A CASE OF VYĀKARA IC Ṇ OXYMORON: THE NOTION OF ANVARTHASA JÑĀ Ṃ 1 Emilie Aussant 2 Abbreviations A A ādhyāyī ṣṭ KV Kāśikāv tti ṛ MBh Mahābhā ya ṣ MbhD Mahābhā yadīpikā ṣ PIŚ Paribhā enduśekhara ṣ PM Padamañjarī Pr Pradīpa Ud Uddyota VP Vākyapadīya vt Vārttika Introduction Numerous studies have dealt with Pā inian grammatical terminology, ṇ 3 each of them proposing still more elaborate classifications. Curiously, however, few were interested in the very word that designates the metalinguistic units, namely sa jñā ṃ . 4 Literally, sa jñ ṃ ā (feminine root stem with the value of an action noun, derived from the root jñā- “to know, to understand” and combined with the preverb sam-) expresses the fact of “knowing, understanding in a common way” and then, as action nouns often acquire a resultative value, “that which is known or understood by the whole of a community”. This literal meaning is present throughout the grammatical discourse for most items designated by sa jñā ṃ , namely technical terms (grammatical or not), autonyms, proper names, expressions whose meaning cannot be derived by analysis and conventional words whose gender and/or number cannot be anticipated. 5 All these items are indeed linked with convention, one way or another. The Pā inian tradition distinguishes several types of ṇ sa jñā ṃ s such as śabdasa jñā ṃ “name of a linguistic form” (example: vākya “analytic expression, sentence”), arthasa jñā ṃ “name of the (linguistic-form) meaning” (example: vibhāā ṣ “option”), bhāvinī sa jñā ṃ “subsequent technical term” (example: sa prasāra a ṃ ṇ , a technical term for phonemes iK as substitutes of phonemes yaṆ), etc. Here I will focus on one of them: the anvarthasa jñā ṃ s. 1 I thank Arlo Griffiths, Pascale Haag and Vincenzo Vergiani for their remarks. 2 emilie.aussant@linguist.jussieu.fr 3 Cf. particularly Chatterji (1933, 1946, 1964), Sarma (1940), Chaturvedi (1940), Agrawala (1940, 1950), Renou (1942), Keith (1945), Venkatacharya (1947), Abhyankar (1961), Sen (1962), Sarma (1964), Bhattacharya (1966), Narayana Murti (1969, 1972), Katre (1968-71), Palsule (1966, 1969), Cardona (1970), Scharfe (1971), Bhandarkar (1972), Wezler (1976), Dvivedi (1978), Kiparsky (1979), Singh (1979), and Bandyopadhyay (1994). 4 Cf. Palsule (1966), Aussant (2005) and Candotti (2006). 5 Which can be exemplified respectively by: vṛddhi (grammatical technical term designating ā - ai - au vowels), gha (grammatical technical term designating, according to the sūtra 1.1.22 of the A ādhyāyī ṣṭ (A), affixes of degrees of comparison taraP and tamaP), hantiḥ (presented as sa jñā ṃ of hantiḥ, i.e. as autonym, in the Mahābhā ya ṣ (MBh) on the vārttika (vt) 11 ad A 1.1.62, vol. 1 p. 163), devadatta or ittha ḍ (individual proper names), ara yetilakā ṇ ḥ (expression of which the meaning (“an unexpected event”) cannot be derived by analysis (literal meaning: “wild sesamum”)), dārāḥ “wife” (masculine, plural). 1