Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici - contenuto non piu disponibile

This paper aims at adding fresh evidence to Scharfe’s proposal (1965) on the interpretation of A I.2.51. The starting point is a question which has already been tackled in the Mahābhāṣya and in the Kāśikāvṛtti ad A IV.2.5; more precisely, the reason for the feminin gender of the taddhita śravaṇā-, which is derived as a name of a particular night in which the moon is in conjunction with the constellation śravaṇaḥ. In fact, the mentioned rule prescribes the replacement of the taddhita-affix aṆ with the technical term LUP. Thus, according to the traditional interpretation of the general rule governing LUP-replacements (A I.2.51), the gender of the derived word should conform to that of the original one, i.e., the masculin name śravaṇaḥ. If the feminin śravaṇā were the first member of the compound śravaṇāśvatthābhyām in A IV.2.5 instead of śravaṇaḥ, the current application of the LUP-rule would be guaranteed, but Vedic and Kalpa-Literature occurrences discourage this supposition. Nevertheless in A IV.2.5 there would be no point in considering the gender of the original word śravaṇaḥ.