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REVIEWS
71
a form of the verb khayati (kşayati) 'to destroy, etc.,' with ūsava, and in fact it is possible to derive chetvä from Vksi. As is well known in the western dialect of the inscriptions of Asoka Skt. kş is represented as ch. Hence in that dialect we can get a gerund chetpă from ksayati.24 The Pāli correspondent of this western chetpā would be chetvā (or chetTāna) which occurs in our verse. In chetvā āsavāni 'having destroyed the i savas', therefore, the former is not to be confused with chetvā, the gerund from Vchida. Not realising this but feeling at the same time that chetva from Vchida 'to cut off' does not go well with asava, the Burmese scholars made an unsuccessful attempt to mend the matter by transposing the words asavāni and alayani and reading the line as chetvà ălayāni āsavāni.25
Against the proposed derivation of chetvā from kşi in chetvu usavāni it cannot be argued that sometimes we get the expressions sotari chetvā or chinnasota where sota <srótus also means 'a stream or flood' and where chinna and hence chetvā have undoubtedly to be derived from Vchida. For, in these cases V'chida does not mean 'to cut off or to destroy', as it has been erroneously assumed, but it means 'to cut across i.e., to cross over, to go beyond, etc. This is made perfectly clear by a passage in the Majjhimanikāya 1.225-26 where it is said about a cowherd who successfully carried his herd across the current of the river Ganges as-- .... vassänar pacchime māse suradasamaye . . . . . . . . titthen' eva gavo patäresi uttaran tiran.....te tiriyam Gangāya sotan chet vā sotthină pār a agamans 4. "In the last month of the rainy season, in autumn, he carried his cows to the other shore with the help of a ford. They having crossed the current of the river Ganges safely reached the opposite shore." Here chetvā cannot mean 'having destroyed the stream, etc. Obviously the same meaning of Vchida 'to cross over is also intended when on the basis of the above illustration it is told to the assembly
24. For the treatment ks > kh and ch in Pāli cf. GEIGER $ 56. The eastern counterpart of the western chetpa would be khettu,
25. This seems to be the real ground for the transposition of the words and not, as LUEDERS observes, while in the verse ariya and älaya are brought into relationship by a play on words. cf. "In unserer Strophe wird ariyo mit alayāni, den Lüsten, die der ariya vernichtet hat, in Verbindung gebracht. Dass es darauf ankommt, haben die birmanischen Gelehrten erkannt, und aus diesem Grunde ist in den birmanischen Handschriften alayāni vor åsavāni gestellt worden." The Mahāvastu translator (I11.400.3f.) also seems to have felt the difficulty in connecting chetvit (from Vchid) with äsavāni and älayani and hence he tried to get over it by substituting hitvå for chetvā and also adding bandhanani as a gloss to āsavāni and älayāni (p. 75, f.n. 1). cf. hitvå ålayāni āsavāni bandhanāni ativytto neti. It may be added that the regular BHS gerund from Vhā 'to abandon' would be jahitvå, cf. EDCERTON, Language 13.117 (1937).
Madhu Vidyā/594
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