Re: [INDOLOGY] pracodayāt in gāyatrī mantras

[Dominik Haas]

The matter was also brought up following yesterday's memorial service
for Prof. Werba, and I've tried to find out some more for my ongoing
Gāyatrī study. I hope it helps somehow.  

The precative is most often made from aorist stems, and is thus very
close to the aorist optative (lacking the s of the precative). The
aorist of causatives is usually the reduplicating aorist, and the aorist
optative would therefore be pracūcudét (cf. Macdonell's Vedic Grammar
for Students, p. 174, §149.4). Apparently, however, no active
_precative_ form of a reduplicating aorist is attested, and I think it
would be rather speculative to postulate a Vedic aorist precative
pracūcudyā́s or pracūcudyā́t.  

Interestingly, the precative is theoretically also made from the present
stem of secondary verbs. Both Whitney (384, §1049) and Müller (1886:
113, §385, note 2) remark that in the precative active of causative
verbs, the suffix ay is to be _replaced_ by the suffix yās. Whitney,
however, regards this formation "as purely fictitious"  (it would be
really interesting to see if a precative like this is actually attested
somewhere). Anyhow, the fictitious Sanskrit precative of pracodayati
would thus be pracodyāt. 

In the RV, pracodáyāt is definitely a subjunctive of a causative verb.
However, since classical Sanskrit doesn't have the subjunctive, many
reciters of the Gāyatrī(s) must have had some difficulties in
understanding this form (if they tried to); I hope I'll gain some
insight in this matter in my dissertation.  

Best,  

Dominik Haas

--- 

__________________ 

DOMINIK HAAS, BA MA 
PhD student, University of Vienna

 dominik.haas at univie.ac.at
ORCID: 0000-0002-8505-6112 [2] 
academia.edu/DominikHaas [3]

> Thank you Hans, 
> Is there such a thing as a causative precative and if so what would 3rd sing. look like for this root. 
> Harry Spier 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 4:24 PM Hock, Hans Henrich <hhhock at illinois.edu> wrote: 
> 
> It's a causative (ṇic) subjunctive (leṭ) 
> 
> Cheers, 
> 
> Hans Henrich Hock 
> 
> On 18 Mar 2019, at 15:16, Harry Spier via INDOLOGY <indology at list.indology.info> wrote: 
> 
> Dear list members, 
> 
> What is the verbal category of pracodayāt in gāyatrī mantras . For example : 
> 
> ekadantāya vidmahe 
> 
> vakratuṇḍāya dhīmahi 
> 
> tan no dantī pracodayāt 
> 
> Is it a causative subjunctive similar to the example in Whitney's grammar section 1043  dhārayāt 
> 
> or is it a benedictive/precative?  Is there such a thing as a causative precative? 
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Harry Spier _______________________________________________
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