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BRIEF COMMUNICATION
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There is a story in the Mahābhārata (3.80.124-127) which illustrates this point. This story of a holy place called Rudrakoți reads in van Buitenen's translation as follows: "(At Rudrakoți) once a crore of seers came diligently and joyfully, desirous of seeing the God. They approached, saying, "I shall be the first to see the bull-bannered God", and "I shall be the first to see him", as the story goes, O king. To prevent these seers of cultivated souls from becoming angry, the Lord of Yoga resorted to his yoga and created a crore of Rudras, one before each of the seers, so that each thought that he had seen him first”.
The lesson of the story is clear. If the God had not created a crore of Rudras, only one of the crore of seers gathered at Rudrakoți would have been successful in the competition and seen the God first - not all of them simultaneously.
Bronkhorst admits that there is no explicit statement in the Nirukta) to the effect that several etymologies of one word in one meaning can be simultaneously correct" (p. 7). Yet he avers that Yāska's procedure seems to indicate the same.
It seems to me that Yaska's procedure indicates just the opposite. His use of such expressions as vā, api vă, yad vā while giving alternative etymologies for a given word - and this is also true in the case of the word nighantu - clearly shows that in his opinion these are possible alternatives and it is presumed that a new suggestion cancels the ones made previously.
It is not clear why Bronkhorst ascribes the view regarding the simultaneous correctness of different derivations of a word to Yaska because in the case of the word anna, although its derivation from ad- is clear, Yaska has chosen to give an additional derivation from a-nam- (Nir. 3.9). It is true it is not easy to say why Yaska does this. It is possible that he did this under the influence of the Brāhmaṇas and the Upanişads where, occasionally, words of known derivation, have been derived in an 'unorthodox' way, witness, for example, the derivation of yajña in the Sat. Br. 3.9.4.23, Ch. Up. 4.16.1; 8.5.1, or of yajus in the Bț. Up. 5.13.2. Or one may say that Yáska did it because to him the derivation of anna from ad- was not that obvious since not all the roots which end ind yield similar formations, and even in the case of roots like bhid-, nud- etc. alternative forms are available. Be that as it may, a case like this cannot be an argument to in fer that Yäska believed in the simultaneous correctness of alternative derivations.
There seems to be only one way of understanding the simultaneous correctness of multiple derivations as of nighantu. We have to suppose that at one time the samamnāya was called nigantu, samahantu and samahartu and that in course of time all these designations assumed one identical form nighantu. Only this way the three derivations become simultaneously correct. Bronkhorst rightly discards this assumption, and yet says that Yaska believed in the simultaneous correctness of the alternative derivations. I must admit that I have not followed Bronkhorst when he says: "But if indeed the different derivations of one word in one meaning
Madhu Vidyā/159
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