Dear Harry,

There is also something in one of the stories from the Kathāsaritsāgara quoted by Lanman in his reader: Section 26 (pp. 49-53) = vi.108-164, which Lanman calls 'The king who didn't know his Sanskrit grammar'. The crucial scene is one where the king misinterprets

modakair (= mā udakaih) deva paritāḍaya mām '*don't* pelt me *with water*/throw water at me'

modakair etc 'pelt me *with sweets*'.

(His ignorance thus revealed, he then needs to go ahead and study Sanskrit properly.)

Maybe this helps?

All best,

Antonia

On 8 February 2015 at 20:25, Martin Gansten <martin.gansten@pbhome.se> wrote:

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3 there is a sentence that, if memory serves, can be read as either sam enena vadiṣya iti '[He thought], "I will speak with him"' or sa mene na vadiṣya iti 'He thought, "I will not say [all that I know]"'. Again if memory serves, Patrick Olivelle and Śaṅkara -- two great authorities in their different ways -- both uphold the latter meaning, but I admit the former has always made more sense to me (not least because the two people concerned do end up conversing in the very next sentence, using the verb sam+vad).

Martin Gansten

Harry Spier wrote:

Thanks for these replies.

What will help me the most is some very simple Sanskrit phrases that show completely different meanings by how you put breaks in the transliteration. I need to show examples of this to non-sanskritist, non-devanagari knowing typesetters.

The best I could come up with is:
पुष्पमध्येति स्मरति च
which can be:
puṣpam adhyeti smarati ca He turns his mind towards the lotus and remembers it.
or
puṣpa-madhyeti smarati ca = puṣpa-madhya iti smarati ca = He remembers [the phrase] "the middle of the lotus"

More examples like this would be useful.

Thanks,
Harry Spier

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