Re: [INDOLOGY] Vālmīki’s first śloka

Sun Nov 20 10:20:22 UTC 2016

Valmiki's bandit biography is only one of the versions, albeit the most
popular of his life-stories available in different texts than Valmiki
Ramayana. The other version is that he is son of a rishi, Pracheta.

The verse under question and the portion of Valmiki Ranayana from where
this picked do not have the bandit version of the narrative in the
background directly or indirectly.

So that may not be a good way to explain the question under discussion.

On Sun, Nov 20, 2016 at 2:57 PM, Jan E.M. Houben <jemhouben at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear David et al.,
> Commentaries may have discussed it as ārṣaprayoga but if we try to take
> the meta-narrative seriously, could it rather have been ... (still)
> "bandit's" prayoga  (bandit with b)? At this early stage, the
> transformation of dacoit Ratnākara to Vālmīki (see at YouTube under
> "Ratnakar to Valmiki" for some modern representations of this episode)
> would not yet have been complete. At least his language would still have
> beginners' and learner's mistakes, and a "hypersanskritization" such as an
> aorist injunctive with an augment superfluously added (which can hardly be
> interpreted as archaic or primitive or colloquial).
> Best, Jan
> .
>
>
> On Sunday, 20 November 2016, David and Nancy Reigle <dnreigle at gmail.com>
> 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> 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> 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
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>      <https://ci6.googleusercontent.com/proxy/RQrPe-
> fIuAHuhqPByOWB2JkSw_O1x8y8-PDEuYhATfXahNfxshFInXITrKFja-fAt9
> NomFBkDRIPE9veFBH6T5ZulbhxrZuBTbVBXApKOBTkFtAfF80vMoRuL30O5b
> YuNrEGtSAEAh-h5Cpi7DbjpPFD1vCm2evDQaN157gzEA1VO1kzXUfTIKCFDN
> agfj6FLFk-bJamI_5nfJM=s0-d-e1-ft#https://docs.google.com/uc?
> export=download&id=0B-TN0Ek0VfGDX1RqVTJKdjBuWWs&revid=0B-TN0
> Ek0VfGDdVF4aXhNb1F5czA4bFhBRzI1S2l3UitFeFBjPQ>
>
> >>>>
> >>>> 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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-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,

(Pune, Maharashtra, INDIA )

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