again, sanskrit Āścarya- 'wondrous

Again, Sanskrit Āścarya- 'Wondrous'Author(s): P. TedescoSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1965), pp. 86-88Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/597709 .

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AGAIN, SANSKRIT ASCARYA- 'WONDROUS '

P. TEDESCO YALE UNIVERSITY

1. IN THE LAST YEARS, 1961 and 1963, two new etymologies of Skt. is'carya- have been set forth, one by Kuiper, Indo-Iran. Journal, V, 136-145, the other by Thieme, KZ, LXXVIII, 104-111.

According to BThhtlingk-Roth, I, 721, (sicarya- occurs as adjective, with the meanings 'selten erscheinend, seltsam, wunderbar' in Pan. 6.1.147, Nir. 2.24 and 11.2, Katha Up. 2.7, Sak., Ragh., and Prab., and as substantive neuter, 'seltsame Erscheinung, Wunder,' is common since the Epics. Pdnini, 1. c., analyzes it as a + sAcar-, s-doublet of car-.

The word recurs in Pali as acchariya-, frequent since the Nikdyas, which is substantive and adjective (e. g. acchariya abbhut& dhammd 'strange and wonderful things'), but does not show the meaning 'rare.' A sporadic side form is acchera-, from transposed *acchayira-, e. g. Samy. and Pv. Prakrit (Sheth's Dict.) has accharia-, -rTa-, -rijja-, acchera-, and acchaara- (transposed from *acchara-[kc]a-?), and, with deaspiration, accaria-, -nia-, accara- (old form without y? cf. fn. 9, end), and acceara- (for acchera-a-?), all only subst. neu., ' vismay, camatkair; wonder, surprise.' From Modern Indic, Turner, Comp. Dict., no. 1464, quotes Kumaoni asaj 'surprise,' for expected *achaj, possibly by dissimilation of *ch with j(j).

2. An attempt at an Indo-European etymology was made by Osthoff, Arch. f. Rel.-Wiss., VIII (1905), 51 ff., who connected a-scarya- with ONorse skcars n. 'Ungeheuer,' skyrse n. ' ibles Vorzeichen' (supposedly with s-suffix), and, with lcw beside skw, Gk. teras 'Wunderzeichen,' farther Lith. keriui 'jemd. bezaubern,' and ultimately Skt. karoti-a vague comparative combination with little chance of truth; it is quoted by Walde- Pokorny, I, 518, Pokorny, p. 642, and Mayrhofer, p. 83.

Then, in 1954, Wackernagel-Debrunner, 11/2, 829, in a brief note tentatively suggested composi- tion of ah, an exclamation (but of joy or dis- pleasure, not astonishment), and -carya- n. 'action,' therefore, ' ein Tun, zu dem man ah ausruft,' an ' *ah-acting '-a very dubious idea.

Kuiper's approach (1. c.) is a modification of Wackernagel's: 1 instead of ath + carya-, he assumes a + *scarya-, the former again an exclamation, the latter a (palatalized) gerundive of kr-/skr-, karOti, 'something at which the sound at must be uttered''; in kr- he meets with Osthoff. But a as expression of astonishment, the palatalization in kir-, the (pre- supposed) transitive use of *a-skr- 'to make d AT

something,' generally the whole conception of 'wonder' as 'something at which one must make a '-all is entirely implausible.

3. Thieme's treatment (1. c.) is a reaction to Kuiper's. He first points out that dscarya- is originally an adjective, and that in its oldest at- testations, in PAnini, Yaska, and Katha Up., it means not 'wondrous,' but ' rare.' 2

This is clearest in Yaska. In Nir. 2.24: bahulam &sdm naighantukam vrttam, dscaryam iva pro- dhanyena, ascaryam is the opposite of bahulam ' frequent,' that is to say, it means ' rare.' Thieme translates: ' Hlufig ist das beiliufige Vorkommen dieser (nimlich der FlUsse) [im Rigveda], ver- gleichsweise selten ist ihr Vorkommen als Haupt- gegenstand eines Hymnus oder Verses.' The same opposition bahulam : ascaryam Nir. 11.2.

The Panini passage, 6.1.147 a-scaryam anitye, is less clear, because there is no context. It means at first 'ascarya- [is] for anitya-'; and since 6.1. 135 sut kdt pftrivah 'before kc, s is added' is to be supplied, we could say 'ascarya- for anitya- [also adds s before c].' But the sense of anitya- is fairly

I However, Kuiper seems in part to have misunder- stood Wackernagel. He did not attribute dscarya- the meaning 'the making of the exclamation CM' (which would be no 'marvel'), but 'a way of acting (-carya-) to which one reacts with the exclamation ah.' -But in another criticism of Wackernagel Kuiper (p. 138) is probably correct. It seems there never was an exclamation as, with s, but only ah, with h, independent of sandhi, and the sporadic cases of as before t are hyper- correct spellings. And if there was no as, there can of course have been no as-.

