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Earlier this year, Language Log readers contributed to the elucidation of "South Asian wrestling terms" (3/1/16).

Rudraneil Sengupta's researches on this topic have now born fruit in the form of a book titled Enter the Dangal: Travels through India's Wrestling Landscape, which is due out 8/3/16.

In it, Rudraneil explores the history and culture of wrestling in India through the eyes of the wrestlers — both Olympians and those fighting in the vast village circuit of local tournaments.

Here's the description of the book on Amazon (India):

‘When I’m on the mat, I’m so filled with this awareness that the slightest touch feels like electricity to my body and my body reacts to that the same way it would have reacted if I touched a livewire.’

Wrestling, kushti, rules the farmlands, as it has for centuries. It had pride of place in the courts of Chalukya (6th-12th cc.) kings and Mughal (1526-1540; 1555-1857) emperors. It was embraced by Hinduism and its epics and has led its own untroubled revolution against the caste system. The British loved it when they first came to India, then rejected it during the freedom struggle. No, wrestling has never been marginal – even if it is largely ignored in modern-day narratives of sport and culture.

From the Great Gama to Sushil Kumar – whose two Olympic medals yanked the kushti out of rural obscurity and on to TV screens – and the many, many pehalwans in between, Enter the Dangal goes behind the scenes to the akharas that quietly defy urbanization. It travels to villages and small towns to meet the intrepid women who fight their way into this ‘manly’ sport. Beyond the indifferent wrestling associations and an impervious media is an old, old sport. Enter the dangal and you may never leave.

It would seem that dangal is a hot topic nowadays, with Disney (India) set to release a film of that name two days before Christmas this year.

And what is a dangal?

Wrestling competitions, known as dangal or kushti, are held in villages and as such are variable and flexible.

Source

We know from our earlier Language Log post that kushti derives from a Persian word meaning "fighting, wrestling".  But what about the source of the word dangal itself?  Perhaps Rudraneil takes that up in his book, but since I haven't had an opportunity to read it yet, I don't know if he actually does or not.  A quick web search shows that "dangal" exists as a word in many languages:  Nepali, Tagalog, Afroasiatic [Proto-Semitic], Polish [perhaps from German], Irish, and most interesting of all, Yagnobian, where dangal means "fell" and may be compared to Swedish digna ("to fall; sink down"), cf. dingla ("to hang over; dangle" [N.B.!! — I added the latter term myself by extrapolation]).  Only in the latter case (Yaghnobi) do I think there is a possibility of some link to the Indian word.

See Valentyn Stetsyuk, "Germanic tribes in Eastern Europe during the 2nd mill. BC" (doc), which includes very interesting observations about the location of the Urheimat of the Germanic peoples.

 

The Yaghnobi language^[5] is a living Eastern Iranian language (the other living members being Pashto, Ossetic and the Pamir languages). Yaghnobi is spoken in the upper valley of the Yaghnob River in the Zarafshan area of Tajikistan by the Yaghnobi people. It is considered to be a direct descendant of Sogdian and has often been called Neo-Sogdian in academic literature.^[6]

Source

It's tantalizing to think that the modern Indian word "dangal" might be somehow related to the Yaghnobi < Sogdian term, and that the Yaghnobi term might in turn be connected to the Swedish / German(ic) words I've cited.  Beyond that, I wonder if the Swedish / German(ic) terms are linked to English "dangle".

At my request, Florian Blaschke supplied this helpful information:

These Swedish words are unfortunately not familiar to me, and Kroonen's Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic does not list them, nor English dangle. The closest I can find is, s. v. *dangjan- "to beat", a Faroese verb deingja "to beat, strike; to fling, throw; to hang about". Jan de Vries, in his Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, connects digna with (what is in Kroonen) *di(:)gan- "to knead", while dingla is by him ultimately connected to detta "hart niederfallen", from *dintan- "to fall, hit", which is not found in Kroonen's dictionary, but in his Reflections on the o/zero-Ablaut in the Germanic Iterative Verbs, in The Indo-European Verb: Proceedings of the Conference of the Society for Indo-European Studies, Los Angeles, 13-15 September 2010, Wiesbaden, Reichert Verlag, 2012 (non vidi).

