May 24, 2021

mThar ’gro zhon / bDe spyod

The king to whom Nāgārjuna wrote his letters is said to be Gautamīputra Śatakarnī of the Śātavāhana dynasty. But Tibetan tradition speaks of a king called mThar ’gro zhon or bDe byed. But what exactly is the Sanskrit name behind these? Already in 1886, Wenzel discussed this issue. All sorts of Sanskrit names have been proposed. See Wenzel 1886: 3–5. But we may not discuss these here. To be sure, Tibetan sources do not seem to refer to Gautamīputra and Śatakarnī as the king’s name. (a) It seems reasonable to assume that Tibetan mThar ’gro zhon (Mahāvyutpatti, no. 3654) is a translation of Śātavāhana (cf. Obermiller 1932: 127; Tibskrit; Seyfort Ruegg 2010: 114). Dan Martin states that the Mémorial Sylvain Lévi (p. 301) has a discussion of the Tibetan. Possibly Tibetan translators interpreted śāta in Śātavāhana as being derived from the root śad (MW, s.v. śad (1): “to distinguish one’s self, be eminent or superior, prevail, triumph”). Thus mthar ’gro zhon may mean something like “eminent carriage” or “carriage of the eminent one.” (b) That Tibetan bDe spyod (Ngawang Samten 1991: 41) is also a translation of Sanskrit Śātavāhana seems to require some explanation. In Negi (s.v. bde ba), we see that śāta has also been rendered as bde ba. It also clear that vāhana has been rendered as ’jug pa as in anābhogavāhana (lhun gyis grub par ’jug pa) and in niśchidravāhana (skabs su ’chad pa med par ’jug pa). One can easily consider ’jug pa and spyod pa to be synonymous, both of which can be said to mean “the act of making effort, endeavoring, exertion” (MW, s.v. vāhana). In sum, we shall for now assume that mThar ’gro zhon and bDe spyod are two different translations of the one and the same name Śātavāhana.


May 06, 2021

Hendiadys in Tibetan

First I reproduce verbatim from Merriam-Webster’s: “William Shakespeare often used hendiadys. For example, his character Macbeth, speaking of the passage of life, says ‘It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.’ For Shakespeare, the construction ‘sound and fury’ was more effective than ‘furious sound.’ The word hendiadys is a modification of the Greek phrase hen dia dyoin. Given that hen dia dyoin literally means ‘one through two,’ it’s a perfect parent for a word that describes the expression of a single concept using two words, as in the phrase ‘rough and tough.’ As you can imagine, hendiadys is a common element in everyday speech and writing.”

Michael Hahn, “Striving for Perfection: On the Various Ways of Translating Sanskrit into Tibetan.” Pacific World 3 (9), 2007, pp. 123–149. On p. 139, Hahn speaks of this figure of speech called “hendiadys.” 

I wish to add some of my own examples in Tibetan: sangs rgyas, byang chub, zhe sdang, ’dod chags, skam chags, etc. There would be many more.