gemination/degemination of stops in ligature with semi-vowels

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

The rule speaks of optional gemination not of dropping onr from a pair when it is part of the etymology DB

--- On Tue, 23/12/08, Kengo Harimoto <kengo.harimoto at UNI-HAMBURG.DE> wrote:

From: Kengo Harimoto <kengo.harimoto at UNI-HAMBURG.DE>
Subject: Re: gemination/degemination of stops in ligature with semi-vowels
To: INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk
Date: Tuesday, 23 December, 2008, 8:01 PM

Adding to Dominic's comment,

Pāṇini has rules regarding gemination, some of them as options in 8.4.46 ff.
 So, not all of the variations (in pronunciation and in orthography) that
involve geminations are ungrammatical.  I think most of them are in fact
Pāṇinian acceptable.

This particular one, V+ttva and V+tva, is optionally allowed by 8.4.47.

Prof. Cardona had an article on nasals that explored various pronunciation
options adopted by Vedic Prātiśākhyas.  Is it published?  There, if I
remember correctly, opinions of some teachers that prohibit certain geminations
were mentioned.  Prohibition of ttva was one of them.

Some copyists are very strict about which options they use in writing: two
Malayalam manuscripts I used have:

- t[y/v]a instead of tt[y/v]a to the point of utpatyabhāvaḥ rather than
utpattyabhāvaḥ

- although they double t after r; thus kīrtyate rather than kīrttyate

Other copyists seem more liberal. I no more pay attention, which may be not a
good practice, whether in a particular manuscript it is sattva or satva if the
manuscript comes from the North.  I think it's rather common to see both
sattva and satva in a manuscripts.

So, my point is to emphasize Dominic's conclusion:

> it seems unlikely that anything can be useful known about the history of
the word bodhisattva/bodhisatva from the way it is written in manuscripts.

Even according to Pāṇini, bodhisattva and bodhisatva can be the same thing.

--kengo harimoto


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