Re: Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context

Dear Eugene

 

>- how to explain the presence of two forms, in two
different

>Gāndhārī contexts and collections, for *catura”ngula*, [caduraghulu and
caduragulu] as Bajaur Fragment 2,

>part 5, line (I. Strauch 2008 fig. 36) has a rather legible (checking with

>some tables of flawless Dr Glass) –*gu*- instead of –*ghu*-.


The “normal” way or writing Skt. catura”ngula in Gaandhaarii
would be

caduraǵula/u/o  (g
with an accent aigu over the letter -g-)

if they are following the Dhammapada orthography as
described by Brough in section 4, 31, 46 of his Gaandhaarii Dharmapada. Here ǵ
represents the velar nasal ŋ, so the actual spelling of the word
is cadura"ngulu.


Have you checked the original script to see if there is a
presence of an additional “hook” as Brough describes in section #4? This hook
could also represent –gh- see below.


However there are other Gaandhaari orthographies and
following Fussman the nasal may just not have been written as these were often
not notated in Gaandhaari and presumably the writer/reader, because the
syllable was accented/heavy (“lourde”) and open would automatically read it as
long and nasalized, even though not written. See Fussman page 478-479
(reference below): “Si la syllabe lourde est ouverte, sa lourdeur est immédiatiement
marquée (et parfois etymologiquement causée) par sa nasalisation”, even thought
the nasalization was not notated. And of course this syllable is etymologically
nasalized (a"ngula). So presumably just writing caduragula/u/o in some
Gaandhaari orthographies would equal cadura"ngula/u/o.



As for the lenition of –t- > -d-, this is very common in
Gaandhaari in almost all cases. One sees it throughout the Gaandhaarii
Dhammapada.


The nominative singular masculine is extremely variable
in Gaandhaarii (Brough, Section 75) and per Fussman (page 473):  "The timbre of final vowels was hardly
differentiated from about the 1st century BC onwards."

 

As for the presence of an aspirate –gh- instead of the
expected –g-. This is “not rare” as Geiger points out in section 62.1 of his
grammar, but he offers no explanation of why this might be the case. My guess
is that many of the speaker of Middle Indic were bilingual Dravidian and
Dravidian has no aspirates, so there would likely be a confusion, but this is
just a guess. Dravidian also has no distinction between voiced and unvoiced
stops which might be a partial explanation for the lention of –t- > -d-
mentioned above.

 

One other point: if you have the ǵ with accent aigu in
the original script (i.e. with a hook on the letter)  this could also represent –gh- (as it does in
the Niya documents, see Brough section #4) although it represents the velar nasal
ŋ in the Gaandhaari Dhp; this would also account for the graphic confusion
of –g- and –gh-.



Hope this helps,

 

Metta,
Bryan

John Brough, The Gāndhārī Dharmapada (London:
Oxford University Press, 1962).

G. Fussman, "Gāndhārī
écrite, Gāndhārī parlée", in C. Caillat, ed., Dialectes dans les
littératures indo-aryennes (Paris, 1989): 433-501.

Wilhelm Geiger, A Pāli Grammar. translated into
English by Batakrishna Bhosh, revised and edited by K. R. Norman (Oxford:
The Pali Text Society, 2005).



--- On Tue, 7/26/11, Eugen Ciurtin <eu.s.ciurtin@...> wrote:

From: Eugen Ciurtin <eu.s.ciurtin@...>
Subject: [palistudy] Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Received: Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 6:41 AM
















 



  


    
      
      
       Dear Professors and Dear List-Members,



In the 2008 edition of the *Anavataptagāthā* by Prof Richard Salomon, the

Gāndhārī word analogous to *caturangula* / *caturaṅgula* is

*caduraghulu*‘four fingers (long/width)’, present in contexts rather

similar in several

canonical works in Pali or Sanskrit (as well as Chinese and Tibetan). As

Prof Oskar von Hinüber writes in his review (*JAOS* 130.1, pp. 90-94,

published December 2010, here 93; please excuse the very rough copy below):



[…] the same recitation of Srona preserves one of the very few references to

the old Indian concept that hair grows on the bottoms of the feet of

particularly tender people: caduraghulu ya me lumu/jadu padatale rmidu, vs.

