Re: [INDOLOGY] Vālmīki’s first śloka

[Jesse Knutson]

Dear Friends, I think the aorist also imparts a kind of archaic/ārṣa-ic
feel in these kinds of contexts. It's obvious how this would be relevant
for the first verse of all poetry right? And as Michael pointed out, it's
not so rare in classical Sanskrit. It just comes across as a little fancy.
Best,J

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 11:46 AM, Harry Spier <hspier.muktabodha at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In an old posting on dating the Jyotisa Vedanga
> http://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology_list.
> indology.info/2000-March/020863.html
> Michael Witzel makes two observations
> 1) that Ramayana book 1 has linguistic characteristics of Late Epic
> and
> 2)  the difficulties in modernizing sentences in verse.
>
> Quoting from the posting:
> -----------------------------
> .........
>
> As I have noticed some years ago (unpublished), this is precisely a feature
> of LATE Epic. In both texts, Mbh. and Ram., [vedic vai occurs not as usual in slot 2 of a sentence but at the end of a paada] c. 13% of all cases of vai
> have this characteristic: they occur at the end. And are most common in
> Mahabharata 12, Ramayana 1 and 7.
>
> ........
>
> 2. We can add: The text is composed in Epic Shloka meter which is not
> exactly a Vedic one (though we have the Vedic  Anustubh). Now, its is a
> well known fact that you cannot change arround or modernize sentences as
> easily in verse as you can in prose. Note the famous case (Lueders) of the
> old, eastern forms in stanzas of the Pali canon.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Harry Spier
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Matthew Kapstein <mkapstei at uchicago.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear David,
>>
>> Bob is of course best able to respond in the case of *Rāmāyaṇa,* but my
>> impression is that the post-Vedic
>> use of the aorist is not so rare as you suggest. A good example to
>> consider is Aśvaghoṣa, particularly in
>> *Saundarananda*, in which he displays his virtuosity in the conjugation
>> systems by making plentiful use of unusual
>> aorist forms. In *kãvya* I rather doubt that this alone can be taken as
>> evidence of antiquity. Rather, the aorist
>> seems to be deliberately employed to display erudition.
>>
>> best,
>> Matthew
>>
>> Matthew Kapstein
>> Directeur d'études,
>> Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
>>
>> Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies,
>> The University of Chicago
>> ------------------------------
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> INDOLOGY mailing list
>> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
>> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
>> committee)
>> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
>> unsubscribe)
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> indology-owner at list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing
> committee)
> http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or
> unsubscribe)
>



-- 
Jesse Ross Knutson PhD
Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali, Department of Indo-Pacific
Languages and Literatures
University of Hawai'i at Mānoa
461 Spalding


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20161119/07869cdb/attachment.htm>