(Just killing time; not to be taken way to seriously!)
BB-Finland includes weekly tasks that really test
the patience and other psychic properties of the
contestants.
This week's task has a "subtask" where the
contestants need to count to ten repeatedly (ten
spoonfuls of some white powder into small plastic
bags).
To alleviate the bordom, some of them started
counting in various languages (Swedish, English,
Russian, Spanish...)
During this morning's TM session I recalled that,
and somehow it lead to me pondering (vicaara?) on the etymology
of the Finnish 'ten', which is 'kymmenen' ('y' as
'u' in French excuse moi). I seem to recall
that's associated with the word 'kämmen' (cam men), which
means 'hand'. Buh..but, one hand has only five fingers!
So, could it be, that 'kymmenen' is an obsolete dual
number word, meaning something like (the number of fingers in)
two hands?? Of the Uralic languages, to which
Finnish belongs, dual number is preserved(?) at
least in Samic, spoken in the northernmost parts of
Norway, Sweden(?), Finland and Russia.
Oddly enough, in Sanskrit the word meaning 'eight'
(aSTa ~= ashta) is, if not a part of a compound,
a dual number word; for instance, its nominative singular
is 'aSTau' where 'u' indicates the inflection in the
dual number. The nominative dual form 'aSTau' appears
for instance in the yoga-suutra:
yamaniyamaasanapraaNaayaamadhaaraNaadhyaanasamaadhayo 'STaav
an.gaani.
(The end without sandhi: aSTau; an.gaani).
So, somewhat playfully, one might "translate" 'aSTau' as
'two aSTa_s', like 'hastau' would be 'two hasta_s'.
Now, as many of us might well know, one of the Sanskrit
words for 'hand' is 'hasta'. The resemblance to 'aSTa'
might be quite striking!
So, two times four is eight (aSTau). Perhaps that's a "proof"
that the Space Brothers who created (inseminated?) Homo "sapiens", had
only two times four fingers! LoL!
hasta m. hand (also as a measure of length), trunk (of an elephant), paw (of
a tiger) etc., N. of sev. men & a lunar mansion; a. --- holding in the hand
(cf. {pANi3}); f. {ha3stA} hand.
