Re: 'Saṁyutta' niggahīta pronunciation

Dear Dmytro,

Here is a quote from Stenzler’s Primer of the Sanskrit Language which makes it simple(r):

“ansuvāra, when preceding sibilants or h is pronounced like -ng- [velar nasal] in “singer” (with nasalization of the preceding vowel); at the end of a word and at the end of the first member of a compound, preceding stops, it is [written and] pronounced like the corresponding class nasal; likewise if, as often happens, the anusvāra is written or printed instead of the class nasal preceding a stop.” (section §9). So

before a velar stop it is pronounced as a velar ṅ (phonetic ŋ, sounds like -ng), although it may be written as -ṃ- or -ṅ- (saṃgha or saṅgha)

before a palatal stop it is pronounced as a palatal ñ (phonetic ɲ, sounds like -ny), although it can be written either way (saṃyuñjati or sañyuñjati).

before a retroflex stop it is pronounces as retroflex ṇ (ɳ like saṇṭṭhitaṃ or saṃṭṭhitaṃ in my previous email)

before a dental stop it is pronouned as a dental n (n, our “normal” nasal), although it can be written as either dvaṃdva or dvandva.

before a bilabial stop it is pronounced as a bilabial dental m (our “normal” m); in this case it is not written as an anusvāra, but simply as a bilabial nasal (e.g. sammukkha, sampadā), I assume because of assimilation.

Before a palatal glide (y) it is also pronounced as a palatal nasal ñ (as in P. saṃyuñjati = sañyuñjati) because of assimilation.

Historically there are two ways of writing the anusvāra: either as an underdot or overdot -ṃ- or -ṁ- which is generic and basically means to “pronounce according to the rules above” or as the homorganic nasal, which gives the pronunciation in the letter. Pāli uses both ways as noted.

According to Stenzler I was wrong about my pronunciation of buddhaṃ saranaṃ … - the -ṃ in buddhaṃ should also be pronounced as a velar nasal (buddaṅ) because of the following s-, which indeed is how it is usually done I believe.

The Wikipedia article seems incomplete. It only alludes to the homorganic nasal before a plosive (i. e. stop, which is the usual situation) and suggests that there should be a nasal fricative homorganic before the sibilants and -h- which is not my understanding (per Stenzler).

Hope this helps. Historically (as Whitney points out) it gets very complicated because of dialects and orthographic problems, and different grammarians' opinions. In Gāndhārī for example, the anusvāra is often left out and expected to be supplied by the speaker. so, looking at the Gāndhārī Dharmapada, for example saṃskāra is written as saghara (see Brough §46). Other dialects show other peculiarities, and Pāli is just another dialect (or, as I argue in my thesis, a combination of dialects) influenced by all the others. The same occurs in the dialects of the Aśokan edicts where denasalization occurs in various situations. The passage you quote from my thesis suggests that there was a right and a wrong way of pronouncing the aspirates, nasals, etc., however I’m not so sure that it was ever so standardized historically,

Mettā,

Bryan

From: "Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, November 28, 2015 9:17 AM
Subject: Re: [palistudy] 'Saṁyutta' niggahīta pronunciation

Dear Bryan,

Thank you for the answer and for the thesis "Linguistic Ambiguities, the Transmissional Process, and the Earliest Recoverable Language of Buddhism" which I have found at:
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/68342/1/Levman_Bryan_G_201406_PhD_thesis.pdf

You give there a quotation from Sp (Samantapāsādikā) 7, 1400 12-17:

iti sithile kattabbe dhanitaṃ , dhanite kattabbe sithilaṃ , vimutte kattabbe niggahitaṃ , niggahite kattabbe vimuttan ti imāni cattāri byañjanāni antokammavācāya kamma ṃ dūsenti. eva ṃ vadanto hi aññasmi ṃ akkhare vattabbe añña ṃ vadati durutta ṃ karotīti vuccati.

Where instead of an unaspirate an aspirate sound, instead of an aspirate an unaspirate one, instead of an oral one a nasalised one, instead of a nasalised on an oral one is produced, these four [kinds of] sounds in the formula pronounced in legal procedures damage the proceedings. For anyone speaking in this way, and pronouncing a sound different from the one required, is said to have a bad pronounciation.

Yet in a Ukrainian or Russian transcription I have to make a choice between "m" and "n", especially since transcription isn't a proceeding.
So I'd like to chose the option which is more probable as an ancient pronuciation.

Whitney hardly writes anything certain in this regard.

Have I understood it correctly, on the basis of Wikipedia article, that in Vedic language anusvara was pronounced like 'n' only before fricative sounds /ś/, /ṣ/, /s/ or /h/? And not before 'y'?

Perhaps there are some cases of niggahīta transference that would shed at least some light on this issue?

