When old is not old...: rv jaradasti-, jaradvisam, and the vulture Jaradgava.

• Author: Tucker, Elizabeth
• Position: Rig Veda

JARADASTI-

JARADASTI-, MEANING 'LONG LIVING', 'long-lived', or 'reaching old age', (2) appears in the verse of the Rgveda marriage hymn which accompanies the hand-taking ceremony:

grbhnami te saubhagatvaya hastam maya patya jaradastir yathasah bhago aryama savita puramdhir mahyam tvadur garhapatyaya devah RV 10.85.36 I take your hand for good fortune, so that with me as your husband you may be long living. Bhaga, Aryaman, Savitr, Puramdhi, the gods have given you to me for housewifery. This verse is repeated in AVS 14.1, and the preceding half verse here is:

agnih subhagam jatavedah patye patnim jaradastim krnotu AVS 14.1.49cd = AVP 18.5.5cd Let Agni Jatavedas make the wife fortunate, long living for her husband. A similar employment is found in AV passages (likewise the two TS occurrences) that have no RV counterpart, e.g.:

matevasma adite sarma yaccha visve deva jaradastir yathasat AVS 2.28.5 (3) = AVP 15.5.3 Like a mother, O Aditi, extend refuge to him, O All Gods, so that he may be long living. ma bibher na marisyasi jaradastim krnomi tva AVS 5.30.8 Be not afraid, you will not die. I make you long living. However, in one AV passage jaradasti- is unquestionably employed as an abstract noun 'longevity', not as a qualifier.

a rabhasvemam amrtasya snustim achidyamana jaradastir astu te asum ta ayuh punar a bharami rajas tamo mopa ga ma pra mesthah AVS 8.2.1 = AVP 16.3.1 Grasp this grain (?) of immortality. Let longevity which is not cut be yours. I bring back your life force, your lifespan. Go not into the night, the darkness. Do not disappear. In the view of a few scholars (Grassmann 1873: 480; Reuter 1892: 601) the same use is present in the older of the two RV passages which employ this word. The verse in question, from a Vasistha hymn to the Visve Devas, is unfortunately full of obscurities:

abhi yam devi nirrtis cid ise naksanta indram saradah suprksah upa tribandhur jaradastim ety asvavesam yam krnavanta martah RV 7.37.7 Even though the goddess Nirrti rules over him, the abun- dant autumns (will) reach Indra. Tribandhu, whom mortals (will) deprive of his own people, approaches longevity. Others (Oldenberg 37-38; Geldner II: 219; Renou EVP V: 43) consider that in 7c jaradastim is an epithet of Indra 'the long-lived one', since this may be implied by b, where, as Geldner points out, we have a transposition of "Indra reaches many autumns."

How is jaradasti- to be analyzed? The RV padapatha divides jarat' asti- in both its occurrences, and there is universal agreement that it is a compound with a second element asti-

The first element is more obscure, and there is agreement only that it belongs with the root jr- 'to age, to waste' (

It has often been assumed that the Samhitas provide evidence for an original determinative compound with endocentric function 'reaching of old age, attainment of old age', which was secondarily employed as a bahuvrihi 'whose reaching is of old age, having attainment of old age', but, as we have seen, RV 7.37.7 cannot prove anything, and on closer inspection AV 8.2.1 does not appear to be probative either. A later verse of the same AVS sukta runs as follows:

krnomi te pranapanau jaram mrtyum dirgham ayuh svasti vaivasvatena prahitan yamadutams carato 'pa sedhami sarvan AVS 8.2.11 = AVP 16.4.1 I make for you breath and expiration, old age as death, long life, well being. I drive away as they wander all the messen- gers of Yama, sent by the son of Vivasvant. Here the poet has decomposed two common exocentric compounds associated with the idea of dying from old age, living long (AV jaramrtyu- 'having death from old age, whose death is in old age', RV and AV dirghayus- 'having long life') and converted them into endocentric expressions. (6) Clearly this is a poet who indulges in wordplay, and hence his use of jaradasti- as an endocentric compound is also more likely to represent a nonce innovation (suggested no doubt by its formal appearance with suffix -ti-) than the only survival in the Veda of an original usage.

