Not sure it's as peacefully economic as all that. Going to my Pokorny
(on which the AHD is based), I find for dap- first the ai. dapayati,
"shares", "splits", which gives Greek word for "tear apart, sever,
slice into pieces" (as with meat), and with doubling of syllable as
intensifier an even stronger sense of ripping apart. From where,
variations go on to food-serving, (over)laden tables, wastefulness,
prodigality, then it gives the words for sacrificial meal & amimal,
and then Jon's "damnum". So apportionment within equal exchange may
only be one possible reading -- my own sense wld move it more toward
excessive sharing, feasting, even something like the potlach (if
IndoEuris can be said to have something of that order) in all of
which the poet will have taken part, singing it it & eating it —
maybe a more democratic participation than in the patron exchange? Or
are these just my anarchistic preferences speaking through the gaps
of our etymological ventures?
Pierre
On Nov 8, 2006, at 10:46 AM, Jon Corelis wrote:
> Derivatives of the root dap- (which yields such English words as
> damage and damn) furnish a useful window on the nature of reciprocal
> exchange relationships, which were central to the ancient
> Indo-European peoples. In their societies, and in Proto-Indo-European
> society itself, a gift entailed the payment of recompense. The root
> dap- embodies the notion of apportionment in reciprocal exchange
> relationships of either sort. In Latin, the word damnum, from a
> suffixed form *dap-no-, meant "damage entailing liability." Its Old
> Norse cognate duan (also from *dap-no-), however, meant "poem." How
> the same Indo-European form can can come to mean "damage entailing
> liability" in one language and "poem" in another makes perfect sense
> in light of the relationship obtaining between the Indo-European poet
> and his patron (typically a king): the poet sang the patron's fame,
> and in return the patron bestowed largesse on the poet. The
> relationship was vital to both parties: the king's livelihood
> depended on the poet's singing his praises (in Ireland, for example, a
> "king without poets" was proverbial for "nothing"), and the poet lived
> off the largess bestowed by the king. The poem therefore was a
> vehicle of this reciprocal exchange relationship; it was a gift
> entailing a countergift just as surely as damages entail reparation.
>
> Calvert Watkins, The
> American Heritage Dictionary
> of
> Indo-European Roots
> --
> ===================================
>
> Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
>
> ===================================
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