Book Title: Collected Articles Of LA Schwarzschild On Indo Aryan 1953 1979
Author(s): Royce Wiles
Publisher: Australian National University

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Page 57
________________ 82 BHARATIYA VIDYA [Vol. XIX of intermingling of these forms: thus the originally western form apäätman appears in the Old Bengali Caryas and figures also in the modern languages of the east of India, while the eastern type of form is actually used as an emphatic possessive several times in the very late Apabhramsa of the Präkṛtapaingala, attanaya<ätmanaka 'one's own'. But this intermingling does not apply to the earlier Apabhramsa period, when tapaya is first found, and it seems difficult to explain by an eastern soundshift a word as much confined to the west as tanaya. A word closely connected with ätman, perhaps even in its IndoEuropean etymology 18 is the rare Vedic word tan, which is often translated by 'self'. Tan in its turn is closely connected in meaning and use with tanu 'body', 'self', e.g. in R. V. VI. 49.13: raya madema tanya tană ca 'may we, by ourselves, rejoice in wealth'. Tanu 'body' was also used as a reflexive in Vedic, but this function was later in Sanskrit reserved evclusively for ätman. There is however evidence that at a considerably later date tanu 'body' was still used as a reflexive. This may not be a survival of Vedic usage and may easily have been an independent innovation, as the two meanings are often associated and words for 'body' are used intermittently in many languages for 'self', as for instance corps 'body' is used in Old French. This use of the word tanu as a reflexive with the meaning of 'self' seems to have been characteristic of the north-west of India. The first evidence of it for post-Vedic times appears in the Kharosthi documents from Chinese Turkestan where Burrow 19 has found it used in a typical possessive manner: tuo sothamga Lpipeya tanu gothade vyosisasi 'you, sothamga Lpipeya, shall pay it from your own farm'. The possessive meaning is also found in the adjective tanuvaga 'belonging to the self. This word figures also in the North-Western Prakrit inscriptions (in the Taxila scroll) as tanuvaka and is clearly. formed from tanu with the addition of the suffix -alca, on the same model as Middle Indo-Aryan and popular Sanskrit asmat-santaka 'our own' 20 The word tanu also survives with the meaning of 'self' in the modern Dardic languages and is for instance quoted for Torwali by Grierson.21 Grierson wished to derive this Torwali word tanu 'self' from Sanskrit atman, but this etymology was contradicted by Turner and later by Burrow. 10 Turner quotes further from Dardie: 18. F. Edgerton, "The Indo-European Semivowels", Language, 19, 1943, p. 116; also Mayrhofer, op. cit., s.v. tán. 19. T. Burrow, The Language of the Kharosthi Documents from Chinese Turkestan, Cambridge, 1937, p. 37. 20. J. Wackernagel, op. cit., p. 144. The preservation of the u before the suffix is probably due to the persistence of this vowel in N. W. Prakrit even when this is against the normal rules of internal Sandhi. e.g. bakuye baharah in the Kharosthi Inscriptions from Chinese Turkestan. 21. G. A. Grierson, Torwali, London, 1929, p. 55-56. 22. R. L. Turner, A Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language, London, 1981, s.v. tan.. -94 Nos. 3 & 4] NOTES ON TWO POSTPOSITIONS OF INDO-ARYAN Tirahi tänu 'own'; Pashai tānik 'self'; Khōwär tan, Gärvi tani 'own'; Maiya tam 'self'. These examples show the very clear connection that exists between the word tanu 'self' and the possessive reflexive adjective 'one's own' in these dialects. Torwali for instance has both tanu 'self' and a possessive tanu 'one's own'. This brings to mind the likelihood that the Apabhramsa tanaya 'own' was also connected in some way with the word tanu 'body', 'self'. There are signs that in Prakrit and Apabhramsa the concrete meaning of 'body' was taken over more and more by sarira, kaya and deha. This was only a temporary feature, since, as indicated by Turner, in modern Gujarati, Hindi and Nepali tan 'body' from Sanskrit tanu reappears as a learned borrowing with the original dental n and with its Sanskrit meaning. There are some cases in Apabhramsa where tanu clearly maintains its concrete meaning,23 but it is never as concrete as sarira < Sanskrit sarira 'body', and can often be translated by 'person' e.g. in the Pahuḍadohä: annu ma janahi appanau gharu pariyanu tanu itthu 'one's house, one's family and one's beloved own person know them to be something other, not the soul' (v. 9.), but sarirayaham sangu kari 'being attached to the body' (v. 102). In fact tapu seems throughout the major Prakrit and Apabhramsa dialects to occupy a place midway in meaning between the derivatives of atman 'self', 'soul' and of sarira, kaya and deha 'body'. Hence an adjective derived from it was eminently suited to be an emphatic possessive postposition meaning 'one's own', 'personal'. 88 The obvious difficulty in deriving tapaya 'own' from tanu 'body', person' is in the form. A derivative in -aya arising from a noun in -u may seem surprising, but there are reasons why this is quite feasible. The nouns in -u and -, particularly those that were feminine in Sanskrit, as was tanu, comprised a comparatively small number and were therefore liable to changes from an early date. In Prakrit the two types, those with short -u and those with long-ū were amalgamated. Apart from a few isolated formations such as ajju (from äryä under the influence of ávaáru 'mother in law'), this type of noun was not on the increase. There was a tendency particularly in Apabhramsa for these -u nouns to add the pleonastic -ka > -ya suffix and to join the more usual type of feminine declension in -a.24 Tanu 'person', 'body' was not one of the words so treated in Prakrit and Apabhramsa. On account of its meaning it was generally found at the end of possessive compounds in the nominative or vocative or at the beginning of other compounds and was therefore not often de 23. It is probable for instance that tanuhei, a word of doubtful interpretation, which occurs in the Paumacariu, ed. Bhayani, vol. I, 8.5.3. represents tanu-bhedin "body-splitting". 24. G. V. Tagare, Historical Grammar of Apabhramsa, Poona, 1948, p. 178. -95

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