Dear David, 

"agamas has here retained its augment": you apparently postulate a development in the language here, but one which does not match the available evidence. 

See mainly Karl Hoffmann Der Injunktiv im Veda 1967, but also, offering alternative analyses of partly the same phrases, Jan Gonda Aspectual function of the Rgvedic present and aorist. 

Another point is that in order to translate the Ramayana a choice has to be made which edition to take as starting point: even for mere practical reasons the Baroda critical edition is the obvious candidate to be selected. 

It was the editorial choice of the editors G.H. Bhatt et al. of this critical edition to give preference systematically to the recension where most grammatical and metrical "irregularities" are found, i.e., the Southern recension. 

The idea is that the manuscripts of the Northern recension underwent "polishing" in a much higher degree. 

Under this "polishing-theory" one should then expect that specific "irregularities" in the text are identical and found in a large number of manuscripts that supposedly represent the older, pre-polishing stage, but this is precisely what is not the case: 

see Leendert van Daalen's 1980 study Valmiki's Sanskrit: at present his study, not without problems of its own, could be redone with more advanced statistical means and a fresh study of the evidence. On the basis of a study of books II-IV van Daalen concludes that the Poet Valmiki wrote mostly "correct" classical Sanskrit -- this does not necessarily always correspond to "Paninian" sanskrit, and the poor definition of van Daalen's "irregularities" is one of the weaknesses in his study, which could however be "repaired" to some extent by referring to other forms of acceptable yet not strictly Paninian sanskrit (cf. Narayana Bhatta's Apaniniyapramanata and www.academia.edu/28515426). 

E.W. Hopkins 1901 was even more sceptical, or, for those accepting his line of argument (cf. Madeleine Biardeau's arguments *against* critical editions for the epics), more realistic, than van Daalen: "There can be no plausible original reconstructed and practically there was from the time of, let us say, the first repetition of the text no original Ramayana" (quoted in van Daalen's study, p. 6).    

Jan Houben

      

Jan E.M. HOUBEN

Directeur d’Études

Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite

École Pratique des Hautes Études

Sciences historiques et philologiques 

54, rue Saint-Jacques

CS 20525 – 75005 Paris

johannes.houben@ephe.sorbonne.fr

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

www.ephe.fr

On 19 November 2016 at 19:55, David and Nancy Reigle <dnreigle@gmail.com> wrote:

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 mā. 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

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