Dear Professor Lusthaus,

from Bhāskarakaṇṭha’s commentary we can only learn in what way he took aśvatarī (f.) to mean in the given context.
In the given context, he equals aśvatarī (f.) with a vaḍavā (f.). Therefore: vaḍavā (f.) stands for aśvatarī. aśvatarī = vaḍavā is what he means to say. He uses vaḍavā, as a vaḍava has a somewhat ambiguous nature: “a male horse resembling a mare [...]“ (MW).
However, he specifies what he actually means, because vaḍava used by itself is not sufficiently precise (in the given context):
kharastriyām aśvāj jātā = “born from a female donkey and (male) horse“, in your own words.

„So that is an attempt to treat aśvatarī as a hinny“. Right. This is exactly what I was getting at and what Roland Steiner's translation says.

Additional information can be extracted from Bhāskarakaṇṭha. If a female hinny (aśvatarī) gets pregnant, he adds, foaling is not possible without opening the abdomen (tasyā garbhaḥ kukṣipāṭanaṃ vinā na niryāti).

I cannot find any translation or interpretation errors here.

Of course, everyone is free to question and to criticise premodern Indian authors for their observations of nature. However, we should never forget that in the present case we see the unspectacular depiction of an everyday reality, and that the authors were able to observe their environment more closely than we can today. If, what Bhāskarakaṇṭha had had to say about female hinnies, had been made up, his explanation of the dṛṣṭānta would have come to nothing. He would have simply made a fool of himself among his contemporaries. Maybe he did, maybe he did not. I for one believe he did not.

Kind regards,
WS


Am So., 22. Nov. 2020 um 13:37 Uhr schrieb Dan Lusthaus <prajnapti@gmail.com>:
On second look, aśva (not asvā), would be a male horse, so kharastriyām aśvāj jātā vaḍavā would mean born from a female donkey and (male) horse, though I’m not sure what to make of vaḍavā/vaḍaba “a male horse resembling a mare (and therefore attracting the stallion)” (MW).

So that is an attempt to treat aśvatarī as a hinny. But is that followed consistently in the literature?

Dan

On Nov 22, 2020, at 7:21 AM, Dan Lusthaus via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear Prof. Slaje,

Thank you for those examples. However, as far as I can tell, the idea that aśvatarī is a hinny, rather than a she-mule, seems to be only in Steiner’s interpretation, not in the texts themselves. Bhāskarakaṇṭha only explains it as a female mule (khara = mule, strī = female animal). Similarly, dvijātīya similarly just means a mule, without specifying that the parents must be a male horse and a female donkey rather than the inverse.

Monier-Williams has around 24 terms that can mean a mule, several of which mean a she-mule (e.g., aśvatarī, kharī, etc.), typically by giving a word for mule a feminine form. For instance:

aśvatara b m. (Pāṇ. 5-3, 91 ) a mule, AV. iv, 4, 8 ; ŚBr.  &c.      
(compar. of aśva) a better horse, Pat.       
a male calf, L.      
one of the chiefs of the Nāgas, MBh. ; Hariv.  &c.      
N. of a Gandharva, L.        
aśvatarā f. a better mare, Pat.     
aśvatarī f. a she-mule, AV. viii, 8, 22 ; MBh. &c.

But a she-mule is not a hinny. A mule has a male donkey and a female horse for parents. A hinny has the opposite: a male horse and a female donkey for parents. Mules and hinnies are physiologically different from each other as well. A hinny can be a male or a female.

The wikipedia entry for “mule” says the following about their fertility:
==

Mules and hinnies have 63 chromosomes, a mixture of the horse's 64 and the donkey's 62. The different structure and number usually prevents the chromosomes from pairing up properly and creating successful embryos, rendering most mules infertile.

A few mare mules have produced offspring when mated with a purebred horse or donkey.[18][19] Herodotus gives an account of such an event as an ill omen of Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 BC: "There happened also a portent of another kind while he was still at Sardis—a mule brought forth young and gave birth to a mule" (Herodotus The Histories 7:57), and a mule's giving birth was a frequently recorded portent in antiquity, although scientific writers also doubted whether the thing was really possible (see e.g. Aristotle, Historia animalium, 6.24; Varro, De re rustica, 2.1.28).

