[INDOLOGY] Examples of very ambiguous devanagari Sanskrit sentences

[Lubomir Ondracka]

See Yigal Bronner's book on śleṣa (Extreme Poetry: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration, Columbia UP 2010). Nice example using two ways of splitting sandhi leading to very different meanings is on page 101. You will probably find more examples in this book.

Lubomír Ondračka



On Sun, 8 Feb 2015 12:15:17 -0500
Harry Spier <hspier.muktabodha at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear list members,
> 
> I need to show to some non-sanskritists that given a Sanskrit phrase in
> devanagari, that how you put in the word breaks in the transliteration can
> result in phrases with very different meanings.
> 
> Can any of the list members give examples of short sentences in simple
> sanskrit in devanagari that when the words are split  differently in the
> transliteration give grammatically correct Sanskrit sentences but produce
> Sanskrit phrases with  "radically" different meanings.
> 
> For my purposes simple Sanskrit sentences are better than more complicated
> Sanskrit from the literature.  And sentences that give very different
> meanings depending on how the words are broken up are better than more
> subtle differences.
> 
> Thanks,
> Harry Spier