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Indo-Arica IV: Sanskrit śvāsura-

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R. L. Turner
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Extract

There is no doubt of the ancientness of Skt. śváśura- and śvaśr- (= Lat. socer and socrus) and their general survival in Modern Indo-Aryan languages: see, e.g., Nepali Dictionary s.w. sasuro and sās. Concerning the earlier existence, however, of its vddhi-derivative, śvāśura-, as a substantive equivalent to OHG suagur, etc. (and so to be accented *śvāśurá-) strong doubt was expressed in Wackernagel-Debrunner, Altind. Gram., II, 2, § 34c.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 1960 , pp. 106 - 108
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1960

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References

1 The modern representatives of śváśura-, which in the older language predominantly denoted ‘the husband's father’ but in the later ‘either husband's or wife's father’, now in nearly every case in which the ambiguous ‘father-in-law’ is defined by the dictionaries apply to the father either of the husband or the wife: Ḍumaki sasurā, Kash. hihur, Panj. sauhrā (to judge by dadauhrā ‘wife's or husband's father's father’), Nep. sasuro, Hi. sasur, Mar. sāsrā. The only ones which the dictionaries restrict to the father of one or other spouse are: (1) husband's father: Maithili sasur; (2) wife's father: Gawar-Bati plošur and possibly Shumashti, šāšurem ‘my f.-in-l.’ (spoken by a man, NTS, xiii, 1945, 276).Google Scholar

2 There have been some new formations, especially for the feminine as in Gk. έκνρ: Pali sasurī, Shumashti š šurī, Pashai (Kuṛangal) š šurī, Hi. susrī as a term of abuse beside sās <śvaśr -, Panj. sahurī, Sinh. suhul <*śvaśurā (not with Geiger, W., Etym. gloss. Sinhalese lang., 185Google Scholar, <śvaśr -); but also for the masculine: Savi präš m. after praš f. <śvaśr -, Morgenstierne, G., Notes on Phalūṛa (Skr. Norske Vid.-Ak., II, Hist.-Fil. Kl., 1940, No. 5), p. 48.Google Scholar

3 śvaśurasyāpatyaṁ śvaśuryaḥ | śvaśuryasyāpatyaṁ śvāśuriḥ | śvāśurer yūnaś chāttrāḥ śvāsurāḥ|

There can be no doubt that apatya- here means ‘son’, and that śvāśuri-, which the Petersburg Dictionary defines as ‘patron, von svasura’ without reference to Patañjali and Monier-Williams, with reference, as ‘father-in-law's son’, means, as Thieme says, ‘father-in-law's son's son’.

1 In Eur. Gypsy a before a consonant-group remained a and before a single consonant < e. This latter change occurred before the loss of vowel in a following syllable, e.g. terno ‘young’ <taruṇa-, pasterni ‘carpet’ <prastaraṇa-, peryas ‘mockery’ <parihāsa-, kerko ‘bitter’ <*kaṭu-kka- (not with Sampson, J., Dial, of the Gypsies of Wales, iv, 146Google Scholar, from Slavonic).

2 Not with Bloch, J., La langue marathe, 421Google Scholar < śváśura-.

3 Replacement of the simple noun by one derived from its v ddhi-adjective is not uncommon in other fields of vocabulary, of the type bilvà- m. ‘the tree Aegle marmelos’ AV which survives in Kash. bil m., Panj. bill m., Hi. bīl m., Guj. bīl n. ‘the leaf’, bīlī f. ‘the tree’, but has elsewhere been generally displaced by bailvá- adj. ŚBr. as in Mar. bel n. ‘the fruit’, m. ‘the tree’.

4 Unextended dev - survives in Kash. dyāra- (<ace. *dēvāram replacing dēváram after type svásāram, bhártaram, etc.) in compounds dyārathar ‘husband's brother's son’, dyāraz ‘husband's brother's daughter’.

5 It is, however, not impossible that there is here a development not of the adjective śvāśurá-, but of the original substantive *śvāśurá- with a change of meaning from ‘f.-in-l.'s son’ to ‘f.-in-l.’, a confusion which might conceivably take place in the mind and speech of the grandchildren and which is perhaps paralleled in Pashai (Laurovan) šair(ī) m. ‘f.-in-l.’. This Morgenstierne, , Indo-Ir. frontier lggs., iii, 3, 165Google Scholar, derives <*śvaśr-, but it is rather <śvaśur(i)ya- ‘f.-in-l.'s son’. The same dialect of Pashai has išpairī ‘f.-in-l.'s son’ (see below). It is to be supposed that this differentiation of form and meaning has been due to interdialectal borrowings.

6 As suggested by G. Morgenstierne in a personal communication.

1 Morgenstierne, G., Indo-lr. frontier Iggs., III, 3, 19Google Scholar, tentatively derives <*śvaśrīya- while comparing śvaśurya-.