Resumen de Zum Verhältnis von ved. 'āśír'- f. ‚Milch(beimischung)‘, 'śrī́'- f. ‚Vollkommenheit, Schönheit, Glanz‘ und der Verbalwurzel 'śrayi'- ‚vollkommen, glänzen machen‘ aus phraseologischer Sicht
There is an etymological difference between Ved. śrīnāti – derived from PIE *k̑rei̯H- ‘to stand out’ – and Gk. κεράννυμι (from PIE *k̑erh2- ‘to blend, mix’), as argued in this journal more than thirty years ago by Narten 1987. Although convincing and nowadays widely accepted, Narten’s argumentation lacks an explanation for one important phenomenon, namely the conspicuous discrepancy in usage between verbal forms from the root śrayi- ‘to make perfect, shining’ and the root noun śrī́- f. ‘perfection, beauty, brilliance’ from the same root. Whereas śrayi- is used mainly to denote the blending of Soma (especially with milk), the root noun śrī́- is effectively never found in such contexts. Addressing this problem, a phraseological analysis of Ved. āśír- f. ‘(addition of) milk’ and āśīrta- ‘mixed (with milk)’ shows that the Vedic continuants of the root PIE *k̑erh2- are confined to a ritual context and therefore exhibit many symptoms of formal (i. e. morphological, phraseological) fixation and freezing. It is exactly this obsolescence and defectivity of the phraseme *Soma [with Milk] k̑erh2- (or at least some of its phraseological components) that led in consequence to its reactivation and (re-)integration into the productive verbal paradigm of śrayi- (< *k̑rei̯H-), which was not only phonetically close but also semantically. This process is responsible for the fact that śrayi- adopted the sphere of usage from the root *k̑erh2- and that it deviates so significantly from the use of the root noun śrī́-.
