“What’s in a name?” asked Shakespeare. I feel it’s all in the name! And I don’t mean in the personal noun sense, but in a more language-centric sense.
What if we had no names for certain concepts, certain issues, certain products, certain feelings? We most probably would not be having those concepts, issues, products and feelings in our daily life too.
Of territoryFor example, the word ‘territory’ would have emerged only when there was some concept of territory among people. In the Early Rig Vedic Period, people mostly lived a nomadic, pastoral life. There was no practice of a settled lifestyle, and most of the people identified themselves with their tribes — their janas . If the jana moved, the people moved too. It did not matter if they were in the Upper Gangetic plain, or near the Ravi-Beas doab. It did not matter if a new Rajan (king) took over their part of the land (for lack of a better word, since there was no concept of territory then), they merely shifted to another place. A sedentary lifestyle did not require territorial concepts.
What iron wroughtBut then, iron was discovered. It helped in ploughing land, and agricultural production increased. Now they not only had enough to eat amongst themselves, but also could give (no concept of ‘selling’ either) to tribal chieftains. Life became more settled, the nomadic culture gradually gave way to subsistence agriculture.
Agriculture needed land. Land became a useful commodity: it could be ploughed and food could be grown. The demand for land made it a prized commodity, even the Rajan began fighting over land, and they began marking their own ‘territories’. Territorial conquests became the norm.
It is not a very new concept – the words being the limitation to man’s imagination. Orwellian theories of doublespeak emphasised it very well in his classic, 1984 . If there are no words, through what will people express themselves? And gradually, those expressions, concepts and feelings would die down. Forever.
New concepts and wordsLet us reverse-engineer this. How did our societies emerge? We did not have words like ‘internet’, ‘globalisation’ and ‘sustainable development’ until recently. They had to be invented and introduced in our daily language, because they were required. Going further back, what would the word such as ‘telephone’ have denoted before Alexander Graham Bell invented it? Take an easier comparison. Take the question of India. We were not India always: it was Sindhu, and later Hindu, from the name of the River Indus (which was earlier referred to as ‘Sindhu’).
All in the familyGoing even farther back, there was a time when words such as cousin, nephew and brother did not exist, but all the relatives were one and the same – referred to by the same name. Family. It was kula during the Rig Vedic period. Isn’t it simply amazing how societies develop with newer words? Or is it the other way round?
The eternal question of egg-and-chicken origin seems all-pervasive.
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