[INDOLOGY] dvandva → bahuvrīhi?

Thu Mar 20 20:22:09 UTC 2025

Dear Antonia and Christophe,

first of all, sorry for the mistake – I wanted to write “copulative 
dvandvas,” an ad-hoc designation I came up with to distinguish these 
dvandvas from those formed with the help of affixes.

As you know, the components of bahuvrīhis can have the same relation as 
in karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, and when coming across a compound in a 
text, I guess that most of us would first determine that relation. If I 
encounter the word /mahāratha/, I would analyze it as a word in which 
/mahā /qualifies /ratha/, that is, as a karmadhāraya. If that doesn’t 
make sense, I will (try to) analyze it as a bahuvrīhi.

I have not read your paper, Christophe, but it makes sense that one 
could generate a bahuvrīhi in which the first component qualifies the 
second one without first constructing a karmadhāraya and then /deriving 
/a bahuvrīhi from it (mutatis mutandis this also applies to tatpuruṣas). 
But even then, the relations between the compounds can be as in 
karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas. Even in abahuvrīhi, /mahā /still qualifies 
/ratha/, as in a karmadhāraya. This is why I call it a 
karmadhāraya-bahuvrīhi. To me, this does not entail (or presuppose) that 
bahuvrīhis are secondary. Is there a better designation?

