On the Etymology of Vedic áha

zachary rothstein-DowDen
harvarD university

This paper sets forth a proposal for deriving the emphatic particle Ved. áha from
an obsolete present form of the verb ā́ha ‘says’. The suggested verbal origin
accounts for unusual syntactic features of the particle, most notably the synchron-
ically unmotivated accentuation of the verb in a main clause containing áha.

1. The clitic 1 particle áha is attested throughout the Vedic period, from the Ṛgveda onward. 2
Like many other particles, it is nebulously defined in the lexica. Grassmann classifies áha as
an emphatic particle with scope over the preceding word and analyzes it as consisting of the
pronominal stem á-, found in the oblique forms of idám and locational adverbs like á-tra and
á-tas, and the clitic particle ha < *ghe, the apophonic variant of ghā̆ < *gho. 3
The same etymological analysis is adopted by Delbrück, 4 who provides a detailed discus-
sion of the use of the particle in prose syntax. 5 He likewise sees in áha an emphatic particle
and traces its other uses back to this basic function. One particularly common use of the
particle in Vedic prose is to introduce a subordinate clause that is contrasted with a follow-
ing main clause:
ŚB I 4,1,4 gāyatrī́ m evaìtád arvā́cīṃ ca párācīṃ ca yunakti [[párācy áha devébhyo yajñáṃ
váhaty] arvā́cī manuṣyā̀ n avati]. 6

Author’s note: I would like to thank Jay Jasanoff, Jeremy Rau, Stefan Höfler, and Jesse Lundquist for their com-
ments on an early version of this paper presented at the GSAS Workshop in Indo-European and Historical Linguis-
tics at Harvard University in 2018, and I would particularly like to thank Stephanie Jamison, Alexander Nikolaev,
and an anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on the final version.
1. In prose, áha always occurs in second-position clitic chains; in verse, áha is most often a constituent of a
second-position clitic chain, frequently appears verse-finally, and occasionally appears elsewhere. The term “clitic”
is used here in reference to the syntactic properties of this word, which unlike canonical clitics always bears the
accent. On accented clitics, see David Goldstein, Classical Greek Syntax: Wackernagel’s Law in Herodotus (Leiden:
Brill, 2015), 50; on accented clitics in Vedic, see John Lowe, “Accented Clitics in the Ṛgveda,” Transactions of the
Philological Society 112.1 (2014): 5–43.
2. RV 48× (I 13×, II 3×, III 2×, IV 4×, V 8×, VI 1×, VII 2×, VIII 6×, IX 1×, X 8×); AVŚ I-XIX 5×, XX 9×; AVP
8×; TS 8×; MS 12×; KS 6×; KpS 2×; VSM 2×; VSK 3×. The particle is particularly common in ŚB where it occurs
over forty times. Several of these (I 5,1,4; 6,4,3; X 2,1,4; 2,2,3; 2,3,18; 5,2,16; XII 3,5,2; XIII 5,3,5) are omitted by
the VPK, which also incorrectly gives XI 4,2,18 as XI 4,2,8; the particle is less frequent in the other Br. texts. After
the Br. period the particle falls out of use. On MS I 11,5 védā́ ha ]=véda ā́ ha], II 1,9 kálpate +ha, and III 3,4 +védā́ ha
see Martin Mittwede, Textkritische Bemerkungen zur Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā: Sammlung und Auswertung der in der
Sekundärliteratur bereits geäusserten Vorschläge (Steiner: Wiesbaden, 1986), 72, 79, 113.
3. Hermann Grassmann, Wörterbuch zum Ṛig-Veda (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1873), 162; so also Alexander
Lubotsky, “Vedic samaha ‘verily’,” Indo-Iranian Journal 38.3 (1995): 257–60, at 259; George E. Dunkel, Lexikon
der indogermanischen Partikeln und Pronominalstämme (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2014), vol. 2: 286.
4. Berthold Delbrück, Altindische Syntax (Halle: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1888), 519–22.
5. As to the semantics, Delbrück comments (p. 519) that “]m[an hat den Eindruck, dass áha oft auch wohl
fehlen könnte, ohne dass der Sinn erheblich verändert würde, und ebenso, dass es oft zugesetzt werden könnte, wo
es nicht steht.”
6. For clarity of presentation, the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa is transcribed in this paper with restored accentuation, as
is usually done. In my opinion, however, the single accent of the manuscripts, its omission in a sequence of accented
syllables (e.g., yajñaṃ váhaty for yajñáṃ váhaty), and its appearance on a syllable preceding a lost accented vowel
(e.g., manúṣyān for manuṣyā̀ n) do represent the linguistic reality of the redactors of the text. For an overview of

Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022) 51

https://doi.org/10.5913/jaos.142.1.2022.ar003
52 Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022)

He thereby joins a gāyatrī verse directed hitherward to one directed away from here: ]]the one
which tends from hence áha carries the sacrifice to the gods,[ and the one which tends hither-
ward pleases the men.] 7