2 I saw this myself, when, long ago, I got interested in the word; but I could not come to a full understanding of the Yaska passage.

86



TEDEsco: Again, Sanskrit " Ascarya- " ' Wondrous'

certain: since nitya- is Panini's term for 'stiindig' (Thieme), 'constant, regular,' a-nitya- is 'nicht- stiindig' (Thieme), 'ungewbhnlich' (Biihtlingk), which comes very close to the 'rare' of Yaska.

In Katha Up. 2.7 c, d, dscarya- is somewhat ambiguous; but the base meaning here also is 'rare,' as Thieme says; the passage is:

dshcaryo vaktat kusalo 'sya labdhd dscaryo jiiatU kus'alanusistah.

I translate:

'Rare one who speaks him,3 able one who gets him;

rare one who knows him, instructed by the able.'

The majority of the translators render ascarya- by 'marvel' or 'marvelous'; so Deussen (p. 272) 'ein Wunder, wer ihn lehrt'; Renou (p. 10) 'mer- veille qui l'explique'; Radhakrishnan (p. 610) 'wondrous is he . . .' But Hertel (1922) 4 has 'selten,' Geldner (1928) 5 'eine Seltenheit,' and Otto (1936),6 beautifully, 'wunderselten.'

The translation 'a marvel' makes sense; as an overtone, this meaning is probably contained in ascarya-; but it is only an overtone; the funda- mental component, the indispensable logical mean- ilng, is 'rare.' Those who say 'marvel,' probably mostly did so, because they did not know that O.carya- also means 'rare.' This also applies to Geldner, who translates 'eine Seltenheit,' but adds in a footnote: 'Wdrtlich: ein Wunder.' 7

Thieme, therefore, is entirely right in contend- ing that the meaning in the oldest passages is 'rare.' But the etymology at which he arrives on

this basis, is not happy. Assuming, without sup- port and against common opinion (cf. Wacker- nagel, I, 140), that in straight phonetic development Ich before IE e, i, y was palatalized to c, he connects d-scarya- 'rare' (with fluctuation r/l) with sichal- 'to stumble,' as a gerundive 'something that one must stumble upon (to find it),' because it is too rare to be found by systematic seeking. But this idea is semantically so entirely implausible that it cannot be accepted.

4. Now many years ago I thought myself of an etymology of askcarya-. It could be a hyper-San- skritization of a Mid. Ind. *&ccharya- = Skt. *Ctpsarya- 'apsaric, fairylike' from apsar's-, later (since AV) apsard ,8 Pali and Pkt. acchar&-. The model for the transposition would be Mid. Ind. pacchd '"after' = Skt. pascl(t). Long vowel before consonant cluster was probably still generally pre- served in oldest Middle Indic, and in Indus-Indic survives to this day, cf. Asoka Girnar ndsti ' is not' and Sindhi dandu 'bullock' = Skt. denta- 'tamed (ox).' 'Apsaric, fairylike' would be a natural concept for ' wondrous'; there is nothing more wondrous than an Apsaras.9

I got the idea from a passage at the end of the fifth act of Sakuntala: dstcaryam, 'marvel,' ex- claims the crowd, when an APSARAS lifts Sakuntala up to the far-away APSARAS pool (apsaras- tirtham). When this occurred to me, I did not know yet that in the oldest passages jscarya- means 'rare.' As I began to examine them, I noticed it, became doubtful, and put the matter back.

5. But does the fact that the meaning of the oldest passages is ' rare,' really exclude the derivation of ascarya- from *jpsarya-? I do not think so. The pure meaning ' rare' in Yaska is indubi- table, and of course 'rare' can become 'wondrous.' 10 But just as well 'wondrous' can become

" The Atman. Die Weisheit der Upanischaden2, p. 53. Vedismus und Brahmanismus (in Bertholet, Re-

ligionsgeschichtliches Lesebuch, pt. 9), p. 160. 6 Die Katha-Upanishad, p. 17. 7 The interpretations of these lines differ considerably

also outside qscarya-. In my opinion, kugalo belongs with labdhd, and is predicate. Labdhd, although an overtone 'one who understands ' exists, is basically 'one who gets' (Rawson, Katha Up., p. 84, 'his attainer'), as labh- in 7a sravandydpi bahubhir yo na labhyah 'whom many cannot even get to hear.' Kugaldnugistah means ' [even when] instructed by the able' (so Radha- krishnan, 1. c.), and resumes 7b yrnvanto 'pi bahavo yam na vidyuh 'whom many may not understand, even when they hear of him.' I think, the author envisages at least three persons: first, the vakta, the prophet; second, the labdhli, who, able, can grasp the intimations of the vaktd; and third, the jiata, to whom the able one las, passed his knowledge on.

