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The late Professor Buehler, in his admirable work on Indian palæography, points to the name of an old species of writing, otherwise unknown, called the puṣkarasārī or pukkharasāriyā, and mentioned by Buddhist and Jain authors. He quite correctly connects this name with that of Puṣkara° or Pauṣkarasādi, an old authority mentioned by some grammarians, Āpastamba, etc. But as far as I am aware, neither Buehler nor any other scholar has gone further into the possible problems connected with this name. Becoming slightly interested in this question, I tried to make a collection of the few passages mentioning Pauṣkarasādi, which are, unfortunately, not very illuminating. Still it may not be wholly out of the way to present here the meagre outcome of my investigations.
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References
page 339 note 1 Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und Altertumslcunde, i, 11, p. 2.
page 339 note 2 Buehler has committed a slight mistake in saying that Pauṣkarasādi was mentioned by Pāṇini, cf. infra.
page 339 note 3 For a preliminary collection of passages concerning Pauṣkarasādi, cf. also Pischel, , Sitz. ber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss., 1903, p. 193 sqGoogle Scholar.
page 339 note 4 Some similar formations are enumerated already in vii, 3, 19; but they are, according to our present philological opinions, misjudged by the Hindu grammarians as, e.g., savhārda is not formed immediately from suhrd, etc.
page 340 note 1 Several of the words enumerated in this gaṇa are quite doubtful. Some instances are wrong too, as when para-strī is quoted as being the substrate of a derivation pāra-straiṇeya. For this is quite apparently derived from a word *para-straiṇa (on straiṇa, cf. A.V., iv, 34, 2; Pāṇ. iv, 1, 87, etc.).
page 340 note 2 Originally simply “sitting on a bullock (cow)”, cf. go-ṣādī (“sitting on cows”), the name of a bird, Vāj. Saṃh., xxiv, 24.
page 340 note 3 Puṣkara here means either “a blue lotus”, which is most probable, or “a white crane”. But I know of no mythical person riding on a crane (cf. however, the name Balākāśva, M.Bh., xii, 1717; xiii, 203). Of course, puskara as well as the synonym sārasa, “a white crane”, could also mean haṃsa. In that case puṣkarasādi would mean either “sitting in the lotus” (Brahmā) or “riding on the hamsa” (Brahmā).
page 339 note 4 The same rule is found in the Candravṛtti, ii, 4, 122.
page 339 note 5 Cf. Lévi, M. Sylvain, JA., 1912, 2, p. 501Google Scholar. There is also in Pāli pokkharasātaka, “a species of crane, Ardea Sibirica” (Jātaka, vi, p. 539), with which of. Skt. puskara-sada, “a certain bird” (Vāj. Sa). The words puṣkara-sāda and °sādi are related to each other in the same way as are go-sāda and go-sādi (Pāṇ. vi, 2, 41). However, Mahīdhara (Vāj. Saṃh., xxiv, 31) apparently read puṣkarasādin as he explains: puṣkarasādī puṣkare sīdatīti kamalabhakṣī pakṣiviśeṣaḥ.
page 341 note 1 Skt. Tārŭkṣya (cf. Weber, , Ind. Slud., i, 391Google Scholar).
page 341 note 2 The text has jappe with the v.l. jappe; however, the meaning must be that of jape.
page 341 note 3 Cf. Burnouf, , Introduction, pp. 205 sqq.Google Scholar; Kern, , Festgruss Both, p. 8Google Scholar.
page 341 note 4 Cf. Pischel, , Sitz. ber. Preusa. Akad. Wiss., 1903, pp. 193 sq., 744Google Scholar.
page 342 note 11 The instances, according to Whitney, would be pāpīyān śreyase and ādityān śmaśrubhiḥ (Taitt. Saṃh., i, 5, 7, 4, and v, 7, 12).
page 342 note 2 Personally I feel inclined to think that the whole thing is fairly simple. arvākgh hi is, of course, impossible, and only a conservative way of writing what ought properly to be arvagh hi. This again simply means to express a sort of aspiration before h, the same as before sibilants (cf. infra).
page 342 note 3 The discussion of this rule in JAOS., ix, pp. 281 sqq., is very lengthy and tedious, but ends in a non liquet.
page 342 note 4 This seems reasonable enough. But according to JAOS., ix, p. 285, Pauskarasadi also wanted to apply, in this case, the rule expressed in xiv, 1, and consequently to write kallppa, etc. This enormity is restricted by xiv, 3.
page 343 note 1 Cf. Weber, , Ind. Stud., xiii, 400. 423Google Scholar; Kielhorn, , IA., xvi, 104Google Scholar.
