جهانڭيرى and jahāngīrī

[funderburkjim]

@jlreeder

Hi, Jason.

In working with corrections for mw72, we came upon:

78314 new <P>.{#jAMhagiri#}¦ {%jāṉhagiri, is,%} m. {%= jahāngīrī.%}

We were questioning whether that last word (jahāngīrī) is a Sanskrit word.

A search of PWG under headword jAMhagiri, shows some Arabic text.

Question 1: This leads me to believe that jahāngīrī is in fact a European spelling of an Arabic word. Do you agree?

When the Arabic script is copy/pasted into Google Translate, there is an oddity:

Question 2: Any idea why part of the Arabic script appears in the English translation?

[jsonreeder]

Very cool word! I've done some snooping, and here's what I've found.

Question 1: Origin It appears to be of Persian origin. I recognized it as a district of Istanbul, which is Romanized in Modern Turkish to Cihangir (though is pronounced [dj]). That Wikipedia page (link) cites the origin of the name as Persian:

The name means "conqueror" in Turkish and, in turn, comes from the Persian compound word jahan + gir (جهانگیر), meaning "conqueror of the world".

I don't mean to suggest that this Sanskrit word has anything to do with Istanbul, but it seems likely that the neighborhood and the Sanskrit word share a common Persian Root.

The "i" at the end of the Sanskrit derivative "jāṁhagiri" could be from a few sources. It could be a demonym, as in "someone from a town called Jamhangir" or a patronymic, "someone related to a person named Jamhangir." It could also be a Sanskrit morpheme of course, though I would not be able to tell you which one. As far as I'm concerned it's a common enough particle that we can consider it "additional" and that the core of the word's origin is "jahan" + "gir."

Question 2: ڭ

The character is not showing up in the translation for two reasons:

• It is not used in Arabic at all
• Strictly speaking it is not used in modern Farsi either. It has been replaced by the related گ (a line ـگـ instead of three dots ـڭـ). As far as I understand they are both equivalent to the English voiced velar stop [g]. Note that the etymology taken above from wikipedia uses the later character.
• You may wonder whether the initial character should be replaced in the digitized dictionary. This would be reasonable, but if I remember correctly there was a decision made to stay as close to the original characters used in the printed edition as possible. Personally I don't know enough about Persian/Farsi to know for certain whether the two characters are actually identical, so I'd lean towards keeping the character from the original dictionary.

[funderburkjim]

Pasting the Arabic script into Google Translate with PERSIAN, there is no Unknown letter. and the English response shows Jhanngyry. Another confirm of your analysis!

Incidentally, the 'giri' part is a common Sanskrit word, meaning mountain, and MW shows Zend 'gaira' as a related word, and Zend seems to be related to Persian.

Very interesting.

Thanks for the lesson!

[drdhaval2785]

It is dIrgha I ई, not i इ.

This suffix is applied to denote relatedness. Not related to giri mountain.

[funderburkjim]

is that 'gIr'/'gIri' 'suffix .. relatedness' used in some modern Indian language ? --- I can't find it in Sanskrit.

[gasyoun]

a decision made to stay as close to the original characters used in the printed edition as possible

Indeed.

Zend seems to be related to Persian.

Sure it is, it's an earlier stage of the language. Old Persian -> Middle (Farsi, for example) - > Persian.

[ghost]

is that 'gIr'/'gIri' 'suffix .. relatedness' used in some modern Indian language ? --- I can't find it in Sanskrit.

-gar is a Persian suffix equivalent to English -er See the 3rd etymology here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%DA%AF%D8%B1.

From an Urdu - English dictionary (Duncan Forbes, A Hindustani-English Dictionary): گر gar (in composition) a maker or a workman, as zar-gar, a worker in gold, a goldsmith. [...]

Two common Hindi words are जादूगर (which is the standard word for 'magician') and बाज़ीगर. I am unable to think of more words with the -gar suffix right now, but the meaning is certainly obviously.

The -i suffix (an drdhaval said above) would add a relatedness meaning to the word. So, जादूगरी means the process of doing जादू (magic, Farsi), the work of a जादूगर, etc. (This too is a common word.)

जादूगरी: https://dsalsrv04.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/dasa-hindi_query.py?qs=%E0%A4%9C%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%A6%E0%A5%82%E0%A4%97%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80&searchhws=yes

The above may not illuminate anything about the MW72 or PWG entries, but it answers your question!

Edit: Forgot to add, this गर has nothing to do with the गीर in जहाँगीर. From Forbes’ dictionary again,

[] gīr, (in composition) taking, seizing, holding; as ’ālam-gīr or jahān-gīr, seizing or conquering the world persian.

[gasyoun]

The above may not illuminate anything about the MW72 or PWG entries, but it answers your question!

A good one, keep on.