The pitch accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, udātta "raised" (acute accent, high pitch), anudātta "not raised" (grave accent, low pitch) and svarita "sounded" (circumflex, falling pitch). Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable Vedic Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language, the language of the Vedas, the oldest Shruti texts of Hinduism. The Sanskrit grammar has a complex verbal system rich nominal Declension, and extensive use of Compound nouns It was studied and codified by History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. Pitch The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred only on the last syllable of a word in cases where the Pitch The circumflex accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred (subject to certain rules on the accented syllable
Udātta marks the place of the inherited PIE accent. In transliteration, therefore, udātta is usually marked with an acute accent, and anudātta and svarita are unmarked since their positions follow automatically from the position of udātta. History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. For example, in the first pada of the Rigveda, the transliteration
- agním īḻe puróhitaṃ
- "Agni I praise, the high priest. The Rigveda ( Sanskrit sa ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a compound of ṛc "praise verse" and veda "knowledge" Agni is a Hindu and Vedic deity. The word agni is Sanskrit for "fire" (noun cognate with Latin ignis Priests of the Vedic religion were officiants of the ''yajna'' service "
means that the eight syllables have an intonation of
- A-U-S-A-A-U-S-A (where A=anudātta, U=udātta, S=svarita),
or iconically,
- _¯\__¯\_
- īḻe is a finite verb and thus has no udātta, but its first syllable is svarita because the previous syllable is udātta. A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds
- Vedic meter is independent of Vedic accent and exclusively determined by syllable weight, so that metrically, the pada reads as
- -. The main principle of Vedic meter is measurement by the number of syllables --. -. x (viz. , the second half-pada is iambic). An iamb or iambus is a Metrical foot used in various types of Poetry.
In some cases an accented syllable disappeared due to linguistic changes in oral transmission of the samhita before it was written down, so that a svarita may be next after an anudātta: this is a so-called "independent svarita". In such cases, the svarita syllable is marked in transcription with a grave accent. Pitch The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred only on the last syllable of a word in cases where the
For example in RV 1. 10. 8c,
- jéṣaḥ súvarvatīr apá
- U-S-U-S-A-A-A-U
- ¯\¯\___¯
became
- jéṣaḥ svàrvatīr apá
- U-S-S-A-A-A-S
- ¯\\___¯
Independent svarita is caused by sandhi of adjacent vowels. Sandhi ( Sanskrit saṃdhi sa संधि "joining" is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at Morpheme There are four variants of it:-
- jātya (= "innate") (due to changes within a word, as in kvà for kúa, as in the example above (u becomes v before a vowel)
- kṣaipra (= "caused by quickness") (u becoming v or i becoming y where two words meet, as in vy-ā̂pta for ví-āpta) (i becomes y before a vowel)
- praśliṣṭa (= "coalescence") (vowel contraction where two words meet, as in divī̂va for diví-iva)
- abhinihita (= "close contact") (prodelision with avagraha where two words meet, as in té-'bruvan for té-abruvan). The term intrinsic denotes a characteristic or property of some thing or action which is essential and specific to that thing or action and which is wholly independent Prodelision is a form of Elision in which the latter word loses its first vowels Avagraha (Dev अवग्रह avagraha) ऽ is a Devanagari symbol used to indicate Prodelision of an अ a.
Independent svarita occurs about 1300 times in the Rigveda, or in about 5% of padas. The Rigveda ( Sanskrit sa ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a compound of ṛc "praise verse" and veda "knowledge"
Contents |
Spelling
In Roman alphabet transcription, udātta is marked with an acute accent, independent svarita is marked with a grave accent, and other syllables are not marked with accent.
In Devanagari editions of the Rigveda samhita:
- Svarita is marked with a small upright stroke above a syllable. The Rigveda ( Sanskrit sa ऋग्वेद ṛgveda, a compound of ṛc "praise verse" and veda "knowledge"
- Anudātta is marked with a horizontal line below the syllable, if it is next before an udātta or an independent svarita. If the first syllable in a pada is anudātta, that syllable and all following syllables which are anudātta are marked with the horizontal line, up to and not including the first syllable which is not an anudātta.
- If an independent svarita syllable is next before an udātta syllable, instead of putting the anudātta mark and the svarita mark on the same syllable, a figure 1 (if the svarita vowel is short) or a figure 3 (if the svarita vowel is long) is written between, and that figure has the svarita mark and the anudātta mark. [1]
- Other syllables are unmarked.
See also
References
- ^ A Vedic Grammar for Students, by Arthur Anthony Macdonnell, publ. See Shiksha (NGO for the Indian non-governmental organization The oral tradition of the Vedas ( Śrauta) consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic Mantras Such traditions Motilal Banarsidass
External links
Motilal Banarsidass (MLBD is a leading Indian publishing house on Sanskrit and Indology since 1903 located in Delhi, India.Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic