Re: [INDOLOGY] Vālmīki’s first śloka

[Dipak Bhattacharya]

Why not a pure solecism as Indian authorities think? These are known in
Indian tradition as ¡rÀaprayoga, irregular use by the seers?

Best

DB

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 6:02 AM, Harry Spier <hspier.muktabodha at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Note also what Oberlies, "A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit" says about
> "irregularities" in epic sanskrit in his introduction..
> "The language of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana may certainly be called
> Sanskrit when compared with contemporary Middle Indo-Aryan but it is a
> Sanskrit which continually deviates from the norms codified by Panini.
> This is not because such 'aberrant' forms were pre-Paninian.  For the Epics
> (and in fact only the Mahabharata) know only a handful - moreover rather
> doubtful - Vedisms. ......Almost always it is metrical exigencies which
> forced the poets to use a form not sanctioned by traditional grammar....the
> "irregularities' are very often found at a metrically relevena position of
> the stanza: "Metre surpasses grammar".
>
> Thanks,
> Harry Spier
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear David,
>> "*agamas* has here retained its augment": you apparently postulate a
>> development in the language here, but one which does not match the
>> available evidence.
>> See mainly Karl Hoffmann Der Injunktiv im Veda 1967, but also, offering
>> alternative analyses of partly the same phrases, Jan Gonda Aspectual
>> function of the Rgvedic present and aorist.
>> Another point is that in order to translate the Ramayana a choice has to
>> be made which edition to take as starting point: even for mere practical
>> reasons the Baroda critical edition is the obvious candidate to be
>> selected.
>> It was the editorial choice of the editors G.H. Bhatt et al. of this
>> critical edition to give preference systematically to the recension where
>> most grammatical and metrical "irregularities" are found, i.e., the
>> Southern recension.
>> The idea is that the manuscripts of the Northern recension underwent
>> "polishing" in a much higher degree.
>> Under this "polishing-theory" one should then expect that specific
>> "irregularities" in the text are identical and found in a large number of
>> manuscripts that supposedly represent the older, pre-polishing stage, but
>> this is precisely what is not the case:
>> see Leendert van Daalen's 1980 study *Valmiki's Sanskrit*: at present
>> his study, not without problems of its own, could be redone with more
>> advanced statistical means and a fresh study of the evidence. On the basis
>> of a study of books II-IV van Daalen concludes that the Poet Valmiki wrote
>> mostly "correct" classical Sanskrit -- this does not necessarily always
>> correspond to "Paninian" sanskrit, and the poor definition of van Daalen's
>> "irregularities" is one of the weaknesses in his study, which could however
>> be "repaired" to some extent by referring to other forms of acceptable yet
>> not strictly Paninian sanskrit (cf. Narayana Bhatta's Apaniniyapramanata
>> and www.academia.edu/28515426).
>> E.W. Hopkins 1901 was even more sceptical, or, for those accepting his
>> line of argument (cf. Madeleine Biardeau's arguments *against* critical
>> editions for the epics), more realistic, than van Daalen: "There can be no
>> plausible original reconstructed and practically there was from the time
>> of, let us say, the first repetition of the text no original Ramayana"
>> (quoted in van Daalen's study, p. 6).
>> Jan Houben
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *Jan E.M. HOUBEN*
>>
>> Directeur d’Études
>>
>> Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite
>>
>> *École Pratique des Hautes Études*
>>
>> *Sciences historiques et philologiques *
>>
>> 54, rue Saint-Jacques
>>
>> CS 20525 – 75005 Paris
>>
>> johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr
>>
>> https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
>>
>> www.ephe.fr
>>
>>
>> On 19 November 2016 at 19:55, David and Nancy Reigle <dnreigle at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Bob and all,
>>>
>>> Ever since I was introduced to what tradition regards as the first śloka
>>> ever written, Vālmīki’s first śloka now preserved at *Rāmāyaṇa* 1.2.14,
>>> I have had a question about it. Probably you or others have long ago
>>> answered it. Sorry for my ignorance of the relevant material on this verse.
>>>
>>>
>>> mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṃ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ |
>>> yat krauñca-mithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāma-mohitam || 1.2.14 ||
>>>
>>>
>>> “Since, Niṣāda, you killed one of this pair of *krauñcas*, distracted
>>> at the height of passion, you shall not live for very long.” (trans. Robert
>>> P. Goldman, 1984)
>>>
>>>
>>> What first struck me is that both of the verbs in this verse, *agamas*
>>> and *avadhīs*, are aorists. Moreover, *agamas* has here retained its
>>> augment, although used with *mā*. My understanding is that, since
>>> aorists largely fell out of use after the Vedic period, they are not at all
>>> common in the *Rāmāyaṇa*. So here is my question. Assuming that this is
>>> in fact Vālmīki’s first śloka, would this point to an original
>>> *Rāmāyaṇa* that is considerably older than the *Rāmāyaṇa* we now have?
>>> Could the *Rāmāyaṇa* as now extant have been reworked, updated in
>>> language so to speak, from an earlier original? For example, F. E. Pargiter
>>> in his detailed study, *The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali
>>> Age* (1913), found considerable evidence that in the oldest purāṇas (
>>> *Vāyu*, *Brahmāṇḍa*, *Matsya*) the verses had been Sanskritized from an
>>> earlier literary Prakrit, and that these Sanskrit verses had in turn been
>>> condensed and rewritten directly in Sanskrit in some other purāṇas (
>>> *Viṣṇu*, *Bhāgavata*).
>>>
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>>
>>> David Reigle
>>>
>>> Colorado, U.S.A.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 1:50 PM, Robert Goldman <rpg at berkeley.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> On behalf of all the scholars who have been involved with the
>>>>  decades-long project to translate and annotate the critical edition of the *Vālmīki
>>>> Rāmāyaṇa*, Dr. Sally Sutherland Goldman and I are happy to announce
>>>> the publication of the seventh and final volume  of the work.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India,* *Volume
>>>> VII: Uttarakāṇḍa*
>>>> Introduction, Translation, and Annotation by Robert P. Goldman & Sally
>>>> J. Sutherland Goldman
>>>>
>>>> Hardcover | December 2016 | *$175.00* | *£129.95* | ISBN: 9780691168845
>>>> 1544 pp. | 6 x 9 | 1 color illus. 1 line illus. 5 tables.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dr. R. P.  Goldman
>>>> Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor in South
>>>> and Southeast Asian Studies
>>>> Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies MC # 2540
>>>> The University of California at Berkeley
>>>> Berkeley, CA 94720-2540
>>>> Tel: 510-642-4089
>>>> Fax: 510-642-2409
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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