When S M Krishna was sworn in as governor three years ago, something struck a Maharashtrian railway officer as uncanny. What caught 39-year-old Devendranath Kasar's attention was the word 'governor'. It held a strange resemblance to the old Marathi word 'govardhan' which means cowherd. When he split up the word into syllables, gov-er-nor, the meaning remained the same in Marathi. For Kasar, a senior commandant with the Western Railways who dreams of being a research scholar, this was a Eureka moment. He reached eagerly for the Oxford dictionary, and here, as he had hoped, he found many hidden revelations.
Even as his etymological pursuits were on, Kasar was blessed with a son on June 6, 2005. But the boy was premature and during the anxious period when his newborn lived in intensive care, Kasar swung from fear to hope to despair. To distract his uneasy mind, he drowned himself in working on his own unique dictionary. This book, he thought, could inspire a revolution someday. It could help alleviate the fear of English which haunts tribal students in remote areas of Maharashtra. But just as his book achieved full shape and went for publication, tragedy struck. The baby died. "The baby was born only for the book," says an emotional Kasar in the prologue, which carries a picture of the child.
In his book, Kasar notes that for every English word derived from Marathi lies a sound scientific logic at play. He has Marathi explanations for words like 'gravity', 'eclipse' and 'periphery'. Kasar's parallel dictionary includes only old-world terminologies though. Marathi, as spoken in the days of Sant Dyaneshwar, before words like 'computer' or 'internet' crept in. So far, he has discovered almost 5,000 vernacular words with a startling resemblance to English.
Discovering these similarities is an exercise that keeps his mind ticking continuously. Meditation for Kasar includes imagining all the elements of agrarian society like the river, plough, roots, coconuts and snakes before going on to split them up and derive their Marathi meaning. Among the obvious derivations are 'path' that became path and 'taru' was twisted to become 'tree'. During this thought process, Kasar forgets he is a senior officer. He generally steals time for this theory in the evenings when his "frame of mind" is conducive to these journeys of exploration.
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Even as his etymological pursuits were on, Kasar was blessed with a son on June 6, 2005. But the boy was premature and during the anxious period when his newborn lived in intensive care, Kasar swung from fear to hope to despair. To distract his uneasy mind, he drowned himself in working on his own unique dictionary. This book, he thought, could inspire a revolution someday. It could help alleviate the fear of English which haunts tribal students in remote areas of Maharashtra. But just as his book achieved full shape and went for publication, tragedy struck. The baby died. "The baby was born only for the book," says an emotional Kasar in the prologue, which carries a picture of the child.
In his book, Kasar notes that for every English word derived from Marathi lies a sound scientific logic at play. He has Marathi explanations for words like 'gravity', 'eclipse' and 'periphery'. Kasar's parallel dictionary includes only old-world terminologies though. Marathi, as spoken in the days of Sant Dyaneshwar, before words like 'computer' or 'internet' crept in. So far, he has discovered almost 5,000 vernacular words with a startling resemblance to English.
Discovering these similarities is an exercise that keeps his mind ticking continuously. Meditation for Kasar includes imagining all the elements of agrarian society like the river, plough, roots, coconuts and snakes before going on to split them up and derive their Marathi meaning. Among the obvious derivations are 'path' that became path and 'taru' was twisted to become 'tree'. During this thought process, Kasar forgets he is a senior officer. He generally steals time for this theory in the evenings when his "frame of mind" is conducive to these journeys of exploration.
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Bury
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This could be perfectly possible, both the words taru and govardhan are of sanskrit origin and almost all the languages in india are derived from sanskrit. It would be really interesting if they come up with some more words of resemblance with marathi or sanskrit.
I want this book..!!