The Pṛthu-Parśu in the Dāśarājña Hymn

 

The Pṛthu-Parśu in the Dāśarājña Hymn

Shrikant Talageri

 

Recently, I wrote an article "Vadhryaśva and an internet Clown" in which I dealt with an internet clown who was abusing me on twitter calling me someone worse than a "Half brain", calling my work "poor quality work" based on "pure imagination", reading which was for him "a waste of time", and pompously declaring: "It is clear Talageri has no knowledge of Sanskrit". His whole weight was on one word: vadhryaśva, which I have translated as "impotent" because it is applied to Divodāsa's father, who could not produce a child until (as per Rigvedic hymn VI.61) he worshipped the river-Goddess Sarasvati with such devotion that she granted him a boon leading to the birth of his illustrious son Divodāsa. VI.62 (the very next hymn after the hymn which refers to vadhryaśva being granted such a boon by the Sarasvati) refers to vadhrimatī (correctly translated by everyone as "the wife of an impotent husband") being granted a similar boon by the Aśvins.

The word vadhryaśva  literally means "castrated horse", but applied to a person it obviously means "impotent" unless there is reason to believe that person to have been physically castrated at some earlier point of time. This clown insisted that the name was not an opprobrious epithet applied to Divodāsa's father but his actual name, and meant "having castrated horses". He even quoted Monier-Williams and other western Indologists who have translated it as a name (most of them safely giving the word as it is, and avoiding actually translating it into its literal English meaning).

I so completely demolished the clown that he ludicrously actually ran away from the debate in a way I would never have expected from anyone, by changing his twitter handle and name from Night-Fighter @Fighting_Sky1 to Alpha @AlphaMan76, and when I pointed this out in a postscript to my article, he again changed his name from Alpha to Alpha Brahmin, and then again converted to Caesar, and finally blocked everyone from viewing his tweets.

 

The point is not about his running away, but about the fact that even clowns like him can have a purpose to serve in this world. I always knew about there being different types of compound words in Sanskrit, and also that the word Vadhryaśva represented a different type of compound word from other names in the Rigveda ending in -aśva. But I had never really used this knowledge, or even realized that this knowledge could be put to use, in arriving at the correct meanings of Rigvedic words when there seemed to be any scope for disputes in interpretation. But this clown's arrogant and insulting persistence made me examine the issue from this perspective and give specific importance to the type of compound that the word represented. And I realized three things:

1. There are two types of compounds relevant to this problem: tatpuruṣa compounds where the first part of the compound qualifies the second part of the compound, and bahuvrīhi compounds where, in addition,  the whole compound is a kind of "possessive" compound. As I have illustrated in my earlier article, the word rāja-putra can mean both "king's son" as a tatpuruṣa compound, or "Having kings as sons" (i.e. the father may or may not be a king, but his sons are kings) as a bahuvrīhi compound.

2. In classical Sanskrit, most words have either frozen into one particular type of compound (e.g., in the above example, the word rāja-putra would normally be a tatpuruṣa compound), or else the question of whether a particular compound is a tatpuruṣa compound or a bahuvrīhi compound would be a matter of specific context. However, the Vedic language does not give this freedom of interpretation: the Vedic language had pitch (or tonal) accents which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, and the accent tells us whether a word is a tatpuruṣa compound or a bahuvrīhi compound: the former retains the accent in the first word in the compound, while the latter retains the accent in the second word (or shifts it further forward within the second word, usually to the last syllable).

Thus, we have the two following examples in the Rigveda of the word rāja-putra:

X.40.3: rāja-putrá — a tatpuruṣa compound — "king's son" or a prince.

II.27.7: rā'ja-putra — a bahuvrīhi compound — "having sons who are kings" or the father of kings.

3. Although fully aware of this distinction, most Indologists firmly ignore the nature of the compound, and translate it as per their convenience. Thus, all the actual personal names in the Rigveda ending in -aśva are bahuvrīhi compounds:

hári + áśva:   háryaśva = having fallow/yellowish horses.

ṛjrá + áśva:   ṛjrā'śva = having reddish-brown horses.

śyāvá + áśva:   śyāvā'śva = having pale brown horses.

pṛ'ṣad + áśva:   pṛ'ṣad-aśva = having dappled horses.

However, the word vadhryaśvá is a tatpuruṣa compound: it is a compound of vádhri (impotent) and áśva  (horse), where the accent is retained in the second word (shifted to the last syllable). The word therefore does mean "impotent horse" (or  "castrated horse" at worst), and definitely does not mean "having castrated horses", and it is a direct epithet applied to Divodāsa's father, referring to his earlier inability to produce a child and not to the kind of horses he possesses.

 

The new awareness of this vital distinction between the two types of compounds in the Rigveda made me take a closer look at the word pṛthu-parśu in the Rigveda, which refers in VII.83.1 to the enemies of Sudās, "the pṛthus and parśus", and only strengthened my case.

Unsurprisingly, all the Indological scholars have treated the word as a bahuvrīhi (or possessive) compound:

Griffith: "with broad axes".

Peterson: "with broad axes".

Wilson: "with large sickles".

Grassmann: "with broad sabers" (i.e. swords).

Sāyaṇa: "with the large rib-bones of a horse"

Geldner: "with swollen chest".

Jamison: "the broad-chested ones".

