Vidmahe lakaar

[S. S]

Hari Om to All,

I am new to this community.  Joined

A few days ago. Iam learning Sanskrit Om my own.

I know vid is the root of VIDMAHE and dha of DHIMAHI 

I have a question: what is the lakaar of the word VIDMAHE? Similarly what is the lakaar form of DHIMAHI?

Thanking all

Ananda 

[Mohan Chettoor]

Based on my limited knowledge in Sanskrit and practically 'nil' knowledge about Vedic Grammar, I present here some crude information on the two roots 'Vid' and 'dhi'.

I am presenting four images from 'A vedic grammar for students' by Arthur Anthony Macdonnel (1916).

From these tables, I assume that 'Vid' is 'lat'(present tense) Ist person(I, We) plural and 'Dhi' is lang(Imperfect-Past tense)  Ist person(I, We) plural.

I am subject to corrections and I invite the scholars to opine on this issue.

Mohan Chettoor. 

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[Harry Spier]

I asked this question about  dhīmahi   many years ago to some vedic scholars. The answer I got was:

dhīmahi was an aorist optative  in the Rg Veda:  meaning 'may we obtain / make our own'.  At a later date we're not sure of, as vedic sanskrit became less understood, people thought it was from dhī and its meaning got changed to "think".

I don't know the sanskrit grammatical terms for "aorist optative" but perhaps some of the other members do.

Harry Spier

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[NathRao]

In Panini's system, "aorist optative" would simply be called liG (sorry, I haven't figured out how change keyboards in web browser), but with the present marker zeroed out (lopa), as allowed in chhandas.

BTW, dhImahi would be the regular atmanepada (root) aorist injunctive of dhyA, except that atmanepada root aorist injunctives are rare.  IEists think that dhyA was back-formed later (that the root was originally dhay+laryngeal), so reject this possibility. Also, the syntax/semantics is supposedly more natural with dhA (dadhaati).

Regards

Nath

[Nagaraj Paturi]

>  I asked this question about  dhīmahi   many years ago to some vedic scholars. 

------ Dear Sri Harry ji,  

By 'Vedic Scholars' , you probably mean non traditional , modern  scholars  from the west studying Vedas from the perspectives of contemporary academic disciplines. 

To an Indian audience in forums like this one, that word carries a different meaning. It refers to traditional Indian scholars studying Veda as part of the age old adhyayana adhyaapana paramparaa through a guru s'ishya lineage. 

That is why, such audience get surprised when you say,

The answer I got was:

dhīmahi was an aorist optative  in the Rg Veda:  meaning 'may we obtain / make our own'.  At a later date we're not sure of, as vedic sanskrit became less understood, people thought it was from dhī and its meaning got changed to "think".

I don't know the sanskrit grammatical terms for "aorist optative" but perhaps some of the other members do.

They naturally think 'how would a Vedic scholar use terms like 'aorist optative' etc. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Let me focus on the contemporary scholarship of the Vedas only for this discussion here

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once Dr Koenraad Elst posted in another forum as follows :

Dar listfolk,

below is the answer from a Sanskrit professor deeply at home in traditional Pandit circles but also familiar with modern historical insights:

//////////////////////////

Regarding the question, I am also inclined to derive dhīmahi from dhā and not  from dhyai/dhī.  There are two good reasons. The root dhī and its younger form dhyai

are not used in the Rigveda and the Gāyatrī is a rigvedic mantra. On the other hand, dhīmahi  from dhā appears already in the Rigveda. The roots dhyai/dhī began to appear starting from the Brahmanas and certainly the rigvedic dhīmahi was later assimilated into these Brahmana's roots. 

The second reason is a semantic one. The basic meaning of dhā  is "to put", but also means "to seize, take hold of, hold, bear, support, wear, put on (clothes)". (The root dhā  when used with words meaning "mind, thought, thinking ", like  cintām, manas, matim also takes the sense of "meditating on, putting your mind on", but this is clearly not the case.) When we look at the verb's object bhargas "radiance, lustre, splendour" of the Sun, it makes perfectly sense to "take hold of" or "absorb" the radiance of the Sun.

////////////////////////////

Any further comments?

Thanks,

KE

He acknowledges that 

The roots dhyai/dhī began to appear starting from the Brahmanas and certainly the rigvedic dhīmahi was later assimilated into these Brahmana's roots. 

The problem with this textualism based historical approach is that its premise itself is that  dhyai/dhī  did not exist in the speech of the Rig Vedic Rishis because it did not appear in their texts that are available to us today. It also implies an assumption that the root  dhyai/dhī  somehow took birth newly during the time of Brahmanas without any previous existence of it during an earlier time i.e., the time of the Rig Vedic mantras. 

Roots in any language don't get created in that language itself at a later time( like that of Brahmanas). All indigenous roots in a language take birth at the stage of its 'primitive' / 'primordial' origins as a proto language or at the time of its separation as an independent language from its older form .

There are two options to account for the 'birth' of dhyai/dhī during the time of Brahmanas. 

1. It is indigenous to Vedic Sanskrit : It existed during the time of Rig Vedic mantras in the speech of the Rig Vedic rishis but did not get employed in the Rig Vedic mantras . Or it got employed in the Rig Vedic  mantras that became extinct today. 

2. It is not indigenous to Sanskrit : It was borrowed from some language that did not exist during the Rig Veda mantras time or that did not influence the speech of the Rig Veda rishis. 

Is there any explanation of type 2 above that you know for dhyai/dhī  ? 

