I don't mean to be lewd, although it's an irresistible temptation of sinful pleasure, but it was Mallory and Adams in Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture (1997) that wrote that *kápro- 'goat', from whence Latin caper, is built on the word for 'penis', *kápṛ.[1] This is an old tired line mentioned too by Julius Pokorny. Seemingly the endowment of goats left quite a large impression on the ancient world. Or is it only a post-Freud obsession? Greek assigns a different quadriped to its allegedly related word κάπρος, 'wild boar'. The only perceivable similarities between a goat and a boar are their hooves and general mammalian air but several scholars want us to believe that the majormost commonality is their respective external organs. How might we touch upon this odd penchant to name animals based on reproductive parts of the body and how might we avoid possible blindness in doing so?
The Ancient Greeks were conscious of the enticing difference in meaning between their word and the similar one in Italy. Hesychius glossed the word κάπρα describing it as 'goat' and he assigned it to the "Tyrrhenian" language (ie. Etruscan). Surely he was alluding to Latin caper and made a mistake in judgement, perhaps based in turn on his own erroneous sources. Or was it really a mistake? Maybe we have it all wrong. Maybe this is another case of mistaken identity and Indo-European bias in the field of etymology. Maybe this is really an Etruscan word that was exported to surrounding IE languages of Western Europe and just maybe there is no such stem *kapro- or penis-based animal terms here at all.
As with so many other dubious roots slopped into Mallory & Adams' EIEC, this one begs to be investigated more closely. For starters, they find it difficult to explain the Celtic reflexes that curiously would point to an Indo-European *g- instead of *k- and in order to protect their reconstruction, they point to possible contamination with a similar PIE animal root. However, if we follow instead Hesychius' testimony, the irregular Celtic reflexes can be perfectly explained through borrowing from the implied Etruscan etymon *capra with its unaspirated [k-]. To the foreign Celtic ear, it could very well sound more like their [g-] than their [kʰ-] did since their plosive contrast was one primarily of voice, not of aspiration as among the Etruscans.
This would really make sense and go with Hesychius' testimony but for one thing, the inclusion of Iranian data like Modern Persian kahra- 'kid', Auramani kawrā 'sheep', Saka Khotanese kaura-, kám̥ra- 'sheep' which has been attributed to a Proto-Iranian reconstruction, *kafra-. Note a complete lack of Indic reflexes situated anywhere to the east. Does this Iranian evidence, much of which is obscure, honestly give us reason to reconstruct a PIE root? Has it been shown that these words are not just borrowings? I'll have to examine this more later and try to solve my own questions. This doesn't seem to be a simple affair.
NOTES
[1] Mallory/Adams, Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture (1997), p.229: *kápros 'he-goat (male Capra hircus)' (see link).
I've just come across your blog and I'm now reading backwards through the archives. I must say I'm impressed by your wide range of knowledge of ancient languages and by the depth of your analysis.
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed strange that the "penis" word is only attested in Indo-Aryan, a branch in which *kapro- is not attested. On the other hand, derivationally and semantically I don't see any difficulties - o-stem derivations of consonant stems are frequent, and I'd assume that the meaning in PIE was not "goat" but "male", which would explain the diverging meanings in Iranian ("male" > "whether" > "sheep"), in Greek ("male" > "(wild) boar") and those languages that have "goat (via "buck").
In that case, the word could be an Italic loan in Etruscan? And maybe Etruscan loaned it on to Celtic, eplaining the initial /g/?
Thank you very much for your praise, Hans.
ReplyDeleteHans: "On the other hand, derivationally and semantically I don't see any difficulties"
Semantically there certainly are issues because one is claiming that 'penis' expands to 'male' and then becomes specialized again to a 'male animal' with no strong reason for so many changes other than the usual cop-out excuse of taboo formation.
It would be helpful if this development was actually attested somewhere in a real-world language but it just seems like a head-game to me (pardon yet another sick pun).
"And maybe Etruscan loaned it on to Celtic, eplaining the initial /g/?"
This is precisely what I wrote above. Instinctually I'm inclined to reject the Iranian reflexes as borrowings somehow from the west but I haven't gotten around to finding pertinent facts to do so yet.
Glen Gordon: Semantically there certainly are issues because one is claiming that 'penis' expands to 'male' and then becomes specialized again to a 'male animal' ... It would be helpful if this development was actually attested somewhere in a real-world language but it just seems like a head-game to me (pardon yet another sick pun).
