About the names of some Vedic poets
Résumé
Review of the means through which the poets of the Rigveda refer to themselves or to their family inside the hymns. One favorite device is the so-called seal, a repeated line of verse, usually at the end of the hymn. These seals contain often a pun or an allusion to the name of the poet and of his family. This holds especially for the poets of the so-called 'Family books'. Most of these names are based on a well-known phraseology, without referring to the geographical or social origin of the individual poets. The root mad- (matching Avestan mad-) 'to distribute [something] in a proper way', from PIE *med- 'to take appropriate measure' is present in some names. A different case is the name Kurusuti, who is the author of hymns in the 8th book of the Rigveda: a new etymology of this partly foreign name is proposed, which betrays a relatively late elaboration of a compound name according to the patterns of the high Vedic poetry.
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