Kannada vacanas

[Robert Zydenbos]

Replies to msg 11 May 98: indology at listserv.liv.ac.uk (DEVARAKONDA VENKATA NARAYANA SARMA)

>Earlier N. Ganesan wrote
><<There was a suggestion that kuuDala is the place name and
>sangamesvara refers to the God's name.kuuDala samngama is a place name.
>How do we know this?There were two Chola era prabandhams of war, now
>lost except for a few verses and their names occur in medieval
>commentaries.The 10th century paraNi prabandhams are called [...]

 nVNI> This does not explain the occurance of name saGgamezwara
 nVNI> without the addition of kUDala. A more rational hypothesis
 nVNI> will be to assume that ordinary people who did not
 nVNI> understand that sangama = kUDala started calling
 nVNI> saGgamEZwara as kUDala saGgamEzwara. In Andhra people are
 nVNI> named as saGgamEzwara. For example the great vaiNika
 nVNI> TumurADa SaGgamEzwara sAstri. Thus the gods name as
 nVNI> saGgamEZwara is prevelent in Andhra.

Maybe it is not out of place here to mention that Basava's a:nkita is not "kuu.dalasa:ngamee;svara", as a few list members have been writing, but "kuu.dalasa:ngamadeeva". :-) (The meaning may not differ much, but I think that we ought to get such details right.)

"Kuu.dalasa:ngama" is of course a hybrid tautological name. As has been pointed out earlier, it _is_ topographical (and there are Kannada sources for finding out that, so we don't need Tamil sources from far away, although of course it is nice to know that such exist too). If the name of the place is that tautology, then one can hardly blame a learned person like Basava for using it, because that is simply the way it is. If we had no other sources that tell us about the existence of such a place, then Basava's using of such an odd word would in itself already have been an indication that it was a locally existing name.

Robert Zydenbos
zydenbos at flevoland.xs4all.nl