Re: [INDOLOGY] {भारतीयविद्वत्परिषत्} Question on Sanskrit Syntax

[George Hart]

Perhaps it’s worth remarking that in South Indian languages except Kannada, the borrowed (tatsama) forms of Sanskrit nouns ending in -a, whether masculine or neuter, end in -am (amu in Telugu).  Thus Tamil/Malayalam svargam (corkkam more commonly in Tamil).  The verse is an extremely simple one and might have been composed by someone whose Sanskrit was rudimentary, or the -am could have been introduced by a copyist who was used to saying “svargam.”  There are many Manipravalam documents in both Tamil and Malayalam where the distinction between the original Sanskrit and the tatsamas pretty much disappears and Dravidian endings are added to Sanskrit and vice versa.  George Hart

> On Dec 31, 2014, at 3:43 AM, Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh at umich.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Ashok.  On another list (BVP), Dr. H.N. Bhatt pointed out that the Nāradasmṛti has the reading ācārāt prāpyate svarga ācārāt prāpyate sukham.  This supports the assumption that in this verse, svarga and svargam are most likely oral/scribal variants, and the origin of the reading svargam could be accounted for in the way you have shown the parallel of svādu(m) udumbaram.  Best,
> 
> Madhav
> 
> On Wed, Dec 31, 2014 at 3:30 AM, Ashok Aklujkar <ashok.aklujkar at gmail.com <mailto:ashok.aklujkar at gmail.com>> wrote:
> Dear Madhav,
> 
> It does not seem to be a question of syntax to me. Accepting that m has been interposed in svarga aacaaraat** would in my view be the most straightforward solution. Instances of such interposing are not common, but they do exist. For want of time and because I did not record them when I came across them, I cannot give a list, but I do recall coming across them. The one which I am cite at present is svaadum udumbaram (Aitareya-braahma.na 7.15?), appearing where one expects svaadu udumbaram.
> 
> **svarga aacaaraat would result from  svarga.h aacaaraat with the loss of the visarga in sandhi.
> 
> While preferring lectio difficiliors is justified in many cases, that principle of textual criticism cannot be applied with the same conviction when its application leads to an ungrammatical construction in an otherwise grammatical work.
> 
> While I have enjoyed reading the subtle grammatical discussions, they all result in making one verse quarter unlike the other three quarters of the verse. It is not probable that the author who writes simple, flowing verses elsewhere would suddenly and in one instance only introduce a rare construction.
> 
> It is possible that interposing of m occurred only in those situations in which two vowels stood immediately next to each other (as in svaadu udumbaram or svarga aacaaraat) and thus ran counter to the very dominant 'vowel consonant vowel' or 'consonant vowel consonant' feature of Sanskrit sentence constituents.
> 
> It is also possible that sukham at the end of the fourth quarter exerted influence on the last word of the third quarter and changed it from svarga to svargam, but we do not need to make the problematic svargam reading rest primarily or solety on that possibility.
> 
> a.a.
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> 
> -- 
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor of Sanskrit and Linguistics
> Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
> 202 South Thayer Street, Suite 6111
> The University of Michigan
> Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1608, USA
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