Re: [INDOLOGY] Nārāyaṇagarta and Kayyaṭa Kashmiri pandits

[Dipak Durgamohan Bhattacharya]

10 2 14

With greetings to all!

The dialogue reminds me of a linguistic phenomenon that I had tried to
guess, wrongly or rightly, from a wrong reading in the Kashmir ms of the
Paippalāda-Saṃhitā of the AV. In 12.19.2 the AVP reads *śraddhemaṃ brahma
juṣatām…*. The Kashmir ms reads *bhraddhemañ juṣatāṃ…* This was the only
confusion between *śra *and *bhra *that I had noted in the Kashmir ms. My
guess at that time was that the *bhra* had come via a *tra*. The source of
the *tra*, I had guessed, was a noted early tendency to replace an initial
s- by  t- in the South. The AVP had sometimes remained in the South.

Later I had to consider the similarity between *śra *and *bhra* in
16thcentury Śārada. Still I do not think that that satisfactorily
solves the
problem.

Best

DB


On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:45 PM, Ashok Aklujkar <ashok.aklujkar at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Walter,
>
> Many thanks for the additional information (especially reference to p. 56
> of your book on Sharada script) and observations.
>
> As I stated in my post of yesterday, I accept your main point that "rbha"
> and "rta" could be confused.
>
> By now, I have been given enough evidence to think of "rbha" --> "rta" as
> a more likely corruption In the case of the Devii;sataka commentary
> pu.spikaa than the "rga" --> "rta" corruption that I had initially
> suggested. Attestation of 'naaraaya.na-garbha" in another manuscript and
> the suggestion of the evidence collected from the Einoo-edited book to the
> effect that there indeed were names ending -garbha (albeit only in the
> Tantrik tradition and probably only as pen-names or post-initiation names)
> further removed my resistance to the "rta" --> "rbha" emendation.
>
> In an earlier stage of my thinking, I would have liked to get an
> *explicit* statement from S. Kaul on the confusability of "rta" and "rbha",
> but such a statement is no longer necessary. That he suggests through his
> employment of "mislection" that copyists misread "bhuu-garta" as
> "bhuu-garbha" and may, therefore, be thought of as having in front of them
> a writing that could be understood either way -- as  "rta" or as "rbha" --
> is now sufficient in view of the evidence coming from other quarters.
>
> About the (reverse) "rbha" --> "rta" emendation in verse 2.209 of
> ;Sriivara's Raaja-tara:ngi.nii, we should start another thread or discuss
> the matter when we meet next. You probably are as short of time as I am at
> present. I leave the choice to you.
>
> With best wishes,
>
> ashok
>
>
> On 2014-02-09, at 1:12 AM, Walter Slaje wrote:
>
> Dear Ashok,
>
> On page 56 of my booklet (with the original akṣaras reproduced from a
> Śāradā manuscript) you can check this possibility for yourself, the
> difference being that a halfcircle below the mātrā is open to the left
> (rta) or closed (rbha). This applies of course to actual handwriting only,
> but not to the abstracted shapes of Śāradā akṣaras, which is why I did not
> categorize such forms under the heading of "Semi-homographe Akṣaras" (pp.
> 43 ff), where you therefore might have looked in vain.
>
> 2) > Srikanth Kaul' himself does not specify that he has emended the text
> the way he has because "rbha" could be a miscopying of "rta".
>
> I have quoted Kaul's editorial note verbatim, and he writes indeed:
> " (*mislec[tion] for Śār. rtā*)". Kaul considered rbha a Śāradā
> mislection for an original -rta and emended his text accordingly.
>
> 3) > Sriivara describes an unceremonious funeral, one in which a body
> brought in a coffin and covered with a single sheet is simply dumped into a
> space that exists in/on the ground, although it is the body of a royal
> person
>
> Actually, Śrīvara here solemnly describes a royal funeral in accordance
> with Muslim rites. This is the context of the stanza quoted by me:
>
> Ḥasan, Sulṭān Zayn's grandson and heir to his deceased father, buries his
> father Sulṭān Ḥaydar Šāh (who unfortunately died of excessive alcoholism).
>
> Regrettably, vocabulary and modes of expression of the largely ignored
> post-Kalhaṇian Rājataraṅgiṇīs are nowhere recorded in our standard
> dictionaries.
>
>
> 4) > In such a context, "bhuu-garta" conveying the idea of a 'ditch' or
> 'trench' seems more appropriate than "bhuu-garbha" (which would connote
> greater depth).
>
>
> From the actual context as given above a different picture emerges. The
> new Sulṭān would hardly have dumped his father into a ditch, for he was publicly
> buried at the royal cemetery in Śrīnagar.
>
> Śrīvara was a poet and expressed himself as such a one. That he had indeed
> a "womb of the earth" in mind when composing his stanza can be seen from a
> telling parallel, where he depicts Zayn's burial as an eyewitness, at the
> occasion of which he had been present as well:
>
> *yatra suptā ivaikatra bhānti pūrve mahībhujaḥ |*
>
> *bhartṛpremṇā dharaṇy eva nihitā hṛdayāntare* || Zayna-T. 1.7.227 ||
> "There, [where] *the Earth had taken them inside* for love of her [royal]
> husbands, the previous Sulṭāns appeared to be asleep [together] in the same
> place."
>
>
> That is the way a cremation-accustomed Hindu poet conceived of the strange
> impression interments left on his mind, when the earth, who is supposed to
> have always only one husband (ruler) at a time, takes them all together
> inside herself (hṛdayāntare = bhu-ga*rbh*e), where they now seem to sleep
> comfortably side by side.
>
> I am sorry that I had not clarified the full context in my earlier mail
> and so unintentionally caused some confusion. I just wanted to be brief
> in pointing out the theoretical possibility that -rbha might have been
> misread for -rta, and that an early mislection of that sort may have easily
> survived in copies made from such an exemplar.
>
>
>
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