Re: [INDOLOGY] Vālmīki’s first śloka
Luis Gonzalez-Reimann
reimann at berkeley.edu
Sun Nov 20 05:12:22 UTC 2016
Dear David,
If what you are suggesting is that because Rāma is supposed to have
lived in Tretā, that implies that the language can be older, the
argument doesn't work. The yuga system only appears in India around the
beginning of the common era. In addition, the placement of Rāma in Tretā
appears only once in Vālmīki, and that is in the second part of the
Uttarakāṇda, which is late. The Uttara, of course, is the one just
published. Later versions of the /Rāmāyaṇa/ -as well as some Purāṇas-
reinforce that placement, but it is all a later development, after the
/Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa/.
Unless I misunderstood you.
Luis
_____
On 11/19/2016 8:55 PM, David and Nancy Reigle wrote:
> Dear Dipak,
>
> What about the standard Indian tradition that Rāma lived in the Tretā
> age? In that case, no ārṣaprayoga would be required to explain the
> archaic language.
>
> Best regards,
>
> David Reigle
> Colorado, U.S.A.
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 9:22 PM, Dipak Bhattacharya
> <dipak.d2004 at gmail.com <mailto:dipak.d2004 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> 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 <mailto: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 <mailto: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
> <http://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
> <mailto:johannes.houben at ephe.sorbonne.fr>
>
> https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
> <https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben>
>
> www.ephe.fr <http://www.ephe.fr>
>
>
> On 19 November 2016 at 19:55, David and Nancy Reigle
> <dnreigle at gmail.com <mailto: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 <mailto: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 <tel:510-642-4089>
> Fax: 510-642-2409 <tel:510-642-2409>
>
>
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