Delbrück conjectures that this use of áha developed out of its use as an emphatic particle. 8 I
will return to this question in my analysis below.
While this older etymology is not wholly compelling, it has yet to be superseded.
Mayrhofer, 9 without rejecting the earlier analysis, tentatively suggests that the word could
be of exclamatory origin like German aha! It is unlikely, however, that a sound expressing
surprise or approbation would have been transformed into a second-position clitic or would
have acquired the requisite semantics. I know of no parallels for such a development.
Oberlies 10 has suggested that áha could in fact be the 1sg. form corresponding to pf.
3sg. ā́ha ‘says’. His reasoning, unfortunately, is not provided. Though positing verbal origin
of the particle does offer significant advantages for explaining its syntactic properties as I
will argue below, Oberlies’s proposition is untenable on formal grounds. There is no reason
to think that the initial long vowel of the expected 1sg. *ā́ha < *HaHádhHa would have
become short. The expected first-person form may even be attested in OAv. ādā (on which
see below). A morphological remodeling of this within Vedic by an analogy of the type 3sg.
cakā́ra : 1sg. cakara :: 3sg. ā́ha : x, where x was resolved as 1sg. áha would be poorly moti-
vated; roots of the structure (H)aC regularly form a synchronically non-ablauting stem āC
throughout the perfect in Vedic, a result of the fact that the strong stem HaHáC- and the weak
stem HaHC-́ fell together. Shortening of the initial vowel of the particle in allegro speech
would be an equally ad hoc explanation.
2. If all that we had to go on were limited attestations, semantics that are difficult to deter-
mine, unremarkable syntax, and no clear Indo-European cognates, the origin of the particle
áha would be impossible to determine. The situation is, however, not quite so desperate. A
first clue to the particle’s origin comes from its odd accentual properties: Pāṇini prescribes
that a verb be accented in a sentence beginning with tu, paśya, paśyata, aha, and aho when
they express respect. 11 This accentuation rule appears to obtain in practice in Vedic prose,
though unambiguous examples are few. Delbrück 12 identifies two instances, both from the
Śatapathabrāhmaṇa:
ŚB I 2,3,2 áty áha tád índró ’mucyata, devó hí sáḥ.
Indra, assuredly, was free from that (sin), for he is a god.
ŚB I 3,1,11 tád dháike sruksaṃmā́rjanāny agnā́v abhyā́ dadhati vedásyā́hā́bhūvant srúca ebhiḥ
sám amārjiṣur idáṃ vái kíṃcid yajñásya néd idáṃ bahirdhā́ yajñā́d bhávad íti

this controversy see George Cardona, “The Bhāṣika Accentuation System,” Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik 18
(1993): 1–40.
7. All translations of the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa are from Julius Eggeling, The Satapatha-brāhmana According to
the Text of the Mādhyandina School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882–1900). Here and elsewhere in translated pas-
sages emphasis, syntactic bracketing, and áha are added for clarity.
8. “Die Bedeutungsentwickelung ]dürfte[ die sein, dass áha ursprünglich ein Versicherungswort ist, und im
Satzgefüge sich ebenso entwickelt hat wie zwar und μέν (sma)” (p. 522).
9. Manfred Mayrhofer, Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1992–2001),
vol. 1: 153.
10. Apud Mayrhofer, vol. 2: 827. This proposal is rightly rejected by Dunkel, Lexikon, vol. 2: 286.
11. Pāṇ. VIII 1,39-40 tupaśyapaśyatāhaiḥ pūjāyām / aho ca. The Kāśikā supplies the example aha māṇavako
bhuṅkté śobhanam “The man adorns himself.” Contrary to the Kāśikā example, áha does not occur sentence-ini-
tially in our texts (in ŚB II 2,2,6 = II 4,3,14 devā́ ḥ begins the sentence).
12. Delbrück, Altindische Syntax, 521–22.
 Rothstein-DowDen: On the Etymology of Vedic áha 53

Here now some throw the grass-ends used for cleaning the spoons into the (Āhavanīya) fire. “To
the veda (grass-bunch) they assuredly belonged. They cleaned the spoons with them: 13 hence it
is something that belongs to the sacrifice, and (we throw it into the fire) in order that it should
not become excluded from the sacrifice,” thus (they argue).

Particularly striking is the contrast in ŚB VI 6,4,12, where the same clause is given first
without áha and with unaccented verb and then repeated with áha and with accented verb:
ŚB VI 6,4,12 ghṛténa tváṃ tanvàṃ vardhayasva [RV X 59,5] satyā́ḥ santu yájamānasya kā́mā
[RV X 116,8] íti ghṛténā́ha tváṃ tanvàm vardháyasva yébhya u tvā́ṃ kā́mebhyo yájamāna
ā́dhatta tè ’sya sárve satyā́ḥ santv íty etát.
“With ghee make thou grow thy body, let the wishes of the Sacrificer be true!”—that is, “With
ghee indeed make thou grow thy body, and for whatever wishes the Sacrificer makes up a fire,
may they all come true!”

The accentual properties of áha cannot be assessed in earlier saṃhitā prose, where all instanc-
es of an accented verb in an áha-clause can have the accent for other syntactic reasons. 14
In early verse this accent rule is not consistently applied. We find for instance an accented
primary verb in
RV I 6,4 ā́d áha svadhā́m ánu púnar garbhatvám eriré / dádhānā nā́ma yajñíyam //
Certainly áha, just after that they once again roused his embryonic state ]= kindled the fire[
according to his nature, / acquiring for themselves a name worthy of the sacrifice. 15
AV I 34,2 jihvā́yā ágre mádhu me jihvāmūlé madhū́ lakam / máméd áha krátāv áso máma cittám
upā́yasi //
At the tip of my tongue honey, at the root of my tongue honeyedness; mayest though be alto-
gether in my power, mayest though come unto my intent. 16
AV VII 39,4 aháṃ vadāmi nét tuváṃ sabhā́yām áha tváṃ váda /
I am speaking; not thou; in the assembly verily do thou speak. 17

But contrary to this we several times find áha followed by an unaccented verb in the RV as in
RV X 86,2 párā híī̀ndra dhā́vasi vṛṣā́kaper áti vyáthiḥ / nó áha prá vindasy anyátra sómapītaye
víśvasmād índra úttaraḥ //
]Indrāṇī:[ “But although, o Indra, you run away, beyond the wayward course of Vṛṣākapi, / you
do not find áha anywhere else for soma-drinking.” – Above all Indra!

