Yāska

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Yāska
Born7th–5th century BCE
Sanskrit grammarian
Notable worksNirukta, Nighantu
Notable ideasGrammar, Linguistics, Etymology

Yāska was an

grammarian[3][4] and linguist[5] (7th–5th century BCE[1]). Preceding Pāṇini (7th–4th century BCE[6][7][8]), he is traditionally identified as the author of Nirukta, the discipline of "etymology" (explanation of words) within Sanskrit grammatical tradition and the Nighantu, the oldest proto-thesaurus in India.[9] Yaska is widely regarded as the precursive founder of the discipline of what would become etymology in both the East and the West.[10]

Dating

Pāṇini cites at least ten grammarians and linguists before him. According to Sumitra Mangesh Katre, the ten Vedic scholar names he quotes are of Apisali, Kashyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphotayana.[11]

Determining the exact century of Yaska is difficult, and opinions of different scholars vary from 7th–5th century BC.[1] Pāṇini mentions Yaska as one of the previous linguists, and so Yaska must precede Pāṇini.[citation needed]

Contribution

Yaska is the author of the

lexical category and the semantics of Sanskrit words. He is thought to have succeeded Śākaṭāyana, an old grammarian and expositor of the Vedas
, who is mentioned in his text.

The Nirukta attempts to explain how certain words get to have their meanings, especially in the context of interpreting the Vedic texts. It includes a system of rules for forming words from roots and affixes, and a glossary of irregular words, and formed the basis for later lexicons and dictionaries. It consists of three parts, viz.: (i) Naighantuka, a collection of synonyms; (ii) Naigama, a collection of words peculiar to the Vedas, and (iii) Daivata, words relating to deities and sacrifices.

Nirukta, or etymology was one of the six vedangas or compulsory subjects in the syllabus of Vedic scholarship in ancient India.

Lexical categories and parts of speech

Yāska defines four main categories of words:[13]

  1. nāma – nouns or substantives
  2. ākhyāta – verbs
  3. upasarga – pre-verbs or prefixes
  4. nipāta –
    prepositions
    )

Yāska singled out two main

ontological categories: a process or an action (bhāva), and an entity or a being or a thing (sattva). Then he first defined the verb as that in which the bhāva ('process') is predominant whereas a noun is that in which the sattva ('thing') is predominant. The 'process' is one that has, according to one interpretation, an early stage and a later stage and when such a 'process' is the dominant sense, a finite verb is used as in vrajati, 'walks', or pacati, 'cooks'.[13]

But this characterisation of noun / verb is inadequate, as some processes may also have nominal forms. For e.g., He went for a walk. Hence, Yāska proposed that when a process is referred to as a 'petrified' or 'configured' mass (mūrta) extending from start to finish, a verbal noun should be used, e.g. vrajyā, a walk, or pakti, a cooking. The latter may be viewed as a case of summary scanning,[14] since the element of sequence in the process is lacking.

These concepts are related to modern notions of

imperfective
aspect.

Yāska also gives a test for nouns both concrete and abstract: nouns are words which can be indicated by the pronoun that.

Words as carriers of meaning: atomism vs. holism debate

As in modern

Buddhist
schools.

In the prātishākhya texts that precede Yāska, and possibly Sakatayana as well, the gist of the controversy was stated cryptically in sutra form as "saṃhitā pada-prakṛtiḥ". According to the atomist view, the words would be the primary elements (prakṛti) out of which the sentence is constructed, while the holistic view considers the sentence as the primary entity, originally given in its context of utterance, and the words are arrived at only through analysis and abstraction.

This debate relates to the atomistic vs holistic interpretation of linguistic fragments – a very similar debate is raging today between traditional semantics and cognitive linguistics, over the view whether words in themselves have semantic interpretations that can be composed to form larger strings. The cognitive linguistics view of semantics is that any definition of a word ultimately constrains its meanings because the actual meaning of a word can only be construed by considering a large number of individual contextual cues.

Etymologically, nouns originate from verbs

Yāska also defends the view, presented first in the lost text of

Sakatayana
for details).

References

  1. ^ a b c Chatterjee 2020.
  2. ^ Witzel 2009.
  3. ^ Vergiani 2017, p. 243, n.4.
  4. ^ Scharfe 1977, p. 88.
  5. ^ Staal 1965, p. 99.
  6. ^ Bronkhorst 2016, p. 171.
  7. ^ The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (2013). Ashtadhyayi, Work by Panini. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 23 October 2017. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  8. ^ Bod 2013, p. 14–18.
  9. ISBN 978-3-642-17528-2
    .
  10. ISBN 978-81-208-1381-6
    .
  11. ISBN 978-81-208-0521-7
    .
  12. ^ Harold G. Coward 1990, p. 4.
  13. ^ a b
    OCLC 25096200. Yaska is dealt with in Chapter 3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link
    )
  14. ^ Langacker, Ronald W. (1999). Grammar and Conceptualization. Cognitive linguistics research, 14. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
    OCLC 824647882
    .

Sources

External links
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