The Journal of the American Oriental Society articles from April 2002

The Journal of the American Oriental Society archives from April 2002

Stanley Insler.(scholar of Indic and Iranian studies)(Biography)
April 1, 2002... Stanley Insler was born in New York City, as he surely had to have been, for he shares the city's best characteristics: cosmopolitan, resilient, creative. This year he will celebrate his 65th birthday, and that occasion has given us, his...

Bibliography of Stanley Insler.(Avestan, Sanskrit, Vedic studies)(Bibliography)
April 1, 2002... 1962: "Avestan daxs-." Indogermanische Forschungen (IF) 67: 53-68. 1965: "Studien zum Awesta, I." IF 70: 14-24. 1966: "Vedic tvaya." IF 71: 221-35. 1967: "Sanskrit capala-." Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung (KZ) 81:...

The dark and deep underworld in the Veda.
April 1, 2002... IN EARLIER PUBLICATIONS I have discussed the concept of yonder world in the Rgvedasamhita (1994) and in the Atharvavedasamhita (1999a), as well as holes and pits (1999b) and distance (2000a), items which sometimes are associated with an...

The race of Mudgala and Mudgalani.(Rig Veda 10.102)
April 1, 2002... ACCORDING TO RGVEDA 10.102 (1) a man named Mudgala wins a race, even though his vehicle is a cart pulled by a bull, rather than a horse-drawn chariot, and even though his driver is his wife, Mudgalani. (2) Beyond this skeletal description, the...

The Old Indo-Aryan tense system.
April 1, 2002... 1. THE EARLY INDO-ARYAN TENSE SYSTEM as described by Panini includes three major past tense forms. According to Panini (see Cardona 1997: 149-50), the L-affixes lun, lan, and lit--respectively replaced by endings in what western grammarians...

Fluidity of early grammatical categories in Sanskrit.
April 1, 2002... OUR RELIANCE ON THE GRAMMATICAL TRADITIONS such as the one formulated in Panini's Astadhyayi often leads us to assume that grammatical categories are fully defined and are beyond confusion. However, a study of the Vedic padapatha and the...

How his srauta-fires save the life of an Ahitagni.
April 1, 2002... THE PITRMEDHASUTRAS DESCRIBE IN DETAIL how a deceased ahitagni is sent on his journey to yonder world. Cremation of the dead body is just one part of the process; the family and the village are likewise dealt with, so that after the unlucky...

Borderline beings: plant possibilities in early Buddhism.
April 1, 2002... THE QUESTION OF WHETHER PLANTS are considered living and sentient beings in Pali Buddhism is brought to the fore by early Buddhist teachings on non-violence. In discussions of the Patimokkha, the Vinaya makes clear that monks and nuns are not...

Rasa and katharsis: a comparative study, aided by several films.(Indian rasa aesthetic, Aristotelian katharsis)
April 1, 2002... For Stanley Insler... Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci A. INTRODUCTION THE GENERAL PROBLEM here considered is the old one of finding a vocabulary adequate to talk about Indian and Western, especially Greek, poetics. (1)...

The Yajnavalkya cycle in the Brhad Aranyaka Upanisad.(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2002... INTRODUCTION ANY ATTEMPT TO TRACE the textual testimony regarding the doctrine of karman and reincarnation in the early Upanisads must sooner or later recognize that there are two, apparently contradictory, traditions. The one that has...

An anagram in the Gathas: Yasna 51.4-5.(Zoroaster)(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2002... YASNA 51 IS A POEM ABOUT RULE, about dominion--about [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], in short. In the twenty-two verses of this hymn (which is both haiti and gatha), this word is found in seven verses (1, 2, 4, 6, 16, 18, and 21), with a...

The Vedic imperatives yodhi 'fight' and bodhi 'heed'.
April 1, 2002... IT WAS FROM READING one of Stanley Insler's stimulating articles nearly thirty years ago that I first came to appreciate the oddity of the Vedic 2nd sg. imperatives yodhi (: yudh- 'fight') and bodhi (: budh- 'awake, heed'). (1) In dedicating...

How the mole and mongoose got their names: Sanskrit akhu- and nakula-.
April 1, 2002... THE ETYMOLOGY OF THE SANSKRIT WORD FOR (supposedly) 'mole', akhu- (RV +), is unclear. There are two proposals in the scholarly literature: according to the more popular view, it is a derivative of the Sanskrit root ([LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE...