Though the situation is admittedly somewhat messy, the use of áha in a main clause with an
accented verb is a persistent feature of the language and can be considered a “syntactic lectio

13. I diverge here from Eggeling, who translates “and the spoons have been cleaned with them,” taking the verb
as a passive, perhaps with Pāṇ. VI 4,62 in mind. But the active morphology speaks against this interpretation. Narten
corrects Eggeling’s translation and suggests that the peculiar long root vowel is taken from the present mā́ rjmi (RV
II 35,2); Johanna Narten, Die sigmatischen Aoriste im Veda (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1964), 58, 197 with n. 477.
14. TS VI 3,1,6 kásmā áha devā́ yā́ maṃ vā́ yāmaṃ vā́ nu jñāsyantī́ ti with accentless verb is not an exception
to the accentuation rule; the sentence is elliptical and is to be understood [kásmā áha devā́ yā́ maṃ anujñāsyánti]
[kasmai vā́ yāmam ánu jñāsyanti[, lit. “to whom will the gods grant a way and to whom will they grant a non-way?”
(my translation).
15. All Ṛgvedasaṃhitā translations are taken from Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton, The Rigveda:
The Earliest Religious Poetry of India (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2014).
16. All translations of the Atharvavedasaṃhitā are taken from William Dwight Whitney, Atharva-Veda Saṁhitā
(Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1905).
17. Whitney (p. 413) comments on the oddity of the verbal accent here, which is found in all but one manu-
script.
54 Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022)

difficilior.” It is not well grounded in the synchronic grammar of Vedic and hence demands
a historical explanation.
One possibility is that áha started out as an emphatic particle and then developed a spe-
cial association with subordinate clauses, where accentuation of the verb is the norm. The
rule that the verb in an áha clause must take the accent would then have been generalized
from the innovative subordinate clauses to the independent clauses in which áha operated
as an emphatic particle. But this development is not trivial. The use of the verbal accent
to distinguish subordinate clauses from main clauses is a central feature of Vedic syntax
and prosody. It is hard to see why speakers would have mistaken the accent in a dependent
clause containing áha as being conditioned by the particle at a time when áha was also used
in independent clauses with accentless verb, or why this usage should have spread from the
former to the latter.
The other logical possibility, and a far more straightforward one, is that clauses with áha
contain a verb the accent of which used to be well motivated under the synchronic rules of
pre-Vedic grammar. Over time, the syntactic environment motivating the accent was lost but
the accent itself remained as an archaism. Precisely this explanation holds for the particle
hánta ]≈ Pā. handa, Pkt. hanta/handa/handi], 18 which consistently introduces a clause with
an accented verb. 19 Thieme 20 argued convincingly that hánta continues a 2pl. pres. ipv. to
the verbal root han ‘strike’. 21 We thus find, for example, ŚB I 2,5,2 hántemā́ m pṛthivī́ ṃ
vibhájāmahai “Well then, let us divide this world between us” with accented verb. The
accentuation of the verb in a hánta-clause can most easily be taken as a fall-out of the fact
that hánta historically expressed the primary verbal action, while the second clause con-
tained a concomitant verbal action that was logically subordinated to the former. 22 In light
of this fact, a verbal origin for áha would plausibly make sense of its accentual properties.
3. With the establishment of some basis for supposing that áha could be of verbal origin,
Oberlies’s suggestion of connecting this particle with the verb ā́ha takes on renewed appeal.
The question then becomes, what morphological relationship could áha bear to ā́ha? In order
to answer this, it will be necessary to examine the paradigm of ā́ha and its Iranian cognates.
In the Saṃhitā texts, the preterito-present ā́ha is used only in the 3rd person, other forms
and tenses being supplied variously by other verbal roots. We later also find 2sg. ā́ttha
(Br.+). 23 As verbal paradigms do not usually “start out” internally defective, there is reason
to suspect that this was not always the case with Vedic ā́ha either.

18. The Middle Indic forms in -nd- are somewhat surprising, particularly in Pāli where a change -nt- > -nd- is
not well paralleled. The special treatment of the cluster may be due to the fact that this is a function word and that
the dental was irregularly voiced in allegro speech, but the existence of Pkt. handi makes it tempting to posit a sg.
ipv. (*)handhi as well, which became handi through dissimilation in quick speech (cf. Aśokan hida ‘here’ < *hidha
for *idha). A contamination handi ⨂ hanta would have yielded attested handa. On the development of the cluster
-nt- see Richard Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit-Sprachen (Strassburg: Trübner, 1900), 189–90.
19. The first unambiguous examples come from the Śatapathabrāhmaṇa; see Delbrück, Altindische Syntax,
43–44; cf. Pāṇ. VIII 1,54.
20. Paul Thieme, Der Fremdling im Ṛgveda: Eine Studie über die Bedeutung der Worte ari, arya, aryaman und
ārya (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1938), 2–3.
21. On the use of the strong stem of athematic verbs in the 2pl. ipv. see Jay H. Jasanoff, Hittite and the Indo-
European Verb (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), 82.
22. The erstwhile verb hánta itself regularly received the accent because it stood at the beginning of its (one-
word) clause.
23. This form appears to violate Bartholomae’s Law, as we might have expected the outcome of *HaHádh+tha
to contain a voiced cluster as in 2sg. álabdhās (MS IV 8,1) or a linking vowel as in dudóhitha (RV+). Schindler
argues that the dental quality of the root, known from Avestan, would not have been recoverable from the third-
person forms, and that ā́ ttha must therefore be an archaism. Against this one might argue that pre-literary spoken
 Rothstein-DowDen: On the Etymology of Vedic áha 55

