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Ṛgvedic satyá
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Extract
That Sanskrit satyá (Avestan haiθiia) derives from sánt is by no means so certain as Georges-Jean Pinault has recently claimed, and as the standard etymological dictionary (both KEWA, III, and EWA, I) maintains. The picture has altered since (as noted already in KEWA) Elmar Seebold finally disposed of the existence of a Germanic *sun∂jaz, which had seemed to correspond in form as well as meaning with Sanskrit satyá ‘true’. Gothic sunja ‘truth’ (>*sun∂ī: Seebold, art. cit., 25, 36) offers no support for the notion of a -ya derivative from the participle. At the same time, Karl Hoffmann had sought to withdraw the support of Agni's epithet santya, by explaining it as ‘being together: (etwa) Mitbewohner‘ from a *sóm-tiyo which otherwise, as in Germanic (English soft), develops a sense ‘appropriate, agreeable: angenehm’. To this may now be added the consideration that Paul Thieme has thought (oral communication) to explain satyá, with IE *sem- ‘one, together‘ in mind, as ‘einig, übereinstimmend‘ from a *sm-tyó. The latter would show more primitive Ablaut and more literal meaning than *sóm-tiyo, but both words would thus be close relatives of samydk ‘together, properly’.
- Type
- Notes and communications
- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , October 1998 , pp. 519 - 526
- Copyright
- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1998
References
1 ‘La base radicale sat- et la notion de loi’, in Nalini Balbir etal. (ed.), Langue, style et structure dans le monde indien: centenaire de Louis Renou (Paris, 1996), 42ffGoogle Scholar.: ‘analyse bien établie’. (For a review of this work see this issue, p. 560.)
2 ‘Germanisch *sanp-/sund- “seiend, wahr”‘, Die Sprache, 15, 1969, 14ffGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Manfred Mayrhofer for drawing my attention to the relevant reference in KEWA, III, 422, which has eluded Pinault, art. cit., 43, top.
3 ‘Ved. santya- und ahd. samfti, ags. séfte’, MSS, 23, 1968, 29ffGoogle Scholar. (Aufsätze, II, 494ff.).
4 For vipra, a non-committal ‘energetic’ may be preferable to ‘excited’ or ‘eloquent‘.
5 Similarly, for vāja, neutral ‘endeavour, reward for endeavour ’seems more generally applicable than the consensus gloss ‘battle-prize’, which rests on the palpably ad hoc glosses, ‘battle’ and ‘food‘, of Nighantu and Sāyana. (Ge. has for 1.36.2 ‘Entscheidungskämpfen’, despite Sāyana's vājesv annesu santya dānasīla… iha karmani, where at least the sacrificial setting is evidently accurate.) Ȯf the remaining attestations of santya, 1.15.12 and 8.44.9 resemble the others in structure, and 8.44.28 resembles 8. 19. 26 in content.
6 Despite Grassmann, the differentiation of á-sant ‘non-existent’ from inherited āsant ‘false’ is consistent: 7.104.12 sác cāsac ca vácasī does not (despite Padāpatha) attest an anomalous ásat ‘false’. 4. 5. 14 anāyudhāsa āsatā sacantām need not be ‘wehrlos sollen sie dem Nichts verfallen’ (following Book 10's támasa sacantām and Sāyana's duhkhena samgacchantām), but more rationally and relevantly ‘let them indulge in falsehood impotently‘ (following 1.152.1 rténa sac- ‘indulge in‘ and 7. 104. 14 droghavācas te nirrthdm sacantām ‘fall victim to’).
7 Renou encouraged the confusion, following Sāyana's mistaken syntax (‘somasya pātah, satyavādin’), with ‘ô (dieu) réel, ô buveur de soma’, as though the word were sánt. The only clear RV occurrence of saty00E1;m as ‘truth’ is in 10. 117. 6 satyam bravīmi vadhá it saá tásya (where the speaker merely offers a truism and has no responsibility for the outcome). In 9. 113. 2–4 ā pavasva … rtavākéna satyéna; … satyám vádant satyakarman … and in 4. 33. 6 satyam 016B;cur nára evā hi cakrúh, the conformity of speech with action is explicit. Here Geldner's ‘ ' mit Wahrhaftigkeit; … wahr redend, du wahrhandelnder’ does not convey any specific meaning; and it is a rather loose use of ‘truth’ to apply it to a vow (‘hatten wahr gesprochen, denn sie taten also‘). An attempt is made below to show that the phrase satyám kr- ‘bring to fruition’ rests on a sense ‘make conformable’.The Rgveda has patiripah … asatyāh for ‘faithless’ wives, later replaced by satī ‘dutiful’ (whereas the Norse goddess Syn, cognate with satī, is rooted in the concept of truth: Seebold, 32).
