Nirukta — etymology and meaning

निरुक्त

Also written: nirukta · yaska · vedic etymology · nighantu

Grammar tells you how a word is formed; Nirukta tells you what it means, and why. Yāska's Nirukta, a commentary on the older Nighaṇṭu word-lists, is the oldest surviving treatise on semantics in any language.

Method

Yāska's first move is to divide the vocabulary of a language into four kinds, and the division has held for twenty-five centuries.

चत्वारि पदजातानि नामाख्याते चोपसर्गनिपाताश्च।

catvāri pada-jātāni nāmākhyāte copasarga-nipātāś ca

There are four classes of word: noun and verb, and preverb and particle.

— Yāska, Nirukta 1.1

The interest is in the pair he treats as fundamental. Nāma names a being, ākhyāta names a becoming — Yāska's own gloss is that the verb has process (bhāva) as its predominant sense and the noun has substance (sattva). Preverbs and particles are handled separately because they carry no independent meaning and only modify. This is a functional classification of parts of speech arrived at from meaning rather than from inflection, and it is roughly the analysis a modern semanticist would give.

Words are grouped into four classes: nāma (noun), ākhyāta (verb), upasarga (prefix) and nipāta (particle).
Yāska holds that nouns derive from verbal roots — that meaning is rooted in action. Not everyone agreed, and he records the opposition.
Where a Vedic word is obscure, the method is to identify the root, the action it names, and the context of the hymn — not to guess.
He preserves the views of seventeen earlier etymologists whose works are otherwise lost.

The warning against recitation without meaning

Yāska's most quoted lines are a rebuke, and they are aimed squarely at the profession he belongs to.

स्थाणुरयं भारहारः किलाभूदधीत्य वेदं न विजानाति योऽर्थम्। योऽर्थज्ञ इत्सकलं भद्रमश्नुते नाकमेति ज्ञानविधूतपाप्मा॥

sthāṇur ayaṁ bhāra-hāraḥ kilābhūd adhītya vedaṁ na vijānāti yo'rtham yo'rtha-jña it sakalaṁ bhadram aśnute nākam eti jñāna-vidhūta-pāpmā

He who has studied the Veda but does not know its meaning has become a mere post, a carrier of burdens. But he who knows the meaning attains every good, and rises to heaven with his faults shaken off by knowledge.

— Yāska, Nirukta, first adhyāya (the sthāṇu verse)

Sthāṇu is a tree-stump or a fixed post; bhāra-hāra is a beast that carries a load. The insult is precise: a reciter who does not understand is not corrupt or lazy, he is inanimate — a thing that supports a weight without any relation to it. And Yāska is not an outsider making this charge. He is the author of one of the six sciences that exist to make correct recitation possible, saying that correct recitation is not enough. He backs it with a verse from the Ṛgveda itself.

ऋचो अक्षरे परमे व्योमन्यस्मिन्देवा अधि विश्वे निषेदुः। यस्तन्न वेद किमृचा करिष्यति य इत्तद्विदुस्त इमे समासते॥

ṛco akṣare parame vyoman yasmin devā adhi viśve niṣeduḥ yas tan na veda kim ṛcā kariṣyati ya it tad vidus ta ime samāsate

The verses abide in the imperishable, in the highest heaven, where all the gods are seated. He who does not know That — what will he do with a verse? But those who know it, they sit here assembled.

— Ṛgveda 1.164.39 (repeated at Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 4.8)

Kim ṛcā kariṣyati — 'what will he do with a verse?' The question is śruti's own, put to the person who has the syllables and not the referent. Note where it stands: inside the Ṛgveda, in the same riddle-hymn that gives ekaṁ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti. The tradition's warning against literalism is not a later reformer's correction; it is in the oldest text, and the science of etymology exists because of it.

Nirukta — etymology and meaning

Method

The warning against recitation without meaning

The sources of knowledge in Sanātana Dharma

Śruti — that which was heard

Smṛti — that which was remembered

Nigama and Āgama — the two revealed streams

The four Vedas

Ṛgveda