In Avestan, unlike in Sanskrit, a full perfect paradigm with all persons and numbers was
likely available to speakers, as was perhaps a larger “averbo” (array of tense-aspect stems)
containing a present and an aorist. The evidence is difficult to evaluate, but nevertheless sug-
gestive and worth reviewing in detail.
We find 3sg. YAv. pairi.āδa (N 14.2 ]32[) ‘says’ beside 3pl. OYAv. ādar ə̄̆ (Y 43,15; FrD
3) ‘say’ corresponding to the Sanskrit forms. Though the occurrence in N 14.2 is rendered
as 3pl. be gōwēnd in the Pahlavi, there can be no serious doubt that a third person singular
form did exist in Avestan.
Various interpretations 24 have been given of OAv. ādā in the Yasna Haptaŋhāiti:
YH 35,8 aṣ̌ahiiā āat̰ sairī aṣ̌ahiiā vərəzə̄nē
kahmāicīt̰ hātąm jījišąm
vahištąm ādā ubōibiiā ahubiiā
He has declared the best search for refuge, for anyone among those who exist, (to be) in shelter
of truth (and) in the community of truth, for both existences. 25

While Humbach 26 in the above translation takes the verb to be 3sg. ‘he has declared’, Hoff-
mann 27 and Narten 28 have argued that this is rather the 1sg. ‘I say’. The context does not
allow us to determine which interpretation is correct with any certainty.
Also problematic is the perfect middle YAv. aδaē(ca) (V 4,47; N 19.4 [37]), a form on
which there is no consensus. Bartholomae, followed by Wolff, 29 takes this to be a 1sg. mid.
‘I say’.
V 4,47 aδaēca uiti nāiriuuaite zī tē ahmāt̰ pourum framraomi spitama zaraθuštra
Und also sage ich: “Dir dem beweibten spreche ich den Vorrang zu, o Spitama Zaraθuštra.” 30

A second approach is pursued by Kümmel, 31 who takes aδaē to be a 3sg. perf. mid. with
passive meaning ‘it is said’. Under Kümmel’s interpretation, the phrase aδaēca uiti “thus it
is said” functions in a way similar to how tád āhur “they say” is used to introduce an apho-
rism in Vedic. If āδae is to be understood as a passive, its semantic development would have
been parallel to that of the oppositional middle YAv. (fra-)vaoce (Y 19,8, 10, 11; Yt 12,17;
14,55) ‘was called’ ← vauuaca ‘called’. As the anonymous reviewer points out, this word
could have been interpolated into the textual tradition later than the composition of the text.
The Nērangestān passage also presents problems. It reads as follows:
N 19.4 (37) +aδaca/aδaēca uiti yaθa kaθaca dahmō staota yesniia hauruua daδāti . . . .

dialects could have maintained the dental character of the consonant (cf. Pāli idha ~ Ved. ihá) and that the ending
-tha was restored for morphological clarity. Nonetheless, Schindler’s interpretation remains the most likely. Jochem
Schindler, “Diachronic and Synchronic Remarks on Bartholomae’s and Grassmann’s Laws,” Linguistic Inquiry 7.4
(1976): 622–37, at 624–25; so also Martin J. Kümmel, Das Perfekt im Indoiranischen: Eine Untersuchung der Form
und Funktion einer ererbten Kategorie des Verbums und ihrer Weiterentwicklung in den altindoiranischen Sprachen
(Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000), 117.
24. See the discussion in Johanna Narten, Der Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1986), 125–26.
25. Helmut Humbach, The Gāthās of Zarathushtra and the Other Old Avestan Texts (Heidelberg: Carl Winter,
1991), vol. 1: 144.
26. See also Humbach, vol. 2: 120.
27. Karl Hoffmann, “The Avesta Fragment FrD. 3,” Indo-Iranian Journal 10.4 (1968): 282–88 ]= Aufsätze zur
Indoiranistik, vol. 1, ed. Johanna Narten (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1975): 221–27[, at 287 n. 15.
28. Narten, Der Yasna Haptaŋhāiti, 125–26.
29. Christian Bartholomae, Altiranisches Wörterbuch (Strassburg: Trübner, 1904), 55; Fritz Wolff, Avesta: Die
heiligen Bücher der Parsen (Strassburg: Trübner, 1910), 339.
30. Wolff, Avesta, 339.
31. Kümmel, Perfekt, 615.
56 Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022)

Kotwal and Kreyenbroek 32 follow Waag 33 in amending aδaēca to +aδaca, which they take
as an adversative particle like its counterpart be in the Pahlavi translation. They translate,
“Otherwise it is as follows: in whatever way a pious man completes the Staota Yesniia . . . .”
Kümmel’s “thus it is said,” however, would not be out of place here either and requires no
emendation. No definite conclusion can be reached concerning either passage.
By way of a present we find the iterative YAv. -āδaiia-ti (V 9,12; N 54.2 [72], 55.2 [73],
65.1 [83]). 34 There are two logical possibilities for understanding the history of this forma-
tion. The first is that it is an inherited iterative and perhaps used to stand beside a different
characterized present. The second is that it was created by analogy with another verb that
formed both a perfect and an aiia-present. It is not clear, however, what verb would have
supplied the basis for such an analogy, and the issue cannot be definitely resolved.
Particularly controversial is YAv. āiδi 35 (Yt 8,48) ‘was/is called’ in the Tištriia Yašt:
Yt 8,48 . . . yāca upairi tå akarana anaγra aṣ̌aonō stiš āiδi.
. . . and the ones which (being situated) above these, are/is called the boundless primordial world
of Ašavan. 36