8 ‘On the concept and function of satya (“ truth ”) in ancient Indian literature’, in Int. conf. on Sanskrit and related studies (Cracow Indological studies, I), Cracow, 1995, 240. The six RV occurrences of satyám kr- and seven of satyá-bhū- are tabulated on p. 236
9 Association of satyá with sánt is progressively etymological in RV, ŚBr., and Nirukta. Cf. ŚBr 2. 4. 2. 6 yad u ha kim ca vācā vyāharati tad u haiva bhavaty etadd hi devasatyam gopāyati. Pinault, reporting Nir. 3.13 satsu tāyate, satprabhavam b'avati.iti vā (pp. 41f.), follows Lakshman Sarup and the Maheśvara commentary in taking satprabhavam bhavati to be an alternative gloss on satsu tāyate. For this Maheśvara has to supply a primary gloss ( tesu prathate) and far-fetched explanations of satprabhavam(in part obscurely transmitted and edited) and of bhavati as a gloss on tāy (viz. tāyate prakāśate.asti.iti.jñāyate). It seems more likely that satprabhavam bhavati constitutes an alternative etymology from sdnt +adj. suffix -yá (less probably - tyá, as suggested by Rajavade, 482, n. of his edition) which, having no basis in Pānini or in the language, has eluded the commentators. (Durga has such an alternative etymology, but understood as ya eva hi santah, ta eva hi satyam vadanti, i.e. as sánt+ pronoun - yā.) Does this forgotten etymology underlie the expression sattvapūrvo bhāvah and the obscure discussion thereof at Nir. 1. 13, and the multifarious attempts based on -tya?
10 Geldner's ‘zujubeln’, linking ánu and madanti, reflects Sāyana's laksmīkrtya stuvanti. For ratim … grnatáh as ‘gift of the worshipper’, cf. e.g. 8. 13. 4 rātíh ksarati sunvatáh. Against Sāyana, Oldenberg postulated bad grammar (* grnántah), Geldner an awkward concatenation of genitives ‘gift of the divine patron of the singer‘.
11 Sāyana's ‘tvayi nivistam’ is surely correct. The form vistám occurs for the sake of association with visvam via viś-; and following Indra'Ls transcendental encompassing of the universe in v. 5, one may expect him to pervade the universe in v. 6. A debased version occurs in BĀU 5.12 anne hīmani sarvāni bhūtāni vistāni … asmin viśanti (Weber's viśante will have been affected by adjacent ramante). Geldner's ‘Es soil ein Ende gemacht werden’ (similarly Renou and EWA), reflects Oldenberg's reference to 4. 19. 10 ápāmsi náryā.ávivesīh, which may rather embroider the present passage than explain it: the subject ( viśvam) vistám astu is easily understood; an unexpressed subject ápas is hardly obvious. For the only other occurrence of vistá in 1. 148. 1 máthīd yád īm vistó mátariśvā, a metrically regular parallel is available in 1. 71. 4 with vÍbhrto ‘dispersed’ in lieu of vistáh. This confirms the sense of pervasion, though vistáh ‘pervasive’ is here active in keeping with later usage. The topic is the role of wind in spreading fire, as could also be the case (rather than a ‘ Trance-Zustand des asketischen Ekstatikers ’) when viś- recurs in 10. 136. 2 múinayo vātaraśanāh … vātasāanu dhraājim yanti yād devāso áviksata.
12 Similarly, 7. 104. 12 satydm … sómo (a)vati doubtless antedates 8. 2. 36 indrah … satyó(a)vitá and 1. 36. 2 avitā … santya (agne).
13 Geldner: ‘Wenn Indra seinen Eifer wahr macht’. Sāyana, construing satyam eva separately, gave kopam dvisadartham karoti ‘directs his anger against the enemy’, justifiably in view of 5. 61. 7 devatrā krnute mánah ‘applies her mind to the gods’ and 10. 117. 2 ādhrāya … sthirám mánah krnute ‘directs a hard heart to the lowly’.
14 Even if the appropriately worded v. 1 sám-sam yuvase … visvāni were, with Geldner, to be deemed supernumerary, such interpolation of a prior invocation to Agni would tend to confirm that the hymn is an appeal to the whole pantheon. The assumption of late interpolation is, however, ill-founded: the fact that in AV the verse is severed and appended irrelevantly to the preceding hymn, and in YV dropped altogether, reflects the improbable assumption that both cittám esām and va ākutih refer to priests, and that the verses must therefore be addressed to an abstraction samjndnam. Either the one Tristubh verse or the rather weak final verse might be the true interloper. Geldner's rendering implausibly assumes that esdm could refer back to sámitih, that the hymn could be an appeal for secular concord (sámitih ‘ Versammlung. Oder: Beratung’), and that in 3d vah could mean ‘ on your behalf’.