysis? If so, then we must we also reject the analysis of Mod.Eng. bridegroom,
which every linguist learns in an introductory course, as the only compound we still have
ending in (a folk-etymologized retouching of) MidEng gome ‘man’? For this gome is
surely even more tenuously attested in Modern English than the root *√VADH - is in Old
Indic.6 The CARDONA argument thus was never very telling against the HUMBACH
analysis, and has lost all force since the publication of THIEME’s analysis. And this is
important because, once again, we see how illogical and counterproductive is the
widespread attitude of many specialists who refuse to accept etymologies involving roots
that are poorly or not at all attested in a given language or branch. The only result is that

6
And, if Middle English were not attested, then we would be relying only on COMPARATIVE evidence to identify this
element.
perfectly well-attested forms are not recognized because other scholars are afraid to
publicize their existence—given that they are not ALREADY known to be attested!

In any case, this analysis of the literature means that MAYRHOFER’s doubts about
THIEME’s analysis of iṣudhyá- simply had NO basis at all by the time they were published,
and his passing over in silence of THIEME’s analysis of pṛkṣúdh- (both s.v. iṣudhy- AND
s.v. pṛ́kṣ-) is even more puzzling.7 We would thus conclude that, pace MAYRHOFER, there
were at the time NO more known “Schwierigkeiten” to prevent the graceful acceptance
(which he was so loath to grant) of THIEME’s (1985:540 n. 27) simple and elegant analysis
of these two words—much less to keep one from remembering to mention Thieme’s
work in all the relevant places.

Our own substantive and methodological contribution, if it is one at all, comes

next. We will try to show these etymologies can be worked out in a little more detail,
addressing a difficulty with these twin etymologies that is real, though one that no one
seems to have raised, namely, that Old Indic compounds normally exhibit external
sandhi, so we should expect not *iṣudh- but x irudh - or x iḍudh-, and so on.8 Moreover,
while some of the usual sandhi rules are occasionally violated in attested compounds, it
seems that the ones that would have to be violated in our two words if they were analyzed
as *iṣ-udh- and prkṣ-udh- are absolute, never violated. In the end then the only tenable
analysis may actually be *iṣu-dh- and prkṣu-dh-, which is not evident from Indic or even
Indo-Iranian data, where such u-stems are not known.

It is only when we consider Umbrian erus that such an analysis becomes hard to
resist. But that does not mean that, even before the Umbrian was identied, the problem
had been analyzed satisfactorily. The methodological point here is simply this: that when
we find fault with existing work, as happened with Thieme’s etymologies, instead of
rubbing our hands in glee, we instead roll up our sleeves and come up with a way to fix it.
It is thus our suggestion, not that scholars should stop nitpicking, since nitpicking is what
scholars are indeed supposed to do, but that we simply stop thinking that it is the sole
responsibility of the author of a given proposal to defend it, whereas the job of the
readers/listeners is to attack it—and that instead both sides can and should undertake
both roles (Feynman reminds us that the first job of anyone proposing a new idea is to try
to refute it himself in every possible way. We only to add to this that the first job of every
critic should, symmetrically be to try to find a way to rehabilitate it).

Now, getting down to the brass tacks, there are some well-known examples where
INTERNAL sandhi seems to take place in compounds (more commonly in Vedic than in
Classical Skt., which of course is good).9

7
In the case of EWA some other critical omissions include THIEME’s (1985) analysis of abhrá-, GELDNER’s close-to-
correct identification of the sexual referent of kiráṇa- (s.v. KAR I 2 ), SAUSSURE’s proposal of a Slavic cognate for
líbhujā-, and several others. It is also a fact that EWA in several cases attributes discoveries made by scholars
apparently less appealling to the author (such as the Geldner and Oldenberg) to ones more favored (such as Hoffmann
and Narten).
8
Ironically, SCHINDLER elsewhere (1972:30) raised precisely this kind of objection against VON SCHRÖDER’s (Māitrāyni
Saṁhitā 1.16) proposed analysis of nábhrāj - as *nábh-rāj-. We analyze this an an expressive form, one of several in
the same text, where voiced and voiced aspirate stops are reverse expressively in terms used to describe a creature
unable to speak (i.e., to speak Aryan), and hence standing for à *nab-rāj-.
9
These include namaskāra - (xnamaḥkāra-) and several others with first member ending in –s; aharpati (*ahaḥpati-)
and several others with first member ending in –r; dūḍabha- *(xdurdabha -) and several others where the first member
is duṣ- or ṣaṣ-; samrāj - (xsaṁrāj-); viśpati - (x viḥpati-); gavāśir and several others with first member gav -; and some
others.
 However, none of these involve the failure of a final obstruent to voice before an
initial vowel or resonant, which seems to belong to the exceptionless rules of the
language,10 not violated even in the metalinguistic formulae of Pāṇini! The same
problem, but even more clearly, obtains in the case of pṛkṣúdh -, since this violates not
just this rule but ADDITIONALLY fails to simplify the cluster –kṣ-, in violation of yet
another otherwise absolute sandhi rule (the expected forms being presumably x p ṛḍ-údh -
or x pṛg-údh -). The idea of allowing some old compounds to violate THESE SPECIFIC
sandhi rules, by in effect undergoing internal sandhi instead of external, is thus very
suspect,11,12,13 even if other external sandhi rules are less inviolate.

