Vedic Etymology (A Critical Evaluation of the Science of Etymology as Found in Vedic Literature)

In course of the observations on the Vedic Etymologies several laws of Semantics have been noticed. For fear of making the work voluminous, they may be given here only in brief:- 1. Words associated with concrete physical phenomena tend to abstract themselves from them e.g. Atri, Brahman. 2. Words connected with sacrifice undergo threefold changes Adhidaivika, Adhibhautika, and Adhyatmika. 3. Names of the most of Nature-gods in course of time become absolutely abstract. 4. There also seems to be a reverse order i.e. the change from the abstract to the comparatively concrete e.g. the names of deities like Manauta and Sraddha’. 5. The role of myths, superstitions and religious beliefs in the process of word-formation is also very important, for they are also the outcome of the human reason which is, indeed, responsible for the evolution of languages. 6. Sometimes the moral sense of the word is utterly perverted e.g. ‘Asura’ in India and “Indra’ in Iran, Many a word is what is called a ‘Fossil Poetry’ e.g. Pipilika-Madhya. 7. Laws of association plays a great part in the formation of words and in changing their meanings. 8. Name given to things seem, directly or indirectly, to refer to some characteristic of the things named. 9. There are certain factors that are responsible for the attribution of more than one senses, very often contradictory to each other, to one word. 10. There are some words which may be said to be fossil History e.g. Asura. 11. There seems to be a relation between the mental disposition and the phonetic nature of the word expressing the object with which that disposition is associated. I am very grateful to the university of Rajputana for the publication grant without which the book could not have been published even now. I am, however, sorry to say that the latter fortion of the book has to be considerably abridged for lack of funds.