Re: Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context
From: Bryan Levman
Message: 3293
Date: 2011-07-26
Daer Eugen,
You're welcome. I would check the original manuscript and see what the letter (-g- or -gh- or ǵ accent aigu) actually looks like as it may simply be an graphic peculiarity leading to these different transcriptions,
Metta, Bryan
--- On Tue, 7/26/11, Eugen Ciurtin <eu.s.ciurtin@...> wrote:
From: Eugen Ciurtin <eu.s.ciurtin@...>
Subject: Re: [palistudy] Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Received: Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 7:57 PM
Dear Bryan,
Thank you so much for your informative answer. I also assumed *t* >
*d*indeed is hopefully trouble-free, origin left aside. I missed to
check again
the volume edited by late Prof Caillat, where Prof von Hinüber's
contribution (now also in his KS), has very valuable information on texts
akin to the cited passage. Your Dravidian guess (for which I have no
competence) looks intriguing. However, up to now only *caduraghulu* is
registered in *A Dictionary of Gandhari*. My intention as to the form was to
see if there are some (even minor) consequences of this (regional/scribal
etc.), not only with the material available in Khotan Dharmapada, but
especially with the treasures unearthed and deciphered after 1994/1995. My
colleague Vincent Tournier (EPHE, Paris) also informs me about almost the
same kind of (so frequent) irregularities.
Thanks again, it indeed helps,
with metta
Eugen
2011/7/26 Bryan Levman <bryan.levman@...>
> **
>
>
>
>
> 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
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
--
--
Dr E. Ciurtin
Secretary of the Romanian Association for the History of Religions
http://ihr-acad.academia.edu/EugenCiurtin
Publications Officer of the European Association for the Study of Religions
www.easr.eu
Lecturer & Secretary of the Scientific Council
Institute for the History of Religions, Romanian Academy
Calea 13 Septembrie no. 13 sect. 5, Bucharest 050711
Phone: +40 733 951 953 or +40 721 877 659
www.ihr-acad.ro
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