TO BECOME OR NOT TO BECOME
(THAT IS THE QUESTION)
Episodes in the history of an Indian word
By Mrs. RHYS DAVIDS , D.Litt., M.A
London
Luzac Co
46 Great Russell Street
1937/5550/164p
CONTENTS
A Foreword
I. Grammarian, Translation an Reader
II. ‘Is’ and “Becomes’
III. Man and His Becoming in the Upanishads
IV. The Noun Bhava: Becoming and Its Implications
V. The Verb Bhũ in Moods of the Present
VI. The Verb in the Future Tense
VII. The Verb Bhũ and the Past
VIII. Becoming in Prospect: Bhavva (Bhabba)
IX. The Verb Bhũ as Making-Become
X. The Bhũ-Stem with Prefixes
XI. Words at parting
Index
A FOREWORD
The sub-titled of my book indicates that it seeks to help the student of what we now call Indo-Aryan. Its main title shows that I would serve the general educated reader. He, if he be trugly general, will at times graze in the field of religions documents, where he will , as general reader, be at the mercy of the translator. And the knkowledge the derives from those documents will be shaped by what this agent has seen in their language – or had failed to see – and converted into his own. The language, original or substituted, will not be his main object; this will be to learn what the writings contain that one was new, was true, or was held to be benefical to the spiritual health of men in a certain place and time. Men then and there were being stirred by certain ideas, and were, in the person of certain teachers, expressing these in a certain idiom.