▪ Jeffery1938: »It occurs only in combination with ↗
istabraq in describing the elegant clothing of the inhabitants of Paradise, and thus may be suspected at once of being an Iranian word. / It was early recognized as a foreign borrowing, and is given as Pers by al-Kindī, Risāla, 85; al-Thaʕlabī, Fiqh, 317; al-Jawālīqī, Muʕarrab, 79; al-Khafājī, 104; as-Suyūṭī, Itq, 322. Others, however, took it as Ar, as the Muḥīṭ notes, and some, as we learn from TA, iv, 168, thought it was one of the cases where the two languages used the same word. / Freytag in his Lexicon gave it as
e persica lingua, though Fraenkel, Vocab, 4, raised a doubt, for no such form as
sundus occurs in Pers, ancient or modern.
1
Dvořák, Fremdw, 72, suggests that it is a corruption of the Pers
sandūqus, which like Syr
sāndūks is derived from Grk
sánduks,
2
a word used among the Lydians, so Strabo XI, xiv, 9, says, for fine, transparent, flesh-coloured women’s garments of linen. / Fraenkel,
Fremdw, 41, compares with the Grk
sindṓn, the garment used in the Bacchic mysteries, and with this Vollers, ZDMG, 51:298, is inclined to agree, as also Zimmern, Akkad. Fremdw, 37.
sindṓn itself is derived from Akk
sudinnu,
sadinnu, whence came the Hbr
sādîn, Aram
sdynā. In any case it was an early borrowing as it occurs in the early poetry, e.g. in Mutalammis, xiv, 3, etc.«