OLIVER HELLWIG
ISLE Zurich
hellwig7@gmx.de
INFINITIVE-KĀMA COMPOUNDS IN THE MAHĀBHĀRATA
The Mahābhārata contains 212 instances of a bahuvrīhi compound consisting of a –tu infinitive as its first member and the noun kāma– ‘wish, desire’ as its second. Functioning like a verbal form, this compound type expresses the wish to perform the action denoted by the infinitive. It is peculiar in that it shows full government of the verb’s arguments and thus highly irregular asamartha compounding. As in the following example, this construction is typically used as a nominal (often corresponding to a relative clause) or verbal apposition: dīrghakālārjitaṃ krodhaṃ moktukāmaṃ tvayi dhruvam (MBh 8,34.12c) “[Look at this man …] who wants to unleash upon you the anger he has nursed for so long.” Note that the phrase dīrghakālārjitaṃ krodham is the direct object of the verb moc-. However, infinitive-kāma compounds can also function as independent main verbs of a clause (as in the previous example, the compounded verbal noun of darś– governs arguments): śiśyayor vai gadāyuddhaṃ draṣṭukāmo ’smi mādhava (MBh 9,33.5e) ‘I want to see the club-fight of my two pupils, Mādhava.’ Discussing its morphological formation, Wackernagel suggests that this compound type is a late formation since it is not yet attested in the Upaniṣads (Wackernagel and Debrunner 1954, 652 (§483.b)). Beyond his brief account, infinitive-kāma compounds have received little attention in linguistic research; for example, Oberlies 2003, pp. 274–279 and Edgerton 1953, pp. 178–180 list infinitive forms, but do not discuss their syntactic use, much less the compound in question. Delbrück 1888, p. 429 provides examples of the syntagm infinitive and verb kam(i)- from Vedic prose, but does not discuss the compound formation. This presentation explores factors governing the use of infinitive-kāma compounds in the Mahābhārata. To this end, these compounds are compared with two semantically equivalent, but better attested constructions: desiderative forms and periphrastic expressions of the form infinitive + eṣ– ‘wish to …’ (e.g. gantum icchati). The presentation discusses which features of the Mahābhārata (e.g., whether a construction is found in the main text or the appendices) and of the syntactic context (e.g., number of verbal arguments, dependency type of the construction) might determine the choice among the three alternatives. In addition, it will study whether the metrical form of the containing text line influences this choice, building on methods developed in Sellmer 2015.
References
Delbrück, Berthold. 1888. Altindische Syntax. Halle: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses.
Edgerton, Franklin. 1953. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Oberlies, Thomas. 2003. A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Sellmer, Sven. 2015. Formulaic Diction and Versification in the Mahābhārata. Poznań: Adam Mickiewicz University Press. Wackernagel, Jacob and Albert Debrunner. 1954. Altindische Grammatik. II, 2: Die Nominalsuffixes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.