[INDOLOGY] Examples of very ambiguous devanagari Sanskrit sentences

[Harry Spier]

Thanks for these replies.

What will help me the most is some very simple Sanskrit phrases that
show  completely different meanings by how you put breaks in the
transliteration.  I need to show examples of this to non-sanskritist,
non-devanagari knowing typesetters.

The best I could come up with is:

पुष्पमध्येति स्मरति च

which can be:

puṣpam adhyeti smarati ca He turns his mind towards the lotus and remembers
it.

or
puṣpa-madhyeti smarati ca = puṣpa-madhya iti smarati ca = He  remembers  [the
phrase] "the middle of the lotus"

More examples like this would be useful.

Thanks,
Harry Spier

On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 1:40 PM, Lubomir Ondracka <ondracka at ff.cuni.cz>
wrote:

> 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
>


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