Best,
Dominik

Am 20.03.2025 um 14:44 schrieb Antonia Ruppel:
> Dear Dominik,
>
> I am confused by the last sentence in your email:
>
> 'As long as no further examples are available, I assume that my 
> intuition was correct and that, unlike karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, 
> *copulative cannot be regularly used as bahuvrīhis* without further 
> modification.'
>
> I would argue that karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas can also never be used 
> as bahuvrīhis; but rather that, when looking at just a compound 
> without context (say: mahāratha-), you often cannot decide whether 
> what you are looking at is e.g. a karmadharaya or a bahuvrīhi. Is that 
> what you mean?
>
> I'd argue that when you see an (unaccented) compound like rājaputrau 
> in isolation, you cannot know for certain whether it is a KDh, TP, BV 
> or DD. You can of course see in dictionaries in which uses it is 
> indeed attested.
>
> All my best,
>    Antonia
>
> On Thu, 20 Mar 2025 at 11:11, Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA 
> <dominik at haas.asia> wrote:
>
>     Dear colleagues,
>
>     Thank you again for your replies. I should have specified that I’m
>     looking for bahuvrīhis like /akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ /might be one,
>     that is, bahuvrīhis directly based on copulative dvandvas – not
>     bahuvrīhis derived from karmadhārayas containing dvandvas (such as
>     /aneka-vaktra-nayana/ and /vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodha/) or bahuvrīhis
>     formed with affixes (/a/-, /sa/-, /nis/-; -/vat/, -/mat/, -/in/).
>     Those are indeed very common.
>
>     Joel Brereton and Walter Slaje referred me to Wackernagel’s
>     /Altindische Grammatik/ (II/1: 280), according to which
>     dvandva-bahuvrīhis are rare. A number of examples are given there.
>     I had a quick look at them:
>
>     – /somapṛṣṭha /could also mean “carrying Soma on their back”
>     – /somendra /“belonging to Soma and Indra” has the alternative,
>     regular form /saumendra /(as well as irregular /somaindra/)
>     – /dīrghābhiniṣṭhāna /“having a long (vowel) or a visarga” has the
>     alternative form /dīrghābhiniṣṭhānānta /“having a long (vowel) or
>     a visarga at the end”
>     – /cakramusala /in Harivaṃśa 47.29*586:2 does not seem to be a
>     bahuvrīhi to me (/bhaviṣyanti mamāsrāṇi tathā bāhusthitāni te / /
>     /śārṅgaśaṅkhagadācakramusalaṃ śūlam eva ca/ /)
>     – /bhūtabhautika /can be derived from /bhūtabhauta /“beings and
>     those related to beings.”
>     – /devāsura /“between /deva/s and /asura/s” and /narahaya
>     /“between men and horses” are used with reference to fighting.
>     Perhaps they were supposed to be tatpuruṣas with the first member
>     in the instrumental? The fight “of the /asura/s /with /the /deva/s”?
>     – /ayānaya /“right-left” is the name of “a particular movement of
>     the pieces on a chess or backgammon board” (MV). To me, this seems
>     to be a product of metonymical thinking; interpreting it as a
>     bahuvrīhi is not really necessary.
>     – I have not succeeded in finding a passage where /saccidānanda
>     /“being, consciousness, and bliss” is used as an adjective.
>     – There remains /balābala /“at one time strong at another weak”
>     (MV) from the Mārkaṇḍeya-Purāṇa. According to lexicographers,
>     /bala /can be an adjective, but maybe this is an actual case of a
>     dvandva-bahuvrīhi.
>
>     This does not look very promising. As long as no further examples
>     are available, I assume that my intuition was correct and that,
>     unlike karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, *copulative cannot be
>     regularly used as bahuvrīhis* without further modification.
>
>     Best regards,
>     D. Haas
>
>     P.S.: /akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ /is used in an appendix passage of the
>     critical edition of the Ādiparvan:
>     01,210.002d at 113_0011 tridaṇḍī muṇḍitaḥ kuṇḍī akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ
>     01,210.002d at 113_0012 yogabhāraṃ vahan pārtho vaṭavṛkṣasya koṭaram
>     01,210.002d at 113_0013 praviśann eva bībhatsur vṛṣṭiṃ varṣati vāsave
>
>
>     Am 19.03.2025 um 22:40 schrieb Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA:
>>     Dear colleagues,
>>
>>     Thank you for your replies! It would make a lot if sense if
>>     /akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ/was a dvandva-bahuvrīhi. Neverthesss, if I
>>     haven’t overlooked it, the possibility of dvandva-bahuvrīhis is
>>     not mentioned in the grammars of Whitney, Müller, Macdonell
>>     (Vedic & Sanskrit), Kale, Mayrhofer, or Gonda, nor do I find it
>>     in Tubb’s and Boose’s book on scholastic Sanskrit. I would
>>     therefore be very grateful if you could provide examples. (The
>>     examples from the Bhagavad-Gītā beginning with /aneka /are
>>     karmadhāraya-bahuvrīhis.)
>>
>>     Thank you again,
>>     D. Haas
>>
>>
>>     Am 19.03.2025 um 19:26 schrieb Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA:
>>>     Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>>     I have a question: Can dvandvas become bahuvrīhis? Specifically,
>>>     I’m looking at the compound /akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ/. Does it just
>>>     mean “wearing an /akṣamālā /as a finger ring,” or could it also
>>>     mean “wearing an /akṣamālā /and a finger ring”? I don’t recall
>>>     ever seeing a dvandva-bahuvrīhi, but in this case it would make
>>>     much more sense, which is why I wonder if this is perhaps a
>>>     rare, non-standard form. Of course, it’s also possible that it’s
>>>     just a misspelling of /akṣamālo ’ṅgulīyakaḥ/.
>>>
>>>     Thank you for your time and best regards,
>>>     Dominik A. Haas
>>>
>>>     __________________
>>>     *Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA*
>>>     dominik at haas.asia | ORCID 0000-0002-8505-6112
>>>     <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8505-6112> | academia.edu
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>>>     | WPU <https://philology.org/>
>>>     Postdoctoral Researcher, Austrian Academy of Sciences / COE
>>>     “Eurasian Transformations” (2024–)
>>>     Gonda Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden
>>>     (2024)
>>>     Post-DocTrack Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2023)
>>>     Lecturer, University of Vienna (2023)
>>>     Doc Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020–2022)
>>>
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>>>     https://doi.org/10.1553/978OEAW93906 (Roland Atefie Prize 2023)
>>>     – Vom Feueraltar zum Yoga. Kommentierte Übersetzung und
>>>     Kohärenzanalyse der Kaṭha-Upaniṣad,
>>>     https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1329
>>>     – Puṣpikā 6. Proceedings of the 12th International Indology
>>>     Graduate Research Symposium (Vienna, 2021),
>>>     https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1133
>>>
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