Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T08:34:14.474Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pali Phāsu- and Dātta-

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R. L. Turner
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Madame C. Caillat in a magistral article in Journal Asiatique, CCXLVIII, 1, 1960, 41–64, followed by a note in JA, CCXLIX, 4, 1961, 497–502, has in establishing the meaning of Pa.1 phāsu- confirmed its connexion with sprś. I question Mme. Caillat's exposition on one point only, namely the exact form of the original derivative of sprś lying behind Pa. phāsu-. Like the previous scholars whom she quotes—Kern, Hoernle, Pischel, and Schwarzwald—she assumes the original form to have been *sparśu-, the resultant *phassu- becoming phāsu-, although recognizing that examples of such a change in Pali are rare; and for most of these an alternative explanation will be offered below. Nevertheless in Prakrit and, according to Pischel (Gr. Pk., § 62), with special frequency in Ardhamāgadhi the first geminate to be shortened with lengthening of a previous vowel was -ss- (Turner, BSOAS, XXXIII, 1,1970,171). The Jaina texts in Ardhamāgadhī have both phāsaī ∽ Pa. phassati < *sparśati and phāsuya- ∽ Pa. phāsu(ka)-; and it is tempting to see the saffle origin for ā in both Ardhamāgadhī words phāsai and phāsuya-. But the existence of Pa. phāsu(ka)- invites the assumption of another origin than spass- both for it and Pk.amg. phāsuya-, for according to Mme. Caillat (JA, 1960,47) the antiquity of Pa. phāsu- is assured by the occurrence of aphāsu- in the Pātimokkha as well as by phāsu- in the Aśokan Calcutta-Bairāt Minor Rock Edict.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 424 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 All abbreviations (apart from those for books and journals) are as listed in my Comparative dictionary of the Indo-Aryan languages (CDIAL).

2 Turner, , Some problems of sound-change in Indo-Aryan, Poona, 1960, 25–7Google Scholar, and TPS, 1937, 8–10.

3 Morgen stierne also referred to dātta- without comment in his article on the word for ‘sickle’ in Modern Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages (Gōteborgs Hōgskolas Arsskrift XXXVI, 3, 1930, 63)Google Scholar.

4 Chatterji's derivation (ODBL, 255, n.) < dātŕ- ‘mower’ (approved by Morgenstierne, loc. cit.) is unnecessary and indeed not very probable, for, apart from the meaning, none of the stems in -tr- recorded in CDIAL (for list see CDIAL. Phonetic analysis, 121) indicate replacement of nominative -tā by a MIA.-ti(h).

5 But if Chatterji's assumption (loc. cit.) that Santali datr m, Mundārī datrom ‘sickle’ were borrowed from dātram is correct, it must have been at a time when ātr was still unchanged and in a dialect area which the present location of these languages suggests might have been the Eastern.

6 dātir lavanārthe prācyesu dātram udīcyesu: repeated by Patañjali, Mahābhāsya 1.1.1, as noted byDanielsson, , ZDMG, XXXVII, 1883, 39Google Scholar, and Charpentier, , Ada Or., VII, 1929, 190Google Scholar. This dāti- is not recorded in Böhtlingk and Both and Monier-Williams has a reference only to its inclusion in Galanos's Sanskrit dictionary.