Kyoto-Harvard transliteration

[Michael Witzel]

Sanjay (below) seems to refer to the frequent Vedic compound  
zUdrArya- (Unicode: śūdrārya-), where to many people's surprise,  
the grammarians mentioned below included, the Shudras come first.

Well, for a good  reason  -- again that of prosody or syllable count.

The Rgveda mostly has the clear, metrically indicated, trisyllabic  
reading  [aariya]  (āriya) for (KH) Arya (aarya, ārya-), as noted  
already by Grassmann 1873, RV Dictionary column 185-6.

In short, Panini-Behaghel's  (2+1+1, 2+2+2) rule is strictly  
followed, against all contemporary social sensitivities:

zUdra+Ariya (śūdra+āriya):  2 syll + 3 syllables, or :  2+1, 2+1+1  
morae.

In fact, this has been noted and explained long ago by Hans Oertel :  
"zUdrArya", I think in ZDMG 1936;  see now H.Oertel, Kleine  
Schriften. Heinrich Hettrich,  Thomas Oberlies (eds.). Stuttgart :  
Franz Steiner Verlag, 1994.


A nice weekend!

Michael


On Aug 3, 2008, at 5:00 PM, Sanjay Kumar wrote:

> According to Kaatyaayana and Patanjali as well later Sanskrit  
> grammarians such as Jayaaditya and KaiyaTa, the order of appearance  
> of the four varnas in copulative compound is not indicative of "the  
> notion worthy of most respect." It rather indicates the sequence as  
> mentioned in the Vedas (see KaiyaTa's commentary on the Vaartika  
> "varnaanaam aanupuurvyeNa" {Panini 2.2.34}). At least the (early)  
> grammatical tradition does not presuppose hierarchy in this context.
>
> Sanjay
>
> McGill University
>
>

Michael Witzel
witzel at fas.harvard.edu
www.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm

Dept. of Sanskrit & Indian Studies, Harvard University
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phone: 1- 617 - 495 3295 (voice & messages), 496 8570, fax 617 - 496  
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