Prepositions in Sanskrit
eki
How many prepositions are there in Sanskrit?
'aa' is the only one I know. (...jñaana-diiptir
aa viveka-khyaateH, YS II,26)
Eddie Hadley
They are expressed by the case terminations. In Classical Sanskrit only
two remain inportant: aa, and prati. Otherwise, they occur as prefixes
in compounds.
From Charles Wikner's A Practical Sanskrit Introductory:
ati- beyond, over, across, past, surpassing, to excess.
adhi- over, above, upon, on, onto.
anu- after, along, like, towards, following.
apa- away, off, from, forth.
api- over, on, close, proximate.
abhi- to, towards, into, against, near, opposite.
ava- down, off, away, from.
aa- towards, near, to, into, at, from, back, return (reversing).
ud- up, upwards, out, above.
upa- towards, near, to, next to, less, down, under.
dur- bad, difficult, hard.
dus- bad, difficult, hard.
ni- down, in, on, under, into.
nir- away, out, forth.
nis- away, out, forth.
paraa- back, backwards, away, forth, to a distance.
pari- around, about.
pra- before, forward, forth, onward, fore.
prati- against, towards, to, at, near, back, again, return
(reversing).
vi- apart, asunder, away, out, implying separation or dispersion.
sam- with, together, along with, cojoined with.
su- good, excellent, well.
Eddie
Visalakshi
Can 'aa' or the set of 22 listed below be classfied as prepositions? If an
equivalent to preposition may be drawn in sanskrit then the case endings
such as 'su', 'au' etc. may be closer to it.
Visalakshi
Eddie Hadley
aa and prati are indeed prepositions, as well as other things.
Both, for example, are also employed as prefixes, carrying a
prepositional sense. The list is one of verbal prefixes, and not
prepositions (thought most them are prepositional).
There are just those two prepositions, that are of any importance.
Sanskrit, being the designer language that it is, has, as you say, the
tendency to use inflection, rather than groups of words, prepositions
etc. to express meaning. And that tendency includes expressing those two
prepositional relationships, inflectionally.
The quotation in the original question, actually occurs in sUtra 28,
not 26 ( - the DevanAgarI numeral for eight, does look a bit like our
Arabic numeral for six :-).
Eddie
Ben Paley
Visalakshi wrote in message <9a8pa7$m2v$1...@newsreader.wustl.edu>...
>Hi
>Can 'aa' or the set of 22 listed below be classfied as prepositions? If an
>equivalent to preposition may be drawn in sanskrit then the case endings
>such as 'su', 'au' etc. may be closer to it.
...or maybe these are "postpositions"... I believe there's been some
discussion on this group before about the line between prepositions and case
endings, and its wider implications.
Cheers,
Ben
Vidhyanath Rao
"eki" <eki...@dwp.net> wrote in message
news:9a5dqp$2ss$1...@tron.sci.fi...
> How many prepositions are there in Sanskrit?
> 'aa' is the only one I know. (...jñaana-diiptir
> aa viveka-khyaateH, YS II,26)
It depends on what you mean by "prepositions".
Often people call upasargas "prepositions". These are compounded with
verbs.
Adpositions (in the strict sense of the term: words used, before or
after nouns and forming phrases with them like prepositions in English
etc) come in two groups: First are from the praadi class. Only three are
in common use in Mediveal Sanskrit: aa, meaning 'upto' (inclusive or
exclusive), prati meaning 'towards', and anu meaning 'afterwards' (in
time, not 'behind'). Panini lists more as karmapravaciniiyas, but these
are rare to non-existent. Second group consists of case forms and
gerunds used in the same roles as prepositions of English. This list is
quite large. You will find the more important ones in McDonnel's
grammar, section 170, and a comprehensive list (including
karmapravaniiyas as given by Panini) in Spreyer's "Sanskrit Syntax",
Chapter 9.
BTW, it is not quite accurate to say that case-forms in Sanskrit
eliminate the need for prepositions: for example, locative (saptamii) by
itself is not sufficient to distinguish between upon, about, inside etc.
In older stages, these were distinguished when necessary using
prepositional words: abhre'dhi (Yaska) "upon/over the cloud", antar
daaruNi (Pancatantra) "inside the wood". But in later Sanskrit, these
gradually got displaced by periphrasis. Even antar is presumably
obselete in this sense in Modern Sanskrit, being used to replace "inter"
in loan-words such as antaaraSTriiya for international! [But apparantly
these coiners as not aware that antar is also cognate to English
'under'.]