RE: Gāndhārī cadurag [h]ulu in context

Dear Eugen,

-gh- for original OIA/MIA -g- is merely an orthographic peculiarity of the scribe of this manuscript. Although alternation between aspirate and non-aspirate forms is not uncommon in Gandhari, in this case the scribe converted all -g- forms in his exemplar to -gh-. The same scribe also wrote the following manuscripts:

Allon. M. 2001. Three Gāndhārī Ekottarikāgama-Type Sūtras: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 12 and 14. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 2. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Lenz, Timothy [J.] 2003. A New Version of the Gāndhārī Dharmapada and a Collection of Previous-Birth Stories: British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 16 + 25. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts 3. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Discussion of -gh- is found in all three publications.

The variation of the final vowel: Bajaur *caturangula*, AG-G *caduraghulu* is typical for Gandhari. As noted by Fussman long ago, final vowel is weak and counts for nothing: for example, nom. sg. m. forms are -a, -u, -o, -e.

Hope this helps with the variant forms, at least.

Best wishes
Mark




> -----Original Message-----
> From: palistudy@yahoogroups.com [mailto:palistudy@yahoogroups.com] On
> Behalf Of Eugen Ciurtin
> Sent: Tuesday, 26 July 2011 4:42 PM
> To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [palistudy] Gāndhārī cadurag[h]ulu in context
>
> 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]
>
>
>
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