Dear Antonia and Christophe,

first of all, sorry for the mistake – I wanted to write “copulative dvandvas,” an ad-hoc designation I came up with to distinguish these dvandvas from those formed with the help of affixes.

As you know, the components of bahuvrīhis can have the same relation as in karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, and when coming across a compound in a text, I guess that most of us would first determine that relation. If I encounter the word mahāratha, I would analyze it as a word in which mahā qualifies ratha, that is, as a karmadhāraya. If that doesn’t make sense, I will (try to) analyze it as a bahuvrīhi. 

I have not read your paper, Christophe, but it makes sense that one could generate a bahuvrīhi in which the first component qualifies the second one without first constructing a karmadhāraya and then deriving a bahuvrīhi from it (mutatis mutandis this also applies to tatpuruṣas). But even then, the relations between the compounds can be as in karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas. Even in a bahuvrīhi, mahā still qualifies ratha, as in a karmadhāraya. This is why I call it a karmadhāraya-bahuvrīhi. To me, this does not entail (or presuppose) that bahuvrīhis are secondary. Is there a better designation?

Best,
Dominik
 

Am 20.03.2025 um 14:44 schrieb Antonia Ruppel:
Dear Dominik,

I am confused by the last sentence in your email:

'As long as no further examples are available, I assume that my intuition was correct and that, unlike karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, copulative cannot be regularly used as bahuvrīhis without further modification.'

I would argue that karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas can also never be used as bahuvrīhis; but rather that, when looking at just a compound without context (say: mahāratha-), you often cannot decide whether what you are looking at is e.g. a karmadharaya or a bahuvrīhi. Is that what you mean?

I'd argue that when you see an (unaccented) compound like rājaputrau in isolation, you cannot know for certain whether it is a KDh, TP, BV or DD. You can of course see in dictionaries in which uses it is indeed attested.

All my best,
   Antonia
 

On Thu, 20 Mar 2025 at 11:11, Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA <dominik@haas.asia> wrote:
Dear colleagues,

Thank you again for your replies. I should have specified that I’m looking for bahuvrīhis like akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ might be one, that is, bahuvrīhis directly based on copulative dvandvas – not bahuvrīhis derived from karmadhārayas containing dvandvas (such as aneka-vaktra-nayana and vīta-rāga-bhaya-krodha) or bahuvrīhis formed with affixes (a-, sa-, nis-; -vat, -mat, -in). Those are indeed very common.

Joel Brereton and Walter Slaje referred me to Wackernagel’s Altindische Grammatik (II/1: 280), according to which dvandva-bahuvrīhis are rare. A number of examples are given there. I had a quick look at them:

– somapṛṣṭha could also mean “carrying Soma on their back”
– somendra “belonging to Soma and Indra” has the alternative, regular form saumendra (as well as irregular somaindra)
– dīrghābhiniṣṭhāna “having a long (vowel) or a visarga” has the alternative form dīrghābhiniṣṭhānānta “having a long (vowel) or a visarga at the end”
– cakramusala in Harivaṃśa 47.29*586:2 does not seem to be a bahuvrīhi to me (bhaviṣyanti mamāsrāṇi tathā bāhusthitāni te  / śārṅgaśaṅkhagadācakramusalaṃ śūlam eva ca /)
– bhūtabhautika can be derived from bhūtabhauta “beings and those related to beings.”
– devāsura “between devas and asuras” and narahaya “between men and horses” are used with reference to fighting. Perhaps they were supposed to be tatpuruṣas with the first member in the instrumental? The fight “of the asuras with the devas”?
– ayānaya “right-left” is the name of “a particular movement of the pieces on a chess or backgammon board” (MV). To me, this seems to be a product of metonymical thinking; interpreting it as a bahuvrīhi is not really necessary.
– I have not succeeded in finding a passage where saccidānanda “being, consciousness, and bliss” is used as an adjective.
– There remains balābala “at one time strong at another weak” (MV) from the Mārkaṇḍeya-Purāṇa. According to lexicographers, bala can be an adjective, but maybe this is an actual case of a dvandva-bahuvrīhi.

This does not look very promising. As long as no further examples are available, I assume that my intuition was correct and that, unlike karmadhārayas and tatpuruṣas, copulative cannot be regularly used as bahuvrīhis without further modification.

Best regards,
D. Haas

P.S.: akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ is used in an appendix passage of the critical edition of the Ādiparvan:
01,210.002d@113_0011 tridaṇḍī muṇḍitaḥ kuṇḍī akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ
01,210.002d@113_0012 yogabhāraṃ vahan pārtho vaṭavṛkṣasya koṭaram
01,210.002d@113_0013 praviśann eva bībhatsur vṛṣṭiṃ varṣati vāsave


Am 19.03.2025 um 22:40 schrieb Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA:
Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your replies! It would make a lot if sense if akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ was a dvandva-bahuvrīhi. Neverthesss, if I haven’t overlooked it, the possibility of dvandva-bahuvrīhis is not mentioned in the grammars of Whitney, Müller, Macdonell (Vedic & Sanskrit), Kale, Mayrhofer, or Gonda, nor do I find it in Tubb’s and Boose’s book on scholastic Sanskrit. I would therefore be very grateful if you could provide examples. (The examples from the Bhagavad-Gītā beginning with aneka are karmadhāraya-bahuvrīhis.)

Thank you again,
D. Haas


Am 19.03.2025 um 19:26 schrieb Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA:
Dear colleagues, 

I have a question: Can dvandvas become bahuvrīhis? Specifically, I’m looking at the compound akṣamālāṅgulīyakaḥ. Does it just mean “wearing an akṣamālā as a finger ring,” or could it also mean “wearing an akṣamālā and a finger ring”? I don’t recall ever seeing a dvandva-bahuvrīhi, but in this case it would make much more sense, which is why I wonder if this is perhaps a rare, non-standard form. Of course, it’s also possible that it’s just a misspelling of akṣamālo ’ṅgulīyakaḥ.

Thank you for your time and best regards,
Dominik A. Haas

__________________
Dr. Dominik A. Haas, BA MA
dominik@haas.asia | ORCID 0000-0002-8505-6112 | academia.edu DominikAHaas | hcommons DominikAHaas
ÖGRW | DMG | SDN | WPU
Postdoctoral Researcher, Austrian Academy of Sciences / COE “Eurasian Transformations” (2024–)
Gonda Fellow, International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden (2024)
Post-DocTrack Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2023)
Lecturer, University of Vienna (2023)
Doc Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020–2022)

Books:
– Gāyatrī: Mantra and Mother of the Vedas, https://doi.org/10.1553/978OEAW93906 (Roland Atefie Prize 2023)
– Vom Feueraltar zum Yoga. Kommentierte Übersetzung und Kohärenzanalyse der Kaṭha-Upaniṣad, https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1329
– Puṣpikā 6. Proceedings of the 12th International Indology Graduate Research Symposium (Vienna, 2021), https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1133 








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