LL-L "Etymology" 2008.02.24 (05) [E/German]

Tue Feb 26 04:48:17 UTC 2008

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From: Luc Hellinckx <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology"

Beste Gael, Ron et al,

Just in order to shed a little light on your path:

http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/باغ <http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/%3F%3F%3F>
*
bāġ* (باغ) seems to be the origin of English "paradise"; Kluge:

*Paradies*

SnSubstantiv Neutrum std.Standardwortschatz (8. Jh.), mhd. paradIs[e],
pardIs[e], ahd. paradIs Entlehnung. Entlehnt aus spl. paradIsus m., dieses
aus gr. parádeisos m. (auch: "Park"), das auf ein iranisches Wort zurückgeht
(avest. pairi-daeza- m. Pl. "Umwallung", apers. paridaida- m. "Lustgarten,
Wildpark", npers. pAlEz "Garten", eigentlich "der Ummauerte, Umwallte"). Das
Wort kommt ins Griechische, weil Xenophon es für die Bezeichnung der Parks
persischer Adeliger und Könige gebraucht. In der griechischen Bibel
(Septuaginta) wird das Wort dann für den "Garten Eden" gebraucht, wodurch es
zu einem Terminus der christlichen Mythologie wird.

Ebenso nndl. paradijs, ne. paradise, nfrz. paradis, nschw. paradis, nisl.
Paradís.

Walz, J. A. ZDW 12 (1910), 192;
Littmann (1924), 16;
DF 2 (1942), 328f.;
Siegert (1950), 146f.;
Weimann, K.-H. DWEB 2 (1963), 400;
Lokotsch (1975), 131;
Röhrich 2 (1992), 1141f.;
LM 6 (1993), 1697-1699.  lateinisch iran

but also:

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=Paradise

where you can read that paradise < pairi + *dheigh, the latter being cognate
with "dough" (dāg in Old English), so I gather that bāg may be a contraction
in some Iranian dialect?

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx

PS: The word reminded me of a famous Hindi-song: Pardesi Pardesi Jana Nahi,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRmLnYUpOaE
Here it means "stranger" ~ Sanskrit *paradēsha* = "foreign country".

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

Thanks, Luc. That's very interesting and *à propos*, isn't it?

It looks as though I wasn't all that far off then I wrote:

Consider Sanskrit words for "envelop," "fence off," "enclose" or
"enclosure": *paribhū *(परिभू), *parici *(परिचि), *paridhā *(परिधा), *parigrah
*(परिग्रह्), *parirudh *(परिरुध्), *paristr *(परिस्तृ), *parivrj* (परिवृज्),
*parizri* (परिज़्रि).

And the plot thickens. I never followed the word all the way back to Ancient
Iranian. Why? I stopped at Hebrew:

פַּרְדֵס *pardes*:
Biblical: park, luscious garden, park
Post-Biblical: esoteric philosophy
Modern: orange grove, orchard

It corresponds *pardesi* in Akkadian, a fellow Semitic language that went
extinct around 100 BCE, and it is ܦܪܕܝܣܐ* ~ *פרדסא *pardaysa* in Aramaic,
Hebrew's sister language. In Modern Persian and Arabic it's فردوس *firdaws*.
(I assume it's an Arabic loan in Modern Persian.)

Apparently we are dealing with an ancient Persian loan that already found
it's way into the Old Testament.

Note the semantic journey in Hebrew! It does remind one of Persian * bāġ* (
باغ), doesn't it?

And here one wonders what the difference was in Ancient Hebrew between
Persian-derived פַּרְדֵס *pardes* and apparently native בֻּסְתָּן
*bustân*(cf. Arabic بستان
*bustân* 'garden', 'orchard'), גִּנָה *gin**â**h* and גָּן *g**â**n*. All of
them can be translated as "garden," and *pardes* and *bustân* can both be
translated as "orchard."  I have a feeling that *pardes* connoted the
Persian idea of a grand, luscious garden, a ... well, paradisiacal one, that
incorporated the idea of inner space. The author of *Balashon* (
http://www.balashon.com/2007/12/pardes-and-paradise.html) writes:

Steinberg's entry for pardes mentions that it was used to translate the word
אשל (Bereshit 21:33) into Aramaic in the Targum Yerushalmi, as described in
Sotah 10a. The meaning there is "an orchard with many types of fruits."
Steinsaltz there writes that the word developed from specifically a
pomegranate orchard (see Ibn Ezra on Kohelet 2:5, where he says that a
ganhas many types of trees, and a
pardes has only one type), to an orchard of many types of trees (Vayikra
Rabba 13), and finally an orchard where people would go to relax and play
in. This last sense would seem to be the esoteric one that Klein mentioned
above, as in the famous Talmudic statement "Four entered pardes" (Chagiga
14b.)

However, the Jewish
Encylopedia<http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=65&letter=P>has
a slightly different understanding of
pardes in that context:

The word pardes is used metaphorically for the veil surrounding the mystic
philosophy (Hag. 14b), but not as a synonym for the Garden of Eden or
paradise to identify a blissful heavenly abode for the righteous after
death. The popular conception of paradise is expressed by the term "Gan
'Eden," in contradistinction to "Gehinnom" = "hell."

This reminds us of Jacqueline's words about the difficulties of translation.
I would narrow it down to literary translation, especially lyrical
translation, and especially of ancient and "exotic" texts. Academic
translation can be liberally studded with notation that explains time, place
and semantics. In "beautiful" translations this tends to be discouraged. How
then do you translate for instance these various Middle Eastern words for
orchard and garden without "burdening" the reader with copious background
information? Or look at the vast area of colors, their names and their
connotations in various languages and cultures. Even among closely related
languages you can be hard pressed to find an elegant equivalent for many a
word, such as one of my favorite Low Saxon examples *swark* ('an approaching
wall of dark storm clouds').

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
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