Dear Bob and all,

Ever since I was introduced to what tradition regards as the first śloka ever written, Vālmīki’s first śloka now preserved at Rāmāyaṇa 1.2.14, I have had a question about it. Probably you or others have long ago answered it. Sorry for my ignorance of the relevant material on this verse.


mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṃ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ |
yat krauñca-mithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāma-mohitam || 1.2.14 ||


“Since, Niṣāda, you killed one of this pair of krauñcas, distracted at the height of passion, you shall not live for very long.” (trans. Robert P. Goldman, 1984)


What first struck me is that both of the verbs in this verse, agamas and avadhīs, are aorists. Moreover, agamas has here retained its augment, although used with . My understanding is that, since aorists largely fell out of use after the Vedic period, they are not at all common in the Rāmāyaṇa. So here is my question. Assuming that this is in fact Vālmīki’s first śloka, would this point to an original Rāmāyaṇa that is considerably older than the Rāmāyaṇa we now have? Could the Rāmāyaṇa as now extant have been reworked, updated in language so to speak, from an earlier original? For example, F. E. Pargiter in his detailed study, The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (1913), found considerable evidence that in the oldest purāṇas (Vāyu, Brahmāṇḍa, Matsya) the verses had been Sanskritized from an earlier literary Prakrit, and that these Sanskrit verses had in turn been condensed and rewritten directly in Sanskrit in some other purāṇas (Viṣṇu, Bhāgavata).


Best regards,


David Reigle

Colorado, U.S.A.




On Tue, Nov 15, 2016 at 1:50 PM, Robert Goldman <rpg@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of all the scholars who have been involved with the  decades-long project to translate and annotate the critical edition of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, Dr. Sally Sutherland Goldman and I are happy to announce the publication of the seventh and final volume  of the work. 





The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīki: An Epic of Ancient India, Volume VII: Uttarakāṇḍa
Introduction, Translation, and Annotation by Robert P. Goldman & Sally J. Sutherland Goldman

Hardcover | December 2016 | $175.00 | £129.95 | ISBN: 9780691168845
1544 pp. | 6 x 9 | 1 color illus. 1 line illus. 5 tables.



Dr. R. P.  Goldman
Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor in South and Southeast Asian Studies
Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies MC # 2540
The University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2540
Tel: 510-642-4089
Fax: 510-642-2409


_______________________________________________
INDOLOGY mailing list
INDOLOGY@list.indology.info
indology-owner@list.indology.info (messages to the list's managing committee)
http://listinfo.indology.info (where you can change your list options or unsubscribe)