10
The changes of palatals and retroflexes are to some extent violated in the metalinguistic formulae of PĀṆINI, but the
voicing rule never is, e.g., in his first rule P1.1.1 vṛdhhir ādaic “ā, ai und au heissen Vṛdhhi” (BÖHTLINGK 1887:2), the
dvandva compound ād-aic has the regular voicing of the metalinguistic exponent -t, but the palatality of the (word-
final) metalinguistic exponent –c is preserved, instead of changing to –k, in violation of P 8.2.30.
11
It might seem that we could get away with *iṣa-údh- and *pṛkṣa-údh- rather than *iṣ-údh- and pṛkṣ-údh-. In the
pṛkṣúdh case, there would be no problem at all since pṛkṣá- is directly attested with the same relevant meaning as pṛ́kṣ-
(‘food, nourishment’, or the like), so *pṛkṣa-údh - would be synonymous with *pṛkṣ-údh -. In the case of *iṣudh- there
is a possible objection, namely, that iṣá- is does not seem to have the same meaning as íṣ-. However, the hapax at RV
1.129.6 iṣá-vant - , conventionally glossed ‘vigorous’ (MW), ‘kräftig’ (EWA), or the like, shows that that iṣá- did possess
the meaning(s) of íṣ- after all—and at a very early date. We would then be dealing with two new examples of what
Wackernagel described as “Ganz vereinzelt[e] … Elision von –a vor anlautendem &- '- […] etwa v. pradakṣiṇ-it- ‘sich
nach rechts wendend’, Āpast. pād-ūna- ‘um ein viertel kleiner” (found also in cases where we get from “-ă … mit e- o-
… als Kontraktionsprodukt auch blosses e o”, e.g., pr- óṣṭha- ‘a bench, stool […]’ and so on (AiGr. i: 319). Moreover,
we will propose a number of other examples. Recent work in Iranian also calls attention to Bact. ατο and Sogd. ’ty,
conjunctions derived from Ir. *atā-uti, which requires a “рaннe caндxи, давшее вариант *at-uti” (YAKUBOVICH
2009:100 n. 104, commenting on SIMS-WILLIAM 1997). On the other hand, even in the case of iṣá-vant - , no one knows
what this hapax epithet really stood for, despite the overconfidence of the reference works–-or who it referred to: thus,
Geldner (1951 i:181, esp. fn. 1) speculated about it referred to the god Bhaga or to the client paying for the sacrificial
ceremony (the yájamāna ‘the institutor of a sacrifice’), and tentatively chose the translation “der … Freigebige (?)”.
This, of course, was probably based on yet another one of the attested senses of íṣ- (the one rendered as ‘affluence’ by
MW), so once again we are dealing with ‘possessing íṣ’. Moreover, if the word was really referring to the insitutor of
the sacrifice, then it might well have meant ‘possessor’ –- not ‘of vigour, Kraft’ or ‘affluence’ –- but precisely ‘of the
libation’, much as in academic German this individual is called Opferherr. Much the same is true if our word was
referring to a god, though. Compare the fact that Viṣṇu is sometimes called (in post-Vedic times to be sure) yajñin -
‘abounding in sacrifices’ (MW), more literally ‘sacrifice possessor’ again. Likewise, hand, AV 18.4.24 ápavant-
‘watery’ (MW = Whitney-Lanman tr.), which is analyzed, as the “Thematisierung” of áp- to *ápa- (AiGr iii:241), in
our opinion represents *ápas-vant- and means ‘rich in sacrifices’, more or less synonymous with svadhā́vant- of AV
18.4.25 and passim. So, these proposed thematizations should be used with caution. In any case, as we argue
immediately below, this does not seem to us the correct solution in our case.
12
More specifically, we know of such attested variants of of íṣ- as íḍ- and (nom.sg.) ír, which have given rise to the
thematized forms íḍā-, írā - ~ AV 15.2.3 irā́- (cp. Av. ižā-), and most likely also (though this could perhaps be
athematic) the *ira - found in iraḿ-mád-, iraṁ-madá - etc. All of these preserve the precise ‘libation’ meaning that we
are positing for the first part of *iṣa-údh -. In short, we have ample evidence that iṣá- and/or *íṣa- could have, and
indeed must have, had the same meaning. And this all that would be required for our analysis of *iṣúdh- as *iṣa-údh-
to go throughWhile there is an inflected sandhi form ír, there is no evidence for an athematic STEM ír - anywhere. That
is, the ír that does occur is just a sandhi form of the nom.sg. of the stem íṣ-. Hence, *iram is by far more likely to be
the acc.sg. of a thematized ira - than of the non-existent stem xír -.
13
We mentioned above that there seem to be no counterexamples to the rule voicing a final obstruent before a vowel
or resonant in external sandhi, including inside a compound. To be sure, Wackernagel (AiGr ii1:152) mentions TBr
satāsatī́ ‘the true and the false’ as replacing the predicted *sad- asatī́ supposedly “ähnlich” to dvandvas whose first
member ends in –ā in place of some other vowel such as TS vaiṣṇā- varuṇá-, AB āgnendra-, and others. However, in
all such example the –ā- in fact replaces some other stem-final vowel, whereas this is not the case with sat-. It seems to
us, therefore, that we are dealing instead with a thematized *sata- asatī́. This is virtually implied by MW’s analysis
whereby the word is said to be “formed in analogy to sutâsuté”. The existence of such an unusual thematization in this
position provides rather good support for our analysis of *iṣa-údh- and *pṛkṣa-údh-. Methodologically, this seems
better than positing exceptions to otherwise exceptionless sandhi rules. The other examples of irregular (internal- or
internal-like) sandhi in compounds seem to involve rules which can be violated at word boundaries. Thus, examples
like namaskāra - for xnamaḥkāra- are paralleled by many Vedic examples of word collocations such as divás putraḥ
Likewise, the aharpati (*ahaḥpati-) type of example is paralleled by the lone RV instance of the word collocation
āvar támaḥ. While this cannot be shown in every case, the very rarity of the examples may authorize to suppose that
these are, after all, all instances of irregular (older ?) external sandhi and not internal sandhi at all. If so, then probably
it does make sense to prefer the analyses proposed by us, since, to reiterate the crucial point yet again, the sandhi rules
that would be violated in *iṣ-údh-, *pṛkṣ-údh- are absolutely exceptionless. This in turn feeds into some of the central
issues in theoretical linguistics that go back to the Baudouin de Courtenay and the founders of the Neogrammarian
 And this feeling turns out to be justified, as we now see from the Italic data. For,
the Umbrian form now seem to suggest a much better solution, which automatically
accounts for the attested forms, namely, prepound u-stems with a postpound *-dh-,
hence *iṣu-dh- and if so then presumably also *pṛkṣu-dh-.

