aaruroha valaahakam

[Ashok Aklujkar]

A moment after I sent my last message, it occurred to me that in my
childhood I had read the phrase abalakha gho.daa in Marathi  (please do not
ask me where I read it or how long ago my childhood existed). I took it to
mean 'a swift, smart horse' on the strength of the context and moved ahead.
Now I notice that abalakha occurs in Hindi too but in the sense 'a horse
characterized by black colour.' (there may however be an association of
swiftness and smartness and hence of superiority with black-colour mares in
Indian legends; cf. the K.r.s.naa mare of the Maharashtra hero Shivaji).
Perhaps Vi.s.nu was assigned a Valaahaka/Balaahaka horse for similar
reasons. 

As the initial "a' is frequently lost, there is no difficulty in holding
that (a)balakha and balaahaka are historically the same word. (I will not
get into questions like which form is original, to which language or
language family the word originally belonged and which way the borrowing, if
it is a case of borrowing as one would suspect, took place.) Even with the
limited context available (particularly, vegena aaruroha), one could
understand the verse as stating that Vasu-manas bolted from the battle field
on a prized horse of a particular kind (as Dr. Vielle has already surmised0.

ashok aklujkar


On 06-02-10 7:51 AM, "Christophe Vielle" <vielle at ORI.UCL.AC.BE> wrote:
> va- or balaahaka according to MW has several meanings: "a rain or
> thunder-cloud", "any cloud" MBh. Kaav. [cf. Kaalidaasa, KS 1,4]; one of the
> 7 clouds appearing at the destruction of the word, Cat. [where?]; [N. of ]
> a mountain, L. [cf. Somadeva Kathaas.]; [and among various other proper
> names] N. of one of the 4 horses of Vish.nu, Kaad.