I am solely responsible for the use to which Florian Blaschke's remarks are put here.

From Gertrud Fremling, a native speaker of Swedish:

The only modern day use I remember hearing is NOT to fall or to hang over. The main example would be "dignande bord", i.e., a table that is overflowing with lot and lots of food – I guess that puts pressure on the table, pressing it down. Likewise, it could be used when a tree or bush is so filled with fruit that it affects the twigs and branches. Maybe that could possibly be related to them being pushed down and thus hanging down or dangling, though, at least in a causal sense.

I looked up the word here. It continues on the following page.

From what I gather at this website, it's related to the similar Icelandic word. I assume that this implies it is not related to German, since the Germanic words came to Sweden after the Viking Ages. The explanation given at the page emphasizes weakening, softening, bending, sinking, losing courage. No references to wrestling or falling down – at least not all the way, merely the bending down under pressure. According to the website, there appears to be some relationship to dough, Swedish "deg", which has something to do with Icelandic "segna" [VHM: in Swedish that means "sink down"] , "siga" [VHM: "dives"].

Not much clue about German! I only had two years of it in high school.

From Donald Ringe, on the history of the English word "dangle":

LOOK FIRST IN THE OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY ONLINE!!!  They're old-fashioned but highly reliable.  They record the Scandinavian ding- forms, but the situation is more complicated and more interesting.  Here's how I'd summarize it.

English dangle first appears in the 16th century; it is not attested in Middle English, nor in Old English.  Puzzlingly, there are forms that look like decent cognates on the other side of the North Sea:  Danish dangle, Swedish & Norwegian dangla, North Frisian "dangeln" (I'd expect something more like dangel; it's not clear they got the morphology right).  The OED implies that they all mean 'dangle', more or less (though you should check).  But just as there are no earlier English forms, there are apparently no Old Norse forms (in any dialect); if there were, the OED would have cited them.  The North Frisian verb could be a Danish loanword; there's really no way to tell, since North Frisian wasn't written down at all before the 17th century (mostly not till the 19th).

NOW THE QUESTIONS:  if these are real cognates, the word *must* have existed in Old English *and* Old Norse–so why isn't it attested?  You could say that's just an accident.  But we have a million and a half words of OE text, and a lot more ON, so accidental non-attestation of a word that isn't tabu is not a plausible explanation.

So probably they're not real cognates.  The NF word could be a loan from Danish; could the English word be a Scandinavian loan too?  After all, lots of English words are.  But then why doesn't it appear in northern Middle English, like Scandinavian loans normally do?  After all, Scandinavian immigration occurred mostly between 865 and the 950's, well within the OE period, so the word should already have been in place in northern ME.  And we have a flood of northern material from the 14th and 15th centuries, including some first-rate Scottish poetry.  So why isn't dangle used somewhere or other in all that material?

This is actually a problem that comes up *a*lot* in the etymologies of words shared by Germanic languages around the North Sea:  apparent cognates, but all attested too late to be real cognates, and no well-known (or at least well-researched) vehicle for word-borrowing either.  Only two possibilities seem to be left.  Either (1) the words are independent creations; that's fairly plausible because we know that Gmc languages make up onomatopoeic verbs by the cartload (see the discussion in Leonard Bloomfield's book Language, published 1933), and they use more or less similar templates to do so.  Or else (2) these darned things *are* loanwords, but the way they were borrowed is one not likely to leave telltale historical signs:  the international trade network in the North Sea, dominated by the Hansa cities of northern Germany but employing sailors of all nationalities.