It seems to that there are several important methodological lessons from all this.
First, regardless of which analysis we end up with, it seems to us the approach to
etymology consistently advocated by THIEME and just as consistently sullenly resisted by
many Indo-Europeanists, Indologists, and so on, is the correct one in principle—even if
of course the particular results of any one scholar’s work may not be satisfactory. In
short, we share the master’s “recht nüchtern erscheinende[] Überzeugung, daß Wörter
nicht fertig vom Himmel fallen”. The history of the response to his challenge has not
been edifying, and one really needs to ask:

What is it exactly that other scholars have been waiting for in relation to these
words? What evidence or argument would finally break the stalemate here? Is
there in fact ANY evidence or argument that could do this—or is the rejection of
these etymologies some sort of article of faith?

It is of course true that the discovery of the Umbrian form does break the
stalemate (or so we hope anyway, see Drupaz 2012: 78 n. 52). But what if this form
happened not to have been attested. What then? Second, as we have seen, this discovery
does alter the balance, leading us away from (either variant of) the etymology with an *-
udh- postpound and to one with *-dh-. This means that, while the good kind of
Nasenrümpfen would not have been unjustified, what actually went on for decades was
both misconceived in terms of the goal (the goal should be to produce a better solution,
not to preclude all solutions and leave the problem unsolved) and in terms of its specifics
(as we have seen, the one real issue, that of sandhi, was NOT raised while all kinds of
non-issues were).

But the more immediate issue is how we decide which etymologies to accept in
the first place. Does the edifying tale we told here have any moral for us who are well
into the 21st century? This is left as an exercise for the reader, who will also have to
decide for themselves what to do with their nose.

BARTHOLOMAE, Christian. 1890-1891. Studien zur indogermanischen Sprachgeschichte.

Halle a.S.: Niemeyer. BB 13,77

CARDONA, George. 1968. On Haplology in Indo-European. Philadelphia: Univ. of Penn.

Press.

Dupraz, Emmanuel. 2012. Sabellian Demonstratives: Forms and Functions.

Leiden – Boston: Brill.

movement, about the placement and the nature of the dividing line (the alleged absence of which was the cornerstone
of generative linguistics starting around 1956) between those parts of language (at least in phonology) that are
“natural” (and exceptionless) and those that are the reverse. The issues thus go far beyond the analysis of these
particular examples, which is as it should be, since no etymology is an island. Moreover, no theory can exist without
data, and the data of theoretical linguistics come from the results of descriptive and historical (including etymological)
investigations.
HUMBACH, Helmut. 1959. Die Gāthās des Zarathustra, II: Kommentar. Heidelberg:
Winter.

Ioannidis, J[ohn] P. A. 2005. Why most published research findings are false. PLoS
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KELLENS,

THIEME 1985 Radices postnominales.

WEISS, Michael. 2009. Umbrian erus. In: Kazuhiko Yoshida & Brent Vine (eds.) East and West: Papers
in Indo-European Studies, 241-264. Bremen: Hempen.

YAKUBOVICH, Ilya.