Brajabuli, Vrajävali and Maithili 311 R.K
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Sauhrdyamaligalam Sauhrdyamangalam Studies in Honour of Siegfried Lienhard on his 70th Birthday Edited by Mirja Juntunen, William L. Smith, Carl Suneson The Association of Oriental Studies Stockholm Siegfried Lienhard Printed with financial support from Konung Gustav VI Adolfs Fondför Svensk Kultur Kungl Patriotiska Sällskapet Contents Längmanska Kultuifonden Published by the Association of Oriental Studies, Stockholm Editors' Preface 1 MATS LINDBERG Llnahrt 3 NALINI BALBIR Formes et usages de la concatenation en prakrit 5 HEINZ BECHERT Zur Kontroverse um die Aoristformen im Päli 27 ERNEST BENDER Na(aräja Viparyasta 37 PER-ARNE BERGLIE Tue Brahman Who Tapped on the Skulls of the Dead 41 GIULIANO BOCCALI Tendencies in the Origins of Classical Kävya 55 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA OSCARBOTTO LIBRARIES Corpus Juris Sanscriticum: Stato dei Lavori 69 © the authors COLETTE CAILLAT Photograph of Siegfried Lienhard: Mia Äkermark Le vrai brahmane, etre "inoffensif', mähm:ze avlhannü, Printed by Graphie Systems, Stockholm 1995 Süyaga<Ja 1.2.2.5 71 ISBN 91-970854-4-B RN. DANDEKAR Soma is not Fly-agaric 81 ERIK afEDHOLM Dhätuprasäda 91 INGEMAR GRANDIN CARL SUNESON Modernization and Revival in a Newar Tradition: The Songs of On the Term vämalokäyatika Pound in Two Central Asian MSS of the Ram Krishna Duwal 117 SaddharmapuJJtfarfkasiitra and its Chinese Interpretation 343 MINORUHARA ALBRECHT WEZLER A Note on the Whiteness of Laughter 141 Erotische Vexierbilder. Oder: Mit welchen 'Types of Ambiguity' muß man im Kävya rechnen? 361 J.W. deJONG Asita et Naradatta 161 AKIRA YUY AMA Classifying Indic Loanwords in J apanese 381 POLKE JOSEPHSON Zara8ustra' s Authority 17 5 Siegfried Lienhard: Curriculum vitce 395 BERNHARD KÖLVER The Publications of Siegfried Lienhard: Poems within Poems: SikhariJJfS in Amaru 189 A Bibliography Compiled by Mirja Juntunen 398 WALTERH. MAURER Foreshadowings of Transmigration in the f!.gveda 207 ROQUE MESQUITA Der Apavarga-Begriff bei Sridhara. Eine vedäntische Erlösungslehre? 215 GERHARD OBERHAMMER Bemerkungen zur Transzendenz des Brahma bei Sailkara 259 CLAUSOETKE Buddhadeva' s Views on Present, Past and Future 267 OLE HOLTEN PIND Päli and the Päli Grammarians: Tue Methodology ofthe Päli Grammarians 281 IRMA PIOVANO A propos of Some Minor Texts on Social and Religions Law 299 R.K.SHARMA Primary Derivatives with Tempora! Connotations 305 W.L.SMITH Brajabuli, Vrajävali and Maithili 311 R.K. Sharma the philosophical concept of time. That is why he spells out time (kala) also in the long !ist of items which are not tobe grammatically described (asisya) cf. 1.2.53-57 (tad asieyam. - kiilopasarjane ca tulyam). 15. He suggests general directions of the present, the past of today and W.L. SMITH yesterdays (adyatana and anadyatana) visible and invisible (aparokea and Stockholm parokea) and so the future of today and tomorrows (adyatana and an adyatana). But he is perhaps more specific about the central syntactical relationships (kiirakas) involved in the primary derivative formations. Brajabuli, Vrajävali and Maithili Bibliography . The literary idiom variably known as Brajabuli, Brajboli and Vrajävall Nyäsa-padamaiijarf-sahitä Käsikävrttilj, ed. by Shree Narayan Mishra, 6 vols., Varanasi (among other spellings) was füst described by Sir George Grierson in his 1985. Jntroduction to the Maithill Language of North Bihär in the following unflattering terms: "(the Maithili poet Vidyäpati)", he writes" was the first Pataiijali's Vyäkara~a Mahäbhä~yam with Pradipa, Uddyota, Sabdakaustubha (on [ ... ] of the singers who [ ... ] wrote in the language of the people; and his Ähnikas V-IX only) and Räjalakshmi commentary ( on Navähnikas only ), by Guru Prasad (songs) soon became exceedingly popular. They became great favorites of Shastri, Varanasi 1938. [ ... ] the Vaishl).ava reformer [ ... ] Chaitanya, and through him, songs proporting to be by Vidyäpati have become as weil known in Bangäli The A~(ädhyäyf of Pä~ini, ed and tr. by Sri§a Chandra Vasu, 2 vols., repr. Delhi 1988. households as the Bible is in an English one. And now a curious circumstance arose, - unparalleled I believe in the history of literature (my italics). To a The Siddhänta Kaumudi of Bha{!ojidik~ita, ed. and tr. by Srlsa Chandra Vasu, 2 vols., Bangäli, Vidyäpati wrote in a difficult and strange, though cognate language, repr., Delhi 1982. and his words were hard 'to be understanded of the people': so at first a few of his hynms were twisted and contorted, !engthened out and curtailed, R.K. Shanna, Pä(lini on linguistic description, JAOS 109.4 (1989), pp. 635-637. in the procrustean bed of the Bangäli language and meter, into a kind of bastard language neither Bangäli nor Maithilf (II p. 34)". lt is this "bastard language" which is now generally known as Brajabuli. Around forty years later Suniti Kumar Chatterji expresses a sirni!ar opinion in his Origin and