The verb has the form of a “passive” aorist of the type OAv. vācī (Y 43,13), auuācī (Y
36,6) ‘was/is said, called’, and srāuuī (Y 32,7; 45,10; 53,1) ‘was/is heard of’. Though āiδi
is morphologically unambiguous, Panaino, 37 Kellens, 38 and Hoffmann and Forssman 39 are
all reluctant to take it as an aorist, seemingly because no other aorist forms of this verb are
attested. But this logic is somewhat circular. This “passive” aorist, if genuine, stands in the
same relationship to the perfect āδa as does OAv. vācī / auuācī ‘was/is said/called’ ]= Ved.
ávāci ‘was said’[ to YAv. vauuaca ‘said’ ]= Ved. uvā́ ca/vavāca ‘id.’[.
Though the analysis of each of the Avestan forms taken individually could rightly arouse
skepticism, taken together they offer a glimpse at a more complex tense-aspect system than
is preserved in Ved. ā́ ha : āhúr and suggest that these used to belong to a non-defective per-
fect paradigm and possibly to a larger averbo that included an aorist and a present. I would
suggest that this root once formed a present *Hédh-oi ‘says’ (morphological type Ved. śáye
‘lies’ < *k̑ éy-oi ]= CLuw. zī̆yar(i) ‘id.’[ 40) that is not continued by any verb in either Avestan
or Sanskrit but that underlies the particle áha. A present middle 41 *Hádhai beside a “passive”

32. Firoze M. Kotwal and Philip G. Kreyenbroek, The Hērbedestān and Nērangestān, vol. 2: Nērangestān
Fragard 1 (Leuven: Peters, 1995), 106–7.
33. Anatol Waag, Nirangistan, der Awestatraktat über die rituellen Vorschriften (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1941), 119.
34. This present appears to be continued in Saka pätāy- ‘speak’ < *pati-ādaya- as noticed by R. E. Emmerick,
Saka Grammatical Studies (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), 82; cf. Jean Kellens, Le verbe avestique (Wies-
baden: Reichert, 1984), 138.
35. So Karl F. Geldner, Avesta: The Sacred Books of the Parsis, vol. 2: Vispered and Khorda Avesta (Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1889), 116. This is the reading of F1, Pt1, E1, L18, and P13, the lectio difficilior against āat̰ K12, and
superior to nonsensical āiδa K15 and āide J10.
36. Antonio Panaino, Tištrya: The Avestan Hymn to Sirius, part 1 (Rome: Istituto italiano per il Medio ed
Estremo Oriente, 1990), 72.
37. Panaino, 136–37.
38. Kellens, Verbe avestique, 45.
39. Karl Hoffmann and Bernhard Forssman, Avestische Laut- und Formenlehre, 2nd ed. (Innsbruck: Institut für
Sprachen und Literaturen der Universität, 2004), 228.
40. See H. Craig Melchert, “Proto-Indo-European Velars in Luvian,” in Studies in Memory of Warren Cowgill
(1929–1985): Papers from the Fourth East Coast Indo-European Conference, Cornell University, June 6–9, 1985,
ed. Calvert Watkins (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1987), 195–96.
41. Some scholars, notably Rix and Kümmel, take the view that PIE possessed two distinct voice endings in the
present system, “stative” *-o(r/i) and “middle” *-to(r/i). While pairs like Ved. bruve ‘is called’ : -brūté ‘invokes’ do
show passive and self-benefactive semantics respectively, there is good reason to think that this is due to a secondary
 Rothstein-DowDen: On the Etymology of Vedic áha 57

aorist *Hā ́ dhi and active perfect *HaHā ́ dha would reflect a well-paralleled derivational type.
This present would stand in the same relationship to the remaining averbo as does pres. mid
vártate ‘turns (intr.)’ to aor. pass. varti ‘turned (intr.)’ and perf. act. vāvárta ‘turned (intr.)’; 42
pres. pádyate ‘steps’ to aor. pā́ di ‘fell’ and perf. papāda ‘fell’; pres. bháyate ‘is afraid’ to
perf. bibhāya ‘is afraid’; and pres. módate ‘is happy’ to perf. mumóda ‘is happy’. 43 Had
*Hédh-oi evolved naturally, it would have given Ved. *á(d)he ‘says’, which might have been
updated to *áddhe or to thematic *ádhate ‘says’.
Wackernagel 44 long ago observed that the inherited imperfect to the verb duhé ‘milks,
gives milk’ is the actually attested áduha (MS III 3,4; IV 2,2) and that the usual form áduhat
must have gained its -t by analogy with the thematic imperfect. In keeping with this, we
would expect the imperfect injunctive of PIIr. *Hádh-ai to have been *Hádh-a, which in turn
would have given Ved. á(d)ha. I propose that this is in fact the particle áha, grammaticalized
and divorced from its verbal paradigm.
4. Because the transition from verb to particle was already complete by the time of our
earliest texts, we can only conjecture as to how this process would have taken place. We
might imagine that the prototypical use of the particle was as in the following example from
Brāhmaṇa prose:
ŚB I 7,3,3 sá aikṣata. áhāsy áhāntár yanty u mā yajñā́d íti sò ’nū́ ccakrāma.
He saw (what occurred, and said), “I have been left behind áha: they are excluding me from the
sacrifice!” He went up after them.

