[Advaita-l] RE: logic and Shastra

Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com
Tue Jun 28 17:32:36 CDT 2005


In general most words have one udaatta and that is *fixed*. For aatman
I believe it is aatma'n, i.e., ma is udaataa. When combining with
other words, the various syllables will take on anudaatta, pracaya or
svarita based on the the surrounding words and sandhi/etc changes. So
svara changes cannot indicate any differences in the meaning of
aatman. It is rather fixed by other considerations. We cannot change
the udaatta position to get different meanings for a word.

The indrashatru example (the mythical fight between tvaShTA and indra)
is not exactly correct in this case. The story in short is that
tvaShTr placed the udaatta on the wrong syllable in "indrashatru" and
indra ended up killing vR^itra instead of the vice-versa. For
bahuvR^Ihi-s the udaatta is on the first word and for tatpuruShas it
is on the second. Since tvaShTa put the udaatta in the wrong place,
the emphasis shifted to indra instead of vR^itra.

Rama

On 6/28/05, Ravisankar Mayavaram <abhayambika at gmail.com> wrote:
> When I said "it is possible to create such nuance with swara-s", what
> I meant is that spoken word is capable of creating such nuances. I did
> not have a specific example for AtmA. But what I thought was, if some
> one was keen on differentiating, they could have done by say having :
> 
> A) A in udAtta and tmA in swarita
> B) A in udAtta and tmA in anudAtta
> 
> and establish a convention that #A is brahman  and #b is jIvA.
> 
> It is also known that the meaning of shruti with the change of swara-s
> due to difference in emphasis as in story of tvasta and indra.
> 
>  Unlike languages like Tamil, or  Hindi, presence of swara-s in shruti
> is makes it capable to presenting such nuances. But whether in this
> context, whether there is a specific usage I do not know. And I could
> be totally wrong on this, if so, my apologies for wasting your time.
> 
> 
> Ravi
> 
> 
> 
> On 6/28/05, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Regarding the word AtmA as self and Self,
> >
> > >
> > >But it is possible to bring such nuances in Sruti through the use of
> > >svara-s.
> > >
> >
> > I have been reflecting on this over the last few days, and am unable to see
> > how the svara-s in veda chanting bear on this issue. Could you clarify?
> >
> > Here is my problem. Take the taittirIya upanishat, for instance. There are
> > only two possible ways of reciting the word AtmA.
> >
> > One is as in the sentence, "anyo.(a)ntara AtmA ...mayaH", where "..." stands
> > for prANa etc, up to Ananda. Here AtmA is recited so that the first "A" is
> > at neutral pitch and the syllable "tmA" has a raised pitch.
> >
> > The other is as in the sentence "tasyaiSha eva shArIra AtmA". Here, the
> > first "A" is at a reduced pitch and "tmA" is at neutral pitch.
> >
> > Both kinds of svara usage apply for each of prANamaya, manomaya, viGYAnamaya
> > and Anandamaya. As far as I can see, it is not possible to correlate one
> > svara usage with the little self and the other with the big Self.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Vidyasankar
> >
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> 
> --
> --
> Ravi Mayavaram <abhayambika at gmail.com>
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