WORDS THAT HAVE LOST THEIR MEANING

In those [pre-Mahábhárata] days one of the household duties of the girls was to milk the cows. It was considered a sacred duty. This is why the Sanskrit word for daughter is duhitá [milkmaid].

In the Mahábhárata age women lost status. Their marriage became a highly expensive affair. Nevertheless the word duhitá, meaning daughter, was retained. The word degenerated to mean a girl who milks away the family wealth at her wedding. The poet Rabindranath Tagore was heavily weighed down with the burden of dowry for the marriage of one of his daughters. So he wrote in a letter, “Oh, she has totally milked us.”