Wiktionary etymology of Malayalam പ്രാവശ്യം looks incorrect
I came across the Wiktionary entry for പ്രാവശ്യം (prāvaśyaṁ):
The page currently states:
"Borrowed from Sanskrit प्रावश्य (prāvaśya)."
I think this etymology should be corrected.
The first problem is that the supposed Sanskrit source प्रावश्य (prāvaśya) is itself a red link on Wiktionary. There is no actual Sanskrit entry for it. I also cannot find prāvaśya in the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Apte's Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary, or CDIAL.
There is also some very interesting evidence in Hermann Gundert's A Malayalam and English Dictionary:
https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/gundert_query.py?page=743
Gundert's entry reads:
പ്രാവശ്യം prāvaśyam (mod.) "Time, turn; in Trav. അനേകം പ്രാവേശം; also നാലു പ്രാവിശ്യം ആളെ അയച്ചു TR."
The important point is (mod.), which Gundert uses to indicate Modern. He does not mark പ്രാവശ്യം with S., his explicit abbreviation for Sanskrit.
This becomes particularly significant when we look at the entries immediately following it. Gundert explicitly marks Sanskrit words with S.:
- പ്രാവൃള് S. (പ്ര + വൃഷ്)
- പ്രാശനം S. (പ്ര + അശ്)
- പ്രാശ്നികന് S. (പ്രശ്ന)
- പ്രാസം S. (പ്ര + അസ്)
- പ്രാസാദം S. (സദ്)
- പ്രാഹ്ണം S. (അഹ:)
So Gundert clearly knew how to identify and mark Sanskrit vocabulary, yet പ്രാവശ്യം is marked "(mod.)", not "S."
He also gives the historical citation:
നാലു പ്രാവിശ്യം ആളെ അയച്ചു TR.
Here TR = Tellicherry Records, giving us an actual Malayalam attestation in the period represented by those records.
As a native Malayalam speaker and a hobby linguist, my own reading is that പ്രാവശ്യം is more plausibly a Malayalam-internal, relatively modern coinage, possibly a Sanskrit-flavoured formation. The form certainly looks Sanskritic, and Malayalam already has familiar forms such as അവശ്യം (avaśyaṁ) "necessarily" and ആവശ്യം (āvaśyaṁ) "necessity, requirement".
But that does not establish that प्रावश्य (prāvaśya) itself ever existed in Sanskrit.
So I think the Wiktionary entry should be corrected. The present statement that Malayalam പ്രാവശ്യം is "borrowed from Sanskrit प्रावश्य" presents an unsupported Sanskrit etymology as established fact, even though the alleged Sanskrit source is not actually attested in the sources I've been able to find, and Gundert himself treats the Malayalam word as modern, not Sanskrit.
If anyone can produce an actual Sanskrit textual attestation of प्रावश्य (prāvaśya), preferably an independent historical source rather than another dictionary copying this etymology, I'd be very interested to see it. Otherwise, I think the etymology should be changed to reflect the possibility of a Malayalam-internal formation rather than asserting a Sanskrit borrowing.
