A most organic evolution

This book transcends any neat scheme of categorisation. It is not, strictly speaking, a work of etymology (the study of origin of words) or of philology (the study of language) or even of cultural anthropology. Instead, Khaled Ahmed's new exploration covers all this and much more, ultimately offering commentary on the linguistic heritage of a significant section of human civilisation spread over more than two millennia..Ahmed, a senior journalist and editor (the essays here are collected newspaper columns from a span of several years), focuses on phonetic and etymological analysis of words in everyday use in Pakistan in their wider social and cultural contexts. The ruminations here explore linkages across vast distances of time and space, connections between the linguistic legacies of four of the world's major civilisations – Judaism, Christianity, Islam and the heterogeneous cultures of the Indian Subcontinent. In so doing, the author lays bare the fact that the ethnocentric vision of the votaries of various faith communities is myopic, inasmuch as they look at their own cultural heritage in exclusive terms..Word for Word tells a different story: that world cultures have profusely borrowed their everyday linguistic expressions from each other. The story of these linkages is defined by the common roots of words belonging to the Indo-European languages from present-day South and West Asia as well as the Atlantic communities. For example, it is known that the Indian, Zoroastrian, Jewish, Arab, Roman and Greek worlds interacted with each other for thousands of years through conquest, proselytisation and trade, both by land and sea. As such, Ahmed is mostly concerned with language with regard to the Indo-European world, with explorations into the connections with, for instance, Chinese civilisation and the African traditions not fully represented here..This study synthesises expressions from mythology, religion, art, literature, philosophy, market behaviour and gender-based formulations. Ahmed is thus able to offer a kaleidoscopic view of the origins of words and the patterns of their transformation, as seen through the multiple domains of social life. For example, we find the word right and its 'righteous' connotations in English, with parallel words in Latin (dexter, dexterous), Sanskrit (daksh, right; dakshin, the country on the right when facing the sun; along with dakshina, alms given with the right hand), French-English (droit, right; adroit) and Arabic (Yemen, the country on the right while facing the sun; and iman, on the right side of god). The relationship between the word for right and its meaning as 'good' can thus be seen reverberating through multiple languages. Upon reflection, it is truly amazing that far-flung human civilisations have developed shared attitudes towards the right being good, superior, true..From gao to gotra.In taking the reader on an odyssey of transmutation, as words from one language morph and evolve into those of another, Ahmed discovers tangible links between regions and faiths. Look, for instance, at a sampling of English and Arabic word pairs: music (mousiqi), chemistry (al-kemiya), arsenal (dar-al-sana'), tarrif (ta'rif), nadir (sit-al-nazeer), candy (qand), cipher (sifer), horse (faras), paradise (fardous). Other pairs with English words include: shame (sherm, Urdu), luck (lekh, Hindi) and saint (sant, Sanskrit), among thousands of others. Ahmed also highlights several manifestations of a common root, such as qabl, qabeel, qabool, iqbal, mustaqbil, istiqbal and maqbool (meaning before, tribe, accept, rise, future, welcome and popular, respectively), apparently different meanings that actually draw on a shared root qbl, manifesting the pattern of evolution of related words carrying different connotations in different contexts. These words or their permutations can be found in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Punjabi. He also describes a plethora of word formations around the use of affixes or suffixes, or simply a diminutive form of expression in Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi such as in kani, kanak, kanya, kangla, kanchani, kanakari and kangani..Some of these explorations are surprising. Ahmed traces the etymology of guest in ancient times when it did not have a welcoming sentiment as understood today, but rather connoted fear of the enemy, of the oncoming visitor. The Punjabi word prauna (par-auna, a visitor from beyond) smacks of intrusion from outside. The Greeks were similarly hostile to visitors, who were perceived as enemy (xenos), from which xenophobia (fear of strangers) comes. Similarly, the English word host is drawn from the French hote, related to hotel and hostel; yet the word itself was once guest (enemy), and eventually led to hostile..The journey of words carrying the same meaning and similar sounds through the Indo-European languages is nothing less than astonishing. For example, the English cow is the Hindi gao, the Urdu gae and the Persian gav. The words derived from words for cow, meanwhile, are ge (for earth in Aryan mythology), gaia (for the Greek earth goddess), which led to the English geography, the Persian name Gehan and the Urdu Jehan. Other derivations from the Hindi gao constitute what seems to be a more straightforward lineage: gopal (cow breeder), gopi (cowherd girl), gokul (cowherd) as well as gotra (family of cows), the latter eventually coming to mean a human tribe. A parallel line of words meaning cow is the French vache, Latin-Spanish vacca and Punjabi vachhi, and by extension the inoculation material prepared from the cow's udder called vaccine..How can the same words and phrases carry opposite meanings in different contexts? Ahmed's example for this is the Urdu phrase aaray aana (come to help). He gives a whole list of words derived from the root aar meaning the opposite of help, such as aara (not straight, diagonal), archan (obstruction), araib (diagonal), arna (sticking to one's position), aryal (obstinate), araana (to put something into a narrow space), aranga (to trip someone) and aaray hathon lena (to oppose someone)..Far afield.Given that these essays began as newspaper columns, most tend to follow a particular template. Ahmed picks up a news item, a scholarly work, a recent statement by a religious or political leader or a current debate (such as, for instance, the name of the Delhi street where Mirza Ghalib lived), and then dives into a single word or phrase within that item, analysing its etymology, linguistic antecedents and alternative uses in different social contexts. For instance, the author traces Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's name to the Russian put, and on from there to the English path, the Hindi path and the Greek patein, which eventually leads back to the Hindi panth. Closely related are the Persian pa, Hindi pad and Urdu pagdandii. The name Putin itself can refer to a traveller in the road; also related is sputnik, which can refer to any traveller and was, of course, the name of the satellites sent into space by the Soviet Union..Following these lineages can be dizzying, and at times seem potentially arbitrary. How to ensure against seeing connections where none exist? Ahmed particularly censures writers who pursue a line of analysis by way of falsely projecting the transnational roots of words from Urdu, Punjabi, Siraiki and other languages. For example, the author chides Sharif Kunjahi, the scholar on Punjabi classical literature, for freely associating words from vastly different cultural backgrounds across the continents. For example, Ahmed castigates Kunjahi's attempts to link the Sanskrit aditya with English (non-)death; the Sanskrit ajiga (unable to swallow) with Punjabi jhaga (shirt) and Persian jigar (liver); arna in the Rig Veda meaning 'contest' with English arena, the place where the contest takes place; and the Sanskrit adar (cloud) with English udder..Meanwhile, Ahmed appears to apply great caution to his own flights of imagination in this regard – strictly adhering to the science of etymology and the knowledge of comparative word forms, and locating his journey of words across linguistic borders through a careful exercise in morphology. His scholarship has gone beyond any other attempt in Pakistan, and is certainly one of the most broad-ranging of any such works in Southasia. In locating the origin of words and their formations across languages, he is able to provide a sense of cultural linkages across the millennia, rendering geographical borders subservient to the wider civilisational currents – all this within the seemingly simple effort to understand the talisman of words..~ Mohammad Waseem is a professor of political science at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).