[Y-Indology] varibility of pronounciation in Vedic chanting?

[Guest guest]

INDOLOGY, "Narayan Prasad" <prasad_cwprs>

wrote:

 

Narayan,

 

This is interesting but allow me to make the following remarks:

 

1. There are multiple forms in which 'l' is written in Malayalam:

 

1.1 Ordinary 'l' as in 'lAsya' or an ardhAkSara 'l' as in 'kalpa' is

identical to the Grantha 'l' but more rectangular at least in print

forms.

1.2 The ardhAkSara 'l' as, for example, the second 'l' in 'illa' is

the Tamil 'l'.

1.3 The consonantal 'l' in word boundaries (for example when writing

the English name 'Burnell') is the 'l' that looks more like the

dental 't'. In Malayalam, the halanta for consonants which are curved

is achieved by looping the right end in a clockwise direction and

giving it an upward flourish. Thus the 'n' (which incidentally looks

identical to the dental 't' except that the middle part is not

looped) is given a halanta form by looping the right end in the

clockwise direction and giving it an upward flourish so it looks like

a vertical line in print. The consonantal 'l' in word boundaries

looks like a dental 't' similarly looped up. In these cases it is

more natural, for my money, to read the 'l' as a 't', not the other

way round.

 

2. The Veda was certainly not studied thru written manuscripts so the

influence of the script should not be important for this development.

 

3. Frits Staal in his 'Nambudiri Veda Recitation' refers to this

pronunciation of 't' as a 'l' (p. 38) not only in word boundaries as

in 'pracodayAt' but also in the middle as in 'yalpatye'

for 'yatpatye', with the explanation that "In Sanskrit words in

Malayalam, dentals occurring as the first consonant of a compound

letter should be pronounced as 'l' ".

 

I feel imho that this development owes itself purely to Tamil (Or

Malayalam ) grammar and its rules of sandhi.

 

hal sandhi is a strong and unforgiving phenomenon in High Tamil

but some forms of it have variants in Low Tamil (LT) and Malayalam.

 

Thus, kAl + poRai ===> kaRpoRai (High Tamil) remains kAlpoRai in LT.

This phenomenon is also noticed word internally. This process is

seen at work in words like 'kalpana' (Malayalam)/ KaRpanai (High

Tamil) meaning 'imagination'. Similarly, 'vilpana' (Malayalam) /

viRpanai (High Tamil) meaning 'sales' from the root verb 'vil', to

sell. Sanskrit 'utpatti' is 'uRpatti' in High Tamil but 'ulpatti' in

Malayalam. Thus 'vatsala' in Sanskrit is 'vaRcala'/ 'vaRcalai' in

High Tamil but 'valsala' in Malayalam.

 

It is therefore possible to see that the dental 't' in SamhitapATha

could have become a 'l' due to the influence of the sandhi rules of

the mother tongue.

 

Hope this helps,

 

Lakshmi Srinivas