ReplyDeleteLet's see what I can dredge up here. Development 1) "Word for penis > Word for male". There's Hittite pešan-/pešn-/pišen- "man, male person", which is related to IE words meaning"penis" (s. Kloekhorst p.775). There are also many examples of words for phallic objects coming to mean "boy", e.g in German Knabe “boy” (Engl. knave) (see also OHG knabo, related to words meaning “stick, club”, Bengel also Dutch, original meaning ”club”, Stift (lit. “bolt”), Pfriem (lit. “awl”). Of course, you could argue that a cigar is a cigar and that there’s nothing phallic behind these words, but this may be the case with kápr.- as well – it may be that it’s just a word with an unknown meaning used for phallus in a few cases in the Veda (see the euphemistic translation Geldner uses for kápr̥th(am) in10.86.17 Rute „rod“, while in 10.101.12a he uses Glied „penis“.
Part II:
ReplyDeleteDevelopment 2): Word for „male (of an animal)” shifting between different species. Here we have English "bull", that can be used e.g. also for male elephants and moose besides for bovids or Geman "Bock" that can be used for roes, antelopes and even for rabbits besides for male goats. And the Dutch / Afrikaans equivalent bok has been used to form names for entire species, independent of gender (e.g. springbok, lit. “leap(ing) buck”). And in any case, if you don’t want to dismiss Greek κάπρος “boar” and the Iranian words as totally unrelated, you’ll have to assume a shift of meaning between different species as well.
All this certainly isn’t proof that this is what’s happened or that a putative PIE *kápr.- "penis" is the source of the “goat” words. But I hope I have shown that a case for the semantics involved in that theory can be made. My doubts concern the attestation of Old Indian kápr.th/kapr.thám - I cannot find any descendants into modern Indo-Aryan in Turner , there are only three Vedic occurences as per the the Bloomfield concordance, all in the R.gveda, there are no correspondent words in other IE languages with the meaning "penis" vel sim., from the occurrences it isn't even clear that the stem is kapr.-, i.e. an old heteroclitic noun extended by a dental element, like yakr.t "liver", or whether the stem is kapr.th-, which would look decidedly un-Indo-European. As I mentioned in my comment to your "Capite velato" blog entry, this word could even be a Para-Munda substrate loan, with a prefix ka- that is typical for such loans. So I'm as inclined as you to think this may be a regional (Mediterranean / Mid-Eastern) substrate word or a "Wanderwort" only for different reasons.
As I was expecting, this is a pars pro toto response. One cannot justify a meandering semantic development (ie. penis → male → male animal → goat) by demonstrating only the first step (penis → male).
ReplyDeleteSecondly, a single word in Indic, kapr̥th-, fails to justify PIE **kapr̥- 'penis' without further attestation in other IE branches. Without **kapr̥- 'penis', one can hardly get to **kapro- 'goat' anyways.
On "pars pro toto" - actually, I had to post my response in two parts, due to length restrictions, and I don't know whether the second part went through. I hope it shows that I'm arguing for the whole change and that I in fact agree with you assessment of the PIE non-status of the supposed **kapr.- If it didn't reach your moderator interface, I'll repost it.
ReplyDeleteFYI for everyone, there are several colourful expressions for 'penis' in Sanskrit not attributable to PIE but rather to more recently created symbolism and semantic shift. So why must kapr̥th- be any different?
ReplyDeleteHere's some more food for thought: kapr̥th may primarily have meant 'ploughshare' [1][2].
ReplyDeletekapr.th may primarily have meant 'ploughshare'
ReplyDeleteInteresting. Unfortunately, all I get from Google when following your links are snippet views, which just peek my interest, but don't give me any chance to check the reasoning or the attestations those authors (hopefully) give. Can you see more than snippets? I heard that Google distinguishes what you can see on Google books depending of the country from where one logs on.
Using the search-string kaprt ploughshare should at least yield some readable hits in any non-communist country, no? (Otherwise I fear Google all the more now, lol.)
ReplyDeleteFor example, The Journal of the Ganganatha Jha Research Institute, vol. 25 (1969), p.509: "Another similar word is the kaprt, applied to the male-organ and the plough-share."
This above statement is pretty clear here, snippet or not.
The statement is clear, but it may well be someone's pet view that is repeated by that person's followers. Like the view that Etruscan is an IE or Caucasian language also doesn't become more correct by people repeating it in print. ;-)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'll try to do a bit more research on kapr.th- and come back if I find anything interesting.
Hans: "The statement is clear, but it may well be someone's pet view that is repeated by that person's followers."
