Reading Notes: Myth-Folklore Anthology

This week, my readings were over two stories in the Origins section of our UnTextbook.
Image: Laos, Source
In The Man in the Moon, I was very intrigued by the wise man character that kept changing the blacksmith.  I can just picture a man humoring the blacksmith's wishes, knowing that the man will never be satisfied.  As he changes the blacksmith, I can just see a smirk coming across the wise man's face as he thinks 'Let's see what I get this guy stuck as.' Maybe it's just the fact that I love to be mischievous, but I really hope the wise man is super cheeky if this story is ever made into a play.  I get that the focus of the tale is to explain why there is a face in the moon, but cheeky characters are always better.


Image: Buddha, Source
The second story The Hare that Was not Afraid to Die, I looked up the etymology of each of the characters.  I was curious if their names came from words that described their behavior in the story.  Jackal can be traced back to the Sanskrit word sgrala-s which literally means 'the howler.
  It is often believed that it is figuratively meaning 'skulking henchman' because they would stir up prey for lions.  This doesn't really fit well for the character in the story.  The Jackal steals food from a hut and then offers it to Sakka when he comes.  Not really much of a skulking henchman.  The etymology didn't really add anything new to our character development, but it was interesting information. When I looked up otter, I found that it most likely comes from Sanskrit udrah meaning 'water creature'.  The Otter in the story does like most otters and gets its food from the river, fish.  The etymology of this word didn't really reveal anything new about the character. When I looked up monkey, I discovered something interesting in the Old French form.  Monequin in Old French is thought to be from a Romanic word that comes from Arabic maimun which literally means 'auspicious.' I think this is very interesting, because many cultures view monkeys as good luck.  The Monkey in this story didn't really have good luck or bad luck. In fact, he isn't even really talked about much.  He has the smallest part in the story.  When Brahmin visits him, it is described in one sentence.  So, this etymology didn't help us with any new insights either, but it was interesting. 

I used Online Etymology Dictionary for my etymology research.
The Man in the Moon is from Laos in Laos Folk-lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson

The Hare that Was not Afraid to Die is from India from Eastern Stories and Legends by Marie L. Shedlock

Comments

  1. Laura GibbsJanuary 23, 2018 at 11:35 AM

    Caitlyn, I am so glad I noticed your post go by because I was really happy to see word-sleuthing here. I am a total etymology addict, and the names of characters in Sanskrit and Pali texts is a fabulous subject: while Aesop's fables usually just have generic animal species names, the animals in stories from India often have "speaking names" (nomen omen), which are a huge challenge to the translator since that is something so easy in Sanskrit (and Pali and so on), but not so easy in English. Sanskrit is one of the most compounding languages in the world, and ancient Sanskrit linguistics is REAL linguistics. If that is something you are interested in, let me know. And if you ever ever ever get a chance to study Sanskrit, DO IT. I started too late (last years of grad school) to become a Sanskritist... but if I had started earlier, that is what I would have become. :-)

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    Replies
    1. UnknownJanuary 26, 2018 at 3:16 PM

      Sanskrit is fascinating! I actually had a homework assignment last semester in my phonology class over Sanskrit and Classical Greek. I didn't get to do a lot of work with it. It was just writing a phonological rule for some sound changes, but I did a lot of research for my introduction on my write-up and the language is so neat. I am personally most fascinated with languages that come from Old Norse and geek out over them.

      Delete
  2. Laura GibbsJanuary 26, 2018 at 3:21 PM

    Yay for Sanskrit! You seriously have to love a language that has an alphabet like Devanagari whose ordering obeys phonology: Devanagari. The Greek alphabet is a mess. The Devanagari alphabet is a thing of beauty. :-)
    "The letter order of Devanagari, like nearly all Brahmic scripts, is based on phonetic principles that consider both the manner and place of articulation of the consonants and vowels they represent."
    Happy Friday!!! :-)

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