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The use of ās- ‘sit’ and vas- ‘dwell’ plus participle and gerund from Early Vedic to Epic Sanskrit

  • Beatrice Grieco

    Beatrice Grieco is a postdoctoral research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome where she is working on a project on Late Vedic language and Indian grammarians. She obtained her PhD in Historical Linguistics at the University for Foreigners of Siena with a project on periphrases with motion and posture verbs in Sanskrit. Her main research interests include grammaticalization processes in Indo-European languages (with a special focus on Vedic Sanskrit), metalinguistic texts, and syntactic categories.

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Published/Copyright: October 31, 2024

Abstract

The auxiliary ās- ‘sit’ is one of a set of verbs that forms iterative-continuative periphrases in Sanskrit, but it has hardly been studied. While modern-day Sanskrit grammars acknowledge its presence, a comprehensive investigation into its usage is lacking. Given the lack of studies on the ās- periphrasis, this paper explores the verbal construction constituted of the root ās- ‘sit’ plus participle or gerund from Early Vedic to Epic Sanskrit, also offering a brief comparison with vas- ‘dwell, live’. A few passages from Vedic prose show vas- in combination with participles and gerunds in a similar use of that with ās-, but these contexts have never been extensively studied in the literature.


Corresponding author: Beatrice Grieco, Department of Documents Studies, Linguistics and Geography, Sapienza Università di Roma, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy, E-mail:

About the author

Beatrice Grieco

Beatrice Grieco is a postdoctoral research fellow at Sapienza University of Rome where she is working on a project on Late Vedic language and Indian grammarians. She obtained her PhD in Historical Linguistics at the University for Foreigners of Siena with a project on periphrases with motion and posture verbs in Sanskrit. Her main research interests include grammaticalization processes in Indo-European languages (with a special focus on Vedic Sanskrit), metalinguistic texts, and syntactic categories.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank all the participants of the workshop “Complex Verb Constructions in Indo-Aryan and Beyond” for attending the conference and for sharing with us their innovative papers and their ideas. I am also extremely grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for significantly improving this paper with their comments. This research was carried out as part of the project PRIN “Metalinguistic texts as a privileged data source for the knowledge of ancient languages”, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR).

Appendix A. Cases in Early Vedic

RV 2.13.4a vibhájanta āsate
10.38.5d baddhá āsate
10.65.7b vimr̥śánta āsate
10.71.11a āste pupuṣvā́n
AVŚ 10.4.11c pradī́dhyata āsate
20.129.10a dhámanta āsate

Appendix B. Cases in Late Vedic (ās-)

AB 4.13.7 abhiṣuṇvanta āsate
ŚB 4.6.8.20b pratiyájanta āsate
PB 9.2.22 (=RV 10.38.5) baddha āsātā
10.3.9 vyāvr̥jyāsate
10.5.8 vyāvr̥jyāsate
JUB 1.17.3a āgāyamāna āste
3.16.3a vāvadyamāna āsīta
3.16.5a vāvadyamānam āsīnam
JB 1.1.28 juhvad āste
1.1.26 juhvad āste
1.2.1 abhivardhayamānas [teṣu] āste
1.2.2 juhvad āste
1.233.10 yajamāna […] āste
1.233.10 saṃpipādayiṣann […] āste
TS 2.5.1.6.1 pratimúcyā́ste
7.4.10.1.4 píbanta āsate
MS 1.10.13 parāpā́tam āsata
2.4.2 vilā́lapata āsate

Appendix B1. Cases in Late Vedic (vas-)

AB 5.10.4 abhyārabhya vasanti
ŚB 11.3.3.1b ʼvadā́ya vasāni
12.5.2.1b júhvad vaset
JB 1.61.30 juhvad vaset
GB 1.2.6e anāhr̥tya vaset
TS 6.1.6.5.3 párimuṣito ’vasat

Appendix C. Cases in the ĀpŚS (ās- and vas-)

ĀpŚS 11.5.6 pracchannā vasati
19.4.2 vratayann āsīta

Appendix D. Cases in Epic Sanskrit (ās- and vas-)

MBh. 1.51.8a tapyamāna āste [hotāraṃ] codayan
1.104.17a japann āste
3.264.45c parivāryāsate
3.190.20b ramann āste
5.94.6c pr̥cchann āste
11.5.15e āsate [madhu] saṃbhr̥tya
11.19.15c parivāryāsate
12.10.19c nindann āsīta
12.18.28c nindanta āsate
12.135.14a gr̥hītvāsta
12.192.17c japann āste

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