Collected Articles Of LA Schwarzschild On Indo Aryan 1953 1979

Author(s): Royce Wiles
Publisher: Australian National University

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BHARATIYA VIDYA
(Vol. XIX
a mere suffix, appears unlikely as a prototype of tanaya which occurs in Apabhramsa mostly as an independent word.
Emphatic expressions in the popular language generally have an element of novelty and tempt one to discard any explanation that is based on a well-worn word or phrase which is likely to be weakened in meaning. Bloch's suggestion that taṇaya is a direct derivative from the verb tan- 'to stretch' appears therefore to have a certain measure of probability, particularly as such a formation seems closely parallel to the other usual possessive postposition, kera karya from kr- 'to make'. But karya is by origin an obligatory participle and the presence of the vowel -a- before the -ya suffix is unheard of in such participles. A direct derivation of tanaya by means of the suffix -ya is therefore highly unlikely in Sanskrit14 as well as in Middle Indo-Aryan. There is even general agreement that the Sanskrit noun tanaya 'son' has no direct connection with the verb tan-. In Middle Indo-Aryan there do exist derivatives in -aya from verbs, but these are agent nouns, as this -aya comes from Sanskrit -aka: e.g. Sanskrit himsaka > Prakrit himsaya 'one who injures', Sanskrit vinasaka > Prakrit vinäsaya 'one who destroys', from the verbs hims- and nas. In such derivatives the vowel of the first syllable is generally lengthened 1e and one would therefore expect *tāṇaya. It is however mainly the meaning that renders the derivation of tapaya from the verb tan- impossible, as it seems hard to imagine how an agent noun meaning 'that which stretches or extends' could possibly have become an emphatic possessive adjective meaning 'one's very own'. The explanation suggested by Bloch therefore remains extremely doubtful both on phonetic and semantic grounds.
The emphatic use of the postposition tanaya and its close link with pronouns render unlikely Dave's suggestion of a derivation from the Sanskrit tanaya. Tanaya 'son', 'descendant' is sometimes used in Sanskrit as an adjective 'belonging to one's own family'. There is however no evidence in Prakrit for this adjectival use of tanaya: it seems to have been simplified and restricted in meaning, and is found in Prakrit only with the meaning of 'son' which is irreconcilable with the later Prakrit and Apabhramsa emphatic postposition tanaya.
Modi's interesting suggestion that the postposition tanaya is derived from the pronoun tad was not developed by him any further. It is in agreement with the geographical distribution of the 14. J. Wackernagel, op. cit., p. 213.
15. M. Mayrhofer, Kurzgefasstes etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindischen, Heidelberg, 1953, ff., s. v. tanaya.
16. J. Wackernagel, op. cit., p. 146.
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Nos. 3 & 41 NOTES ON TWO POSTPOSITIONS OF INDO-ARYAN word. Tanaya is found only in Southern and Western Apabhramsa and in Prakrit texts influenced by Apabhramáa. It is very usual in Old Western Rajasthani and has survived in poetic usage in modern Gujarati. Probable further derivatives of tanaya are confined to the western and central areas, for example the postposition ne in Gujarati, Panjabi and Hindi, and nem, nim in Marathi. 17 It is more doubtful whether the modern Awadhi ten 'from' is a derivative of tapaya. One would therefore be inclined to associate tanaya with a prototype that was characteristic of the west of India. The oblique of the pronoun tad appears in Hindi and the associated group of languages as tin, and only in the extreme west and scattered other areas does one find an oblique of the demonstrative pronoun that resembles tanaya: Sindhi has an oblique plural base tan-, Mewari an oblique plural tanam and an oblique singular tani, while Kumaoni has an oblique plural tanana or tanu. These forms are probably derived from the Prakrit genitive plural of the pronoun tad, which was tanam, and the short vowel in the first syllable of the modern forms is due to weakening in an unaccented word. The association between the genitive and the possessive is close and the suggestion made by Modi would therefore carry some conviction were it not for certain objections of a phonetic nature. The genitive plural tanam, which occurred along with tesim as the most usual form in literary Mähäraştri, was generally replaced in Apabhramsa by täham. Tanam, according to the evidence of the survivals in the modern languages, must have continued to exist in the spoken language over some parts of western India. Had the postposition taṇaya been directly derived from tänam, one might at least in its earlier occurrences expect to find a long vowel in the first syllable: tänaya.
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From the point of view of meaning the most probable source of the postposition tapaya would be a word meaning 'self'. Hence Tessitori's theory of derivation from ätman 'self', atmanaka 'one's own' has much to commend it. But some phonetic difficulties lie in the way of this theory too. The loss of the initial vowel is to be expected in a word used as a postposition, and so there is no need even to consider the alternative Vedic form of atman, namely tman 'self' as a possible prototype. The real difficulty lies in the fact that the change of -tm- to -pp- in ätman> appana just like the closely associated change of -to- to -pp- and of -du- to -bb- was characteristic mainly of the western areas of India, particularly in the Prakrit and early Apabhramsa period. This is shown by the frequency of appana <ätman 'self' in Western and Southern Apabhraméa, while the preservation of the dental, atman < atta is characteristic of the Prakrits which originate from a more easterly region than these Apabhramsa dialects. In the later Apabhramsa period there was a certain amount 17. M. C. Modi, op. cit., p. 232:
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