Amreditas and related constellations in the Rigveda

Journal of the American Oriental Society, The, Oct-Dec, 2003 by Jared S. Klein

In discussions of compound types in the Vedic language, the category that is typically placed at or near the end and given only cursory treatment is the amredita. (1) It is easy to see why this is so. Formally, an amredita consists of two adjacent identical complete words. The only feature distinguishing the amredita qua compound is that only the first of the repeated words is provided with an accent. (2) In the padapatha text the two members are regularly separated by an avagraha, as is normally the case with compounds, but the samhita text transmits the members together just as it would any two adjacent words, applying whatever sandhi rules may be relevant. In this study we will follow the procedure of Aufrecht (1877) and cite amreditas with a hyphen between their members, except where vowel sandhi is operative between the two constituents. Thus, agnim-agnim, dhiyam-dhiyam, iheha, etc.

Semantically, amreditas were recognized already by Panini as signalling durative and distributive values, i.e., the notions of undelimited continuation ('over and over, again and again') and singulatim repetition ('one by one, one after the other'), which, when applied to all members of a set, may attain universality ('every'). (3) But, as we shall see, the semantics of this category as a whole shows nuanced variation depending on the part of speech class of the individual amreditas.

[section]1. Amreditas are by no means rare in the Rigveda. I have located 132 different forms occurring 291 times, not counting another twelve exact pada-repetitions. (4) This figure represents, to my knowledge, the first complete tabulation of these forms. (5) Amreditas are fashioned from forms belonging to six different parts of speech: nominals (including both nouns and adjectives) (94 forms, 211x + 5 repetitions), pronominals (15 forms, 31x + 5 repetitions), adverbials (8 forms, 17x[.sup.6] + 1 repetition), preverbs (7 forms, 20x), numerals (7 forms, 11x), and verbs (1 form, 1x + 1 repetition). Because these forms have never been listed in their entirety, I provide a complete listing in Appendix 1. Where nominal types (taken in the broadest sense to include nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals) are concerned, all case forms but the vocative are represented. Moreover, with the single exception of the adjectival amredita navya-navyah, all nominal amreditas are morphologically singular. A partial exception to this is the (improper) numeral amredita ekam-eka, where the second member has been assimilated to a following term (cf. [section]15). Nevertheless, numeral amreditas such as dva-dva (2x), panca-panca (1x), and sapta-sapta (2x) do occur, the latter two indifferent to morphological number and the first obligatorily dual. Similarly, personal pronoun amreditas include first person plural forms vayam-vayam (1x) and asman-asman (1x). A single example of the pronominal neuter plural ta-ta is also attested. The fact that non-singular amreditas are limited to numerals, pronouns, and adjectives suggests that amreditas associated with these parts of speech are to be interpreted at least in part differently from those involving nouns, a suspicion which will be confirmed in what follows.

In [section][section]2-7 we shall provide a rapid general survey of the Rigvedic amreditas along part-of-speech lines, focusing on formal and lexical features. We shall then turn to a more detailed investigation of these forms, again by grammatical category, in which semantics will play a central role ([section][section]8-16). Following this we shall investigate various constellations which, while not themselves amreditas, seem to be formally related to this type ([section][section]17-22).

[section]2. The order of relative frequency of nominal case forms represented among noun and adjective amreditas in the Rigveda is: locative (29 forms, 64x + 1 repetition), accusative (32 forms, 59x + 3 repetitions), (7) dative (4 forms, 54x), (8) genitive (10 forms, 13x), instrumental (8 forms, 9x), nominative (7 forms, 7x + 1 repetition), (9) and ablative (4 forms, 4x). In addition, one form (samit-samit: 1x) is morphologically nominative but semantically instrumental. This form will be given special treatment in [section]9, as will vise-vise and dive-dive, two forms which, despite their dative appearance, have been treated normally or frequently as locative in the literature.

[section]3. Moving on to pronominals, we note that the most frequent word appearing in amreditas is anya-(4 forms, 10 occurrences), followed by the ta-pronoun (3 forms, 9 occurrences + 1 repetition), the ya-stem (4 forms, 8 occurrences + 4 repetitions), personal pronouns (3 forms, 3 occurrences), and forms of ayam (1 form, 1 occurrence). (10) On the semantics of these, cf. [section]12.

[section]4. Under adverbials we include amreditas formed from pure adverbs, such as iha (8x + 1 repetition), punah (2x), etc. as well as most adverbially employed nominative/accusative neuter forms, such as idam (2x), bhuyah (1x), and sasvat (1x). For more on these forms, cf. [section]13.