[INDOLOGY] A distraction from the Coronavirus

Sun Apr 5 17:46:44 UTC 2020

Here are a few more examples of change in gender from Sanskrit to Hindi

बाहु पुं -> स्त्री
बलि पुं -> स्त्री
जिह्व पुं -> (जीभ) स्त्री

I could not find any exmaple where a fem Sanskrit word is changed to Masc.
in Hindi.

Best,
Amba

On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 at 22:39, Hock, Hans Henrich via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Thanks, Madhav, for the reference to Hindi मेरी आत्मा*.*
>
> I had been aware of several Sanskrit neuter words that were taken into
> Hindi with feminine gender (*pustak(a) = kitāb* (f.), *vastu = čīz *(f.),
> *āyu* = *umra* (f.)), but not any masculine.
>
> The feminine gender for *merī ātmā* can be explained as modeled on the
> Urdu expression *merī jān*, just as the neuter --> feminine words above
> can be explained in terms of the gender of their Urdu counterparts. The
> importance of *merī ātmā *lies in the fact that it is not neuter in
> Sanskrit, and hence alternative explanations in terms of claiming that
> gender assignment of Sanskrit words in Hindi fluctuates (similar to what
> happened in Romance languages) become less likely.
>
> The fact that Sanskrit words like these have been assigned feminine gender
> further supports the idea that a certain amount of the “Sanskritization" of
> Hindi consisted in simply substituting a Sanskrit form for an existing Urdu
> word, without adjusting the gender. Maybe this was an early phenomenon,
> when the first concerted effort was made to substitute Sanskrit words for
> Urdu ones?
>
> Has anyone else noted similar cases of odd gender assignment of Sanskrit
> borrowings in Hindi? I would appreciate any additional examples that might
> be out there.
>
> One more curiosum: Checking the web I find a fair amount of citations with
> मरा अात्मा; interestingly, they seem to be quite common in Christian Hindi
> texts, but there was at least once citation from an ISKON text as well.
> Could this be a case of hyper-Sanskritization?
>
> At any rate, when I saw your message, I was shocked, too, at the mere
> existence of a collocation like मेरी आत्मा.
>
> Stay healthy and keep being productive,
>
> Hans Henrich
>
>
>
> On 5 Apr2020, at 09:33, Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Dear Roland,
>
>      Your observation that many of these masculine usages for * padma*
> come from Kashmir is interesting. I have no idea of how gender works in
> Kashmiri and particularly in old Kashmiri.  Just looking at Hindi, the
> three gendered words of Sanskrit get redistributed to two genders.  While
> Marathi has three genders like Sanskrit, the genders of words often change
> in Marathi.  Words like * svapna *and *vighna *that are masculine in
> Sanskrit become neuter in Marathi.  The Marathi users of Sanskrit will
> instinctively use these words in neuter, till they are corrected by a
> learned pandit.  मेरी आत्मा of Hindi has always shocked me as a Marathi
> speaker.
>
> Madhav
>
> Madhav M. Deshpande
> Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
> University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
> Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
>
> [Residence: Campbell, California, USA]
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 7:24 AM Roland Steiner <
> steiner at staff.uni-marburg.de> wrote:
>
>> Dear Madhav,
>>
>>
>> > The norm in classical literature is to use *padma *in neuter gender,
>> like
>> > other words for the lotus.
>>
>> I am aware of this, but there is also evidence in non-epic and
>> non-puranic works, for example
>>
>> Kṣemendra's *Darpadalana* (7.30):
>>
>> *°śoṇaprabhārdrāv iva pādapadmau*
>>
>> Or, Somadeva's *Kathāsaritsāgara* (5.2.229):
>>
>> *ubhau kalaśapadmau ca śuśubhate sitāruṇau*
>>
>> Or, *Mokṣopāya* 5.65.29 (= "*Yogavāsiṣṭha*")
>>
>> *padmāv iva jaloddhṛtau*
>>
>> Perhaps it is no coincidence that these examples all come from texts that
>> originated in Kashmir.
>>
>> With best regards,
>> Roland
>>
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