Under the interpretation of áha as a verb of speaking, this sentence makes a good deal of
sense. We might literally (but perhaps anachronistically) render it “And he saw [it]. ‘I have
been left behind’—he said—‘for they are excluding me from the sacrifice’.” The posited
verb *áha would originally have been accented in this position inasmuch as it constitutes
a sentence unto itself, of which it is the first (and only) word. Such parenthetical verbs of
speaking are common cross-linguistically. One might compare both syntactically and seman-
tically Lat. inquit ‘says’, Greek φησί ‘id.’, and OIr. ol and ar ‘id.’, which like áha do not
occur clause-initially. Whether áha was originally clause-initial and later developed clitic
properties 45 or began life, so to speak, in mid-clause necessarily remains a matter of con-
jecture.

realignment and that the original distinction was tied to stem morphology. Jasanoff points out that only the ending
*-to(r) can be reconstructed for derived thematic presents in *-sk̑e/o-, *-i̯ e/o- and *-ei̯ e/o-, whereas *-o(r) is particu-
larly at home in athematic (root) presents in the historical record. Posited *Hédh-oi ← *Hédh-or is simply a middle
form in keeping with Jasanoff’s interpretation and not a “stative.” See Helmut Rix, “The Proto-Indo-European
Middle: Content, Forms and Origin,” Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft 49 (1988): 101–19; Martin Küm-
mel, Stativ und Passivaorist im Indoiranischen (Wiesbaden: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 8–9; Jay H. Jasanoff,
Hittite and the Indo-European Verb, 48–51.
42. On the peculiar averbo of vṛt see especially Karl Hoffmann, Aufsätze zur Indoiranistik, vol. 2, ed. Johanna
Narten (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1976), 589–92.
43. Verbs of speaking constitute a liminal semantic category and are often unaccusative or “middle-like” despite
the fact that these verbs can logically be transitive. In Hindi, for instance, the verb bolnā ‘say’ does not take an
ergatively marked agent when it introduces reported speech (vah bolā ‘he said’ not #us-ne bolā). This phenomenon
is also visible in the diathesis of Latin loquōr ‘speak, say’, Old Irish labraithir ‘id.’, Greek ψεύδομαι ‘lie’, etc.
44. Jacob Wackernagel, “Indisches und Italisches,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem
Gebiete der indo-germanischen Sprachen 41 (1907): 305–19 ]= Kleine Schriften von Jacob Wackernagel (Göttin-
gen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1953), vol. 1: 494–508[, at 309–13.
45. Stephanie Jamison (p.c.) draws my attention to the parallel provided by manye ‘I think’, which is commonly
used parenthetically in the epics.
58 Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022)

It is worth saying a few more words about the accent at this point. It might be objected
that in our texts, direct speech is regularly reported (with or without íti) using exactly the
accentuation that the speaker would have used in the original pronouncement; this need not
always have been the case. I have already discussed a similar construction involving hánta
above, which hints that a single accented verb introducing a clause perceived as subordi-
nate was the norm at an earlier period. To this can be added a further piece of evidence
from Pāṇini (VIII 1,46), who tells us that following ehi manye, used mockingly (prahāse),
a (future) verb is accented. 46 In this case, it is difficult to know whether the reason for the
accent is the frozen imperative ehi ‘come’ or the indicative manye ‘I think’; either would
support the current argumentation.
As the present fell out of use in the pre-history of Vedic, áha remained as a particle of
reported speech, presumably serving a function similar to that of íti in the historical period.
We witness such a transition from finite verb to quotative particle in the Old Russian second-
position clitic -de ‘said’ ] = OPol. -dzie], syncopated from the verb 3sg. *děje ‘says’, 47 and
in Hittite, where reported speech is regularly marked using a second-position clitic = wa(r).
This is usually taken as continuing a 3sg. finite verb *werh1t ‘he said’ from the same root as
Greek ἐρέω ‘ask’ and εἴρω ‘say’. 48
It is unclear to what extent áha retained its nuance as a particle of reported speech into the
historical period, as opposed to being a simple emphatic particle. There are certainly numer-
ous early instances in which a quotative particle would make sense. In addition to RV X 86,2
cited above, we find numerous suggestive usages of áha in early Vedic prose:
TS V 4,3,4 átho khálv āhuḥ kásyāṃ vā́ha diśí rudráḥ kásyāṃ véti.
Or rather they say, “In what áha quarter is Rudra or in what?” 49
MS I 4,5 samṛtayajñó vā́ eṣá yád darśapūrṇamāsaú. kásya vā́ha yakṣyámāṇasya devátā yajñám
āgácchanti kásya vā ná 50 bahūnā́m̐ samānám áhar yájamānānām.
Dieses Neu- und Vollmondopfer, das ist ein Konkurrenzopfer. Zum Opfer wessen áha, der
vorhat, das Opfer zu veranstalten, kommen schließlich die Gottheiten herbei oder zu wessen
nicht, unter den vielen die am selben Tag das Opfer veranstalten? 51
MS I 10,15 tè ’bruvan kásya vā́hedám̐ śvó bhavitā́ kásya vā pácatéti.
Sie sagten: “Wem áha oder wem wird schließlich das ]Ganze[ hier morgen gehören? Kocht
etwas!”
TS V 3,1,1 = 7,8,1 utsannayajñó vā́ eṣá yád agníḥ. kíṃ vā́haitásya kriyáte kíṃ vā ná.
Now this fire (ritual) is an extensive sacrifice; what áha part of it is performed or what not?

See also ŚB I 3,1,11 above.