Development of Bengali; Vidyäpati' s poems, he writes, "exerted an enormous influence on Vai~l).ava poets in Bengal" [ ... ] "(his poems) were admired and imitated by Bengali poets from the 16th century downwards, and the attempts of the people of Bengal to preserve the Maithill language, without studying it properly, led to the development of a curious poetic jargon, a mixed Maithilf and Bengali with a few Western Hindi forms (my italics), which was widely used in Bengal in composing poems on Rädhä and Kr~IJ.a. This mixed dialect came to be called 'brajabuli', or the speech of Vraja, from the fact that the poems composed in it described Kr~IJ.a' s early life and his love with Rädhä which had for its scene the Vraja 310 311 W.L. Smith Brajabuli, Vrajävalf and Maithili district, round about Brindävan, near Mathurä. This 'Braja-buli' is of course 1504 and 1532. lt was introduced to Assam by Sailkaradeva (1449-before entirely different from the Western Hindi dialect, called 'Braj-bhäkhä'; 1559) founder of the Vai~l).ava sect officially known as Eka-forai:za-niima which is current round Mathurä (I p.103)". Not long afterwards the literature dharma, "The Religion of the Sole Refuge of the Name". Sailkaradeva of this "curious poetic jargon" became the subject of Sukumar Sen's A wrote both lyrics and plays in Brajabuli or Vrajävali, the designation Assamese History of Brajabuli Literature, perhaps the most quoted authority on the scholars prefer in order to distinguish it from its Bengali counterpart; in subject. "Brajabuli'', Sen writes in the first sentence of this work, "is a accordance with this usage the Assamese variant of Brajabuli will henceforth Mischsprache. Maithili is the basic part, while Bengali, with oddments of be referred to as Vrajäva!I in this paper. Dates given for Sailkaradeva' s Hindi and Brajbhäkhä, form the superstructure. Brajabuli is really a dialect earliest Vrajäva!I composition vary. Thirty-four of his lyrics, known as - only it is literary - of Bengali, and in the sense that it had originated and Bargfts; "Great Songs", have survived and six one-act plays, called ahkfya developed in Bengal and had been cultivated exclusively by Bengali poets. niita. As dramas were performed in Vai~l).ava monasteries or sattras during Another form of Brajabuli almost indistinguishable from that of Bengal, investiture ceremonies, a !arge number of additional Vrajäva!I plays came originated in Assam at about the same time. But there the growth of Brajabuli tobe written during ensuing centuries. was extremely restricted, and as the Assamese speech is just a member of In Vrajavalf Bhii9iir Vyiikarai:z iiru Abhidhiin4 by Näräyal). Candra the [same] group od dialects [it] does not require any special treatment. Goswämi, abbot of a sattra in Mäjuli Assam, a work in the Indian linguistic [ ... ] What we have just said about the Assamese Brajabuli is applicable tradition, the abbot notes that scholars have not yet come to a conclusion as mutatis mutandis to the Brajabuli of Orissa [ ... ]Assamese Brajabuli seems to what kind of language Vrajävali is; some, he notes, say it is an Kunstsprache to have developed independently through direct connexion with Mithilä". (krtrim upabhiieii), others see it as a Mischsprache (mifra bhiieii) while a These off band and rather puzzeling remarks are all that Sen has to say on third opinion holds that it is an independent language (svatantra bhiieii). lt the linguistic nature of Brajabuli and all that he has to say on the voluminous is not difficult to understand such differences of opinion. Maithili, Assamese Brajabuli literature of Assam as well. 1 and Bengali all belong to the eastern branch of the lndo-Aryan language The first Bengali to write a Brajabuli lyric was a poet titled Yaforaj family and their medieval literary representatives possessed a considerable Khän, who mentions king Husain Shah, ruler of Bengal between 1493 and number of syntactic features in common. None of the three literary languages 1519, hence he must have written this first Brajabuli lyrics around the were standardized and all exhibited a !arge range of variant forms, and 2 beginning of the l 6th century • The great popularity of this idiom in these are not always registered in the available reference works. Tue Standard Bengal is, however, primarily due to the fact, as Grierson and Chatterji study of Maithili, Subhadra Jha's The Formation of the Maithilf Language 5 point out, that Caitanya (1486-1533), the founder of the Gauqiya Vai~Q.ava (FML ), does not record all the forms found in EM (and, it can be added, sect, was very fond of Vidyäpati's Kr~Q.a songs in Maithili. These were !acks an index), while Grierson's An Introduction to the Maithilf Language expropriated by the Bengali sect and were given a major role in its liturgy of North Bihar (IML) is based on Vidyäpati's poems collected from oral 3 after 1582 • This greatly encouraged the production of new songs which sources, and hence describes a later stage of the language.