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How to kill a cow in Avestan 167
equivalent to a certain extent with framr¯uit¯e depending on *v¯ısait¯e in Y. 8,4 which I NSLER quotes as a parallel. auu¯o, on the other hand, is the accusative of an s-stem noun, *á ˘uas. Although such a syntactic disjuncture cannot be ruled out with certainty, it would nevertheless be hard even if we could regard v¯ıs e ˙nt¯a as a verb of motion (”to enter“).
Although all interpretations connecting mrao¯ı with the root mr¯u ”to speak“ are supported by the Pahlavi translation which uses guft ”spoken“ 5 , several quite diver- gent proposals were published as to the form in question. In a 1957 article, H. H UM - BACH argued that mrao¯ı cannot represent a 3rd sg. form of the passive aorist of ”mr¯u/mrav ‘sprechen’“ because this root is supplied by v¯ac in the aorist throughout, the 3sg. aor.pass. being v¯ac¯ı. Instead he proposed to connect mrao¯ı with the YAv. adjective ”mr¯ura- ‘gewalttätig (?)’“ which is used in Vd. 2,22 as an epithet of the ”winter“, just as the compound gaojan- ”cow killing“ is used in Vd. 7,27. According- ly, he proposed the tentative translation ”die Kuh wird, um getötet zu werden, gewalt- tätig behandelt“ 6 . Note that here, the infinitival syntagm is regarded equivalent with a passive final clause, ”for being killed“. In H UMBACH
’s first Gatha edition (1959: I, 99), his translation was a bit more concise: ”.. während die Kuh zu Tode gequält wird ..“ This view according to which mrao¯ı is a 3.sg. aor.pass. of a root 2 mr¯u ”to torment“ was adopted by J. K ELLENS in his study on the Avestan root nouns (1974, 325) as well as — hesitatingly — by K. H OFFMANN
and B. F ORSSMAN
in their ”Avestische Laut- und Flexionslehre“ (1996, 228). It was K ELLENS who extended the basis for the alleged 2
13,109, interpreted by him as ”qui ne maltraite pas“, and mrauuaii˚¯asca appearing as a variant reading in Yt. 1,15. Taking the latter as a gen.sg. of a fem. ¯a-stem mrauu¯a- ”la violence“, K ELLENS
explicitly tried to improve B ARTHOLOMAE ’s Wörterbuch entry ”mrv¯ı- f. etwa ‘Hader, Zwist’“ based on G ELDNER ’s reading mruaii˚¯asca (1904, 1197). One further derivation of the root in question had been claimed before by G. K LIN
- GENSCHMITT in his 1968 dissertation on the Farhang-¯ı ¯o¯ım according to whom mruta appearing in F.11 (491) is the ”einziger Beleg des PPP. der Wz. mr¯u“ [!], its meaning being ”‘vernichtet, geschädigt’ (o.ä.)“ 7 . The interpretation of mrao¯ı as a passive form of 2
ELLENS ever since: It is repeated both in ”Les textes vieil-avestiques“, edited together with E. P IRART
(K ELLENS
-P IRART
1991, 289) and in a recent article dealing about the Avestan infinitives (K ELLENS 1994
[1995], 57); the translation agrees with the one proposed by H UMBACH
in 1957: ”.. lorsque la Vache est maltraitée pour être tuée“ (K ELLENS -P
1988, 121). H UMBACH himself, however, has meanwhile changed his mind again. In his second Gatha-edition published in collaboration with J. E LFENBEIN and P.O. S KJÆRVØ (1991),
5 As usual, this is an interlinear rendering of the Avestan words rather than a translation: W AMTˇc c
spoken“. 6 H UMBACH 1957, 91 with fn. 26. 7 K
1968a, 149; the ”Teildruck“ (1968b) does not contain any commentary on the form in question. 168 Jost Gippert he now regards mrao¯ı not as a finite passive form of mr¯u
but as an ”instr.sg. of an ¯ı-stem noun mrao¯ı- ‘destructive action, destruction, enfeeblement’, derived from the same root (1991: II,89). Taking g¯auš jaidii¯ai as a direct speech clause, he arrives at the following translation for the verse in question: “.. when, with the destructive action (called) ‘let the ox be killed’ ..” (I: 135). H UMBACH felt it necessary once again to explicitly state that “mrao¯ı cannot be for *mr¯auu¯ı [sic; see n. 42 below], 3rd sg.aor pass of mrau/mr¯u ‘to speak, recite’, since the aor. of this root is supplemented by the root vac ‘to speak, say’” (II: 89). Considering this amount of divergent opinions, it seems worth while reinvestigating the arguments put forth in detail 8 . If we start with contrasting the two roots in ques- tion, 1
2
Avestan and elsewhere: With its Vedic counterpart, br¯u-, it shares both its meaning and its formal pecularities, i.e. the existence of an athematic root present, the non- existence of an aorist stem, and its suppletion by * ˘uaˇc-. And it can be traced to a Proto-Indo-European *mluH- by identification with Slavonic *ml˘uv- “to speak” 9 . The case for 2
a verbal root. In this case, the form mrao¯ı would remain the only finite form attested — provided the analysis as underlined by K ELLENS and H
OFFMANN / F
ORSSMAN can
be maintained at all. But the nominal derivatives invoked as witnesses are not beyond doubt either. The most serious problem is posed by the alleged attestation of a noun *mruu¯ı- or
question, it is just the verse containing this word which shows the greatest variation in manuscript tradition. This was studied in great detail by J. K ELLENS
(1968, 43) in connection with a second hapax legomenon appearing alongside with *mrauu¯a- here, viz. p e r e t-. For the present investigation, the complex situation may be summarized as follows.
Taking G ELDNER
’s edition as a basis, the text of Yt. 11,15-16 can be rearranged into syntactical units in the following way: (11,15) sraoˇ˙s e m. aˇ˙s¯ım. [huraod e m. v e r e \r¯ajan e m. fr¯ada ˜t.ga¯e\ e m. aˇ˙sauuan e m. aˇ˙sahe.
(11,16)
haxaiia. sraoˇ˙sahe. aˇ˙siiehe. haxaiia. raˇ˙snaoš. razištahe. ... 8 I shall not discuss the name amru-, appearing in Yt. 13,109 in the genitive form, amraoš, rhyming with the following name, camraoš, nor the Old Persian proper name Gaubruva 〈g-u-b-ru-v〉 interpreted by H UMBACH
(1991: II, 89) as “bull-killer”. They have no argumentative value. 9 Cf. M AYRHOFER 1986-, II, 235 sq. for O.Ind. br¯u- (BRAV I ) and V
ASMER 1955, II, 148 sq. s.v. Russ. molv-a. The Slavonic -i-present (Czech mluviti, Pol. mówi´c etc.; a “ˇcech. mluvati” as quoted by M AYRHOFER seems never to have existed) can immediately reflect the athematic root present if it was remodelled after the 3.pl.pres.ind.act. *ml˘uv ˛ et˘ı < *mluh 1 énti ≈ Ved. bruvánti. 10 The text in brackets is suppleted from Yt. 11,1. Yüklə 167,53 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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