The common use of áha to mark a contraposition of clauses as in several of the examples
above likely grew out of its use as a quotative particle; the etymological “prototype” of TS V
3,1,1 (above): (*)]kíṃ áhaitásya kriyáte] ‘what part of it is performed’ contained an accented

46. Pāṇ. VIII 1,46: ehi manye prahāse lṛṭ.

47. See A. E. Aniki, Russkij etimologičeskij slovar’ (Moscow: Rossijskaja Akademija Nauk, 2019), s.v. -de. I
am grateful to Alexander Nikolaev for drawing my attention to this parallel.
48. Alwin Kloekhorst, Etymological Dictionary of the Hittite Inherited Lexicon (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 958.
49. All translations of the Taittirī yasaṃhitā are taken from Arthur B. Keith, The Veda of the Black Yajus School
Entitled Taittiriya Sanhita (Cambridge MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1914).
50. Schroeder’s edition of the text ends the sentence after ná, but Amano argues for the sentence division given
here based on parallel passages. See Kyoko Amano, Maitrāyaṇī Saṃhitā I-II: Übersetzung der Prosapartien mit
Kommentar zur Lexik und Syntax der älteren vedischen Prosa (Bremen: Hempen, 2009), 139 n. 3.
51. All translations of the Maitrāyaṇī yasaṃhitā are taken from Amano.
 Rothstein-DowDen: On the Etymology of Vedic áha 59

verb for which it was difficult for speakers to account using the rules of their synchronic
grammar. This clause would have cried out for a second clause completing the thought. This
yielded the syntactic construction of the type TS V 3,1,1 [[kíṃ vā́ haitásya kriyáte] kíṃ vā ná]
“what part of it is performed or what not?” This sentence is fully in line with the common
construction in which a first clause with an accented verb is opposed to a second clause with
an unaccented (and often elided) verb, as in MS I 5,7 [[kásmāt sāyám agním upatíṣṭhante]
kásmāt prātár né]ti “Warum tritt man am Abend an das Feuer heran [und verehrt es], warum
nicht am Morgen?” From this and similar contexts the use of áha to introduce a “whereas”
subordinate clause followed by a main clause became common, as in the following passage:
MS II 4,3 táto yáḥ sómo ’tyáricyata tám agnā́ upaprā́vartayat svā́héndraśatrur vardhasva
ítī́ndrasyā́hainam̐ śátrum ácikīrṣat índram asya śátrum akarot.
Den Soma, der davon übrigblieb, den warf er (Tvaṣṭṛ) ins Feuer (Agni) fort ]mit den Worten:[
“Svāhā! Wachse als Indras Feind!” Zu Indras áha Feind wollte er ihn ja machen, den Indra
machte er zu seinem Feind.

Even here a quasi-verbal quotative interpretation of áha is possible; the subject’s intent is
given in the first clause (“he wished, he said, to make it an enemy of Indra”) and is opposed
to the real outcome in the second clause (“but (in reality) he made Indra his [own] enemy”).
In the Ṛgveda the particle is mostly used in a rather colorless way, rendering translations
like ‘indeed’ almost necessary. This is not true of RV VIII 33. This hymn can be divided
metrically 52 and thematically into two pieces. The first part of the hymn (verses 1–15) is
in praise of Indra, while the brief second part (verses 16–19) criticizes women and equates
the officiating priest with a woman. Here we find áha in a puzzling syntactic construction:
RV VIII 33,17 índraś cid ghā tád abravīt
striyā́ aśāsiyám mánaḥ
utó áha krátuṃ raghúm
Indra said just this, “the mind of woman is not to be instructed, and áha her will is fickle.”

The odd syntax of this verse immediately draws the reader’s attention. It is highly unusual
that the logical subject of the final pāda, krátum, together with its predicate raghúm, appear
in the accusative. A first impulse might be to take krátum raghúm as an object of abravīt,
appositional to tád and in a kind of oratio obliqua like that of Greek and Latin. It is normal 53
for verbs of speaking to take a double accusative of the type RV X 42,3 kím aṅgá tvā magha-
van bhojám āhuḥ “Do they not call you the benefactor, bounteous one?,” I 161,13 śvā́ nam
bastó bodhayitā́ ram abravīt “The billy-goat ]= the Sun?[ said the dog ]= the Moon?[ was the
awakener,” and X 10,12 pāpám āhur yáḥ svásāraṃ nigácchāt “They call him evil who will
go down on his sister.” It would be without parallel, however, for an entire nominal sentence
(in this case the clause [krátū raghúḥ] with fronted subject) to function as the object of a
verb of speaking.
One possibility might be to take tád adverbially and not as the direct object of the verb,
thereby freeing abravīt to take krátum as its object. Adverbial use of tád is common in
Brāhmaṇa prose. But there are no unambiguous instances of tád functioning adverbially
in the Ṛgveda outside of correlative yád . . . tád clauses. 54 By contrast, it is very com-

52. On the final anuṣṭubh verse see Hermann Oldenberg, Die Hymnen des Rigveda: Metrische und textge-
schichtliche Prolegomena (Berlin: Wilhelm Hertz, 1888), 146.
53. On this construction see Carl Gaedicke, Der Accusativ im Veda (Breslau: Koebner, 1880), 255–77; Del-
brück, Altindische Syntax, 178–81.
54. Delbrück (Altindische Syntax, 216–17) seems to claim that RV I 154,2 prá tád víṣṇuḥ stavate vī ríyèna “In
60 Journal of the American Oriental Society 142.1 (2022)