21 (p. 214) "And soft hair, four fingers long, grew on the sole(s) of (my)

feet" (Salomon): compare Sono Koliviso ... sukhumalo hoti, tassa padatalesu

lomani jatani, Vin I 179,5 (cf. 182,2; 185,14) and hesta padatalabhya ca

romabhuc caturangul(i), SHT <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/SHT>

*sht* - server-parsed HTML IV p. 309 (Kat. Nr. 187 = K 1081) = Bechert,

Bruchstucke, p. 125, in a Srona-Avadana, which is compressed into four

verses. The same idea concerning the feet of extremely tender people is also

found in the Jaiminiya Brahmana: cf. Willem B. Bollee, "Folklore on the Foot

in Pre-modern India," Indologica Taurinensia 34 (2008): 39-145, esp. nn. 24

and 477: lomasau hasya adhastat pddav asatuh, JB II 270.



It is of course very hard to supplement Prof von Hinüber’s enlightening

references to the ‘hair of the soles’ (W. Caland: “this quality [...] is not

noted anywhere else”, cited in W. B. Bollée 2008 p. 104 n. 477; for Sk/Tib *

Anavataptagāthā*, see Marcel Hofinger ed. 1954/1982, p. 208). It is I assume

also difficult to understand why such people are seen as belonging to a *m**

ṛdu*-category (no Āyurvedic references found so far), as there are so many

restrictions and taboos as regards hair in Buddhist texts, also one

identification as ‘Evil’ in immediate JB II 269. One possible explanation, I

would suggest, is to consider the connection of several different Indic

expressions and ideas here conflated, more typically: 1. soles’ hair (even

if strongly contradicting the *mahāpuruṣalakṣaṇa*); 2. soles’ four fingers

distance from earth; 3. Earth’s capacity (especially as flat, levelled earth

- one locus classicus being *Lv* 57 Vaidya), to rise and subside under

specific circumstances no more and no less than four fingers, in an equally

rare instance of ‘seismic waves’, in dozen of passages associated in fact

with the manifestation of earthquakes; 4. some *āyurveda* and

*kāmaśāstra*interdiction to directly touch the earth; 5. other

occurrences of ‘four

fingers breadth’ related to earth: e.g. special herbs as in *Vess* 534 or

special rice as in the *Supriyāvadāna*.



As among the list-members are not only several masters of Pali but at least

one, Professor Allon, of Gāndhārī also, I would like to ask:



-          how to explain the presence of two forms, in two different

Gāndhārī contexts and collections, for *caturangula*, as Bajaur Fragment 2,

part 5, line (I. Strauch 2008 fig. 36) has a rather legible (checking with

some tables of flawless Dr Glass) –*gu*- instead of –*ghu*-.



-          would you consider this a very genuine stock-expression, as it is

now attested by the oldest MSS? Are there some solutions for detecting its

origin and explain their varieties?



I would also like to sum up (from a paper still in progress) the analogous

handling of ‘four fingers’: *caturangula* is the strict measure of hair

(from a special foot); the strict measure of rice foliage (from a special

earth, in *Divy* 120); the strict measure of bodily size (of a special

individual: Nanda’s tallness [only] four fingers less than the Buddha, seen

as a most positive fact; including in some Central Asian fragments); the

strict measure of the Buddha’s opening of his robe (MN I 233,36); the strict

measure of ‘levitation’ above the earth (again, of the most unique airborne

beings); the strict measure of earth’s aptitude — reputedly, *mah**ā**pṛthiv

**ī* is from early narratives to later Abhidharma seen as *acal**ā* — to

become ‘elastic’. It seems these are by no means the single types of a

rather autonomous, ‘floating’ and ‘[quite systematically] intruding’

expression. Do you perhaps know a special study already devoted to this

topic which escaped my attention?



Even if far away from Gandhāra, I am pleased to add this ‘survived’ up to

Handel’s *Messiah*, in an opening aria just titled ‘Ev’ry valley should be

exalted’, which is a rephrase by his Brit benefactor Jennens of similar

passages from Isaiah and Luke, but is present as well in different Christian

apocryphal gospels, in the French carol ‘Baissez-vous, montagnes; plaines,

haussez-vous’, etc.



Thanking you in advance for your observations,



With kind regards,



E. Ciurtin



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