According to the poetician Vāmana, a genitive ending can denote not only a direct relation but also an indirect relation. For example, in kamalasya kandaḥ ‘the bulb of the lotus flower’ the genitive ending Ṅas introduced after the word kamala denotes the indirect relation between the lotus flower and the bulb, the relation established through the intermediary of the lotus plant that has a direct relation with both of them. Is such a view acceptable to Pāṇinian grammarians? Careful scrutiny of (...) Patañjali’s discussions in the Mahābhāṣya concerning what the affix matUP signifies reveals that he does not accept that a genitive ending occurs to denote an indirect relation: he considers that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50: ṣaṣṭhī śeṣe, which provides for introducing a genitive ending, has for its domain a direct relation alone. For Vāmana, on the other hand, the poetic expression kamalasya kandaḥ and the like serve to testify to the fact that a genitive ending can be used to signify an indirect relation. What is important is that Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 as it stands does not exclude this. Just as Patañjali accepts a direct relation as the domain of Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.3.50 on the basis of the usage of model speakers, so does Vāmana accept an indirect relation as its further domain on the basis of the usage of great poets. (shrink)

The present paper is focused on the way Vayākaraṇas and Ālaṃkārikas analysed a specific kind of karmadhāraya compounds, taught in Aṣṭādhyāyī 2.1.56 and 72 and later associated with the upamā- and the rūpaka-figures respectively. On the basis of a fresh interpretation of the relevant grammatical sources, the authors try both to understand how the theorists involved them in their analysis and to reconstruct the several steps of the inquiries realized by the modern scholarship on this topic. Nonetheless their research is (...) targeted on the interpretation of these two Pāṇini rules and they conclude that these rules do not actually target similes and metaphorical identifications, but, on the one hand, A 2.1.55-56 deal with a functional pair of figurative compounds involving an upamāna and an upamita, i.e. a reference standard and something which is benchmarked, and, on the other, A 2.1.72 closes a series of karmadhāraya-rules, aimed at illustrating A 2.1.57. Furthermore, they exclude that Pāṇini in A 2.1.55-56 used the term sāmānya as a tertium comparationis, even though Patañjali had already advanced—but eventually rejected—this interpretation. (shrink)