8On the basis of the nom. apsard(h). 9 There is also another Pali acchara-, of unclear origin,

which means 'the snapping of the fingers.' Strangely enough, the Pali grammarians derive acchariya- 'marvelous' from this acehard-, as 'that which is acehara- yogga-, i. e., worthy of the snapping of the fingers (in admiration) ' (Grit. Pali Diet.), which is rather daring, but not from the Apsaras-word. The PTS Diet. accepts their derivation, and on this basis already regards dgcarya- as a hyper-Sanskritism. - The strange Pkt. accara- and acchaara- from *accharaa- could represent *dpsara-, with a- instead of ya-suffix.

10 Germanic has a word for 'wondrous,' Go. sildaleiks, etc., which is a compound of the 'seldom '-word, OE



88 TEDESCO: Again, Sanskrit " Ascarya- " 'Wondrous'

'rare.' E.g., the aiscarya- of the Katha Up. passage, with its core meaning ' rare' and its overtone ' marvelous,' can be an original ' marvelous,' which has already predominantly become ' rare,' as well as an original 'rare,' which is beginning to shade over into 'marvelous.'

That 'rare' is attested earlier, does not prove that this meaning is older. The later meaning can show up first owing to special reasons.

From a general viewpoint, a change of 'wondrous' to 'rare' is more probable than the con- verse. 'Rarity' and 'frequency' are abstract ideas, which usually arise only later, and are then ex- pressed by words with originally concrete meanings. Another Sanskrit word for 'rare,' virala-, which occurs since MBh., originally means 'stand- ing thinly, sparse' (like trees), and so does Lat. rarus. The opposite, bahulh- 'frequent,' is originally 'thick'; so still RV, and Gk. pakhus. Lat. saepe 'often' is '*herded together,' cf. saepes 'enclosure.' A priori, therefore, it is likely that in Jscarya- also the meaning 'rare' is later than 'wondrous'; that it appears earlier, can be due to special circumstances.

*jpsarya- 'fairylike' probably had a long existence underground, before, in the fifth century B. C., it rose, as ascarya- 'unusual' and ' rare,' to the sur- face. '*Fairylike' first became 'wondrous,' and this, then, 'rare,' and in the sixth or fifth century probably both meanings were already fully developed. When, then, the rising grammarians needed a term for 'rare' (as opposed to 'frequent'), which the Vedic language seems not precisely to

have offered,"1 they adopted *accharya-, and at this occasion sanskritized it into tscarya-. For 'wondrous' there existed a common old Vedic word, adbhuta-, and that may be the reason why in this meaning, the older one, ascarya- appears in San- skrit only later-first, as Thieme (p. 110) shows, in Kdtyayana, third century B. C., who (ad Pan. 6.1.147) corrects Panini's ascaryam anitye to ds&caryam adbhute. (In the Sakuntald passage, the crowd's cry dscaryam is echoed by the Purohita with adbhutamn khalu samvrttam 'a wonder, in- deed, has happened': he still uses the Vedic word.)

'Rare' does not coexist with 'wondrous' in ascarya-: when 'wondrous' arises, 'rare' has dis- appeared. And Middle Indic does not know it. In this view, ' rare ' would represent a side line of the development: although attested earlier, it would be the later meaning, having arisen from 'wondrous'; but after a brief existence, 'rare' disappears again, and 'wondrous' alone survives. Perhaps the meaning 'rare' was taken over by virala-.

Exactly what Pdnini meant when he ascribed ascarya- inserted s (as, e. g., pariskrta- 'adorned'), is a problem which I am not equipped to investi- gate. Of course one would have to consider all his cases. Perhaps Pdnini did not intend to imply identity with a-car- 'to approach,' nor consider the semantic relation, but simply meant: in a structure ds'car-, a is preverb, and root-initial sc- is an alter- nant of c-, as in RV su-s'cardrd- 'shining well' beside candrd- 'shining' (Pan. 6.1. 151).

seldan, etc. (not attested in Gothic), and originally means '*of rare form.' The base meaning of Gmc. *selda- is uncertain; it has no etymology.

"An older word which developed the meaning 'rare' was 6lpa- 'little ' ('klein' and 'wenig'), attested since AV. It seems practically to mean 'rare' in the MahA- bhasya (Thieme, p. 105 f.), YAska has alpa-nifpatti- ' (a word) of rare occurrence,' and Manu opposes alpagah 'seldom' to prdyagah 'mostly' (B-R, I, 464 f.).



again, sanskrit Āścarya- 'wondrous

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