ÁHIR BUDHNÍYAḤ and BHŪMIDUNDUBHIḤ: The serpent of the deep and the earth-drum: A hypothesis of etymological and/or cultural connections

This article highlights how the process of semantic extension applied to the OIA onomatopoeic noun dundubhí, usually meant as “drum”, is the token of significant cultural changes: especially within ritual performances, such as the mahāvrata rite, gradually canonised in the Brahmanical ritualism, it turns out to be a device to promote a new model of sovereignty, related to the establishment of the so-called Kuru-Pañcāla realm. Such a cultural transformation, carried out in the Middle and Late Vedic period in northern India, entailed that ancient Indo-European tribal cultural traits were intermingled with cultural substrate/adstrate elements: the term dundubhí is “etymologically” connected to the Proto-Muṇḍa *ḍub-/*dum- “to be swollen, roundish”, the PAA *duby-/*dub- “tail, buttock, animal limbs”, and Middle Iranian isoglosses meaning “tail, extremities, fat-tailed animals”. Moreover, as bhūmidundubhi “earth-drum” beaten on the border of the ritual area in the mahāvrata rite, representing earthly sonority and the “mighty bellowing” of cattle, it is associated with the IIr myth of valá/vará, the “enclosure”, in which the treasure/cattle “endowed with rock as foundation” (ádri-budhna, ṚV 10.108.7ab), is hidden. The related lexicon and imagery recall mythical archetypes, such as the Serpent of the Bottom (OIA áhir budhníyaḥ, Gr Pythô ophis) or primordial Monster of the Deep (Gr Typhôn/Typhôeus), and BMAC interferences are also embedded. However, although linguistic evidence confirms the etymological relationship between the OIA budh-ná and the Greek pythmên, the case of the Greek Typhôn/Typhôeus seems more uncertain: the IE reconstruction *dhubh-/*dhub- “depths” is considered a secondary outcome, and cannot be convincingly applied to the term dundubhí, because of its onomatopoeic nature. None- theless, as an outcome of linguistic and cultural interferences, “Sanskritised” within the ritualism, which supported the paradigm of the Kuru-Pañcāla sovereignty, the term dundubhí conveys the double “redundant” value of deep/high sonority and swollen/roundish abundant prosperity, to which the figure of Bṛhaspati is correspondent: in ṚV 10.64.4 he is defined as the kaví tuvīrávān “poet endowed with powerful bellowing”, which announces prosperity, spreading it loftily, throughout the cosmos.