mon in all periods to introduce direct speech with the expression tád āha/ur, the pronoun
functioning anaphorically with reference to the finite clause. So, for instance, I 161,2 ékaṃ
camasáṃ catúraḥ kṛṇotana / tád vo devā́ abruvan ]Agni:[ “‘Make the one cup to be four’—
that the gods said to you”; I 161,13 suṣupvā́ ṁsa ṛbhavas tád apṛcchata / ágohiya ká idáṃ no
abūbudhat “After you slept, Ṛbhus, you asked this: ‘Who awakened us here, o Agohya?’”; I
191,16 kuṣumbhakás tád abravīd giréḥ pravartamānakáḥ / vṛ́ścikasyārasáṃ viṣám arasáṃ
vṛścika te viṣám “The little teeny kuṣumbha-bug said this, as it made its teeny turn forth
from the mountain: / ‘Without juice is the poison of the little scorpion, without juice is
your poison, little scorpion’”; X 27,18 ayám me deváḥ savitā́ tád āha drúvànna íd vanavat
sarpírannaḥ “This god Savitar here says this to me, ‘Only he whose food is wood, whose
food is melted butter will win.’”
It is better, therefore, to explain the accusative krátum raghúm otherwise than as the
object of abravīt. This was already seen by Sāyana, who seems to take áha in this instance
to mean āha. 55 Given the analysis of the particle áha posited above, Sāyana’s interpretation
is not only defensible in modified form, but even appealing. I would suggest that two clear
possibilities lie open to us. One is that the direct speech ends in pāda b, and pāda c passes
back into indirect speech with áha used as a verb and with verbal rection: “and he said that
her will is fickle.” The use of áha as a verb can perhaps be justified by the fact, observed by
Jamison, 56 that this odd passage uses non-standard language to imitate and mock the speech
of women. It may well be that verbal use of áha was preserved in non-standard speech as
an archaism. 57 A second, less ambitious possibility is that áha is used here to mark reported
speech within direct speech and perhaps introduces a subhāṣita (proverb), the first words of
which are krátuṃ raghúm. It is common practice in later Sanskrit to refer to proverbs by their
incipit, as often in the Pañcatantra, and proverbs critical of women certainly circulated at a
later period in ancient India. 58 Though no definite conclusion can be reached concerning this
passage, a delineation of the problem is a step toward a solution.
5. To sum up, the fact that a verb in a main clause containing áha regularly receives the
accent has never been adequately explained. I have proposed that this feature of the prosody-
syntax interface can be accounted for in historical terms if áha continues an old athematic
imperfect injunctive *Hádh-a to the root *adh ‘say’, which otherwise forms only a defective
perfect system 2sg. ā́ ttha, 3sg. ā́ ha, 3pl. āhúr. Over time, áha lost its verbal force. I have sug-
gested that this newly created particle was originally used to mark reported speech. Traces of
this usage may still be visible, especially in early prose. The fact that a verb in an áha clause

this way Viṣṇu will be praised for his heroic deed” is the only clear instance of adverbial tád in the Ṛgveda, but even
here tád can depend on the preposition or be an internal object in a passivized construction.
55. Sāyana ad RV VIII 33,17 uto api ca striyāḥ kratuṃ prajñāṃ raghuṃ laghum āha.
56. Stephanie W. Jamison, “‘Sacrificer’s Wife’ in the Ṛgveda: Ritual Innovation?” In Creating the Veda, Liv-
ing the Veda: Selected Papers from the 13th World Sanskrit Conference, ed. Joel P. Brereton and Theodore N.
Proferes (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2018), 19–30, at 23; eadem, “The Secret Lives of Texts,” JAOS
131.1 (2011): 1–7, at 3; “Women’s Language in the Rig Veda?” In Indologica: Cборник статей памяти Т. Я.
Елизаренковой, ed. L. Kulikov and M. Rusanov (Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities, 2008), vol.
1: 153–66, at 159.
57. Similarly, Jamison has also called attention to the fact that female speakers in the Ṛgveda use the perfect
optative with disproportionate frequency, while it is all but lacking for men. Jamison, “Where Are All the Optatives?
Modal Patterns in Vedic,” in East and West: Papers in Indo-European Studies (Proceedings of the Kyoto Indo-
European Workshop, Kyoto University, Sept. 2007), ed. Kazu Yoshida and Brent Vine (Bremen: Hempen, 2009),
27–45; eadem, “Women’s Language in the Rig Veda?” 160–64.
58. Examples are numerous; cittaṃ puṣkarapatratoyataralaṃ vidvadbhir āśaṃsitam “ihr Sinn ist, wie die
Weisen sagen, so unstät wie die Wassertropfen auf dem Lotusblatte.” Otto Böhtlingk, Indische Sprüche (St. Peters-
burg: Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1863–65), vol. 1: 4.
 Rothstein-DowDen: On the Etymology of Vedic áha 61

was regularly accented led to the use of áha as a marker of subordination. Ultimately, áha
came to be used as an emphatic particle. While not every step posited is guaranteed in every
detail, this new etymology improves on previous proposals by recognizing and accounting
for the special accentual properties of this word.

aBBReviations
AV]Ś[ Śaunakīyā Atharvavedasaṃhitā
AVP Atharvaveda-Paippalādasaṃhitā
Br. Brāhmaṇas
CLuw. Cuneiform Luwian
FrD 3 Fragment 3 from James Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta (Leroux: Paris, 1893), vol. 3:
150.
KpS Kapiṣṭhalakaṭhasaṃhitā
KS Kaṭhasaṃhitā
Lat. Latin
MS Maitrāyaṇīyasaṃhitā
N Nērangestān
OAv. Old Avestan
Oir. Old Irish
OPol. Old Polish
Pāṇ. Aṣṭādhyāyī
PIE Proto-Indo-European
PIIr. Proto-Indo-Iranian
RV Ṛgvedasaṃhitā
ŚB Śatapathabrāhmaṇa, Mādhyandina recension
TS Taittirīyasaṃhitā
V Vīdēvdād
Ved. Vedic
VPK Vishva Bandhu et al., Vaidikapadānukramakoṣa. Lahore: Vishveshvaranand Vedic
Research Institute, 1935–65.
VS[M] Vājasaneyisaṃhitā, Mādhyandina recension
VSK Vājasaneyisaṃhitā, Kāṇva recension
Y Yasna
YAv. Young Avestan
Yt Yašt