Studies in Sanskrit Syntax: A Volume in Honor of the Centennial of Speijer's Sanskrit Syntax.

• Author: Scharf, Peter M.

The present volume is devoted to encouraging and facilitating the study of Sanskrit syntax. The editor presents revised versions of fourteen papers read at two symposia that he organized to bring together scholars in various fields working on Sanskrit syntax: the Symposium on Sanskrit Syntax at the Eighth South Asian Languages Analysis [SALA] Roundtable in Urbana, Illinois, 29-31 May 1986, and the Second Symposium on Sanskrit Syntax at the Ninth SALA Roundtable in Ithaca and Syracuse, 5-7 June 1987. The volume contains two contributions each by Madhav Deshpande, Steven Schaufele, and the editor, as well as papers by Ashok Aklujkar, R. N. Aralikatti, Vit Bubenik, Stephanie Jamison, Brian Joseph, Jared Klein, K. Meenakshi and Bertil Tikkanen. The work includes an extensive bibliography (pp. 220-44) built upon the combined bibliographic papers Deshpande and Hock prepared for the Silver Jubilee volume of the Centre for Advanced Study in Sanskrit at Pune University (its most notable flaw being that the cumulative reference list on pp. 210-17 duplicates a number of its entries). Note a few supplements below.

The quality and subject matter of the papers varies greatly, as is to be expected in a collection of this kind. Deshpande well integrates the analyses of Paninian grammarians with pertinent questions of syntax in his two papers, "Paninian syntax and the changing notion of a sentence" (pp. 31-43), and "Paninian reflections on Vedic infinitives: On the meaning of tumartha." Meenakshi's "Genitive in Panini and in Epic Sanskrit" (pp. 145-52), on the other hand, does not succeed in penetrating the analyses of the Paninians he deftly dismisses. I fail to see how the label "ablative genitive" is more accurate than the rejected view that the genitive is used when karakas such as apadana (ablative) are not intended to be expressed by the speaker (avivaksita). Is one not tantamount to the other? Yet Meenakshi abruptly dismisses, without explanation, the interpretations of 2.3.50 sasthi sese given in the Mahabhasya and in the Kasika, while erring in his explanation of Panini's treatment of the nominative case. This is not surprising, since understanding Panini's provision of the sixth triplet of nominal terminations involves a clear understanding of his provision of the first triplet (see sub 2.3.50, Mbh. I:464.10-27). Meenakshi writes, "through 2.3.46, kartr is marked by the first or nominative case endings in the active, and karman by the same endings...