Piilu: Harappan Elephant-Word's Voyage to Mesopotamia and its Dravidian root

[N. Ganesan]

Dr. Ashraf wrote:

> Her interesting paper, however, does not discuss anything on the Semitic word for the elephant (Feel: فيل) which bears a very close
> resemblance to the word 'peelu' itself. She missed out on that, but otherwise it is an interesting hypothesis.

Thanks. Interestingly, Brahui (Cf. Ibrahim), now the people are ethnically Balochi, but speak the oldest form of Dravidian has also the same word for elpehant, as Semitic "Fiil".
https://thevore.com/brahui/
elephant: 1. fîl
https://glosbe.com/en/brh/elephant
píl

Even in Sanskrit, we have phala < pazham of Dravidian. Also, read David W. McAlpin's papers on Proto-Dravidian and its first branching off language, Brahui
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273024083_Velars_Uvulars_and_the_North_Dravidian_Hypothesis
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285628453_Brahui_and_the_Zagrosian_Hypothesis

> I missed it.

No problem, you can watch it at:
https://www.facebook.com/rmrl.in/videos/572587734093098

I made some comments to Bahata. Brahui and Semitic names piil (fiil) makes me more convinced that the word pilu/piilu are having quite different root-dhaatu and that is not pal. The author's central thesis of the Indus word for elephant, piilu being present in Mesopotamia is essentially correct. It is like Drav. "eLLu" ( < neLLu) for sesame seeds. However, I think the Dravidian word, "pal" (=teeth, connected with paHtu '10', paHRi 'pig' and then, pAl 'white, milk' is quite different from "piilu" elephant. "piilu" involves l/r alternation as in niir/niila and so many other word-pairs in Dravidian (Cf. piraan, piirkku, ... Also, on the Islamic saint's title, Piir - this word is from Sind province of Pakistan.) See Walter Fairservis' book on Indus Civilization, but Walter does not tell how this word, Piir, is derived. Ultimately, Yoga terms iDa 'left', piGkalA (< pii(r) 'yellow') due to the color of the elephant tusks ...

Two papers by B.A.M are here,
Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, B. Ancestral Dravidian languages in Indus Civilization: ultraconserved Dravidian tooth-word reveals deep linguistic ancestry and supports genetics. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8, 193 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00868-w

Her 2019 paper
Ansumali Mukhopadhyay, B. Interrogating Indus inscriptions to unravel their mechanisms of meaning conveyance. Palgrave Commun 5, 73 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-019-0274-1

[N. Ganesan]

On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 10:31 PM Bahata Ansumali nee Mukhopadhyay  wrote:

Dear Mr. Ganesan

Thanks a ton for your message. Actually, my paper discusses the word 'fil' in the following section, and the corresponding supplementary section. The word  ‘fīl’ is just a phonological variation of ‘pīl’ used in certain Arabic languages. The Supplementary section discusses the evidence in much detail. 

4.4 Persian re-popularization of ‘pīl’ and the word’s Indian origin

Despite the illuminating article by Bagchi (1933), Indian philologists have often held
an opinion that the Arabic/Persian word ‘fīl’/‘pīl’ has been borrowed as elephant-word ‘pīlu’
in the Indian languages (e.g., Sircar, 1965 p.326). Starting from thirteenth century, the Islamic
empires of India (first Sultans then Mughals) have re-popularized the Persian elephant-word
‘pīl’ by terms like ‘pīlkhana’, i.e. ‘elephant stable’ (Ray, 2009). This possibly influenced some
Indian philologists to compare the Gupta period official designations ‘pīlupati’/‘mahāpīlupati’
with some other known designations of Iranian influence (e.g., ‘Divirapati’, ‘Gañjavara’), since
for centuries before their time of analysis, Indo-Aryan elephant-words had mostly taken over
northern Indians’ active vocabulary, making ‘pīlu’ relatable mainly to the Perso-Arabic terms
‘pīl’/‘fīl’. In Supplementary-file-S1’s Section-K, I have discussed that if one analyses the
distribution of ‘pīru’ and ‘pīlu’ in old and new Near Eastern languages, and correlates the c.
300 BC Seleucid administrative cuneiform texts that used the ‘pīlu’ variant, and the Seleucid
elephant army that comprised only Indian elephants received from Chandra Gupta Maurya
(Stolper, 1994 p.20-22; Kistler, 2007 p.64-65), one may harbour reasonable doubt regarding
the Iranian influence in the coinage of designations ‘pīlupati’/‘mahāpīlupati’, which have so
successfully survived in eastern Indian Sanskrit inscriptions for at least six centuries (Gupta
dynasty to Sena dynasty), without getting replaced by any other elephant-word.
Supplementary-file-S1’s Section-K reiterates with additional historical and linguistic evidence
that irrespective of the origin of ‘pīlupati’, the word ‘pīlu’ had surely travelled to Persia and
Iran from Indus valley, not otherwise, and its root was of purely Indian origin.