[INDOLOGY] dvandvas

[victor davella]

I had sent this to Oliver a few days ago, but I just realized I did not
send it to the entire list.

Dear Oliver,

The topic is discussed quite thoroughly by Kātyāyana and Patañjali in the
Mahābhāṣya ad P. 2.1.1 (and of course the various sub(sub) commentaries
thereon).  The discussion is technical of course, and the pros and cons of
each mode of analysis are hashed out at length.  In the translation of the
āhnika by Joshi and Roodbergen (Patañjali's Vyākaraṇa-Mahābhāṣya
Samarthāhnika 1968) the discussion begins on p. 168 with Patañjali's
prelude to Vārtt. 25. The answer to your question, though, is stated
plainly in the translators' introduction (p. xvii): "The conclusion that
they arrived at is that dvandvas or a bahuvrīhi can be formed of more than
two constituent words. Elsewhere a compound is generally formed of two
words only."

This analysis is also reflected in commentators' glosses. See Scholastic
Sanskrit by Tubb and Boose p. 126 for examples.

See also the Kāśikāvṛtti ad P. 2.2.29 cārthe dvandvaḥ where the gloss of
dhava-khadira-palāśāḥ is given as dhavaś ca khadiraś ca palāśaś ca. Note
that the word enekam is continued from 2.2.24 which treats bahuvrīhi
compounds and is used to indicate that such compounds can be formed from
multiple words not just two as is usually the case by sup supā etc.

All the Best,
Victor


On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 3:08 PM, Oliver Hellwig <hellwig7 at gmx.de> wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> a very basic question about Sanskrit syntax: Are dvandvas, in traditional
> Sanskrit grammar, considered to be inherently binary, which means that
> dvandvas consisting of n>2 words should be bracketed by (n-1) brackets when
> constructing a dependency tree?
>
> Ex.:
> kaTutiktakashAyaushadha = "a herb that is kaTu, tikta and kashaya"
>
> Should a dependency tree constructed from this expression look like ...
> a. ((((kaTu + tikta)[dvandva] + kashAya)[dvandva]) + aushadha)[...] =
> "nested" dvandva
> or like
> b. ((kaTu + tikta + kashAya)[dvandva] + aushadha)[...]
>
> Any comment is welcome!
>
> Best regards, Oliver Hellwig
>
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