Sanskrit hiṃsā || Hebrew khamás || Arabic ḥamās
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From Michael Carasik:
I have been wondering whether Gandhi’s “ahimsa” can be related to Hebrew חמס, the reason (per Gen 6:11) that God brought the Flood.
Michael asks whether this connection is plausible.
Though Sanskrit is an Indo-European language and Hebrew is Semitic, my initial impression is that the connection is not entirely implausible. Here's why.
Hebrew khamás חמס
חָמָס• (khamás) m (plural indefinite חֲמָסִים, singular construct חֲמַס־, plural construct חִמְסֵי־)
- robbery, theft
- violence, evildoing, injustice, cruelty, rapine, oppression [last three definitions added by VHM]
(source)
Akka. ḫamāṣu (= to oppress), Ethiop. amaḍa (= he oppressed), Syr. חֲמַץ (= he put to shame), and to base חמס.
Klein Dictionary, חָמוּס, Carta Jerusalem; 1st edition, 1987 (source)
Comment by John Huehnergard:
Klein’s cognates for Hebrew ḥāmas (חמס) are unlikely to be correct. Hebrew s (ס) corresponds to s in Akkadian, Arabic, and Ethiopic, not to ṣ. So Hebrew ḥāmas is cognate with Aramaic ḥ-m-s ‘criminality, violence’ (link root ḥms) and, probably, the rare Akkadian words ḫamsu ‘maltreated’, ḫimsātu ‘wrongful possessions’, ḫummusu ’to oppress’ (see conveniently, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, 2nd printing, pp. 104, 116, 120), and perhaps Arabic ḫamisa ’to be(come) hard, firm, strict, severe, afflictive’. Semantically similar but etymologically unrelated is Biblical Hebrew ḥ-m-ṣ (with ṣ צ, not s ס), ’to oppress’, which is related to Akkadian ḫamāṣu, Syriac ḥammeṣ, Sabaic ḫmṣ ’to deface (an inscription)’, but probably not to Ethiopic ʕammaḍa.
—————–
Sanskrit hiṃsā हिंसा
From हिंस् (hiṃs), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeys- (“fright”), an extension of *ǵʰey- (“wound, thrust”). See हेषस् (heṣas) for more.
- injury, mischief, wrong, harm, hurt (said to be of three kinds: personal, verbal and mental)
- killing, slaying, destruction, violence
- robbery, plunder
Derived terms
- अहिंसा (ahiṃsā, “non-violence”)
(source)
—————–
Arabic ḥamās
Hamas is an acronym of the Arabic phrase حركة المقاومة الإسلامية or Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, meaning "Islamic Resistance Movement". This acronym, HMS, was later glossed in the Hamas Covenant by the Arabic word ḥamās (حماس) which itself means "zeal", "strength", or "bravery". In Hebrew, there is a similar-sounding word, ḥāmās (חמס) connoting "violence" and it has been suggested that the phonemic resemblance between the two terms may have conduced to abetting acrimonious relations between Israel and this Palestinian movement.
(source)
This leads me to ponder: how deeply and widely can we go with the notion of triliteral roots?
Selected readings
- "Ur-etyma: how many are there?" (7/6/14)
- "Edenics" (11/1/13)
- "The origin of speeches: Wrathful dispersion for real?" (12/31/07)
martin schwartz said,
January 14, 2023 @ 8:42 pm
1) The nasal symbol transliterating the Sanskrit word
is really /n/ before the sibilant; 2) this /n/ is not part of the
root but what Indi-Europeanists call the nasal infix. The Skt. word, whose Indo-European etymology is supplied above,
is related to the nasal-infixed form hinasti 'he wounds, injures'.
The latter is like yunakti 'joins' alongside yuñjanti 'they yoke, join'
from root y(a)ug, whence also yoga-. Cf Latin juxta from *yug-s-,
alonside the infixed verb jungere 'to yoke, join', parallel to
Lat. fixus to verb fingere, etc. 3) Since Sanskrit and Hebrew (etc.) were not in contact, there is no reason to think of a borrowing,
and an ultimate connection between IE and Semitic is very moot, and tis cannot serve as a case in point, and since the Sanskrit does not come from a triconsonatal root phonically similar and otherwise
reconcilable with the Hebrew, one needn't ponder, from this example, how far (across linguiistic families?) the notion of triconsonatal roots can be taken. –While there are roots with 3
consonants in IE, the Semitic relationship of root consonants
as matrces of meaning further specified by vowel patterning has no
analog in Indo-European.
TR said,
January 16, 2023 @ 4:05 pm
It's odd to explain why "the connection is not entirely implausible" by citing etymologies that clearly show there's no connection.
[VHM: Not if one wanted to generate a bit of discussion, as happened in this case.]
(Arguably IE ablaut is to some extent an analog of Semitic template morphology, but that's going off topic.)
[VHM: Then why bring it up?]
TR said,
January 18, 2023 @ 11:00 pm
I was responding to the last sentence of Martin's comment.
Victor Mair said,
January 19, 2023 @ 7:59 am
All the more, I don't see the point of bringing up ablaut and template.
Yves Rehbein said,
January 20, 2023 @ 7:00 pm
> It's odd to explain why "the connection is not entirely implausible" by citing etymologies that clearly show there's no connection.
I'd count that as a comment on the historic framework rather than the historical linguistics per-se.
Which denies "3) Since Sanskrit and Hebrew (etc.) were not in contact, there is no reason to think of a borrowing," because there are notable artrfacts shared between Indo-European and Semitic speakers, just not between Sanskrit and Hebrew. The script, for example, follows the alphabetic tradition. More importantly as far as Genesis is concerned, Carolina Lopez-Ruiz argues emphatically for a broader perspective.
TR said,
January 21, 2023 @ 4:56 pm
Well, sure, except that the "not entirely implausible" comment is immediately followed by "Here's why" and a bunch of etymologies that refute it, not a discussion of the possibility of historical contact. The post would be a perfectly sensible one if only that "not" were removed.
R. Fenwick said,
January 22, 2023 @ 12:55 am
@Yves Rehbein: Which denies "3) Since Sanskrit and Hebrew (etc.) were not in contact, there is no reason to think of a borrowing," because there are notable artrfacts shared between Indo-European and Semitic speakers, just not between Sanskrit and Hebrew.
Though that's also not necessarily a reason not to look to Sanskrit specifically. Though it's not yet percolated very far out of the cuneiform-studies realm to produce richer results in historical linguistics, it's been recognised for some time that Bronze Age Mesopotamia hosted a small community of speakers of an Old Indic language very close to Vedic Sanskrit. The language itself appears to have been mostly associated with the Hurrian-speaking Mitanni Kingdom, and no contiguous texts in it are known to survive, but traces can be seen in loanwords spreading through Hurrian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Ugaritic.
(Some of these traces are stark: the Vedic gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra, and the Nasatyas are cited in sequence in the treaty between the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I and Mitanni king Shattiwaza, and an Old Hittite horse-training manual written by a Mitanni trainer measures the length of training laps with a paradigm of clearly Indic terms for "(number) turns of the racecourse": aikawartanna "one turn", tierawartanna "three turns", panzawartanna "five turns", sattawartanna "seven turns", nawartanna "nine turns" (compare Vedic eka-, tri-, pañca-, sapta-, nava-vartana "one, three, five, seven, nine turnings").
Though Hebrew was part of a somewhat different cultural sphere, Ugaritic was at least in the same general area and not too distantly related. It's conceivable that etymologists of Central Semitic languages more broadly might happen across one or two words where Sanskrit might be a useful proxy for potential Mesopotamian Old Indic etymologies.