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Bahuvrihi

one of many noun compounds

Sanskrit Noun Compounds include the famous "Much Rice" or Bahuvrihi ("BV") noun-noun compound.

Bahu (much) vrihi (rice) means "one whose rice is much", a person with lots of rice, a wealthy person.

Diagnosis:

  • [ N1 N2 N2-case ]BV must be a Bahuvrihi if N2-case is not the case of N2, different by number or especially gender.

  • [ N1 N2 ]BV can be translated as One whose N2 is N1.

  • [ N1 N2 ]BV is not an adjective-like modifier of a required head noun, but can stand alone as its own referring noun phrase, referring to someone or something by way of pointing out that that one possesses N2 that is N1.

  • What it refers to is none of its components. A wealthy person is neither Rice nor Much, but One whose rice is much. It is like a name constructed for a thing by a mere attribute of the thing.

    English can approach the Bahuvrihi in names like Pippi Longstocking, where Pippi is One whose Stockings are Long, except that Long is an adjective not a noun. Why, because her last name refers to her, like Blackbeard refers to a pirate, despite the fact that she is not a pair of socks, just as the pirate is not his beard.

Construction:

The form, [ N1 N2 ] BV, taken as a reference to another noun N3, is conjugated with a case ending according to the role played by N3 with the Verb. N3 may be explicitly present or absent in the sentence; if present it also gets the same role or case as the bahuvrihi compound. N1 gets no case marking, only N2 is case marked. This explains why the case on N2 is that of N3 not N2, so for example a feminine noun as N2 conjugated with a neuter or masculine gender taken from N3, is necessarily a bahivrihi.

Commentary:

Bahivrihi encourages Indian philosophy, it may seem, to be slippery about categories. If a certain wealthy person is not a Person with much rice, but himself IS "Much Rice", then grammatical distinctions and naming are not really to be relied upon very much, and category merger is the regular order of the day in Sanskrit speech, writing and language-bound thinking.

In Bahuvrihi semantic interpretation, we identify a referent (N3) (like a Person) with a naturally non-coreferential noun (N2) (like Rice) and an attribute (N1) of N2 (like "much, a lot of"). Hereby two (or three) become one, their category boundaries are lost, and a mental habit is much practiced of reconsidering one thing as not just perhaps, but clearly, visible in another thing. If A can be B no matter A or B, then where is distinction, category, or logic?

Thus it is not surprising that in such a cognitive playground something like the god Shiva can be understood as becoming a hundred Shivas, then ten thousand Shivas (cf. Mark Dyczkowski, The Doctrine of Vibration).

I am not complaining. Emotional reinterpretation and merger are good things.

 

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Copyright © 2025 Thomas C. Veatch. All rights reserved.
Created: May 20, 2025, Modified: October 19, 2025