As of October 2002, there had been only 60 documented cases of mules birthing foals since 1527.[19] In China in 2001, a mare mule produced a filly.[20] In Morocco in early 2002 and Colorado in 2007, mare mules produced colts.[19][21][22] Blood and hair samples from the Colorado birth verified that the mother was indeed a mule and the foal was indeed her offspring.[22]

A 1939 article in the Journal of Heredity describes two offspring of a fertile mare mule named "Old Bec", which was owned at the time by Texas A&M University in the late 1920s. One of the foals was a female, sired by a jack. Unlike her mother, she was sterile. The other, sired by a five-gaited Saddlebred stallion, exhibited no characteristics of any donkey. That horse, a stallion, was bred to several mares, which gave birth to live foals that showed no characteristics of the donkey.[23]

==

The wikipedia entry on “hinny" has the following on fertility:
==

Hinnies are difficult to obtain because of the differences in the number of chromosomes of the horse and the donkey. A donkey has 62 chromosomes, whereas a horse has 64. Hinnies, being hybrids of those two species, have 63 chromosomes and are in the majority of cases sterile. The uneven number of chromosomes results in an incomplete reproductive system. According to the ADMS: "The equine hybrid is easier to obtain when the lower chromosome count, the donkey, is in the male. Therefore breeding for hinnies is more hit-and-miss than breeding for mules."[2]

The male hinny or mule can and will mate, but the emission is not fertile. Male hinnies and mules are usually castrated to help control their behavior by eliminating their interest in females.[citation needed]

Female hinnies and mules are not customarily spayed, and may or may not go through estrus. Female mules have been known, on rare occasions, to produce offspring when mated to a horse or donkey, although this is extremely uncommon. Since 1527, sixty cases of foals born to female mules around the world have been documented.[4] In contrast, according to the ADMS, there is only one known case of a female hinny doing so.

Namely, in China, in 1981, a hinny mare proved fertile with a donkey sire. When the Chinese hinny was bred to a jack, she produced the so-called "Dragon Foal", which resembled a donkey with mule-like features.[5] In Morocco, in 2002, a mule mare bred to a donkey sire produced a male foal.[4] DNA testing revealed the foal has a mixed karyotype hybrid like the Chinese hinny offspring "Dragon Foal".[citation needed]

Hinnies are rare for many other reasons. Donkey jennies and horse stallions can be choosier about their mates than horse mares and donkey jacks.[citation needed] Thus, the two parties involved may not even care to mate. Even if they do cooperate, donkey jennies are less likely to conceive when bred to a horse stallion than horse mares are when bred to a donkey jack. Breeding large hinnies is an even bigger challenge, as it requires stock from a jenny of large size, such as the Baudet de Poitou or American Mammoth Donkey. Mammoth donkey stock is becoming increasingly rare and has been declared an endangered domestic breed. Fanciers are unlikely to devote a Mammoth jenny's valuable breeding time to producing sterile hinny hybrids, when Mammoth jennies are in high demand to produce fertile purebred Mammoth foals

==

There is no mention of requiring caesarians.

Some of the mule terms in MW:

dvi—jātīya mfn. relating to the twice-born i.e. to the first 3 castes of twofold nature or mixed origin, mongrel. dvi—jātīya m. a mule.

mūka “the offspring of a mule and mare”

ruṇḍa m. the offspring of a mule and a mare (also means “maimed, mutilated; a headless body”)

vega—sara m. (cf. vesara) a mule.        
vega—sarī f. a female mule.

vesara m. (cf. vega-sara; also written veśara) a mule.        
vesarī f. a female mule.

sakṛd—garbha m. ‘having only one conception’, a mule.

saṃ-ka°rāśva m. ‘mongrel horse’, a mule.

While some refer to female mules, I don’t think any of these terms specifically indicate a hinny, which, again, could be male or female. The Chinese terms clearly differentiate between a mule (騾 luo, the result of mating a mare with a donkey) and a hinny (駏驉 juxu, result of mating a stallion with a female donkey). I remain curious what the underlying Sanskrit or prakrit term behind juxu might be.

with regards,
Dan

On Nov 22, 2020, at 6:00 AM, Walter Slaje via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

> “A hinny is [...] the offspring of a male horse (a stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny)."
Is there a Skt term for a hinny?

Cp. Mokṣopāya  I.38.8:
aviśrāntamanāḥ śūnyam āyur ātatam īhate |
duḥkhāyaiva vimūḍho 'ntar garbham aśvatarī yathā ||

Bhāskarakaṇṭha explains it as follows:
"aśvatarī" kharastriyām aśvāj jātā vaḍavā | tasyā "garbhaḥ" kukṣipāṭanaṃ vinā na niryāti (Mokṣopāyaṭīkā on I.13.8)

Cp. the translation by Roland Steiner (Wiesbaden 2014: p.52):
13.8 Ein innerlich verwirrter [Mensch, dessen] Denken (manas) nicht beruhigt [ist], strebt nach einem leeren, ausgedehnten Leben, [das einem] nichts anderes als Leiden [einträgt], wie eine Maul­­eselstute[1] eine Leibesfrucht [begehrt].

