[INDOLOGY] Female name Bhaayi?

[Martin Gansten]

Nagaraj wrote:

> I am sure, most of you must be aware of the female name ending bāī 
> /bāyī/ bāy /bā found in many contemporary northern particularly 
> north-western languages.
>
> Pingree's version is possibly bāī >vāī, such a phonetic change b<>v 
> being quite common many Indian languages.
>
> The bhāī version could possibly be a hyperstandardization or scribal 
> error.

Yes, this was one of the first thoughts to strike me. But /śrībhāyi/ is 
used consistently at the end of each of the sixteen chapters; the -i is 
short, and surely the variation v<>bh is not very common, at least 
outside Bengal? (This is not my area of expertise, so I'm open to 
correction.) Also, if /bhāyi/ is to be understood as a suffix, Śrī would 
have to be the mother's personal name. Not impossible, of course, but 
perhaps unusual?

Madhav wrote:

> The town "Vāī" (वाई) is found in Maharashtra, a famous place near 
> Satara, where many Sanskrit works like Dharmakośa were published.  Vai 
> has been a well known center for Sanskrit scholarship and the home of 
> the Prājña Pāṭhaśālā, which continues to function till today.

Perhaps that is why Pingree homed in on it (though he explicitly says 
that Yādava lived in Gujarat).* It may have been one of his 
over-confident emendations. But even reading /vā[y]i/ för /bhāyi/ and 
/supure/ for /suṣuve/, the /-nāmni/ will be unmetrical and the first two 
pādas won't hang together, so I do think his suggested reading must be 
abandoned.

(* I did try a web search for वाई गुजरात, but all I could find was वाई-फाई!)

Martin



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