Abstract
It is general knowledge that the hymns of the Ṛg Veda contain a large amount of bahuvrihis. The most common word formation rule of these Vedic compounds, which in the vast majority of cases are most appropriately defined as secondary adjectives with possessive meaning, qualifies as a transcategorization or conversion rule. Thus, in general, the bahuvrihis in the Ṛ gVeda are formed without specific suffixes. In certain cases, however, suffixes are employed in the formation of alternatives to ø-suffix bahuvrihis. In other cases, only suffixed formations are found and a corresponding non-suffixed form does not exist. Upon closer examination of what the author has collected, thanks to her close scrutiny of the entire corpus of the hymns of the Ṛ gVeda , formations with an evident suffix – discussed and at times defined by Wackernagel as pleonastic – might indeed reveal certain linguistic procedures adopted for metrical reasons.