Asian Studies

Could there be a more down-to-earth, unremarkable word than ब"ठना ? And yet the simple concept of ‘sitting’ yields a wide range of metaphorical and idiomatic meanings in both Hindi and English. In some ways the two traditions run in parallel: for example, in both languages ब"ठक / sitting has acquired the abstract sense of a ‘session’ (this word itself derives, like ‘sit’ itself, from Latin sedere ‘to sit’); but elsewhere the idioms work out differently, giving us plenty to think about as we sit contemplating the histories of these words.