Paninian accounts of the class eight presents.

AuthorScharf, Peter

In a paper presented to the American Oriental Society in 2004, (1) I discussed the need for comparing comprehensive linguistic descriptions of Sanskrit with specific corpora rather than attempting to establish the relative date of texts and linguistic treatises on the grounds of individual rules. Which texts were known to the author of a particular linguistic description has implications for the relative date of the linguistic treatise and the texts, and thus for Indian intellectual history and the history of Sanskrit literature. In that paper, I accepted the validity of methodology to establish the correspondence between the language described by a linguistic treatise and the language used in particular texts. Such a correspondence is established by demonstrating a high correlation between the linguistic behaviors described by the treatise and those exhibited in the text. Conversely, a low correlation between the described and exhibited behaviors establishes the lack of correspondence between the language described and the language used. I was critical, however, of the procedure used by scholars until now, which, rather than examining degrees of correlation between the complete set of linguistic traits described and the complete set exhibited, has examined individual traits.

It may be convenient to briefly recapitulate my review in that article of the contributions of Whitney (1893a, 1893b), Renou (1960), Thieme (1935), Cardona (1972, 1984, 1991, 1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1999, 2005), Bronkhorst (1980, 1981, 1991, 1996), and others (see the bibliography in Scharf 2008) to the relative dating of Indian linguistic treatises and Vedic texts. Thieme (1935) argues that Panini knew certain Vedic texts on the grounds that specific forms mentioned in particular Vedic rules are found only in those texts. Bronkhorst (1991: 88) proposes the converse, that disagreement of a particular Vedic text with a particular trait described by a Vedic rule evidences that Panini did not know that Vedic text. Since the agreement of the linguistic trait of one rule and the disagreement of the linguistic trait of another rule with usage in the same text may present contradictory evidence as to whether the text was known or not, scholars have articulated that contradictory results may be due to complexities in the composition both of the texts described and of the describing linguistic treatise. Bronkhorst (1991: 76-81, 103-4) warns that the extant form of the Vedic text in question may differ from its form in Panini's time due to additions, deletions, and alterations in sandhi, accentuation, vowel length, etc., made to the text in its subsequent transmission. Contradictory results may also be due rather to complexity in both the composition and intent of the linguistic treatise. The linguistic treatise may be prescriptive rather than descriptive or may be deliberately incomplete. Thus Bronkhorst (1991: 81) entertains the possibility that Panini excluded forms found in Vedic texts known to him because he considered them incorrect, and Cardona (1991: 130; 1997a: 281; 1997b: 37-38) argues that Panini may refrain from accounting for certain Vedic forms out of deference to exegetical traditions received in his time. The relationship is complicated by variation both in the corpus of Vedic texts and in the linguistic treatises. Hence, I argued that conclusive results depend upon testing how closely comprehensive systems of linguistic description conform to clearly delineated textual corpora.

Now, while I explored (in Scharf 2008) the relation of rules in the Astadhyayi to Vedic forms, the current paper investigates the importance of the contents of ancillary texts that form a part of the linguistic description in determining the descriptive scope of a linguistic system. The Indian linguistic treatises form comprehensive systems of linguistic description by reference to accompanying lists (gana) not itemized in the rule-sets that refer to them. The most extensive of these is a root list (dhatupatha). The Astadhyayi of Panini refers to a root list in numerous rules, the most prominent of which, Pa. 1.3.1 bhuvadayo dhatavah, terms items in the list beginning with bhu to be roots (dhatu). The current paper considers how variation in the various received versions of the Dhatupatha alters the linguistic description of the linguistic system that comprises the Dhatupatha.

The Paninian Dhatupatha is known through numerous manuscripts as well as through several commentaries (NCC, vol. 9, pp. 287-88). Three complete commentaries composed in Sanskrit are extant: the Ksiratarangini of Ksirasvamin (early twelfth c. C.E., Kashmir), the Dhatupradipa of Maitreyaraksita (mid-twelfth c. C.E., Bengal), and the Madhaviyadhatuvrtti of Sayana (fourteenth c. C.E., Vijayanagara, Karnataka). (2) These commentaries provide examples of forms and make comments; Sayana provides a full range of examples including nominal derivatives with details of derivation. Several other root lists accompany rule-sets composed by other linguists. The Sabdakalapa grammar of Kasakrtsna includes a dhatupatha on which Cannavirakavi (c. 1500 C.E., Kuntikapura, Tumkur district, Karnataka) wrote a Kannada commentary Kasakrtsna-sabda-kalapa-dhatupatha-karnataka-tika. (3) A shorter version of the Sabdakalapa is found in the Katantra grammar of Sarvavarman (c. 400 C.E.), which itself was enlarged (c. 800 C.E.) in Tibetan Tanjur and supplied with a root list (Scharfe 1977: 163 n. 5; Yudhisthira Mimamsaka 1965/66: 11-12).

