Syntaxe et sens de la tournure védique prathamam jayamanah

Abstract

The Vedic locution prathamam jayamanah is a syntagm, where the first word, used as an adverb, means that the action expressed by the participle happens just before the action of the main verb of the sentence. Once this rule is established, other examples of this use of prathamam can be identified. This turn, very rare in texts, was archaic and finally disappeared: in its evolution indeed, the Sanskrit language exploited other possibilities, as for instance the absolute locative or the nominal compounds.