"ai" with umlaut in RV (Van Nooten and Titus and Lubotsky)

[John Robert Gardner]

(This might be one for George to clarify):

10 times in the RV, e.g., as in RV 1.176.1, we have

        ma'tsi no va'syai:STaya

Mostly with these terms, Van Nooten & Holland's notes indicate:

        "Many lines can be restored to their proper syllable count simply
resolving external sandhi contractions between words in a clause or
members of a compound.  These . . . are of two types .  First are teh
contractions of vowels" (1994:iii).

Clearly that is the case here.  What is not clear is what the umlaut over
teh "i" in this case (the examples in the Introduction do not mention this
example, or clarify the signification of the umlaut).  I could see this as
simply the convention to designate the ellision of the two words with
external vowel sandhi.  However, I notice the umlauted "i" for this
several times in teh Titus version too.  What leaves me less clear,
however, is that the Lubotsky e-version (from teh TITUS CD . . . unless
it's not the per-word-resolved version I thought it was) has the same
thing.

Any suggestions/clarifications?

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=
John Robert Gardner
ATLA-CERTR
Emory University
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