Language and Style of the Vedic RsisElizarenkova, perhaps the greatest living scholar of the Rgveda and certainly its greatest linguist, explains here the relationships between a very complicated grammatical system and the peculiarities of style of the archaic religious poetry. The laudatory hymn is treated as an act of verbal communication between the poet Rsi and the deity, with the hymn itself transmitting certain information from man to god. From this viewpoint, the hymn is used as a means to maintain a circular exchange of gifts between the Rsis and their gods. Many peculiarities of the functioning of the grammatical system of the Rgveda are interpreted in connection with the model of the universe of the Vedic Aryan. For example, the concept of time as a circular process bears closely on the use of the verbal grammatical categories of tense and mood; the personification of some abstract forces can explain some irregularities in the functioning of the nominal category of gender; and the idea of magical power attributed to the Sacred Speech in general, and to the name of a god in particular, underlies the magical grammar of this religious poetry. |
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Common terms and phrases
abhí abstract accent accusative ádhi adjective Agni ahám ánu aorist appears Aryaman Aryan Asvins Atharva Veda attested Avesta ayám beginning Brahmanaspati case-forms compound construction context cosmogonic dative deity deity's denotes divine ellipsis epithets example expressive feminine finite verb formal forms function Geldner gods Gonda grammatical grammemes horses hymn Indo-European Indra índro injunctive instance interpretation language lexical libation linguistic literally magic Maruts meaning metre metrical scheme Mitra mythological neuter nominative noun Old Indian opposition pāda participle particle phrase play poet poetic polysemy praise praise-hymn prayer pronoun proper name Renou repetitions Rg Veda ritual Rși sacrifice sám Savitar second person semantic sentence singular Soma sómam sound-hints speech stanza stem structure subordinate clause syllable syntactic tád tám thee theonym thou tion translation Tristubh tvā tvám utá Vāc vām various Varuņa vayám Vedic Vedic language verse vocative Vrtra words worshipper yád Наука