[1] Eine Maul­­eselstute (Vater: Pferdehengst; Mutter: Eselstute) kann nach Bhāskarakaṇṭha nur mit Kaiserschnitt gebären; MṬ I ad 13.8: aśvatarī kharastriyām aśvāj jātā vaḍavā / tasyā garbhaḥ kukṣipāṭanaṃ vinā na niryāti.

pw offers a series of entries of Sanskrit words for "Maulthier" (= "mule"):

and gives one entry for "Maulesel" (= "hinny"), namely dvijātīya. Schmidt adds "°pāraśama":


Kind regards,
WS


Am So., 22. Nov. 2020 um 10:48 Uhr schrieb Dan Lusthaus via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>:
I also found Dhadpale’s idea convincing.

As to whether there were āgama versions, the answer is yes, but not currently available in an Indic language, only in Chinese translation. In addition to the Madhyama-āgama passage I posted, there is a version of the Assalāyana sutta that was translated as an independent text: Fanzhi eboluoyan wen zhong zun jing, 梵志頞波羅延問種尊經 (Sutra on questions to Buddha about caste from the brahmin Ebulouyan=Assalāyana), translated by 竺曇無蘭 Zhu Tanwulan (*Dharmarakṣa, *Dharmaratna), a Central Asian monk in the late 4th c. Since it expands the discussion a bit, I translate it here. Like the Madhyama-āgama version, it omits the problematic word, unless the word was glossed instead of translated. But it adds an additional equine reproductive set:

《梵志頞波羅延問種尊經》卷1：「頞波羅延言：「我種自說言勝餘種。」
佛告頞波羅延：「有驢父馬母，馬[7]為生子，名是何等？」
頞波羅延言：「名騾。父亦不字為騾，母亦不字為騾。」
「若何以字為騾？」
「我先祖呼作騾，我隨言騾。」
「有馬父驢母，驢[8]為生子，若名為何等字為駏驉？父亦不字為駏驉，母亦不字為駏驉，若何知為駏驉？」
「我先祖呼為駏驉，因隨言駏驉。」」(CBETA, T01, no. 71, p. 877, b29-c7)
[7]〔為〕－【宋】【元】【明】。[8]為生…為＝生子名是【宋】【元】【明】。

Ebulouyan said, “Those of my type (= caste) say that we are better than the other types.”
Buddha replied to Eboluoyan: “There is an ass father and a horse mother. The horse gives birth to a child. What is it called?”
Ebulouyan said: “It’s called a mule. The father is not designated as a mule, nor is the mother designated as a mule.”
[Buddha asks]: Why then do you designate it as a mule?
[Ebulouyan]: “The patriarchs who preceded me called it a mule, and I follow them in saying it is a mule.”
[Buddha]: “There is a horse father and an ass mother. The ass gives birth to a child. Would that be called a 駏驉 juxu (English: hinny)? [1] Neither is the father designated as a juxu, nor is the mother designated as a juxu. So how do you know it as a juxu?
[Ebulouyan]: “The patriarchs who preceded me called it a juxu, so for that reason I follow them in saying it is a juxu.”

—
1. 駏驉 juxu “By some accounts a mythical horselike beast; other accounts give it as the offspring of a stallion and female donkey.” (CJKVE-D). In English this is called a hinny. “A hinny is a domestic equine hybrid that is the offspring of a male horse (a stallion) and a female donkey (a jenny). It is the reciprocal cross to the more common mule, which is the product of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The hinny is distinctive from the mule both in physiology and temperament as a consequence of genomic imprinting.” 

Is there a Skt term for a hinny?

Dan

On Nov 21, 2020, at 10:17 PM, Madhav Deshpande via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Along the lines of Professor Dhadphale's suggestion for vekurañja as coming from Skt. dvaikulajanya, there are expressions like dvaimātura, ṣāṇmātura etc. The term dvyāmuṣyāyaṇa refers to a son with two fathers, one legal and the other biological. The sons born out of the so-called niyoga "levirate" are described with this term.  The term kuṇḍa used in the passage has a meaning of "out of wedlock," but having a dual connection, suggesting something unnatural, illegal.   So dvaikulajanya sounds like a very possible source.  I wonder if there is a northern Sanskrit āgama version.  I read from earlier messages that the non-Pali versions translated into Chinese show that this term was eliminated from the text, possibly being considered some sort of an error.

Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]


On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 2:58 PM Martin Straube via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Artur, Rolf & Dan,
following a note in my files I see that M.G. Dhadphale has suggested 
an etymology of the word in question in 1974. Please find the article 
attached. This may or may not be helpful too.
With best wishes
Martin


--
Martin Straube
Research Fellow in Pali Lexicography
Pali Text Society
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Indologie und Tibetologie
Deutschhausstrasse 12
35032 Marburg
Germany
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