[INDOLOGY] Does anyone know of Sanskrit works that use 2nd-syllable rhyming?

[Dominic Goodall]

A late reaction to an earlier thread.

Setting aside the question of dating, which is so often contentious, I am always *amazed* when people tell me that they are not convinced that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is a Southern production.  The work is full of Southern touches, many of which have been pointed out by a variety of scholars over the last century.  Yes, ok, there are also Northern touches, but why should that be surprising for a Southern work ?  The South seems always long to have been more conscious of the North than the North has been of the South.  It is full, for example, of rather long-standing Northern sacred toponyms (Tenkasi = “Benares of the South”; Madurai = Mathurā, etc.; and, of course Southern rivers are regularly equated with the Gaṅgā and Yamunā), whereas there are no old instances of a “Northern” Kāñcī or Śrīraṅgam or Chidambam, nor of the "Kāverī of the North”. 

Or are there ?

Similarly, the high literary style of the Bhāgavata, involving, in some parts, a high concentration of Vedic archaisms seems sometimes to be mentioned as though it were a factor that might suggest high antiquity and a provenance somewhere in the North.  But at what time in any part of the Sanskritic world would Vedic literature not have been prestigious and accessible to Veda-knowers seeking to write in a consciously archaising style?

But what about an element of style that not nearly as many authors would have been similarly motivated to copy ?

Second-syllable rhyming, in which just the consonant of the second syllable of each verse-quarter is rhymed, is abundantly present in post-Sangam Tamil literature and ubiquitous (or, if not, at least pretty nearly so) in the devotional literature of the Āḻvārs and Nāyaṉmārs, while being extremely rare in Sanskrit verse composition.  An example will make this clear:

BhP_10.31.001/1 jayati te 'dhikaṃ janmanā vrajaḥ śrayata indirā śaśvad atra hi
BhP_10.31.001/3 dayita dṛśyatāṃ dikṣu tāvakās tvayi dhṛtāsavas tvāṃ vicinvate
BhP_10.31.002/1 śaradudāśaye sādhujātasatsarasijodaraśrīmuṣā dṛśā
BhP_10.31.002/3 suratanātha te 'śulkadāsikā varada nighnato neha kiṃ vadhaḥ
BhP_10.31.003/1 viṣajalāpyayād vyālarākṣasād varṣamārutād vaidyutānalāt
BhP_10.31.003/3 vṛṣamayātmajād viśvato bhayād ṛṣabha te vayaṃ rakṣitā muhuḥ
BhP_10.31.004/1 na khalu gopīkānandano bhavān akhiladehinām antarātmadṛk
BhP_10.31.004/3 vikhanasārthito viśvaguptaye sakha udeyivān sātvatāṃ kule

I had long thought that this argument, expressed in 1996, would be a clincher, at least for the devotional verses in which second-syllable rhyming occurs, for proving Southernness, since I don’t know of any other Sanskrit works that use this feature.

But Sanskrit literature is vast, hence this appeal:

Does anyone know of any other Sanskrit works that use such 2nd-syllable rhyming?



Dominic Goodall
École française d'Extrême-Orient,
19, rue Dumas,
Pondicherry 605001
Tel. +91 413 2334539




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