Bedouins, and more linguistic shifts
Posted by Catherine Cartwright Jones on May 14, 2000 at 11:30:12:
In Reply to: Woops some typos posted by Babaganooj on May 13, 2000 at 23:24:08:
If I had to pay Jeremy 5 cents for every typo I've written on this
forum, he'd be a very wealthy man. The US treasury would wonder where
all the nickels went.
On the cultural associations of tenderness: in the Bedouin,
expressions of sentiment and feeling are often very much suppressed in
men, and frowned on as womanly, showing weakness and lack of
self-control. To what extent does this extend to other Arab culture?
Also ..... I've been wishing someone with a specialty in South Asian
linguistics would magically appear..... It looks to me as though
the "mehandi, mehndi, mehedi, menhadi....etc group of words for henna
were derived from the Persian word for "night of the henna", which so
far as I can tell, was not practiced in India until the 15th century
when there was Muslim expansion into the Deccan (through Persia).
Henna was certainly used in India before that, with a group of
cultural assosiations different from the Mediterranean belief system.
I don't know what the words were in Sanskrit and indigenous
Indian languages for henna before 1500 CE. There certainly seems to
be a separate and parallel origin in India for henna traditions, that
merged with the ME traditions beginning around the 15th century CE.
Linguistics would be a great help in determining where and when which
henna traditions came and went on the Indian subcontinent!
For instance ..... I sure wish I knew exactly what word was used for
henna in Babylon in 2000 BCE, or Susa in 1250 BCE. Babylon had trade
connections with India, but it's belief system was much closer to the
Ugaritic/Catal Huyuk group of deities and practices. They used henna.
Was their word for henna related to it related to the Ugaritic or
Semitic roots, and was their use of it within the fertility
goddess/virgin warrior goddess belief system? (Inanna/Anath and
Asherah/Ishtar). (I am in such urgent need of a really good
Assyriologist, and they just don't seem to set up shop on every
corner!) And what word was used for the henna depicted in Ajanta in
100 CE? Did it have an Ugaritic/Semitic root, or was the root from an
indigenous South Asian language?
Do you have any familiarity with the South Asian language group?
The Chinese have a very different word for henna (fingernail flower,
or fingernail ornament).... henna went into western China probably
between 900 and 1500 CE certainly during the period that those two
cultures were strongly connected by the empires based in Samarkand.
But then, the Chinese weren't apt to adapt in words from other
languages.... and it doesn't look as though henna every went very far
into China.
