Amreditas and Related Constellations in the Rigveda

Reduplicated demonstratives in ancient Indo‐European languages

“…The native term for these compounds is āmreḍita , literally ‘reiterated’. They can have a durative (‘over and over’) or distributive (‘again and again’; ‘every’) meaning (Delbrück : 51–5; Klein , ). Reiterating compounds can be formed from any word category in Sanskrit: divé‐dive ‘day after day’ ( div‐ ‘sky, day’), yád‐yad ‘whatever’ ( yád ‘which’), páñca‐pañca ‘five each time’ ( páñca ‘five’), ihéha (= ihá‐iha ; ihá ‘here’) ‘here and there’.…”

“…A list of pronominal reiterating compounds in Rigvedic Sanskrit is given by Klein (: 799); see also the discussion in Lejeune (: 210–212). The Rigveda contains nine occurrences of the stem sá‐sa (to sá/tá‐ ‘this, that’) and one of ayám‐ayam (to ayám ‘that, he’).…”

“…Klein (: 784–785) plausibly ascribes the delimiting or specifying value of Rigvedic sása – as opposed to the expected generalising meaning – to the occurrence of the particle íd . Compare his translation of (2), in which táṃ‐tam íd is rendered by ‘that very one’:…”

Rigvedic nú: Configurational Syntax, Semantics, and Poetics

“…The first occurrence of the particle is the only instance where it follows an initial āmreḍita (+ íd ), a formation that stands on the borderline of compound and word‐iteration (cf. Klein ). The four‐syllable opening of this line constitutes a phrasal adverb preceding the main clause, which begins with bh yaḥ .…”

“…The āmreḍita‐like effect is fostered by nú , which aligns the value inherent in the main clause with that of the prior adverbial phrase ( úpopén nú ~ bh ya ín nú ). The total effect is very much like that of VIII.12.19 deváṃ‐devaṃ vo (á)vase / índram‐indram gṛṇīṣáṇi / ádhā yajñ ya turváṇe vy naśuḥ ‘In singing the heavenly Indra over and over again for aid for all of you, they have in that way succeeded in bringing the worship to success’, where one might speak of mutually reinforcing or complementary āmreḍitas (Klein : 776).…”