Tadbhava

Tadbhava (Sanskrit IAST|"tadbhava") is one of three etymological classes defined by native grammarians of middle Indo-Aryan languages.cite journal | last=Kahrs | first=Eivind G. | title=What is a tadbhava word? | journal=Indo-Iranian Journal | volume=35 | issue=2-3 | pages=225–249 | date=1992 | doi=10.1007/BF00164933 at pp. 67-69.] 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.cite journal | last=Grierson | first=George | title=Indo-Aryan Vernaculars (Continued) | journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies | volume=3 | issue=1 | pages=51–85 | date=1920 at pp. 67-69.] 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.cite journal | last=Staal | first=J.F. | title=Sanskrit and Sanskritization | journal=The Journal of Asian Studies | volume=22 | issue=3 | pages=261–275 | date=1963 | doi=10.2307/2050186 at p. 272.]

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 IAST|śraddha in modern Bengali, which include a tatsama form IAST|sroddhā and a semi-tatsama form IAST|cheddā in addition to the tadbhava form IAST|sādh. Similarly, Sanskrit IAST|ājñā exists in modern Hindi as a semi-tatsama IAST|āgyā and a tadbhava form IAST|ān (from Prakrit IAST|āṇa) in addition to a pure tatsama form IAST|ājñā. 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.cite journal | last=Burghart | first=Richard | title=A Quarrel in the Language Family: Agency and Representations of Speech in Mithila | journal=Modern Asian Studies | volume=27 | issue=4 | pages=761–804 | date=1993 at p. 766.] cite journal | last=Barannikov | first=A. | title=Modern Literary Hindī | journal=Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies | volume=8 | issue=2/3 | pages=373–390 | date=1936 at p. 390.] 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 IAST|hṛdaya exists in Hindi both as a tatsama word and as a tadbhava word. However, the tatsama word IAST|hṛdaya means "heart", as it does in Sanskrit, whereas the tadbhava word IAST|hiyyā 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.

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