The "Virtually Unknown" Benedictive Middle in Classical Sanskrit: Two Occurrences in the Buddhist Abhisamayalankara

2006

The present paper deals with a group of athematic middle participles with the suffix -ana-which exhibit quite unusual syntactic properties in early Vedic, in the language of the ~gveda (RV), While the fmite forms with which these participles are said to belong are employed only transitively, -ana-participles made from the same stem are attested in both transitive and intransitive (passive) constructions, This fact was noted. already by DeIbriick in his seminal Altindische Syntax, I Such asymmetry in the syntactic properties of finite and participial forms requires an explanation, To begin with, I shall focus on two typical examples, the participles hinva.na-and yujana-,

2012

This book is the first comprehensive study of the Vedic present formations with the suffix -ya- ('-ya-presents' for short), including both present passives with the accented suffix -yá- and non-passive-ya-presents with the accent on the root (class IV in the Indian tradition). It offers a complete survey of all -ya-presents attested in the Vedic corpus. The main issue in the spotlight of this monograph is the relationship between form (accent placement, diathesis) and function (passive/non-passive) in the system of the -ya-presents – one of the most solidly attested present classes in Sanskrit. One of the aims of the present study is to corroborate the systematic correlation between accent placement and the passive/non-passive distinction: passives bear the accent on the suffix, while non-passives have the accent on the root. The book also focuses on the position of the passive within the system of voices and valency-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan. Leonid Kulikov (PhD, Leiden University) is an Assistant Professor at Ghent University. He has published widely on synchronic and diachronic typology (in particular, on the diachronic typology of labile verbs and valency-changing categories), on the Vedic verb system and syntax, and on Vedic philology, and has edited numerous volumes in the fields of linguistic typology and Indology. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Historical Linguistics. His current research focuses on the grammar of early Vedic, a translation of the Atharvaveda, and the diachronic typology of transitivity and voice.

Guruparamparā. Studies on Buddhism, India, Tibet and More in Honour of Professor Marek Mejor. Edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, Stanisław Jan Kania, Małgorzata Wielińska-Soltwedel, Agata Bareja-Starzyńska, 2022

Heinrich Roth is the author of the first known European Sanskrit grammar. Although his work is unique in its perfection and the author’s palpable admiration for and dependence on the indigenous Indian tradition (especially on the Sārasvata system), it has not yet been published and consequently has had little impact on the history of Indology. This paper attempts to highlight the great loss that Sanskrit studies have suffered as a result of this omission. It does so by analysing the first chapter of Roth’s treatise on the basis of the edition and translation currently being prepared by Johannes Schneider (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities). After detailed analysis, which includes the explanation of the technical vocabulary, and after dealing with the general features of Roth’s grammar and his supposed and actual errors or inconsistencies, the way Roth presents his material is compared with the description in other early European grammars: four Latin (Hanxleden, Pons, Paulinus’ Siddharubam and Vyàcarana) and four English (Colebrooke, Carey, Wilkins, Forster). The paper concludes with the slightly speculative question of what would have happened if Roth’s grammar had been published during his lifetime and had received the interest and recognition it deserved.

Studi e Saggi Linguistici, 2023

The attached file is just a draft of the publication. Please refer to: https://www.studiesaggilinguistici.it/ssl/issue/view/31 This paper aims to provide some preliminary findings on the so-called āmreḍita compounds by considering evidence from Vedic Prose, here represented by the Brāhmaṇas. So far studies have focused on āmreḍitas in the R̥gveda, while a systematic investigation of those in the later Vedic Prose language has not been undertaken yet. Vedic Prose exhibits the emergence of new forms, almost absent in earlier texts but taught in the Aṣṭādhyāyī: I will focus on verbal āmreḍitas, in particular on those formed with imperatives and gerunds. According to the Indian grammarians, verbal āmreḍitas encode the same values as the intensive category, i.e., kriyāsamabhihāra “repetitious or intense action” and nitya (= abhīkṣṇya) “reiteration”. The equivalence in meaning between repeated verbal forms and intensive verbs – already identified by Pāṇini and his commentators (cf. Kāśikā ad A 3.4.2; Kāśikā ad A 8.1.4) – explains why verbal āmreḍitas are present in Vedic Prose. Indeed, I will demonstrate that the first cases of verbal āmreḍitas are found in Vedic Prose when the intensive category was recessive.

Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies-university of London, 2008

The last active period in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics, although associated with scholars who for the first time explicitly identified themselves as new, has generally been castigated in modern histories as repetitious and devoid of thoughtfulness. This paper presents a case study dealing with competing analyses of a single short poem by two of the major theorists of this period, Appayya Dõ Åks Ç ita (sixteenth century) and Jaganna Åtha Pan Ç d Ç itara Åja (seventeenth century). Their arguments on this one famous poem touch in new ways on the central questions of what the role of poetics had become within the Sanskrit world and the way in which it should operate in relation to other systems of knowledge and literary cultures.

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2021

mong the prolific Tibetan authors in the field of Sanskrit linguistics in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries we find a triad of scholars named Blo gros brtan pa, respectively styled the second, third and fourth Blo gros brtan pa. They were indubitably thus regarded as members of a form of intellectual dynasty in reference (and reverence) to the famous Indian paṇḍita Sthiramati. Like their Indian namesake they were experts in various branches of Buddhist scholasticism. In this article I will discuss two works on Sanskrit grammar which can tentatively though confidently be attributed to two of the three Blo gros brtan pas. I will also briefly address the matter of the proliferation of Sthiramatis / Blo gros brtan pas in the Tibetan Middle Ages. Given the fact that the Cāndra-vyākaraṇa sūtra text and a wide range of subsidiary treatises belonging to the Cāndra school have been included in the first, fourteenth-century redaction of the Bstan 'gyur section on Sanskrit grammar, it is remarkable that a Tibetan translation of Dharmadāsa's basic vṛtti commentary on the Cāndra sūtra text is conspicuously missing in this canon. 2 1 Cordial thanks are due to Burkhard Quessel (curator of the Tibetan collection of the British Library, London) for magnanimously providing information on and digital pictures of relevant holdings of that library, and to Dr. Péter-Dániel Szántó (presently postdoc researcher at LIAS, Leiden University) for his invaluable assistance in the reading of the 'Vartula' script passages.

Indo-Iranian Journal, 2001

Journal of Language Relationship, 2011

Drifting between passive and anticausative. True and alleged accent shifts in the history of Vedic ¢presents This paper focuses on the system of the Vedic present formations with the suffix ya-and middle inflexion, paying special attention to the attested accent patterns. On the basis of a study of the paradigmatic and syntactic features of this verbal formation we can conclude that the traditional analysis of some members of this class in terms of the passive/nonpassive (anticausative) opposition is inadequate. I will offer a short overview of the history of this class, concentrating, in particular, on several accent shifts which account for a number of exceptions to the general correlation between the semantics and accent placement (passives: accent on the suffix vs. non-passives: accent on the root). Some of these shifts can be dated to the prehistoric (Common Indo-Aryan?) period (cf. suffix accentuation in such non-passives as mriyáte 'dies'), while some others must be features of certain Vedic dialects, dating to the period after the split of Common Indo-Aryan.

2012

This book is the first comprehensive study of the Vedic present formations with the suffix ya (‘ ya-presents’ for short), including both present passives with the accented suffix yá and non-passive -ya-presents with the accent on the root (class IV in the Indian tradition). It offers a complete survey of all ya-presents attested in the Vedic corpus. The main issue in the spotlight of this monograph is the relationship between form (accent placement, diathesis) and function (passive/non-passive) in the system of the -ya-presents – one of the most solidly attested present classes in Sanskrit. One of the aims of the present study is to corroborate the systematic correlation between the accent placement and the passive/non-passive distinction: passives bear the accent on the suffix, whilst non-passives have the accent on the root. The book also focuses on the position of passive within the system of voices and valency-changing categories in Old Indo-Aryan.