Re: [INDOLOGY] Searching for a little-known Nyāya

Fri Jun 26 12:08:52 UTC 2015

Valerie: aren't black-naped hares (*Lepus nigricollis*), also known as
Indian hares, native to India? As you may know, Dravidian languages have a
non-IA word for rabbit/hare: **mucal*/*muyal (*Telugu *kundēlu *is an
interesting exception)*.* Are there any other non-IE words for hare in
other Indian languages? I think the words *kharabhaka/ kharago**ś**  (*खरगोश)
'donkey's ears'  are of recent origin, and perhaps have a Persian
connection.

Elliot: You are right about the language in the video. It is indeed Telugu
-- distinctly the Telangana variety. The kids are indeed speaking
Americanized English. They must be one of the Telugu-American immigrant
families.

Walter:  I heard *mahānasa-śaśa-nyāya* (rabbit in the kitchen -- easy to
catch) and *śaśa-viṣāṇa-nyāya* (a hare's horn -- a term for an
impossibility), but not the one you mentioned. I know *śaśi as moon * (in
compound form for*śaśin *is moon), but not as a feminine form of *śaśa. *Does
any other Indian language show an equivalent of *śaśī-sarpa-nyāya?*

Suresh.

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 2:20 AM, Elliot Stern <emstern at verizon.net> wrote:

