The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

72 The Secret of the Veda
strength, balam, which is of the same family as the Greek ballō,
Istrike,andbelos, a weapon. The sense, strength, for daks.a has
thesameorigin.
But this idea of division led up also in the psychology of
language-development to quite another order of ideas, for when
man wished to have words for mental conceptions, his readiest
method was to apply the figures of physical action to the mental
movement. The idea of physical division or separation was thus
used and converted into that of distinction. It seems to have
been first applied to distinguishing by the ocular sense and then
to the act of mental separation, — discernment, judgment. Thus
the root vid, which means in Sanskrit to find or know, signifies
in Greek and Latin to see. Dr. ´s, to see, meant originally to rend,
tear apart, separate; pa´s, to see, has a similar origin. We have
three almost identical roots which are very instructive in this
respect, — pis, to hurt, injure, be strong; pis., to hurt, injure,
be strong, crush, pound; and pi´s, to form, shape, organise, be
reduced to the constituent parts, — all these senses betraying
the original idea of separation, division, cutting apart, — with
derivatives, pi´sāca, a devil, and pi´suna, which means on one
side harsh, cruel, wicked, treacherous, slanderous, all from the
idea of injury, and at the same time “indicatory, manifesting,
displaying, making clear” from the other sense of distinction.
So k¯r., to injure, divide, scatter appears in Greek krinō, I sift,
choose, judge, determine. Daks.a has a similar history. It is kin
to the root da´s which in Latin gives us doceo, Iteachandin
Greek dokeō, I think, judge, reckon, and dokazō, I observe,
am of opinion. So also we have the kindred root di´s meaning
to point out or teach, Greek deiknumi. Almost identical with
daks.a itself is the Greek doxa, opinion, judgment, and dexios,
clever, dexterous, right-hand. In Sanskrit the root daks. means
to hurt, kill and also to be competent, able, the adjective daks.a
means clever, skilful, competent, fit, careful, attentive; daks.in. a
means clever, skilful, right-hand, like dexios, and the noun daks.a
means, besides strength and also wickedness from the sense
of hurting, mental ability or fitness like other words of the
family. We may compare also the word da´sā in the sense of