Narmada and Narbada

[Jürgen Neuss]

Dear Sureshji,

Interesting question. I am aware of the use of the 'b' only in colonial,  
british sources ('Nerbudda/Narbada'). All the original texts (Sanskrit,  
Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati) I have seen in the course of my research on the  
Narmadaparikrama uniformly have the 'm'. In case you find the 'b' in any  
(South) Indian source, please let me know.

Jürgen



On Sun, 07 Oct 2012 12:00:45 +0200, Suresh Kolichala  
<suresh.kolichala at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone know the phonological reasons for the alternation of the  
> river
> name 'Narmada' as 'Narbada'? I also see this river name sometimes being
> spelled as Narbedda.
>
> It is surprising to see a labial nasal winding up as an oral stop. Is  
> there
> any historical evidence to believe in a transformation of narmada >  
> narvada
>> narbada? /m/ > /v/ is very common in Dravidian, and /v/ > /b/ is common
> in the New Indo-Aryan (NIA) languages of East and Central India.
>
> I appreciate any responses.
>
> Regards,
> Suresh.
> Atlanta, GA.


-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dr. phil. Jürgen Neuß
(Independent scholar)   | email: juergen.neuss at fu-berlin.de
Berlin, Germany	       | http: www.central-india.de
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