It is generally accepted that the etymology of the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit official title guśura(ka)- has to be sought within the Iranian sphere, but the details remain debatable. In this article, I... Show moreIt is generally accepted that the etymology of the Gāndhārī and Sanskrit official title guśura(ka)- has to be sought within the Iranian sphere, but the details remain debatable. In this article, I first give an overview of recently discovered evidence for an early sound change of *w- > *γw- in some Iranian dialects from the Indo-Iranian borderlands. On this basis, I then propose to derive guśura(ka)- from a dialect form such as *γwazurg / *γwuzurg / *γuzurg < *wazr̥ka- ‘strong’. Two by-products of this article are a new Bactrian etymology for the Gāndhārī personal name G̱aṇavhryaka and some notes on the etymology of the Gāndhārī title sturaka-*. Show less
The interpretation of the Niya Prakrit grapheme is an unsolved problem of the Kharoṣṭhī script. This article will argue that, at least in most cases, it represents Bactrian /šk/. After a brief note... Show moreThe interpretation of the Niya Prakrit grapheme is an unsolved problem of the Kharoṣṭhī script. This article will argue that, at least in most cases, it represents Bactrian /šk/. After a brief note on the palaeography of the akṣara and its attestations in other forms of Gāndhārī, Bactrian etymologies will be proposed for some Niya Prakrit words containing this grapheme. As some of these words have been considered before key witnesses to the Tocharian C hypothesis (Burrow 1935b; 1937: vii-ix), this renewed understanding of has broader consequences for the issue of the linguistic substrate in Niya Prakrit. Show less
