Tadbhava

Tadbhava (Sanskrit ) is one of three etymological classes defined by native grammarians of middle Indo-Aryan languages. A "tadbhava" is a word which had been borrowed from Sanskrit, but which had changed to fit the phonology of the Prakrit or Apabhramsa in question. Tadbhavas were distinguished from tatsama words - a term applied to borrowed words which retained their Sanskrit form - and deśi words - a term applied to words which could not be traced back to Sanskrit. In the modern context, the terms tadbhava and tatsama are applied to Sanskrit loanwords not only in Indo-Aryan languages, but also in Dravidian, Munda and other South Asian languages.

Tadbhavas in Indo-Aryan languages

As all Indo-Aryan languages are descended from Old Indo-Aryan, tadbhavas in Indo-Aryan languages comprise what would be considered the native or inherited vocabulary. As a word descended through time from Old Indo-Aryan to Modern Indic, many phonetic, morphological, and semantic changes often occur. Modern Indo-Aryan languages have two classes of tadbhava words. The first covers words which have come to these languages from Old Indo-Aryan, through Prakrit and Apabhramsa. A second class of tadbhava words in modern Indo-Aryan languages covers words which have their origin in classical Sanskrit and which were originally borrowed into Prakrit or Apabhramsa as tatsamas but which, over the course of time, changed in form to fit the phonology of the recipient language. Words that were borrowed into a modern Indo-Aryan language itself as tatsamas, but which have since changed in form are often called ardha-tatsamas or semi-tatsamas by modern linguists.

Tadbhava, tatsama and semi-tatsama forms derived from the same Old Indo-Aryan root sometimes co-exist in modern Indo-Aryan languages. For example, the descendents of Sanskrit in modern Bengali, which include a tatsama form and a semi-tatsama form in addition to the tadbhava form . Similarly, Sanskrit exists in modern Hindi as a semi-tatsama and a tadbhava form (from Prakrit ) in addition to a pure tatsama form . In such cases, the use of tatsama forms in place of equivalent tadbhava forms is often seen by speakers of a language as a marker of a more chaste or literary form of the language as opposed to a more rustic or colloquial form. Often, however, a word exists only in one of the three possible forms, that is, only as a tadbhava, tatsama or semi-tatsama, or has different meanings in different forms. For example, the Sanskrit word exists in Hindi both as a tatsama word and as a tadbhava word. However, the tatsama word means "heart", as it does in Sanskrit, whereas the tadbhava word means "courage".

Tadbhavas in other South Asian languages

In the context of Dravidian and Munda languages, the terms "tatsama" and "tadbhava" are used to describe words which have been been borrowed from Sanskrit either unmodified ("tatsama") or modified ("tadbhava"). Tadbhava as used in relation to these languages, therefore, corresponds more accurately with the categories of tatsama and semi-tatsama used in relation to the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages. All Dravidian languages contain have a proportion of tadbhava and tatsama words, possibly exceeding over half of the vocabulary of literary Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam, with Tamil being less Sanskritised.

References