Mettā, Dmytro

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> Od: "Bryan Levman bryan.levman@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
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> Předmět: Re: [palistudy] 'Saṁyutta' niggahīta pronunciation
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Dear Dmytro,

The anusvārais complex and there is not necessarily a simple answer to the question asthere have been different interpretations over the ages amongst Indian andwestern scholars. For a discussion see Whitney’s grammar, §70-73.

In internal sandhi:

My understanding is that the -ṃ sound is a “generic” form of the anusvāra/niggahīta and indicates the vowel is to be nasalized in assimilationto the following consonant (what is called a homorganic nasal).

So, with the example Jim gives, saṃgha is actually to be sounded saṅgha, that is as a velar nasal or ŋ, because it comes before a velarstop, athough it can be written either way.

The palatal nasal ɲ can also be written two ways, eitheras saṃjānāti or sañjānati; again the pronunciation is as palatal , because it comes before a palatal -j-. One also sees this often with anasal before the palatal ca as in nāmañca. Although these are two separatewords, the ca is an enclitic and acts like an appendage of nāmaṃ.

A dental nasal, occurs before a dental stop, e.g. a quoteending in damman ti, where theanusvāra/niggahīta is replaced by the dental -n.Again, although this is “external sandhi” (dhammaṃiti), the ti is such anomnipresent particle, that is acts almost like a case ending.

Nasals before retroflex consonants are rare, but theywould also be assimilated as in saṇṭṭhitaṃ(“established”), which could also be written saṃṭṭhitaṃ and sound the same.

I always assumed that none of these nasals were fullyformed, i. e. that they were “lacking that closure of the organs which is requiredto make a nasal mute or contact-sound (Whitney, §70), but I imagine practicewas different, depending on what part of India one was from.

Between words

Pāli seems to have both forms of orthography; probablymore common is the anusvāra/niggahīta,retained as -ṃ, which seems often tobe the case between words, as in buddho dhammaṃ deseti, not buddho dhamman deseti. This follows the Skt.practice. But although written as dhammaṃdeseti, before the dental d- of deseti, the anusvāra would be pronounced as a dental –n. Whether fully closed or not, I don’t know, but my guess is thatit would be, in order to clearly retain the accusative case inflection.

The above is the Sanskrit practice as I understand it. So

buddhaṃ saraṇaṃgacchāmi, following the homorganic nasal law would actually bepronounced buddhan saraṇaṅ gacchāmi,etc., with the anusvāra/niggahīta assimilatedto the place of articulation of the following consonant (the -ṃ of buddhaṃ assimilated to the dental fricative of saraṇaṃ and the -ṃ of saraṇaṃ assimilated to the velar stop of gacchāmi). But whether it was actually pronounced this way inancient times is impossible to tell and I have certainly heard modernrenditions which are different. But the above would be the most “natural way” ;phonologically, that is following the shape and place of articulation of the mouth

Mettā, Bryan

From: "Dmytro Ivakhnenko aavuso@... [palistudy]" <palistudy@yahoogroups.com>
To: palistudy@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, November 27, 2015 7:35 AM
Subject: [palistudy] 'Saṁyutta' niggahīta pronunciation

Dear Pali friends,

To ascertain how to transcribe 'Saṁyutta' in Ukrainian and Russian, I would like to know the most reliable version of its niggahīta ancient pronunciation.

Charles Duroiselle wrote:

"ŋ, (niggahīta), found always at the end of words is, in Burma, pronounced like 'm' in, jam, ram; in Ceylon, it is given the sound of 'ng' in, bring, king"

A Practical Grammar of the Pāli Language
http://dhamma.ru/paali/durois/paligram.pdf

I have read in Wikipedia:

"In Vedic Sanskrit, the anusvāra (lit. "after-sound") is a sound that occurs as an allophone of /m/ — at a morpheme boundary — or /n/ — morpheme-internally—, if they are preceded by a vowel and followed by a fricative (/ś/, /ṣ/, /s/ or /h/).

First, the anusvāra began to be used before /r/ under certain conditions, then in Classical Sanskrit its use had extended before /l/ and /y/, replacing earlier [l̃] and [ỹ]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anusvara

Does this signify that pronunciation on Sri Lanka (Ceylon) has undergone influence from Classical Sanskrit, while Myanmar (Burma) preserved an earlier form?

E. Miller writes in his "Simplified Grammar of the Pali Language":

"Before a 'y' the anusvāra can remain, or the whole group can migrate into 'ññ', as e.g. saṁyoga or saññoga."

https://books.google.com/books?id=yxbHMM5sfpAC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20
https://archive.org/details/simplifiedgramma00mulliala

What does this imply for ancient pronunciation?

Metta,

Dmytro

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