The original function of jaradasti- is more likely to be preserved in the two stereotyped expressions that are repeated again and again in slightly varying forms in the AV: jaradastir yatha asat / asah / asani "so that he / you / I may be one who reaches old age" and jaradastim tva / ma.... krno- or jaradastim tva / ma... vdrdha- (vardhaya-) "make you / me... one who reaches old age" or "increase you / me... reaching old age." The traditional character of these expressions is indicated by the old verb forms they employ: the inherited short-vowel subjunctive of the verb 'to be', the Indo-Iranian nasal present of kr-, (7) and at AVS 18.3.10 vardhantu, the only occurrence in the whole AV of the active Class I present with transitive meaning (jardse ma jaradastim vardhantu "let them increase me as one reaching old age for old age"). (8) Together with the above mentioned RV jaranam asimahi / asnavanta they fully support Wackernagel's opinion (Altind. Gr. II.1: 190; II.2: 637) that jaradasti- belongs with several o ther early Vedic compounds consisting of noun + noun with suffix -ti- that are employed in the value of nomina agentis: e.g., RV vasudhiti- 'bestowing goods' (RV 1.181.1, 7.90.3), havyadati- 'giving oblations' (3.2.8), kamakati- 'wishing wishes' (8.92.14), vasuniti- 'bringing goods' (AVS 12.2.6). This function of compounds in -ti- is unknown in Old Indic outside the RV and AV, but it is parallelled in Old Iranian; cf. Gathic Avestan ranyo.[LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'joy-bringing' (Y44.6, 47.3, 50.2), (9) and therefore is clearly inherited at least from Indo-Iranian. As the inflected first element of RV asvamisti- 'seeking horses' (RV 2.6.2, 8.61.7) demonstrates, the second element in -ti- governed the first, just as in other types of compounded nomen agentis where an accusative inflection is sometimes attested (puramdara-, dhiyamdha-, etc.). (10)

On the basis of this analysis as an obsolete type of compound with nomen agentis value meaning 'reaching old age, one who reaches old age', it becomes possible to suggest an alternative explanation for the problematic first element jarat-. Among the nouns meaning 'old age' that are attested in the RV, the most archaic is jaras(certainly of animate gender, and probably f. as in Classical Skt.), whose IE origin cannot be doubted in spite of the differences in gender and ablaut from Grk. [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] 'honor, privilege', [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 'old age'. (11) Khotanese ysare

In the RV all compounds that contain s-stem nouns as first element and whose second element begins with a vowel show "external sandhi" at the compound juncture (diachronically the process must have involved voicing of the word final * s > z and its subsequent loss). This normally resulted in a vocalic hiatus, e.g., namaukti- f. 'expression of respect' (namas- n.), sravaesa- m. 'quest for fame' (sravas- n.), and manarnga- (attested in the alliterative verse RV 10.106.8, but probably containing manas- n.). There are also cases where it is out of the question to postulate a thematic stem for the first element and where the hiatus can only result from the loss of stem-final * -s between vowels: vasyaisti- f. 'quest for what is very good' (vasyas- 'better', comparative with suffix -yas-), usausas (RV 10.8.4) 'of every dawn' (gen. sg. usas + usas). As this amredita based on the most archaic gen. sg. form of the word for 'dawn' shows, the development to two vowels in hiatus occurred where there is clear diachronic evidence for a laryngeal at the beginning of the second element: usausas

If we reconstruct a nominal compound consisting of the s-stem 'old age' (the ancestor of Vedic jaras- + a noun with suffix -ti- based on the root 'to reach' (the ancestor of Vedic asti-), the hypothetical IE form would have been *g(e)r[H.sub.2]-es-[H.sub.1]nk-ti-. It is not claimed that such a compound necessarily existed in PIE, but it is suggested that these two inherited noun stems came together to form a compound in Indo-Iranian or prehistoric Old Indic. If the development was parallel to the cases with s-stem first member examined above, we would expect this compound to have developed to * jara asti-. The parallels involving s-stems do not show what might be expected in the case of a second element beginning with a-: according to the regular phonological development a contraction of * jara'asti- > * jarasti- should have occurred (although * -a- may have continued to be scanned as two syllables). But the internal structural analysis of this particular compound may have become obscure by the time it had evolved to * jara asti-, given that it was of a very rare type that was becoming moribund in Old Indic. From a formal point of view its structure at this stage would have appeared identical in all respects (including accentuation) to that of inherited compounds with a deverbative first element such as trasadasyu- (cf. the IE type represented by OP Darayava(h)u-, Grk. [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] The root jr- shows a...