Tvám védyâm sîdasi cấrur adhvaré
Tvấm pavítram ṛshayo bhárantas
Tvám puníhi duritấni asmát.”
“Thou, O God of Fire, goest mightily across the earth; thou sittest brilliantly on the altar at the sacrifice. The prophets carry Thee as the Purifier; purify us from all misdeeds.”
From this root pu we have, in Latin, pūrus, and pŭtus, as in argentum purum putum, fine silver, or in purus putus est ipse, Plaut. Ps. 4, 2, 31. From it we also have the verb purgare, for purigare, to purge, used particularly with reference to purification from crime by means of religious observances. If this transition from the idea of purging to that of punishing should seem strange, we have only to think of castigare, meaning originally to purify, but afterwards in such expressions as verbis et verberibus castigare, to chide and to chasten.
I cannot convince myself that the Latin crimen has anything in common with κρίνειν. The Greek κρίνειν is no doubt connected with Latin cer-no, from which cribrum, sieve. It means to separate, to sift, so that κρῖμα may well signify a judgment, but not a crime or misdeed. Crīmen, as every scholar knows or ought to know, meant originally an accusation, not a crime, and, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, has nothing whatever in common with discrīmen, which means what separates two things, a difference, a critical point. In crimen venire means to get into bad repute, to be calumniated; in discrimine esse means to be in a critical and dangerous position.
It is one of the fundamental laws of etymology that in tracing words back to their roots, we have to show that their primary, not their secondary meanings agree with the meaning of the root. Therefore, even if crīmen had assumed in later times the meaning of judgment, yet its derivation from the Greek κρίνειν would have to be rejected, because it would explain the secondary only, but not the primary meaning of crīmen. Nothing is clearer than the historical development of the meanings of crīmen, beginning with accusation, and ending with guilt.
I believe I have proved that crīmen is really and truly the same word as the German Verleumdung, calumny.[6] Verleumdung comes from Leumund, the Old High-German hliumunt, and this hliumunt is the exact representative of the Vedic śromata, derived from the root śru, to hear, cluere, and signifying good report, glory, the Greek κλέος, the Old High-German hruom. The German word Leumund can be used in a good and a bad sense, as good or evil report, while the Latin crī-men, for croe-men (like liber for loeber), is used only in malam partem. It meant originally what is heard, report, on dit, gossip, accusation; lastly, the object of an accusation, a crime, but never judgment, in the technical sense of the word.
The only important objection that could be raised against tracing crīmen back to the root śru, is that this root has in the Northwestern branch of the Aryan family assumed the form clu, instead of cru, as in κλέος, cliens, gloria, O.Sl. slovo, A.S. hlûd, loud, inclutus. I myself hesitated for a long time on account of this phonetic difficulty, nor do I think it is quite removed by the fact that Bopp (“Comp. Gr.” § 20) identified the German scrir-u-mês, we cry (instead of scriw-u-mês), with Sk. śrâv-ayâ-mas, we make hear; nor by the r in in-cre-p-are, in κράζω, as compared with κλάζω, nor even by the r in ἀ-κρο-ά-ομαι, which Curtius seems inclined to derive from śru. The question is whether this phonetic difficulty is such as to force us to surrender the common origin of śromata, hliumunt, and crīmen; but even if this should be the case, the derivation of crīmen from cerno or κρίνειν would remain as impossible as ever.
This will give you an idea in what manner the Science of Language can open before our eyes a period in the history of law, customs, and manners, which hitherto was either entirely closed, or reached only by devious paths. Formerly, for instance, it was supposed that the Latin word lex, law, was connected with the Greek λόγος. This is wrong, for λόγος never means law in the sense in which lex does. λόγος, from λέγειν, to collect, to gather, signifies, like κατάλογος, a gathering, a collection, an ordering, be it of words or thoughts. The idea that there is a λόγος, an order or law, for instance, in nature, is not classical, but purely modern. It is not improbable that lex is connected with the English word law, only not by way of the Norman loi. English law is A.S. lagu (as saw corresponds both to the German Sage and Säge), and it meant originally what was laid down or settled, with exactly the same conception as the German Gesetz. It has been attempted to derive the Latin lex, too, from the same root, though there is this difficulty, that the root of liegen and legen does not elsewhere occur in Latin. The mere disappearance of the aspiration would be no serious obstacle. If, however, the Latin lex cannot be derived from that root, we must, with Corssen, refer it to the same cluster of words to which ligare, to bind, obligatio, binding, and the Oscan ablative lig-ud belong, and assign to it the original meaning of bond. On no account can it be derived from legere, to read, as if it meant a bill first read before the people, and afterwards receiving legal sanction by their approval.