 

But it is not a bahuvrīhi (or possessive) compound: the accent is on the second word in the compound: pṛthu-párśu. it is a dvandva compound where two distinct entities are clubbed together, and here it is two distinct entities, the pṛthu/pārthava and parśu/parśava clubbed together as allies, unitedly marching towards the Bharatas.

These dvandva compounds usually combine together different Gods (mitrā'-váruṇa: Mitra and Varuṇa, dyā'vā-pṛthivī': Heaven and Earth, etc.) and usually retain both the accents, but in other cases they can retain the accent on the second word: an example from the Atharvaveda is ulūkhala-musalá (Atharvaveda IX.6.15) "mortar and pestles".

 

Only one early Indological scholar noted the mistake made by other Indologists of his time (in treating this compound as a bahuvrīhi compound), and pointed out that such an interpretation was "perfectly impossible", but he was ignored by his contemporary as well as by later translators, perhaps because translating the compound word as "the pṛthus and parśus" would have created other problems (for the invasionist interpretation).

So Griffith notes his sharp comment in his footnote to the verse ("Ludwig declares that the former meaning is perfectly impossible, and argues that pṛithu-parśavah must mean 'the Pṛithus and the Parśus'"), but goes on to repeat the mistake (by translating it as "with broad axes").

 

This is a lesson, to analysts of the Rigveda, to examine the accents in the compound words while interpreting them, and also to be careful to not accept all consensus points among the Indologists as sacrosanct.

 

Appendix added 15-10-2022:

The Gathering of the Textbook Readers and Citers.

After my above article, other text-book readers-citers have joined the battle to show how my above interpretation is wrong. Giacomo Benedetti, who already took up arms on the subject of the word cāyamāna, has joined the fray:

 

The impression he succeeds in giving (although he uses the ambiguous phrase "several bahuvrīhi compounds" and not "all bahuvrīhi compounds") is that bahuvrīhi compounds in the Rigveda, when the first word in the compound "has two syllables and ends in -i, -u" have the accent on the second word. He specifies that compounds with pṛthu- are included among them, and gives an example of one word pṛthu-pā'jas to make his point.

I never thought that I would be compelled to use the Witzellian phrase "does not mention", but since it is being used against me repeatedly in this debate, I will do so: Benedetti does not mention that these are exceptions to the rule and not the rule: not even with respect to the specific word pṛthu- as the first word in the compound. Thus we also have bahuvrīhi compounds with pṛthú- where the accent is on the first word as per the general rule: pṛthú-yāman,  pṛthú-śiras,  pṛthú-jāghana,  pṛthú-pāṇi,  pṛthú-pragāman,  pṛthú-budhna,  pṛthú-stukā, pṛthú-sto. And all these words are also found "in both old and new mandalas". Let me also mention, lest the omission be cited against me, that one of the words is also found as pṛthu-budhná with the accent on the second word.

So what I cited was the rule, what he is citing is the exception.

More than that, we again come up with the same situation where the text-book readers and citers firmly refuse to see the context of the reference which could show which of the two is the correct interpretation: the word pṛthu is found in two accented forms in the Rigveda: pṛthú (broad) and pṛ'thu (the name of a tribal identity). It has been assumed by all the translators and grammarians that the word in this compound is the former word meaning "broad", and translated accordingly.

But the fact is that the word in the compound is actually the latter word indicating a tribal identity. As the first word in the compound is not accented, it cannot automatically be assumed, as is done by them, that it is the word pṛthú (broad).

Also to be noted is the fact that the word pṛ'thu (the name of a tribal identity) is found only once (elsewhere) in the whole of the Rigveda: in VI.27.8, along with the word cāyamāna, and tells us (as per all the translators) that Abhyāvartin Cāyamāna was a pṛ'thu=pārthavá.

So as per all these textbook readers and citers, it is a pure coincidence that words like śimyu, cāyamāna, and pṛthu, in the Rigveda, are practically found only in the hymns dealing with the three Great Battles of the Bharatas! I call this special pleading.

Once common sense is applied, and special pleading and textbook citing are left aside, it becomes clear that the words pṛthu and parśu, in the compound word found in VII.83.1 are names of tribal identities, both nouns, and the compound is a noun+noun dvandva compound and not an adjective+noun bahuvrīhi compound.

As for the word parśu, it is found elsewhere only four times in the whole of the Rigveda (in two accented forms párśu and parśú), all four being found only in the New Rigveda, and meaning "rib" or extended to a name of a person. Nowhere does it mean "axe" (or any similar implement) which is paraśu in the Rigveda.

So all the translations by Griffith, Wilson, Peterson and Grassman, which translate the word as an axe or a similar implement/weapon are clearly forced contortions in order to fit in with the assumed word pṛthú (broad). The translation by Sāyaṇa as "broad rib-bones of a horse" is also a convoluted meaning although it treats the word as "rib" and not an implement. The translations by Geldner, "with swollen chest", and Jamison, "the broad-chested ones" have the saving grace that they at least translate the word as "rib", even as they try to draw out extended meanings from it in order to explain the joint word in the specific verse as a bahuvrīhi compound. However, an objective look at the word shows it to be a dvandva compound referring to the combined forces of the Pṛthu and Parśu clans/tribes, found in the Rigveda only in the Old Rigveda and in the battle-hymns of the Bharatas, marching together (towards the Bharatas), as correctly recognized by Ludwig.