-------------------------------------------

Even if one would like to go by IE theory, the appearance of dhyai/dhī  in Brahmanas must be accounted for through its derivation from a PIE root that is reconstructed from usages in some non-Indic IE language(s) that were not in contact with the speech community of the Rig Vedic rishis and as such did not influence the speech of the Rig Vedic rishis. 

Do you know of any such IE derivation of dhyai/dhī ? 

-------------------------------------------------------

There is a semantic aspect to this too. 

I responded to Dr Elst as follows :

Dear Dr Elst, 

I would like to know from the pundit /pandita or you , 

How the Rigvedic poet would have imagined or would have been able to accept the possibility of taking hold of an entity like radiance that can not be held in hands ? 

Or What is the process that was kept in mind by the poet for taking hold of an entity like radiance of a distant object like Sun?

What were the examples of absorbing /absorption known to the Rigvedic poet , what were the absorbing and absorbed objects observed by him? 

Did he observe human bodies absorbing any distant solid, liquid or gaseous or any other kind of material after which he could have imagined human body absorbing an entity like radiance of a distant object like Sun?

 

 

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--

Nagaraj Paturi

 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Senior Director, IndicA

BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra

BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra

BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.

Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru

BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership

Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership

Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies, 

FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education, 

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

 

 

 

[Vishvas Vasuki]

On Tuesday, 14 June, 2022 at 8:36:53 am UTC+5:30 nagara...@gmail.com wrote:

How the Rigvedic poet would have imagined or would have been able to accept the possibility of taking hold of an entity like radiance that can not be held in hands ? 

विचित्र आक्षेपः।  यथा वै धृतिर् धारणे (ऽष्टाङ्गयोगे षष्टाङ्गत्वेन प्रसिद्धे) चित्तव्यापारविशेषे प्रयुज्यते, तथैवात्र "धा धारणे" ।  

[Nagaraj Paturi]

The intention of my question itself was to drive the Dhaa DhaaraNE side to come to such a meaning of an inward practice as in YS. 

Then the Dhyai/Dhee side and Dhaa DhaaraNE side semantically and culturally come very close. 

The intention of denying the meaning of meditation to dheemahi has been to lead it to deny inward practices being available in the Veda mantras and all the inward practices being later, from the time of Upanishads

and the next part of this project is to 

bring the argument of Upanishads being post-Buddhist and inward practices on the Vedic side being an influence of or borrowing from Buddhism. 

Dheemahi's derivation is one of the anchor points in this debate. 

Any derivation of the word leading to a meaning of some inward practice goes against the project of establishing the Vedic west as  non inward, non ascetic, Buddhist/Greater Magadha east as  inward practice centric asceticism centric . 

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[विश्वासो वासुकिजः (Vishvas Vasuki)]

On Tue, 14 Jun 2022 at 21:02, Nagaraj Paturi <nagara...@gmail.com> wrote:

The intention of denying the meaning of meditation to dheemahi has been to lead it to deny inward practices being available in the Veda mantras and all the inward practices being later, from the time of Upanishads

Wilson 

English translation:

“We meditate on that desirable light of the divine Savitā, who influences our pious rites.”

RTH Griffith

May we attain that excellent glory of Savitar the God:

So May he stimulate our prayers.

Jamison & Brereton

Might we make our own that desirable effulgence of god Savitar, who will rouse forth our insights.

Grassmann

Dass wir des Gottes Savitar begehrtes Licht erlangten doch, Der unsre Bitten fördere.

ENGLISH

That we may attain the light desired by the god Savitar, who encourages our requests.

Geldner

Dieses vorzügliche Licht des Gottes Savitri empfingen wir, der unsere Gedanken anregen soll.

ENGLISH

We received this exquisite light of the god Savitri, which should stimulate our thoughts.

Elizarenkova

Мы хотим встретить этот желанный Блеск бога Савитара, Который должен поощрять наши поэтические мысли!

ENGLISH

We want to meet this desired Shine of the god Savitar, Which should encourage our poetic thoughts!

[NathRao]

I was intrigued by this, so I looked into how Sayana explains dhImahi (and the one occurance each of adhImahi and adhItAm).

There are three explanations. One, only in the case under discussion he derives it from dhyA. In quite a few, there is no explanation, but just a gloss such as dhArayAmaH or sthApayAmaH. In some a reference to a root dhI AdhAre/dhAraNe (this is the 'fourth' class, with present dhIyate. In a handful of cases [I noted 1.131.2, 3.29.4, 6, 10.36.5, 10.36.7, 10.35.4], he explicitly connects to liG of dhA. Pictures of the explanation under the Gayatri mantra (3.60.10) and 1.131.2 are attached, if you want to chase through the references to Panini.

P.S. In case it was not clear from Mohan's post, vidmahe is the regular present (laT) I pl (uttamapurusa bahuvacanam).

[Harry Spier]

Thank you for this Nath. 

For those who want to look at what you've pointed out in greater detail.

I've gone through the online version version of the Rg-veda at GRETIL and made a list of the verses in the Rg-veda where  dhīmahi occurs.

1-17-6, 1-44-11, 1-127-5, 1-131-2, 1-141-10, 2-11-12, 3-29-4, 3-30-19,

3-62-10, 5-6-4, 5-21-1,5-82-1, 5-82-6, 7-15-7, 7-66-9, 8-7-18, 8-22-18,

8-103-5, 10-16-12,10-35-4, 10-36-5, 10-36-7, 10-66-2, 10-87-22

Harry Spier

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