Kyoto-Harvard transliteration

[Sanjay Kumar]

Prof. Witzel:
Thank you for the reference to zuudraarya. 
I was in fact referring to what Gérard Huet had to say about the order of names of the four varnas. I quote him from his second-last email:
"Actually, vaarttikas recommend the fair law: first should be come the notion worthy of most respect, like in maatapitarau. And of course braahma.nak.satriyavi.t"suudraa.h - brâhmans should always go first!"
According to (secularist) grammatical tradition, "the notion of worthy of respect" applies to the first example: maataapitarau; the second example (braahma.nak.satriyavi.t"suudraa.h) simply alludes to the sequence (aanupuurvya) in which they appear in the Vedas, i.e. Rig-Veda 10.90.12. It should be noted that Sanskrit texts often follow the same sequence even outside Dvandva compound. 
Sanjay
McGill University
Canada
 

________________________________

From: Indology on behalf of Michael Witzel
Sent: Sun 8/3/2008 7:00 PM
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Kyoto-Harvard transliteration



Sanjay (below) seems to refer to the frequent Vedic compound 
zUdrArya- (Unicode: sudrarya-), 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]  (ariya) for (KH) Arya (aarya, arya-), 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 (sudra+ariya):  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 
8571;
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