Fact check

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>Can anyone confirm the two assertions made in the following quotation (from
>_The New Pioneers_ by Tom Petzinger, Jr.):
>
>In many ancient languages the word equivalent of "business" shares the same
>roots as "life"; in old Sanskrit, "man" was derived from a word meaning to
>weigh, value, count out, or share.

Here is a version from the Web:

<<The earliest known examples of cuneiform writing involved business
transactions almost exclusively, from livestock to olive oil. In many
ancient languages, the word equivalent of "business" shares the same roots
as "life." A 3,000-year-old Chinese character for business translates as
"life with meaning." In old Sanskrit, "man" was derived from a word meaning
to weigh, value, count out, or share.>>

Taking the assertions separately:

<<The earliest known examples of cuneiform writing involved business
transactions almost exclusively ....>>

I believe this is true, according to my casual reading. And why not? Before
cuneiform no doubt there were marks on a stick to count the sheep, etc.

<<In many ancient languages, the word equivalent of "business" shares the
same roots as "life.">>

Hard to dispute or confirm, but probably correct IMHO. One's *business* is
how one makes his *living*, right? In many cases the "roots" are not all
that well understood however. Consider for example the ancient English
language: "busy" can be traced to Old English, there is a cognate like
"besich" in Dutch, and that's it ... no distant cognates, no proto-IE
ancestor .... I wonder whether one can associate "busy" with German
"besichtigen" = "look around", in light of the sense of "busybody" where
"busy" seems to mean "[overly] attentive"; but I'm sure this has been
addressed or rightly ignored by wiser minds ....

<<A 3,000-year-old Chinese character for business translates as "life with
meaning.">>

Since I am grossly ignorant of Chinese, I tend to assume that others --
perhaps even including Petzinger -- may be also (my apologies if my
assumption is unwarranted). I believe what he refers to here is not a
character but rather the two-character word "shengyi" = "business". I have
no idea how old this word is, but 3000 years ... well, that's a lot of
years. "Sheng" = "life"/"birth"/"growth" according to my primitive
understanding [as in "shengri" = "birthday"], "yi" = "idea"/"intention" [as
in "yisi" = "meaning"]. I think in Chinese the attributive word would
usually come first (same as in English), so a naive gloss of "shengyi"
would seem to be "life/growth intention/idea" or something like that,
without the "with" given by Petzinger. It's not clear to me how this came
to be used for "business" exactly; perhaps some Chinese scholar can
enlighten me. [For that matter, I can't understand why "under" + "stand" =
"understand" in English either, and I've been speaking English every day
for 25+ years!]

<<In old Sanskrit, "man" was derived from a word meaning to weigh, value,
count out, or share.>>

Is that old Sanskrit as opposed to modern Sanskrit? I presume the word in
question is "purusha" = "man". Since my ignorance of Sanskrit is nearly
total, I can only look in Buck's book, which gives the etymology of
"purusha" as "?". Well, that's concise enough. As for the other word
meaning "value" etc., I note Buck gives Avestan "p at r@skA-" [@ = schwa, A =
a-macron] for "price" ... apparently connected with Sanskrit "a-prata-" =
"without recompense", Latin "pretium" = "price" ... without suggesting any
relationship to the Sanskrit "purusha"; I can't find anything closer than
that, but again perhaps better informed persons can comment.

-- Doug Wilson