I'd put my money on (2).  I suspect that the word is a late-ish Scandinavian innovation, borrowed into North Frisian (easy, because of intensive contact with Danish) *and* into English–necessarily by sailors, whose speech was never recorded because they were lower-class; then later, maybe much later, the word gets into the general London vernacular and eventually becomes respectable.  I note with interest that the earliest English attestation is apparently from London.

That's about what I can make of this.  There's no indication that the word goes back beyond the late middle ages at the earliest.

Comments on the origins and meanings of dangal in Indian languages

From Surendra Gambhir:

The word meaning wrestling tournament or competition came into many Indian languages through Marathi. It does not seem to be of Sanskrit origin. Most probably it is Arabic, Turkish or Persian but that needs to be checked.

From Jamal Elias:

It's not Urdu, and isn't used in Urdu to mean wrestling.

From John Hill:

A quick check of Google Translate gives 'wrestling' as the meaning of dangal in Urdu [VHM: but see the previous note from an Urdu specialist; the contradiction is puzzling], and 'cirque' and 'athletics' in Hindi.

The online Shabdkosh English Hindi Dictionary which can be found here.  It gives कुश्ती kushtee for 'wrestling'. It also gives मल्ल युद्ध malla yud'dha  malla yuddha for 'grapple', 'grappling', hand-to-hand struggle', 'wrestle', 'wrestling'.

Another online English Hindi dictionary gives a number of terms as translations of 'wrestle' – none of them similar to dangal or those others given above. You can have a look at their offerings here.

Again – another online Hindi English dictionary gives dangal as the Hindi for 'wrestling arena'. See here.

I also checked Hobson-Jobson but it had no terms related to wrestling. Some online Urdu dictionaries differentiate between Greco-Roman wrestling and ordinary wrestling – but I could find no terms similar to dangal.

It all seems very confusing.

A similar Urdu English dictionary gives Kushti or Kushti Larna for wrestling. See here.

From George Cardona:

Hindi has a word दंगल ‘wrestling’; the Gujarati cognate (દંગલ) means ‘fight’. But I don’t know the etymology.

VHM: dangal दंगल; daṅgala દંગલ

From Pushkar Sohoni:

Dangal means a riot in Marathi, but the root is connected with a tumultuous assembly, like of singers and musicians, and therefore probably has a ritualistic origin.

From Philip Lutgendorf:

I am traveling in India and without access to dictionaries, so I do not know what McGregor (who usually tries to give etymologies) says, but I am guessing that dangal is not a Sanskrit-derived word but is what is called 'deshaj' ('indigenous'). Although it is used to refer to wrestling competitions (not wrestling per se, which is 'pahalwaanii' or 'kushtii'), it also refers to competitions of other kinds (e.g., poetic).

Perhaps Shri Fred will know more, in his Himalayan perch. Off to Ahmedabad!

From Fred Smith:

I just looked this up in MacGregor’s Hindi-English Dictionary. It’s listed under daṃgal. The primary definition is an excited crowd. Next is an arena (esp. for wrestling). Next is a contest (as wrestling or reciting) – as Sri Philip notes. MacGregor cites this as a Persian word – dangal.

Thanks for the reminder of the 4th of July, I would have forgotten it entirely in the Himalayas.

Comments on the origins and meanings of dangal in Persian

From Brian Spooner:

…dangal sounds familiar to me but I can't remember now where I have come across it. The form of the word is certainly acceptable as Persian (cf. e.g. jangal), though I don't think it is an I-E form. I assume you have checked Steingass, but just in case you hadn't I checked. For dangal it has: sitting knee to knee, a crowd. Then for dangil, dingil (written the same of course): cuckold, foolish, awkward, etc. Not anything I remember, and I don't currently have anyone I could test it on for current usage.

From Arun Joglekar:

The Persian dictionary by Dr. Steingass gives the meaning of "Dangal" as: "sitting knee to knee, crowd".

"Dang" means astonished, confounded, stupid, sound made by collision of 2 stones.

