Re: By-/vy alternation in hinter-India

Dear Lance Cousins,

Thanks for the comments.

>O. v. Hinueber (Ueberblick §255) gives initial vy- as Sinhalese and
>initial by- as South-east Asian. That is also my impression.

>
>> However, I see no clear correlation
>>between the origin of the Patimokkha MSS and editions I have and the
>>initial by-/vy- alternation.

>
>That is interesting. Can you elaborate ? Obviously since the 18th
>century (at least) there has been introduction of S.E. Asian Mss to
>Sri Lanka which has influenced Pali orthography. Also some recent
>Thai editions at least seem to be influenced by PTS which often
>follows the Sinhalese (?) tradition on this. I think the Burmese
>printed editions at least use almost exclusively initial by-. Do you
>have any Burmese Mss which use vy- ?
> 
>
I was referring to Sri Lankan tradition editions and MSS. I checked the
2 Burmese Paatimokkha editions I have and they indeed only
have by- forms. Maybe there is a rule about this in the
Saddaniti or some later Burmese grammar. I searched the CSCD and
almost all vy- forms are in the Sinhala text section on the CSCD.
Besides that, only a few vy- forms seem to have escaped the scrutiny of
the Burmese editors and are found in the devotional works Pajjamadhu
and Buddhagu.navaali. I did not go through the vy- search results in
great detail though.
It would be interesting to find out whether older pre-fifth council
Burmese MSS are so consistent.
I don't have photographs of Burmese MSS yet. I hope to photograph a few
when I get access to the library in the south where they are stored. The
Sinhala Siam Nikaya editions and MSS tend to have vy- forms, but not
consistently. The Khom MS I have seen has only by-  The Sinhala
(Burmese) Amarapura Nikaya printed editions tend to have by-- but not
consistently.
It is my hope to find a pre-1750s Sinhala Patimokkha MS to see what the
differences are with what comes after, but so far I have not found one.

>  >
>>Norman (``Dialect form in Paali'') notes an initial v/bh alternation in
>>Middle Indo-aryan and states that it is dialectical. I could not find
>>anything in his writings about an initial vy-/by- alternation.
>>   
>>
>
>He does however point out (e.g. EV II Introduction §74d) that initial
>vy-/by- does not make position in verse. This might imply an earlier
>form of writing Pali with initial v-/b- for such cases. There are a
>number of very early Ms and inscriptional cases where we have -vv- in
>place of the expected form -bb-.
>
> 
>
Thanks. I have seen this this -vv- form (-tavva instead of -tabba) in
Hinueber's edition of the oldest Pali manuscript (a fragment of the
Cullavagga preserved in  Nepal) and in the Southeast Asian inscriptions.
Initial vya- is found in the old Cullavagga MS: vyattena bhikkhunaa
pa.tivalena sa.mgho ~n~naapetavvo. Note the -valena instead of -balena.
It also reads vahuu instead of bahuu. No ba character is used in the MS.
Further, no velar ''n appears to be used in this MS but only the
anusvaara .m, e.g.,sa.mgho instead of sa''ngho, just like in some old
Sinhalese Patimokkha MSS where no velar ''n is employed.
Is the absence of the velar n also a feature of some scripts?

>>Initial by- is not found in the Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit
>>Dictionary, however the MW Sanskrit English Dictionary gives byu.s (as
>>well as pyu.s) as a reading for vyu.s (in the sense of `dividing'.)
>>   

>We should note that in some Indic scribal traditions 'v' and 'b' were
>not distinguished. This means that for some BHS texts we do not know
>for certain whether vy- or by- was written. It is not improbable that
>there were South Asian scribal traditions for Pali too in which 'v'
>and 'b' were not distinguished. If so, we might expect copying of Mss
>backwards and forwards between traditions which differed on this
>point to have sometimes introduced minor confusion.
> 
>
Hinueber mentions in his description of the Cullavagga MS that, although
the ak.sara ba is available in this Gupta script, it was not used by the
scribe. So it seems that at this 9th century stage there was no problem
with distinguishing between b and v, but that simply no b was used or
was not found in the MS the scribe was copying from.

If the initial b-/by- form is just a Southeast Asian tradition and only
initial v- takes place in Pali and Sanskrit, then how is one to explain
that Baaraa.nasii/Benares is used instead of Vaaraa.nasii, and Bihar
instead of Vihar? (I read somewhere that the name of this Indian state
originates from vihaara, but I don't know if this is
correct.)Are these modern alternations?

Best wishes,
                  Bh. Nyanatusita