Ref. check verse 6.41 Bhagavad Gita

[John Smith]

On Fri, 5 Mar 1999, Charles Wikner wrote:

> On Thu, 04 Mar 1999, John Smith <jds10 at CUS.CAM.AC.UK> wrote:
>
> > An optional sandhi for final -n before initial l- is simply to write the
> > -n as an anusvara.
>
> Is there authortity for that?  I had assumed that the use
> of anusvAra here was due to ignorance or font limitations.

It's not so much a question of authority as of usage. (I am here going to
use "pure" Harvard-Kyoto ASCII: "M" means anusvara, "&" means
candrabindu.)  Whitney, for instance, notes that the normal MS usages are
"trIMlokAn" or "trI&llokAn", and suggests that a "better" usage would be
"trI&l lokAn". (Grammar, 206a.) He also states that, "according to the
Hindu grammarians", final *m* before l- becomes a nasalised "l", in
exactly the same way as happens to final -n (71, 206, 213d) -- so that the
use of anusvara for -n is "just as reasonabl[e]" as for -m. Nasalisation
is a notoriously difficult area, and I'd be interested to know what "the
Hindu grammarians" do actually say here, since Whitney is not the most
reliable witness; but there is no reason to mistrust his comments on MS
usage. Indeed, the sandhi -n + l- -> -M + l- occasionally finds its way
into print -- there's an example in one or other of the Brahmana paasages
in Boehtlingk's Chrestomathie, for instance, though a rapid search fails
to locate the exact spot.

> ...

> Translations to hand take puNyakRtAm as genitive plural of
> puNyakRt: worlds of the meritorious (=merit-performers), but
> I see no objection to taking puNyakRtAn as accusative plural
> of bahuvrIhi puNyakRta: worlds prepared for the meritorious/
> created by merit (as dvaita/advaita interpretations).

I presume you mean tatpuruSa, not bahuvrIhi.

John Smith

--
Dr J. D. Smith                *  jds10 at cam.ac.uk
Faculty of Oriental Studies   *  Tel. 01223 335140 (Switchboard 01223 335106)
Sidgwick Avenue               *  Fax  01223 335110
Cambridge CB3 9DA             *  http://bombay.oriental.cam.ac.uk/index.html