The word entered in Indian languages and the meaning changed to wrestling competition and crowd / melee.

Comments on Yaghnobi and other Central Asian languages

From Adam Benkato:

Apparently the compound verb dangal(a) kun- means 'to throw, throw out' and dangal(a) vu- is 'to fall, drop'. I don't know about any connection to wrestling and haven't heard of Yaghnob wrestling—but Lubomir Novak, author of the most recent Yaghnobi(-Czech) dictionary (http://bit.ly/29fTGQ7) would probably be the one to ask about that.

From Barakatullo Ashurov:

The noun 'dangala' and 'dangal' is also used in Tajik and Uzbek.

In Tajik same as in Yaghnobi it takes 'kardan – to do' verb, e.g., dangala kardan 'to throw out/away'. This always has a negative meaning, such as throw out/away of hate, anger etc. Same tone is observed in Yaghnobi.

The noun dangala is also used with verb 'to give'. Dangala dodan – to throw off in the context of fight or wrestling.

In the sense of 'to hit' it comes in the compound 'dangal šap kardam' – to hit with a rod.

Any type of stick longer than a meter is referred to as 'dangal čub' – dangal stick / hitting stick.

There is also a children's game  called  'dangal bazi' that resembles Indian (Rajasthan) stick dance. but in more sporty manner.

In Uzbek this noun is commonly used with verb 'to speak' and it means 'to tell frankly or straightfowardly without holding back'.

This use of dangal in Tajik as adverb 'dangali' is used to describe a person with 'dirty tongue' or straight speaking or shameless. Note, only negative quality.

From Silvia Pozzi:

My husband is an Uzbek from Bukhara, Tajik dialect native speaker. He told me that there is an expression used during the modern Kurash fighting that says 'Dangal Gurash ger', and that can be translated as 'don't get smart'.

Summary of evidence by Francesco Brighenti

Although no etymology for Hindi/Urdu dangal ‘wrestling arena; wrestling tournament’ seems to be available through a Web search, I am led to think the word is not Indo-Aryan, and comes from Persian instead — though I don't know the etymology of Persian dang and dangal (see below). Here is what I have found:

Persian (from F.J. Steingass’ dictionary):

dang-ā-dang ‘equipoised, equal, exact; knee to knee; intimately connected; equally’

dangal ‘sitting knee to knee; a crowd’

Urdu (from J.T. Platts’ dictionary):

dangal [also attested in Hindi and Persian] ‘a tumultuous assembly, a crowd; the sitting face to face in an assembly; an amphitheatre; arena (esp. for wrestling)

Hindi (from M. Chaturvedi’s dictionary):

dangal ‘a wrestling tournament/bouts; wrestling arena; tumultuous assembly'

The whole idea of wrestling is for a competitor to gain a superior position over his opponent, whom he forces down, either by causing him to fall (takedown) or by pressing him against the mat (pinning hold).

All of this is food for thought as we enter the dangal.  The English word "dangle" may be completely irrelevant to the Indian word "dangal".  Then again, at a deeper level, it may share a basic sense with the Indian word.

Note received from Rudraneil just before posting:

Unfortunately, I could get no leads on 'dangal' – but the way the word is used now, it basically means a wrestling tournament. It is definitely not used to denote 'wrestling' or a wrestling club (akhara). The only usage I have come across is "wrestling tournament" or "wrestling match".

My book only very briefly touches on some etymologies, just to give a feel of how many different cultures Indian wrestling draws from, and its possible antiquity.

That is exactly what I thought Rudraneil would say.  "Dangal" is a hard nut to crack, but I think that — collectively — we have made considerable progress in this post.

[Thanks to Ron Kim, Heidi Krohne, and all the others who responded to my question about the meaning and derivation of dangal]

July 6, 2016 @ 6:10 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Announcements, Borrowing, Etymology, Language and sports, Lexicon and lexicography

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