[Advaita-l] mRtyunjaya mantra commentary

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

<On Sat, 20 Apr 2024, Raghav Kumar Dwivedula wrote:

> Thank you for the references of Uvatacharya and Mahidharacharya who say
> that, उर्वारुक has to be (by implication) some fruit like the jujube or badari
> (ber) which fall of by themselves when ripe (Since cucumbers as a matter of
> common experience do not fall off on their own.)  
>

Some additional comments on this.

My mother told me that when she was young they used to pick the bor that 
fell on the ground.  Some of the more intrepid girls would climb the trees 
to pick the fruit but you could also just shake it and they would fall if 
ripe.


I was wrong about the amarakoSha because I was looking at the completely 
wrong bit.  In fact in vanauShadhi varga 36 it gives karkandhUrbadarI kolI
as three synonyms.

The amarakoSha also has the word iravAru in vanauShadhi varga 155: 
iravAruH karkaTI striyau.  The rAmAshramI TikA adds uravAru and eravAru as 
synonyms and for the former says "iti shruteH" quoting the exact text we 
are discussing.  The author Swami RamAshrama (in his pUrvAshrama he was 
BhAnuji dikShita the brother of bhaTToji dikShita and father of nAgoji or 
nAgeSha bhaTTa) was a Mahratta Brahmana living in Kashi. He says all these 
words are synonyms for kAkaDI which in Marathi (and Gujarati) definitely 
means cucumber.

The western dictionaries mistakenly refer to karkandhU/badarI as Zizyphus 
jujuba.  This the Black Jujube which is cultivated in India now (and what 
the jujube candy is made from) but is actually indigenous to Arabia and 
Persia.  The Indian jujube or Bor/Ber is Zizyphus Mauritania a related 
species.  In fact there are many species of Jujube and many words for the 
different varieties in Sanskrit which are sometimes used indiscriminately. 
However it is far too much of a stretch to equate cucumber with jujube. 
One or the other must be correct but which one remains a mystery.

One more note, I was surprised to know this mantra is in the arANyaka 
portion of KYV.  Given its' importance in shrauta (as we discussed some 
time back[1]) I would have expected it to be in the saMhitA.

One more one more note! :-) Looking at that earlier post again, I see in 
footnote 4, I touch upon this subject and speculate that urvAru might mean 
gourd. This is probably wrong too though amarakoSha vanauShadhi varga 155 
immediately before the words for karkaTI gives kuShmANDa and karkAra as 
words meaning gourd.  I don't know if gourd easily separates from the 
stem.


[1]https://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2017-March/044786.html
-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>