________________
ANALYSIS OF MEANING
.
85
theoretically two possibilities present themselves : (1) nom. sg. of ekavit, and (2) nom. sg. of ekavidh. The available lexicons have accepted only the stem ekavit and assigned it the meaning' being one, simple'. But if we examine the contexts in which the word appears, we notice that it does not quite fit in all of them. We are forced to admit more than one word and more than one meaning.
The stem ekavyt with the meaning 'single' is quite in order e. g. in the Sat. Br. 3. 6. 3. 14 where it occurs in connection with the spreading of the sacrificial grass. We read : grhitvá prastaram ekavid barhíh strnāti" having taken the prastara, he spreads the altar-grass in a single layer" (Eggeling). The commentator on the Kåty. Sr. S. 8.2.25 and 8.7.12 where the word occurs in a similar context also explains ekavrtekadhātu 'having one layer,' i. e. the grass is spread only once ( ekavāram ).
But the same is not true when the word occurs again in the Sat. Br. 13. 2. 1. 5 in a different context. When the food offerings are offered to cardinal numbers like eka, dvi, tri, etc. the numbers are successively raised by one. The word ekavit occurs as an adjective of svarga while attempting to justify this procedure of raising the numbers by one. We read: ékasmai sváha dvábhyam sváha ...... ity anuparvám juhoti/ ...... ékottarā juhoti / ekavid vai svargó lokah. Here we cannot accept Eggeling's translation “He performs oblations successively increasing by one, for single indeed, is heaven." This does not bring out the relationship between ekotlaratva of the offerings and ekavrt nature of the heaven. This can be undestood properly only if we interpret ekavit as nom. sg. of ekavidh 'rising by one' (ekena vardhate). The numbers are raised successively by one because the svarga loka also, when thought of as having three or seven layers, successively rises by one.
The context thus forces us to admit one more word ekavidh rising by one'
Even in the passages where the stem ekavit is quite clear, its analysis, and consequently its meaning, is not always quite certain. Although the difficulty has not been noted by the lexicons, it has been already mentioned in the Alt. Gr. II, 2 p. 43. It is mentioned there that sometimes it is difficult to decide whether the second part of the compound, -vít, is to be understood as the root noun vit from V urt 'to be, to exist' or as the root noun -vr-t from Vur 'to cover.' It is
Madhu Vidya/389
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
