One of the more important Sanskrit words we shall encounter is jnana. Jnana means literally knowledge, and specifically the Supreme Knowledge: that which delivers from avidya (ignorance). Therefore pure jnana is nothing other than Realisation itself. Normally the term is used in such phrases as jnana marga (the Path of Knowledge) or jnana yoga (the yoga of knowledge — which, as we explain elsewhere, is normally equivalent to the Path of Knowledge). These terms differentiate the way of Knowledge from the ways of Love (bhakti marga) and of (ritual) action (karma marga).
The root of the word is a fundamental Indo-European one, kn or gn, which gives us the English knowledge as well as the Greek gnosis. It also forms the basis of the Germanic word kennen, to know, and of course the English/Scots form, ken, and related words such as cunning and canny. Thence it is a short step from knowledge to ability. To say that one can do a thing is originally to say that one knows how to do it. So this fundamental word encompasses all knowledge and ability from the highest to the most everyday.
Interesting also is the fact that the root is connected with the idea of beauty. Cunning is used dialectically to mean “beautiful”* as is quaint, another form of the word. Here we are conceptually rooted in the essential connexion between the Absolute, Realisation and primordial Beauty (Plato's to kalon).
What is most interesting, however, is that the same root also gives us some fundamental words related to femininity, such as queen and a now-obscene term for the female genitalia. The Sanskrit word for woman is the related jani and the Greek is gunos (which gives us our gynaecology, etc.)
These are all extensions of an even more primordial root, ku, which may very well be more widespread than the Indo-European family of languages, indicating an origin dating back before the division of the major language groups. Eric Partridge, in his authoritative study of English etymology, cites the Egyptian quefen-t meaning female genitalia (but also used honorifically by Ptah Hotep when addressing a goddess) and mentions several Semitic cognates. He says that the basic idea behind the original root ku is probably “essential femineity”**
The extended root, kn, jn, gn (in the Germanic and Latin languages cun/kun) has two lines of descent, the one emphasising the mother and the other knowledge***. Originally, these two ideas are identical, the final Supreme Knowledge (jnana) being reunion with the Mother.
The Mother in Her form as Wisdom persists even in patriarchal times. In both the Greek and hebrew traditions, Wisdom (Gk. Sophia, Heb. Hokmah) is feminine.
* Though this dialectical usage might be thought to have been limited to linguistically conservative rustic use by the 20th century, it appears in the 1934 song Dames from Forty-Second Street in the line “All those cute and cunning, young and beautiful dames”. One might also note that cute itself, originally short for acute, is another term for beauty derived from one for inteligence.
** Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 1966, p. 135. The ku root also gives us our “cow” — the milk-giving female animal which, in India is regarded as sacred precisely because of her representing the nurturing Mother. This is undoubtedly a tradition going back to pre-patriarchal times. Also related is the Vedic (and pre-Vedic) form of Dea, Vac, Who is not only the World-Creatrix and Speech (extension of both knowledge and creation), but also manifests in the form of a Cow, cf Latin vacca/French vache.
*** RF Rattray (1961) “On Lips Of Living Men” Quarterly
Review no. 299.627