[INDOLOGY] The term vakharī

Nagaraj Paturi nagarajpaturi at gmail.com
Wed Oct 27 03:47:08 UTC 2021


 *వైఖరి* [Skt.] n. Manner, appearance, way, రీతి, విధము.

https://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/app/brown_query.py?page=1234

Vaikhari is a Sanskrit borrowing in Telugu used in the sense of demeanour.

This meaning shares the manifest quality of vaikharii as opposed to the
unmanifest quality of paraa, pas'yantii and madhyamaa.



On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 12:13 AM Rolf Heinrich Koch via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Just to make it clear, it is not Mayrhofer but Wright who refers to a
> hypothetical Middle Indic form.
>
> Why not contact Prof. Wright (via BSOAS London) and ask him.
>
> Heiner
>
>
> Am 26.10.2021 um 19:54 schrieb Jim Ryan:
>
> Hi,
>
> I wrote to Andrew Ollett (U. Of Chicago) regarding  “vaikharī” in Prakrit.
> He replied as below. I got his permission to post his reply as it adds to
> the discussion (and may in fact show that we might not be able to track the
> proper history of this word with current knowledge.)
>
> Jim
>
>
> Dear Jim (if I may),
>
> I saw the discussion on INDOLOGY but didn't have too much to add.
> Mayrhofer interprets it, sensibly, as if it had come from a hypothetical
> Middle Indic form (I don't say "Prakrit" for reasons that will become
> clear) *vi-kṣarati, which is also the etymology of the Hindi word bikharnā
> "scatter." The Pāiyasaddamahaṇṇava
> <https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdsal.uchicago.edu%2Fdictionaries%2Fsheth%2F&data=04%7C01%7Cjryan%40ciis.edu%7Ca5bf7e180e1048c9f82308d998a58739%7C34d667e31c5d4101b901e5d9fd8d69d9%7C0%7C0%7C637708658969521889%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=uMi946zgBY9cYLnoHkGauScJiAFFrP%2FU17lVDxs0DJo%3D&reserved=0>,
> an early dictionary of Prakrit, does give vikkhara- as a verbal stem,
> meaning to "scatter" or "spread," attested apparently in the Uvāṅgadasāo,
> an early Jain text. But in fact the usual "Prakrit" form of the root that
> appears in Sanskrit as *kṣar is jhar-. In fact, in the Prakrit texts I have
> (i.e., literary Prakrit, produced between the second and the twelfth
> centuries), I find neither vikkhara- or vijjhara-. While we're at it, an
> origin from *vikr̥ta- might be entertained as well.
>
> None of this, in any case, would explain why Bhartr̥hari should have
> chosen to use a Middle Indic form, or a form derived from Middle Indic, for
> a major element of his theory, especially when there was a Sanskrit term
> easily to hand. I know of no citations of vaikharī or similar words
> (*vēkharī, *vekkharī, *vaïkharī, *veharī, *vikkharī*, etc.) in Prakrit.
>
> I hope this helps, although I suspect it won't!
>
> Andrew
>
>
> On Oct 24, 2021, at 6:38 AM, Rolf Heinrich Koch via INDOLOGY <
> indology at list.indology.info> wrote:
>
> Yes, it has a Prakrit origin as Madhev suspects. See
>
> Mayrhofer, A Concise Etymological Sanskrit Dictionary, vol 3,p. 267
>
> "vaikharī f. Name eines best. Lautes / name of a particular sound (Up.,
> u.a.): nach Wright, NCSL 24 falsch sanskritisiertes Patronym. von mi.
> *vikkhara- < ai. viksarä- m. „Abfluß44 (AV), „Beiname Visnus44 (ep.,u.a.)".
>
> Heiner
>
>
>
> Am 24.10.2021 um 02:11 schrieb Jim Ryan via INDOLOGY:
>
> Hi,
>
> I’m curious about the term Vaikharī for articulated speech. In the *Encyclopedia
> of Indian Philosophies *volume on the Grammarians, judging from the
> index, it seems this term was first used  by Bhartṛhari (at least in a
> grammatical context.) V. S. Apte cites the Mallinatha commentary on
> *Kumārasaṃbhava *for an authoritative reference of the word, but that is
> quite late (15th century.) Firstly, are there instances of this word used
> with any frequency before Bhartṛhari? Secondly, the lexicons give no good
> verbal root or root word for it. I note that the word *vaikṛtī *as
> “alteration” has a similar shape (and wouldn’t fit badly in the
> “articulated speech” category of Vāc), but I’m presuming that the word
>  vaikharī is not a Prakrit-derived form.  So… where and how do we get to
> this important term in language theory in India, which seems unrelated to
> any other common root or word?
>
> Jim Ryan
> Asian Philosophies and Cultures (Emeritus)
> California Institute of Integral Studies
>
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> --
> Dr. Rolf Heinrich Kochwww.rolfheinrichkoch.wordpress.com
>
>
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>
> --
> Dr. Rolf Heinrich Kochwww.rolfheinrichkoch.wordpress.com
>
>
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-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.


Director, Indic Academy
BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra
BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra
BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.
Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru
BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership
Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies,
FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
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