avakaha.daa-cakra

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Dear List members,

 

In his "Kanna.da bhaa.seya caritre"(History of Kannada Language),

Mr P G Kulkarni(1967) has presented the origin of the term "avakaha.daa"

in avakaha.daa-cakra which is quite common in astrology.

 

For each quarter or cara.na equal to 3 degrees 20 minutes of the 27

nak.satras, a specific letter of the alphabet is assigned, called

cara.naak.sara. In North India, a child is given a raa;si name whose

initial letter starts with the same letter as the corresponding letter of the

quarter of the nak.satra in which the moon was there at the time of his

(or her) birth. I do not know whether there is any custom of giving

a raa;si name to a child under this type of system. In this system,

the letters ",n" and "~n" also occur. In any of the north Indian languages,

no word or name starts with these two letters. But there are certain words

starting with these two letters in Tamil and with the second in Malayalam

also. Does it indicate the Dravidian origin of avakaha.daa-cakra ?

 

So far as the origin of the term avakaha.daa is concerned, the above-

mentioned author has shown that if the letters are counted in order from

k,rttikaa onwards and the maatras of i,u,e,o (short or long) are chopped

off, we get the following alphabet (p.519):

 

a (a-i-u-e-o)-va-ka-ha-.da-ma-.ta-pa-ra-ta-na-ya-bha-ja-kha-ga-

sa-da-ca-la-gha-,n-cha-.sa-.na-.tha-dha-pha-.dha-jha-~na-tha

 

(For details, see pp.514-519 of the above book.)

 

It is clear that the name "avakaha.daa-cakra" comes from the initial

five letters of the above alphabet. The order of the letters of this alphabet

is different from the one obtained from the Maahe;swara-suutras in

Paa.nini's A.s.taadhyaayii. P G kulkarni is of the view that this system of

alphabet might have originated in between 10th-8th c. BC. It is to be noted

that in this system the letters ",r", ",l","ai","au","ba" and ";s" do not occur.

 

Best regards.

 

Narayan Prasad