Responsion in the Rigveda.
April 1, 2002... [section]0. AMONG THE FORMS OF REPETITION found in the Rigveda, the most abstract is that of syntactic pattern. Where the repeated pattern is itself a construction rather than a set of appositional terms occupying the same syntactic rank, it is...

The Indo-Iranian word for 'shank, shin'.
April 1, 2002... Ein Spielmann zog einst des Weges daher, Da sah er ein Knochlein blitzen, Er hob es auf, als war's ein Rohr, Wollt' sich eine Flote d'raus schnitzen. G. Mahler, 'Das klagende Lied' 1. AVESTAN ASCUUA- 'SHANK' THIS...

Sanskrit sardigrdi-.
April 1, 2002... IT IS A GREAT PLEASURE to offer in honor of my good friend Stanley Insler the following modest contribution towards elucidating the prehistory of an obscure Sanskrit lexeme. The first appearance of sardigrdi- is in the (in)famous passage of the...

Nilakantha Caturdhara's Mantrakasikhanda.(text on interpretation of Vedic verses)
April 1, 2002... NILAKANTHA AND HIS WORKS WE (1) ALL USE NILAKANTHA CATURDHARA'S commentary on the Mahabharata, but what do we know about him? Who was he and when did he live, and where? What was going on in the intellectual world he inhabited, and in the...

Abhaksya and abhojya: an exploration in dietary language.(dharma literature of India)
April 1, 2002... IF THE WAY TO A PERSON'S HEART iS through the stomach, then the way to the soul of a civilization may be through its dietary practices. Examining the food habits of a people has been a staple among anthropologists, some of whom, like Mary...

Sura in the Paippalada Samhita of the Atharvaveda.(intoxicating beverage)
April 1, 2002... THERE ARE ONLY A FEW REFERENCES in the Rgveda (1) to sura an alcoholic beverage. The connection of sura and visa 'poison' is mentioned, as well as drtim suravato grhe 'the leather bag hanging in the house of the possessor of sura (1.191.10)....

Dasadasi.
April 1, 2002... INTRODUCTION THE DHARMASASTRAS DO NOT encourage anuloma marriages. (1) Yet they are concerned about the inheritance of sons born of marriages in which the wife's varna is lower than that of her husband. (2) To be sure, the higher the varna...

Sanskrit for civil servants 1806-1818.(Sanskrit instruction in Great Britain)
April 1, 2002... THE EARLY HISTORY OF SANSKRIT STUDIES in Great Britain contrasts sharply with that on the continent of Europe. The first chair of Sanskrit at a European university was not founded in Britain, as might have been expected of the country that had...

Kharosti and Brahmi.(early scripts of India)
April 1, 2002... THE EMERGENCE OF WRITING (1) IN INDIA and the relation between the two early scripts, Brahmi and Kharosti, have received new attention in the last several years. (2) A consensus has emerged that challenges Georg Buhler's theories that had...

Vedisch ksad.(text in German)
April 1, 2002... [LANGUAGE NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] KSAD- "SPEISEN VORLEGEN" bedeutet, zeigt eine Stelle wie AV 10,6,5. Dort wird von dem als Amulett dienenden Halsschmuck, der nach dem vorhergehenden Vers wie ein Gast in unserem Hause wohnen soll (grhe...

Adhrigu and drigu: on the semantics of an old Indo-Iranian word.
April 1, 2002... IN HIS LONG and characteristically thorough article, "Wortkundiche Beitrage zur Arischen (Indo-Iranischen) Kulturgeschichte und Welt-anschauung" (1958), W. Wust surveyed the many attempts that have been made to analyze and interpret the obscure...

When old is not old...: rv jaradasti-, jaradvisam, and the vulture Jaradgava.(Rig Veda)
April 1, 2002... JARADASTI- JARADASTI-, MEANING 'LONG LIVING', 'long-lived', or 'reaching old age', (2) appears in the verse of the Rgveda marriage hymn which accompanies the hand-taking ceremony: grbhnami te saubhagatvaya hastam maya patya...

Remarks on the temporal values of the Rig Vedic terms in -pitva-.(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2002... This contribution examines the Rig Vedic terms in -pitva- (abhipitva-, apapitva-, apitva-, prapitva-, and sapitva-) by considering both their distribution among the poetic families and the juxtapositions in which the terms are employed by the...

Pindar's Rigveda.(Greek and Vedic poetry)(Critical Essay)
April 1, 2002... THE COEDITOR OF THIS VOLUME once remarked that she never understood Pindar until she read the Rigveda. Herewith (by title nodding to Nagy 1990) I offer a few stylistic animadversions on both texts to the Jubilar, a sensitive observer, as a...