[Advaita-l] Pronunciation of brahma vahni jihvA and so on

Raghav Kumar Dwivedula raghavkumar00 at gmail.com
Wed May 23 03:54:00 EDT 2018


Namaste
I have a doubt regarding the pronunciation of words having nasal and
semi-vowels preceded by a hakAra as in the words brahma, vahni, jihvA etc.

My understanding is that at least in vedic mantras, brahma is pronounced
bramhA and vahni is pronounced vanhi. In other words the nasal ( na ma ) or
semivowels (like va) precedes the ha-kAra.

Therefore it's wrong to say brah-ma and vah-ni and jih-vA . The right way
is to say bram-ha, van-hi, and jiv-ha.

There is pANiNiya shikShA which says  हकारं पञ्चमयैर्युक्तमन्तःस्थाभिश्च
संयुतम्  औरस्यं तं विजानीयात्कण्ठ्यमाहुरसंयुतम्  ।
which i am told , explicitly states the rule. But there seems to be some
ambiguity about the word aurasyaM in the above rule and how to apply it in
our context.

what exactly does it mean in this context?

I request any member who has knowledge of this to kindly share their
understanding.

Om
Raghav


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