Several other grammars include their own versions of dhatupatha. The Candra grammar of Candragomin (fifth c. C.E.) avoids technical terms and dispenses with Panini's karaka class names. The Jainendra grammar of Devanandin (c. 5-7th c. C.E.) closely follows the sequence of Panini's rules while further condensing their formulation. The Mugdhabodha of Vopadeva (late thirteenth c. C.E., Maharashtra) similarly condenses rule formulation in a set of 1184 sutras in twenty-six sections. The rule-set and commentary Amoghavrtti of the Jain monk Sakatayana (ninth c. C.E.) are the foundation of the Siddhahaimacandra of Hemacandra Suri (1089-1172 C.E., Gujarat) (Scharfe 1977: 101-89). While the root lists associated with these grammars share a large common stock, each dhatupatha differs from those attached to other grammars by the addition, omission, alternative classification, and modification of roots in the list.

There are several reasons for the variation in the contents and ordering among these root lists. Naturally some of the diversity arose due to copying errors in the course of the transcription of manuscripts. Yet more interestingly, roots may have been deliberately added by linguists or redactors to their dhatupatha in order to account for forms in the Sanskrit language as known to them. Such roots would account for new words not known to Panini, or to other early grammarians, that may have come into Sanskrit due to historical sound change and from borrowings into Sanskrit from regional and foreign languages throughout the history of Sanskrit's presence in the sub-continent. Source languages for borrowings include languages in the Dravidian, Munda, and Austro-Asiatic families with long histories in South Asia, as well as Prakrits, Middle Indic, and Modern Indic languages considered to be descendants of Sanskrit. Emeneau (1980) discusses the high degree of cross-linguistic borrowing in the South Asian sub-continent that supports evidence of areal effects in language development and helps to challenge the traditional genetic model of linguistic change. In addition to sound change and borrowing, the linguistic process of analogy created new verb forms in Sanskrit to be accounted for by reclassification of roots within the dhatupathas.

Since Westergaard published his Radices linguae sanscritae in 1841, scholars have disagreed concerning the degree of inclusion of so-called "inauthentic roots" in the received dhatupathas, that is, the inclusion of roots whose derivatives are unattested in the language. Whitney (1884: 282-84) claimed that more than half of the two thousand roots listed in the Paninian Dhatupatha were inauthentic and never likely to be discovered in Sanskrit literature, and Edgren (1882) examined possible reasons for their inclusion in the list. Among these reasons are (1882: 12) that they are inferred to account for nominal forms or to serve as their denominatives; (1882: 18) that they are of onomatopoetic origin; and (1882: 15) that similar sounding roots are coined in classes that have the same meaning designation, even when there are no nominals for which to account. Edgren notes that some roots inferred by the first two reasons are legitimate, for example, kakh 'laugh' which has cognates in Greek [kappa][alpha][chi][alpha][xi][omega] and Latin cachinno. Yet he complains that these reasons are extended injudiciously by the inclusion of phonetic variants of roots. While researchers such as

von Schroeder (1879, 1895) do turn up Vedic evidence of derivatives of roots unattested in previously examined literature, Buhler (1894), Franke (1894), Kittel (1893, 1895), Palsule (1961: 208-13), Katre (1938-39: 485-86; 1944: 65-72), and Tripathi (1965) explore derivatives of listed roots in Middle Indic, Modern Indic, and Dravidian. Rosane Rocher (1968) recognizes that grammarians would legitimately account for Middle Indicisms adopted in Sanskrit by positing roots to derive them. She and Cardona (1976: 240-41) conclude evaluations of previous work by calling for more detailed study of dhatupatha commentaries. Yudhisthira Mimamsaka (1973/74: 2.64-68) gives examples of the addition and omission of roots, alteration of sequence and classification, and change in markers and meanings noticed already by medieval commentators, thereby indicating that the texts received by various commentators already differed in their readings.

The current paper considers that making...

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