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Pali Phāsu- and Dātta-

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

R. L. Turner
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Madame C. Caillat in a magistral article in Journal Asiatique, CCXLVIII, 1, 1960, 41–64, followed by a note in JA, CCXLIX, 4, 1961, 497–502, has in establishing the meaning of Pa.1 phāsu- confirmed its connexion with sprś. I question Mme. Caillat's exposition on one point only, namely the exact form of the original derivative of sprś lying behind Pa. phāsu-. Like the previous scholars whom she quotes—Kern, Hoernle, Pischel, and Schwarzwald—she assumes the original form to have been *sparśu-, the resultant *phassu- becoming phāsu-, although recognizing that examples of such a change in Pali are rare; and for most of these an alternative explanation will be offered below. Nevertheless in Prakrit and, according to Pischel (Gr. Pk., § 62), with special frequency in Ardhamāgadhi the first geminate to be shortened with lengthening of a previous vowel was -ss- (Turner, BSOAS, XXXIII, 1,1970,171). The Jaina texts in Ardhamāgadhī have both phāsaī ∽ Pa. phassati < *sparśati and phāsuya- ∽ Pa. phāsu(ka)-; and it is tempting to see the saffle origin for ā in both Ardhamāgadhī words phāsai and phāsuya-. But the existence of Pa. phāsu(ka)- invites the assumption of another origin than spass- both for it and Pk.amg. phāsuya-, for according to Mme. Caillat (JA, 1960,47) the antiquity of Pa. phāsu- is assured by the occurrence of aphāsu- in the Pātimokkha as well as by phāsu- in the Aśokan Calcutta-Bairāt Minor Rock Edict.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , June 1973 , pp. 424 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1973

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References

1 All abbreviations (apart from those for books and journals) are as listed in my Comparative dictionary of the Indo-Aryan languages (CDIAL).

2 Turner, , Some problems of sound-change in Indo-Aryan, Poona, 1960, 25–7Google Scholar, and TPS, 1937, 8–10.

3 Morgen stierne also referred to dātta- without comment in his article on the word for ‘sickle’ in Modern Indo-Aryan and Iranian languages (Gōteborgs Hōgskolas Arsskrift XXXVI, 3, 1930, 63)Google Scholar.

4 Chatterji's derivation (ODBL, 255, n.) < dātŕ- ‘mower’ (approved by Morgenstierne, loc. cit.) is unnecessary and indeed not very probable, for, apart from the meaning, none of the stems in -tr- recorded in CDIAL (for list see CDIAL. Phonetic analysis, 121) indicate replacement of nominative -tā by a MIA.-ti(h).

5 But if Chatterji's assumption (loc. cit.) that Santali datr m, Mundārī datrom ‘sickle’ were borrowed from dātram is correct, it must have been at a time when ātr was still unchanged and in a dialect area which the present location of these languages suggests might have been the Eastern.

6 dātir lavanārthe prācyesu dātram udīcyesu: repeated by Patañjali, Mahābhāsya 1.1.1, as noted byDanielsson, , ZDMG, XXXVII, 1883, 39Google Scholar, and Charpentier, , Ada Or., VII, 1929, 190Google Scholar. This dāti- is not recorded in Böhtlingk and Both and Monier-Williams has a reference only to its inclusion in Galanos's Sanskrit dictionary.