> The National Geographic Society identifies the rabbit as a female
> cottontail rabbit and the snake as a black rat snake {
> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150624-rabbits-snakes-animals-science-nation-video/).
> It places the video source somewhere in the eastern United States. While I
> have not set foot in India since 1982, I believe the architectural features
> of the house and the lush green grass  in the video are more likely to be
> American than Indian.
>
> The South Indian language is possibly Telugu. ammā is mother and nannā is
> father. To my ear, the child’s English language  sounds more  American than
> Indian.
>
>
> Elliot M. Stern
> 552 South 48th Street
> Philadelphia, PA 19143-2029
> United States of America
> telephone: 215-747-6204
> mobile: 267-240-8418
> emstern at verizon.net
>
> On 26 Jun  2015, at 01:40, Valerie Roebuck <vjroebuck at btinternet.com>
> wrote:
>
> One odd thing: the animal in the video does indeed appear to be a rabbit,
> as distinct from a hare. I thought that rabbits were not native to India,
> and that the word śaśa referred to a hare (the words ‘hare’ and ‘śaśa'
> probably being cognates). Of course, they may well behave in the same way
> when their young are threatened, but they are different species.
>
> Valerie J Roebuck
> Manchester, UK
>
> On 25 Jun 2015, at 23:49, Walter Slaje <slaje at kabelmail.de> wrote:
>
> This video is so convincing that the idea of a śaśīsarpanyāya develops all
> by itself, even without ever having heard of it before. Great!
>
> Jan's likely assumption that this textually unattested nyāya might "have
> been based on actual observation" reminds one all the more painfully of our
> insufficient knowledge of realia and the material culture of pre-modern
> India.
>
> Speaking of nyāyas - and we may as well include the kavi-samayas, the
> ideological and material roots of which still remain unexplored by and
> large -, I should like to draw your attention to a promising rumour
> according to which the Indological Section of the DMG (German Oriental
> Society) consider a prize competition for cracking the history of
> development of some of the toughest nyāya- and kavisamaya-nuts. This might
> possibly materialize in the broader context of the 33rd Deutscher
> Orientalistentag to be held from the 18th to the 22nd of September 2017
> in Jena, Germany (the domain of, among others, Otto von Böhtlingk and the
> Schlegel brothers).
> I am not well informed enough, but would advise an occasional glance at
> the homepage of the Section (http://www.dmg-web.de/indologie/index.html)
> in the run-up to the Orientalistentag in 2017. So, plenty of time for
> warming-up.
>
> Many thanks, and kind regards,
> WS
>
>
> 2015-06-25 13:40 GMT+02:00 Patrick Olivelle <jpo at uts.cc.utexas.edu>:
>
>> Walter and all:
>>
>> I do not know abut this maxim, but this real life video of a mother
>> rabbit doing just what the maxim say could be instructive. It was probably
>> filmed somewhere in south India, I am not sure of the language of the
>> people taping it.
>>
>> Patrick
>>
>> http://*zeenews.india.com*
>> /news/world/watch-the-epic-fight-here-rabbit-battling-a-snake-to-protect-her-bunnies_1619126.html
>> <http://zeenews.india.com/news/world/watch-the-epic-fight-here-rabbit-battling-a-snake-to-protect-her-bunnies_1619126.html>
>>
>> The South Indian language is possibly Telugu.
>>
>> On Jun 25, 2015, at 3:24 AM, Walter Slaje <slaje at kabelmail.de> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>>
>> I am searching for textual evidence of a little-known Nyāya.
>>
>>
>> In an article by Soutik Biswas “Why India's sanitation crisis kills
>> women” (BBC News India, 30 May 2014), it was claimed that “Several studies
>> have shown that women without toilets at home are vulnerable to sexual
>> violence when travelling to and from public facilities or open fields.
>> [...]“. One mother told researchers, “We have had *one-on-one fights
>> with thugs in order to save our daughters from getting raped*. It then
>> becomes a fight that either you [the thug] *kill me to get to my
>> daughter*, or you back off.”
>>
>>
>> This courageous behaviour of mothers fighting for her girls at the risk
>> of their own lives reminds one of the *śaśī-sarpa-nyāya* (“the bunny and
>> the snake”), known to some by hearsay only, but not (yet) traceable. The
>> generalization here lies certainly in the fact that a (physically weaker)
>> female (*śaśī*) effectively fights a (physically stronger) male (*sarpa*).
>> The latter would be the aggressor(s), the victim(s) the (female) bunny
>> and/or her young.
>>
>>
>> The rare feminine formation *śaśī* causes no real trouble, as
>> occurrences of the word are anyway testified in the *Mokṣopāya*
>> (VI.34.103) and in Ratnākaraśānti’s *Vidagdhavismāpana* (175) [written
>> communication by Roland Steiner].
>>
>>
>> In connection of the very idea behind this nyāya, I should also like to
>> add that Gandhi could indeed have been aware of a similar popular maxim, as
>> he refers explicitly to “the violence of *the mouse against the cat*“,
>> writing that
>>
>>
>> “A girl who attacks her assailant with her nails, if she has grown them,
>> or with her teeth, *if she has them* [? W.S.], is almost non-violent
>> (...). Her violence is the violence of the mouse against the cat.“ (Harijan,
>> 08-09-1940).
>>
>>
>> On the other hand, Gandhi had
>>
>> „(...) always held that it is physically impossible to violate a woman
>> against her will. (…) If she cannot meet the assailant’s physical might,
>> her purity will give her the strength to die before he succeeds in
>> violating her. (…) I know that women are capable of throwing away their
>> lives for a much lesser purpose.” (Harijan, 25-08-1940).
>>
>>
>> The statement in the last paragraph, only cited for its somewhat
>> conflicting character with the first one, would, if further pursued,
>> however lead into an entirely different matter, better not to be touched.
>>
>>
>> I would be fully satisfied if someone among this learned community could
>> contribute to the mysterious* śaśīsarpanyāya*, on- or off-list.
>>
>>
>> Thanking you,
>>
>> WS
>>
>> -----------------------------
>> Prof. Dr. Walter Slaje
>> Hermann-Löns-Str. 1
>> D-99425 Weimar
>> Deutschland
>>
>> Ego ex animi mei sententia spondeo ac polliceor
>> studia humanitatis impigro labore culturum et provecturum
>> non sordidi lucri causa nec ad vanam captandam gloriam,
>> sed quo magis veritas propagetur et lux eius, qua salus
>> humani generis continetur, clarius effulgeat.
>> Vindobonae, die XXI. mensis Novembris MCMLXXXIII.
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