[Advaita-l] Re: Bodhaayanokta Mahaanyaasam Sanskrit pdf Text Available

Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com
Fri Jun 9 14:37:18 CDT 2006


Thanks to Ajit Krishnan and Siva Senani Nori for pointing out typos in
the document by private email. I am in the process of editing and will
upload the corrected document in a few days.

I was horrified at the number of mistakes I had made in the puruSha
suuktam which I know by-heart. I didn't bother to check it
(over-confidence).

The sections I have checked thoroughly are the raudrii-kara.nam,
aatma-raxa, prati-puuruSha, apratiratham and tvamgne-rudro, since I
was trying to memorize them. Not that there won't be errors lurking
there. The rest of the stuff I have not looked at more than once. I'd
be especially grateful if someone can go through the shiva-saGkalpa
section.

Both Ajit and Senani has asked me the meaning of the % symbols in the
document. I am mailing the answers to the list so that it might be
useful.

The % sign is an adaptation from the symbol used by Pandits Ganesh
Dravid and Krishnamurti Sastrigal in their monumental 2 volume
publication of the kR^ishhNa yajur veda in devanaagarii lipi. They use
the mathematical division sign. The reason is as follows: In most of
the typesetting software, support for samyutaaxara is limited [1]. In
the old grantha texts, when a free-standing consonant like r or n was
found, it *meant* something. For example, a free-standing r stands for
svarabhakti. In sahasra-shiirShaa puruSha.h, the r in shiirShaa turns
into svarabhakti as per the yaju.h praatishaakhya [2]. I can't discuss
in detail the extremely interesting svarabhakti phenomenon. Suffice it
to say the actual process of when r (and also l) turns into
svarabhakti is quite different from what just the praatishaakhya says.
What is actually followed in practice is a superset of what is
described there. It is possible that it is defined in the
vyaasa-shixaa.

The % sign after n means that n is not doubled and there is a *pause*
which is roughly half the time which you pause between two padas.

The khSh instead of kSh is also due to prAtishAkhya rules. In fact,
grantha texts have a samyutaaxara for khSh also. Note that in normal
Sanskrit (vedic or classical) the combination khSh does not occur at
all.

There are double n's because the praatishaakhya demands it in certain places.

I have a half-written article on the praatishaakhya which I hope to
complete within a few months. So more details in that!

Finally Senani asked me about my usage of "caveat emptor", meaning
buyer beware. The document is indeed freely downloadable, it was a
slight misuse of terminology on my part.

------------------

[1] The best (and complete) samyutaaxara support for normal Sanskrit
is from Wikners package. Still it does not support the prAtishaakhya
mandated samyutaaxaras like khSh. Unfortunately when I started out, I
started using Baraha and figured out how to get proper pdf files using
Wikners package only later. By then it was too late. I had used
"Baraha Direct" and created a word document and it was not easy
converting that to Wikners skt format. Anyway, I have uploaded the
yajur-veda rudra-suuktam using Wikners package today. You can see the
quality difference in samyutaaxara support!

[2] This particular svarabhakti at least does not happen in the R^ig
veda (I heard a tape of the R^ig puruSha suuktam). Not sure if
svarabhakti happens at all in R^ig veda.

Rama

On 6/8/06, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear List Members,
>
> I have uploaded a pdf file with the Mahaanyaasam at
>
> http://www.geocities.com/balasr
>

[ ... ]

> This is a small beginning to transcribing important mantras available
> only in grantha without many errors! I would greatly appreciate any
> feedback regarding errors in the document!



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