同語反復表現に見られるインド的思惟の特質

Abstract

The religio-philosophical literature of ancient India abounds in polyptoton, i.e., a type of expression repeating a same word in different cases in the same sentence, such as in yajñena yajñam ayajanta devāh "The gods offered the sacrifice for themselves by means of the sacrifice." This type of expression has not received much attention from modern scholars, being simply regarded as one of the poetical expressions. From the fact that in religio-philosophical texts the polyptoton appears only in particular contexts, it can hardly be doubted that this style is not merely of rhetorical nature but must bear a certain meaning at least in the religio-philosophical context. The present article intends to find out the purport of this expression by tracing back to the origin of its usage in ancient Sanskrit literature (from the Moksadharmaparvan in the Mahābhārata up to the Śatapathabrāhmana of the late Vedic period). In the Epic the polyptoton appears most often, in the form of ātmanātmānam payśati "He sees himself by means of himself" or ātmany ātmānam paśyati "He sees himself in himself, " in the context dealing with the practice of Yoga and the perfection of Yogic practice. Secondly, it occurs in passages discussing world creation and/or dissolution with the verb srj- 'to create', etc. inside the sentence. The first type is still predominant in the polyptoton of the Bhagavadgītā, which belongs to the older portion of the Epic. In the Upanisads, on the other hand, the polyptoton increases in ritualistic context, getting almost equal in occurrence to the polyptoton describing Yogic practice and perfection. In addition, the Upaniśads contain a few passages that use polyptoton with a tangible intention of equating two objects of different nature : energy, vigor, prosperity, etc. versus man (sacrificer), sacrificial paraphernalia and natural environment. From the Brāhmana we understand this was exactly the original usage of polyptoton in ancient Indian literature. The examples in the Śatapathabrāhmana show that polyptoton began in use in ritual environment and was established by ritual theorists of the Vedic period as the technical device to ascertain the indubitable efficacy of ritual performance. This style of expression is used intentionally in the Brāhmana for recovering for a mundane object its own original state of perfect energy and form, in short, for restoring the original form of a man and the world. It is for this reason that polyptoton appears in later texts predominantly in the context dealing with Yoga that aims at the perfect realization or recovery of one's own self, and, in the second place, in the context of world creation, which, in Indian speculation, means cyclic revolution of the world into its original state of being.