Etymology of a few words

[Shrinivas Gadkari]

On Thu, 23 May 2002 14:25:08 -0700, ken knight <hilken_98 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>‘ra issues out of ri through its conjunction with ‘a’.
> Jayaratha explains that the sound ra flashes forth
>instantaneously like lightning, whereas a phoneme has
>a certain duration, and he adds that in Shiva there is
>no objectivity (whereas it is already there at the
>level of the phonemes ra and la). Further, according
>to tradition and not only in the Trika, the phoneme
>‘ra’ is regarded as the seed of fire agnibIja. So when
>the power of will, in its undisturbed form, flashes
>forth instantaneously like lightning, the phoneme ri
>will arise; and in its undisturbed form, equally
>bright but comparatively more stable, rI will arise;
>then, when this twofold energy appears as stability or
>stillness (sthairaya,nishcalatA), a state belonging to
>earth (l^i,l^I) will arise.   Padoux p.255-6
>

Namaste Kenji and members interested in this topic,

Picking this topic after a break of about a month.
You have pointed that ra is agni bIja, and have been
struggling to understand the relation between the
sound ra and agni.

My contemplation makes me associate ra with roaring
sound rrrrrrr... . Roaring is a manifestation of anger.
This is the closest I could get to agni.

Then Shra has to do with quieting anger. (Since in
an earlier post I gave reasons to associate Sh with
quieting).

Comments are welcome.

Best regards
Shrinivas Gadkari