Professor Jha's citation from Mammaṭa's Kāvyaprakāśa calling the usage bhāti padmaḥ sarovare was also on my mind.  Clearly, he knew that some poets used padma in masculine, but considered it to be a doṣa.  If we discount Mammaṭa's value judgment, his statement probably means something like this: the neuter usage of padma is the mainstream usage, while the masculine usage is marginal.  This is something like Kiparsky's interpretation of Pāṇini's term vibhāṣā referring to marginal usages.  On the other hand, the Amarakośa says: vā puṃsi padmam nalinam etc. indicating that Amara knew the alternating genders and didn't see any problem.  So we have Mammaṭa on one side and Amara on the other side.  An interesting situation indeed.  नैको मुनिर्यस्य वच: प्रमाणम्? 

Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]


On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 7:33 AM Madhav Deshpande <mmdesh@umich.edu> wrote:
Dear Roland,

     Your observation that many of these masculine usages for padma come from Kashmir is interesting. I have no idea of how gender works in Kashmiri and particularly in old Kashmiri.  Just looking at Hindi, the three gendered words of Sanskrit get redistributed to two genders.  While Marathi has three genders like Sanskrit, the genders of words often change in Marathi.  Words like svapna and vighna that are masculine in Sanskrit become neuter in Marathi.  The Marathi users of Sanskrit will instinctively use these words in neuter, till they are corrected by a learned pandit.  मेरी आत्मा of Hindi has always shocked me as a Marathi speaker.  

Madhav

Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]


On Sun, Apr 5, 2020 at 7:24 AM Roland Steiner <steiner@staff.uni-marburg.de> wrote:

Dear Madhav,


> The norm in classical literature is to use *padma *in neuter gender, like
> other words for the lotus.

I am aware of this, but there is also evidence in non-epic and non-puranic works, for example

Kṣemendra's Darpadalana (7.30):

°śoṇaprabhārdrāv iva pādapadmau

Or, Somadeva's Kathāsaritsāgara (5.2.229):

ubhau kalaśapadmau ca śuśubhate sitāruṇau

Or, Mokṣopāya 5.65.29 (= "Yogavāsiṣṭha")

padmāv iva jaloddhṛtau

Perhaps it is no coincidence that these examples all come from texts that originated in Kashmir.

With best regards,
Roland