The words “dost”, “yaar”, and “ishq”
The words dost, yaar, and ishq are commonly used to express feelings in India, and they are also popular in lands ranging from Turkey at one end to Indonesia at the other.
These words are even found in the Wakhi language of the Pamirs, a descendant of the Khotanese Saka that became extinct a thousand years ago.
Of these words, dost and yaar mean friend with different connotations, and ishq means love.
Many see these as Persian words that are loanwords in other languages.
But first, let us look at the history of the Persian language.
Modern Persian comes after Middle Persian, the official language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), that followed Old Persian of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). The earliest known related language of the family is the Avestan language from northeast Iran and Central Asia, next to the lands of the Vedic tradition, which is practically interchangeable with late Vedic Sanskrit. I recommend Vedic and Indo-European Studies by the Greek Sanskritist Nicholas Kazanas for a deep study of this question.
None of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern or New Persian. Arabic became the official language of Persia one century after the coming of Islam to Persian Empire (in 642 CE) and it remained the official language for two centuries. New Persian was a revival that came to incorporate many Arabic and Turkish influences it had meanwhile absorbed.
The origin of New Persian is not clear. Although greatly influenced and closely affiliated to Middle and Old Persian, there is no conclusive evidence that it is directly descended from these languages. It may instead derive from a Pahlavi dialect once spoken in northeast Iran.
Since New Persian arose in northeast region of Khorasan, in the region where Dari is spoken now, it should be assumed that it also incorporated influences from Sanskrit which was used widely in the nearby region of Afghanistan.
Persian words with near identical Sanskrit cognates include mard, maryāda (man); zan, jani (woman); pust, pust (bark); doma, loma (tail); čub, kṣubdha (stick); gol, gulā (flower); gisou, kéśa (hair); xordan, khādana (eating); damidan, dhaman (blowing); jangidan, janya (fighting); kandan, khanana (digging); kond, kuṇṭha (dull knife); sâf, srpra (smooth); daryâče, toyarāśi (lake): and so on.
New Persian is not that old; it goes back to about 10th century. “Classical Persian” is the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry during 10th to 18th centuries. Here are the three layers of New Persian:
Early New Persian (9th/10th centuries)
Classical Persian (10th–18th centuries)
Contemporary Persian (19th century to present)
Ferdowsi (940–1020), in his epic the Shahnameh, states that he spent thirty years writing his book to revive Persian language.
Now we come to the words of our essay.
Dost
Persian dost is normally derived by academics from Sanskrit joṣṭṛ, which means loving, via Persian dwst’ /dōst/, from Old Persian 𐎭𐎢𐏁𐎫𐎠 (d-u-š-t-a /dauštā/, “friend, lover”). The root word joṣa means satisfaction and pleasure.
Sanskrit dostha sounds almost the same as dost, but it means servant. Another similar-sounding word is dāsa, which also means servant.
Since dostha is much more like dost than joṣṭṛ, it could very well be that dost is from dostha with a later transfer of meaning. As a parallel, note that bhadra of Sanskrit is similar to bad of Persian but has an opposite meaning. It has been proposed that Persian bad is a loanword from the Prakrit bhadda, for “bad”, where the semantic change had already occurred. (Although “bad” of English is viewed as being unrelated, it is likely to have traveled west via trade networks.)
Examples of semantic change.
A word where meaning has changed is aurat, which is woman in Urdu but vagina in Arabic. In Arabic, the term ‘awrah or ‘awrat (عورة) derives from the root ‘a-w-r which means defectiveness, imperfection, blemish, weakness, genitalia.
No wonder, in modern Iran using the word awrah for woman is considered derogatory and sexist.
Semantic change results from the evolution of word usage and it can be so significant so that the current meaning is radically different from the original one. Thus you flip meaning as you go from buddha to buddhū in Hindi, or from śiṣṭa to śiṭh- in Kashmiri.
Here are a few examples from English:
Awful — Originally signifying full of awe and inspiring wonder (or fear), it now means extremely bad.
Nice — Its meaning has swung from foolish, ignorant, frivolous, senseless to precise, careful.
Demagogue — This word originally meant a popular leader. Now it means a politician who panders to emotions and prejudice.
Egregious — It originally meant something that was remarkably good, but now it is the opposite meaning of bad or flagrant.
Yaar, Yār
Yār is “friend” in Persian; in Pashto the word is “yor”.
The famed linguist Emile Benveniste in his Indo-European Language and Society (1973) saw its origin in Sanskrit yātṛ,which means brother-in-law.
He argued that the origin is associated with devar-, younger brother-in-law, who in the large joint family became a close friend to the bride.
Ishq, Išq
The Modern Persian word ešq (عشق) means love, where the classical word is išq.
Traditional Persian scholars derive išq from the Arabic ‘ašaq (عَشَق) “to stick, to cleave to”, which in turn is derived from ‘ašaqa (عَشَقَه) the plant commonly called lablâb (لَبلاب) that twines upon trees, and cleaves to them.
But this is clearly wrong since išq is not found in the Quran, which uses the word “habba” (حب) to denote love. This is confirmed by the fact that ešq lacks a Hebrew counterpart; the Hebrew term for love is ahav, which is akin to the Arabic habba.
The Iranian scholar M. Heydari-Malayeri proposes that ešq is from the Avestan iš- “to wish, desire, search” which is cognate with Sanskrit iṣ- “to wish, strive for, seek”.
icchati[iṣ] = wish
iṣṭa = loved and desired
=lover, beloved, sought
iṣkṛti = healing, love=> iṣk
Thus, while our three words related to friendship and love have a Persian connection, their origin may be traced to India.
Likewise the Persian word for happiness, shad, has a Sanskrit cognate śāta. Therefore, “shādi” for marriage is quite derived from Sanskrit. Given these linguistic facts, one could assert that New Persian is a Prakrit.
References
E. Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society. University of Miami Press. (1973)
M. Heydari-Malayeri, On the origin of the word ešq. 2007.
N. Kazanas, Vedic and Indo-European Studies. Aditya Prakashan. 2016.