page 343 note 2 On questions connected with this phonetic rule, cf. e.g. Benfey, , Vollsl. Gramm., i, p. 26Google Scholar (cf. p. 38); Ascoli, , Kritische Studien, p. 260, n.Google Scholar; Whitney, , JAOS., vii, 404Google Scholar; ix, 298 sq.; Jacobi, , Zeitschr. f. vgl. Sprachf., xxv, 603 sq.Google Scholar; Kirste, , VOJ., iv, 44Google Scholar; Wackernagel, , Altind. Gramm., i, p. 132Google Scholar, and especially Johansson, , Shāhbāzgarhi, ii, p. 21 sqqGoogle Scholar.
page 343 note 3 Cf. Buehler, , SBE., ii, p. 70Google Scholar.
page 344 note 1 Cf. Buehler, I.c., ii, p. 87.
page 344 note 2 G.U.1 has the senseless reading kaṇvapuṣkarasādiḥ.
page 344 note 3 Cf. Buehler's, edition of the Ā pastambīya Dharmasūtra, p. 1 sqGoogle Scholar.
page 344 note 4 Cf. Buehler, , SBE., ii, pp. xvii, xxiii sq.Google Scholar; Winternitz, , Gesch. d. ind. Literatur, i, p. 238Google Scholar.
page 344 note 5 All the manuscripts read Pauṣkarasādiḥ, but the late Dr. Kirste introduced the reading Puṣkaṛa° with the remark “but see the comm.” What this means I am at a complete loss to understand. For not only does Mātṛdatta himself read Pauṣkara°, but he also expressively denounces Puṣkara° as being a false reading (apapāṭha), cf. Kirste's edition, p. 105. However, the Grantha MS. of Hiraṇyakeśin perused by Kirste after the publication of his text, undoubtedly reads Puṣkarasādi (cf. Sitz. ber. Wiener Akad. Wiss., 1891, 4, p. 7).
page 345 note 1 JASB., vol. Ixii, i (1893), p. 9 sqqGoogle Scholar. Cf. Winternitz, , Gesch. d. ind. Literatur, iii, p. 557Google Scholar.
page 345 note 2 Cf. Liebich, , Zur Einführung in die indische einheimische Sprachwissenschaft, ii, p. 47Google Scholar; Winternitz, , Gesch. d. ind. Literatur, iii, p. 382, n. 1Google Scholar.
page 345 note 3 Cf. Liebich, I.c., p. 47.
page 345 note 4 Cf. Zeitschr, . f. Indologie u. Iranistik., ii, 147 sqqGoogle Scholar.
page 346 note 1 The North-Western Provinces may first have been conquered by Cyrus, and then reconquered by Darius shortly after 520 B.C. (Cf. Zeitschr, . f. Indologie u. Iranistik, ii, 147 sqqGoogle Scholar.)
page 346 note 2 Cf. Festgabe H. Jacobi, p. 277, n. 4; BSOS., iv, 343. It is, of course, not absolutely sure that Kātyāyana's yavanānī lipyām likewise applies to Panini.
page 347 note 1 It is, unfortunately, unknown to me at what time Brahmā was first thought of as being born from and sitting in the lotus. The epithets such as abjaja, padmayoni, etc., and the myth itself do not seem to belong to the earliest parts of the epics. Cf. Hopkins, , Epic Mythology, p. 191Google Scholar. However, in the Brāhmaṇas the Creator (Pṛajāpati) is seated on a lotus-leaf; and this idea does not seem to be foreign even to the aborigines of India (cf. JRAS., 1926, p. 129).
page 347 note 2 It must be remembered that the name brāhmī (lipi) is, as far as we know, a rather late one. The oldest works which are acquainted with it seem to me to be the Lalita Vistara and the Mahāvastu, which may well belong to one of the first centuries of our era (cf. Winternitz, , Gesch. d. ind. Literatur, ii, 193, 199 sq.Google Scholar). But it may be remembered that the enumerations of different alphabets also contain that of the Hūnas, and may be considerably much younger. The Jain works which mention the brāhmī are of quite uncertain date.
page 347 note 3 Cf. Buehler, I.c., p. 18 sq.
page 348 note 1 Cf. Müller, W. Max, Orient. Lit. Zeit., 1912Google Scholar, col. 541 sqq., who also pleads for a South Arabian origin of the Indian alphabets, but whose opinions are otherwise rather confuse.
page 348 note 2 On this place, cf. JRAS., 1927, p. 111 sqq.
page 348 note 3 L.c, p. 18.