ReplyDeleteSexual terms based on metaphor are exceedingly common. It's prejudicial rhetoric to charge a priori that this considerable possibility may be a "pet view".
Indeed, **kapr̥- is provably "pet view" because it's based on only one obscure term of one language of one branch of IE, all in pompous defiance of Hesychius' direct testimony that κάπρα (Latin caper) is indeed Tyrrhenian (ie. Etruscan, and thus more broadly Proto-Aegean). Since **kapr̥- ignores methodology, no proper linguist is obligated to treat the root as anything other than careless fringe.
Again, don't misunderstand me - I am not saying that there was a PIE *kapr.- "penis". But the same way I'm not ready to accept the assertion that Vedic kapr.th- has an IE pedigree without checking, the same way I'm not ready to accept that it meant "ploughshare" just because some snippets from Google books say so, without seeing the reasoning and the attestation of the meaning. You put me on a hunt here - before I read your post, I hadn't even heard about the kapr,- etymology. Yesterday I had been checking several Sancrit dictionaries available online here , and in none of them a meaning "ploughshare" or similar is attested. As the word seems to be attested only about 6 times at all and as it doesn't seem to have left any descendants in the Modern IA languages, I 'd just like to see the basis for assigning any meaning to it - be it "penis" or be it "ploughshare".
ReplyDeleteWhile you're distracted by whether "google snippets" are valuable leads to new info or not, I've typed today's post and shared a direct parallel of the theorized development of kapr̥t- in Latin vōmer 'ploughshare' → 'penis'.
ReplyDeleteRg Veda 10.086.16.1 is retrievable online if one wants to seriously discuss it:
ReplyDeleteNa seśe yasya rambate ntarā sakthyā kapŗt
"He achieves not whose ploughshare/penis dangles between his thighs."
Both 'penis' and 'ploughshare' work here, but the latter adds dimension to the text.
And a further book on Latin's use of vōmer (as well as other similar terms like falcula 'little sickle') as mentula for the curious among us can be read Adams, The Latin Sexual Vocabulary (1990), p.24.
Do I deny that it that could have meant "ploughshare"? No, I don't. But it may as well have meant "stick", "rod", "awl", "club"or any other of dozens of words a meaning "penis" can normally be derived from. So I'd just like to see where a meaning "ploughshare" for kapr.th- is really attested, instead of being assumed based on speculation about sexual symbolism. That's all.
ReplyDeleteYou're straying from the topic above. Being that kaprth- fails to relate to Western European goat terms despite Pokorny, it's irrelevant to this issue what meaning you wish to attribute or not attribute to the unrelated Sanskrit term.
ReplyDelete"So I'd just like to see where a meaning 'ploughshare' for kapr.th- is really attested[...]
You're free to investigate the Rg Veda yourself, if interested.
You're free to investigate the Rg Veda yourself, if interested. That's the point, I did, as you can see from my linking to the Sancsrit text with Geldner's translation, and there's no good basis there to select the meaning "ploughshare" instead of any other possible word that may or may not have served as a basis for the meaning "penis".
ReplyDeleteBut you're right, this is all only tangential to your initial post, and I don't want to flog any dead goats here. ;-) I think we agree that kapr.th- probably doesn't have anything to do with the goat word.
Still, even if we leave the Iranian words out, what do you think was the original meaning of *kaprV-? If it was "goat", how do we get to Greek "wild boar"?
I'm looking at every Sanskrit word, not just the translations. In both RV 10.86.16 (as quoted above) and 10.101.12, both 'penis' and 'ploughshare' work equally well. And yes, so could any number of nouns, but 'penis' is no more nor less favourable from what I see here.
ReplyDeleteAt 10.101.12, the kaprth- is being [ud dadhā]-ed, [coda]-ed and [khud]-ed "for the riches" (vājasātaye). So are men using their penises to attain sexual bounty? Or are farmers ploughing the fields for bounty of harvest? Perhaps both or perhaps something else. How on earth can we tell either way? Without other cognates in Indo-Iranian or some other hint, we may be doomed to never know.
"[...] what do you think was the original meaning of *kaprV-? If it was 'goat', how do we get to Greek 'wild boar'?"
I think I might reject the Greek 'boar' as a homophonous red-herring, although I'm no more sure of its source than Pokorny.
Behind the rest of the West European words would lie Etruscan *capra 'goat' which implies (but doesn't guarantee) an Aegean root *kapara. As above, an early loan would explain the unexpected Celtic g- and Etruscan is just in the right place and time.