13. New page on Courses

I have added a Page on Courses, click on Tab above. This is information on Distance Learning or Open University courses, mainly for an MA in Sanskrit, collected a few years back so may be somewhat dated. But it may give an idea of what's available, so please treat it as just a starting point for your own exploration! I did my MA in Linguistics from Annamalai University (Correspondence course); the study notes were nothing to write home about (sad, when you learn Subramanya Sastri's lectures on the Mahabhashya were written from this university!) (See Resources page). Tamilnadu universities do not seem to have MA Sanskrit in their list (though they have French, Arabic, etc.!).. 

12. Aids to understanding Panini’s sutras – Vŗtti, vārttika and bhāshya

Given that the sutras of Panini are so terse and expressed in a sort of code language, naturally aids to understanding have always been created, and used almost as an integral part of the treatise. We take a look at some of the most prominent here.

First of all, each sutra is followed by a restatement (a paraphrase, according to Rama Nath Sharma on page 17 of the chapter “Panini and the Paniniyas”, in his Volume I, see Resources page). This paraphrase is termed a  vŗtti, which as we saw in the last post, means the state of reality or what exists. It was a part of the term anuvŗtti, which we understood as carrying over or recurrence (Sharma’s equivalent) of words or contexts from the head sutra in a section of the sutras that deal with a line of thought, almost as if a statement were being broken down into sub-statements. The Vŗtti re-states each sutra, giving the missing links, explicitly stating the understood words to be supplied from other sutras (such as those carried forward by anuvŗtti), and also laying out the case and number of each word. As we saw, Panini uses each case in a specific sense: a saptami, or seventh case, for example, which is the locative in normal language, is used as a condition, an ‘if-then’ clause (in the circumstances that something is so-and-so), the sixth case (possessive) indicates what is being acted upon, e.g. in substitutions. The Vŗtti analyses and expands each of the words in the sutra, thereby telling us what role each plays.

Taking our last example again, we start with

1.1.11 īdūdeddvivacanam pragŗhyam

The two entities are parsed for their case ending and number, thus:

 īdūdeddvivacanam 1/1, pragŗhyam 1/1

which indicates that both are in nominative case (first case) and singular number. Next would follow the anuvŗtti, or carried-over words from previous sutras, except that for this particular sutra, there aren’t any, as it is the head sutra in this domain (the adhikāra-sūtra). For the next sutra, we will see the anuvŗtti in brackets. After this comes the vŗtti or paraphrase, supplying all those little bits and pieces that break up the joined words (sandhi) into the individual parts, explicitly state the relationship between the words, and restate the sutra in plainer terms:

 īt ūt et  ity evam antam dvivacanam śabdarūpam pragŗhya samjñam bhavati

This is the Sanskrit version of the paraphrase we gave in English: a  word form (śabdarūpam) having an ending (antam) in long vowels īt ūt et and having dual number (dvivacanam) is (bhavati) a pragŗhya word. Of course, this sutra does not exactly explain what pragŗhya words do; it merely starts the list of examples of such a species.

The vŗtti is thus itself a concise paraphrase of the sutra, and obviously may need further elaboration with examples. That is provided by another type of instructional aid, called the vāŗttika (again a derivative of the same word: vāŗttā means ‘news’). The vāŗttika in turn is expanded and expounded upon by a bhāşya, or commentary. Sharma says (Vol.I, p.17) that “the relationship between a sūtra and its vŗtti is very similar to that between a vāŗttika and a bhāşya".  We will see examples of the latter two types of commentary in a later post.

Before leaving this discussion, let us see the vŗtti for the next sutra, which requires anuvŗtti as well to supply the words understood from the head sutra:

1.1.12 adaso māt

The words are separated out thus in Sharma's treatment: adasah 6/1, māt 5/1 , which indicates that the first is in sixth  case (possessive, of), singular number, and the second is in fifth case (ablative, from), singular. The next element in the exposition is the anuvŗtti, which supplies the carried-forward complement from the previous sutra to complete the thought:

(īdūdet pragŗhyam #11),

the #11 showing it is from sutra 11 of the same quarter (pāda) and chapter (adhyāya). Finally, the vŗtti, which fleshes out the idea in a fuller sentence:

Adasah sambandhī yo makāras tasmāt para īdūdetah pragŗhya samjña bhavanti

Which means “(long vowels) ī, ū, and e which follow the m of adas ‘that’ are termed pragŗhya”.

The rest of the sutras follow a similar pattern, and we have already seen the word division, the carry-forward of terms (anuvŗtti ) and paraphrase (vŗtti) and our own home-spun explanations in common English in the previous posts. So where do we (or Rama Nath Sharma, or Srisa  Chandra Vasu) get these vŗtti  and vāŗttika for the sutras? The vŗtti are mainly those provided in a work called the Kāśikāvŗtti, attributed to the duo Vāmana-Jayāditya of the city of Kāśi (Banares) in the 7^th century AD. The vāŗttika are in main attributed to the great Kātyāyana of the 3^rd century BC, and Rama Nath Sharma estimates (Sharma, Vol.I, p.6) that some 1250 of them (or around one-third of the sutras of the Ashtādhyāyi) have been quoted by the (even greater) sage and grammarian Patañjali in his Mahābhāshya or Great Commentary (2^nd century BC), the authoritative work on the Ashtādhyāyi and much else besides in philosophy, logic etc. Indeed these three, Panini, Katyayana and Patanjali, are the “three sages” or “muni-trayah” of the linguistic heritage of Sanskrit.  

Sharma categorically states that “Pāņini cannot be understood without the help of the commentaries, most notable among which is the Mahābhāşya” (Sharma, Vol.I, p.xi). The vŗtti  merely exposes the sutra without critical comment; the vārttika  takes up critical analysis where warranted. Sharma feels that the vŗtti should have preceded the vārttika, and quotes Yudhisthira Mimamsaka to the effect that Panini probably provided his own vŗtti in the Ashtadhyayi itself (or, at least, provided explanations similar to a vŗtti), but the only extant full-length vŗtti, the Kāśikā, is of a fairly late date (Sharma, Vol.I, p.17). Looking at the length and depth of the Mahabhashya, it would not be unfair to say that the bare explanations attempted in the vŗtti or even vārttika are like the tip of an iceberg, the major portion of which is buried in the Mahabhashya. It is also interesting to speculate that the Ashtadhyayi probably did not have the status of a ‘received’  scripture, or shruti, since it was frequently criticised and corrected by later scholars, and since it explicitly recognized the changes between Vedic and later forms of the language. 

There is another variant of the Ashtādhyāyi and commentary, the Siddhānta-Kaumudi of Bhattoji Dikshita, whose "eye for meticulous detail and interpretation" makes the work "the standard text for studying Pāņini" according to Sharma (Vol.I, p.26).

Links:

Vasu’s Ashtadhyayi can be downloaded here (comes in 8 files):

https://archive.org/details/ashtadhyayi

There is a series of lectures on the Mahabhashya by Subrahmanya Sastri of the Annamalai University, volumes 1 to 6 of which are available for download:

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya1

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya2

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya3

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya4

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya5

https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnPatanjalisVyakaranaMahabhashya6

The later volumes of Sastri's Lectures (there are 8 more) up to Volume XI have been republished by the Kuppuswami Sastri Research Institute, 84, Thiru Vi. Ka. Road, Mylapore, Chennai-600004, www.ksrisanskrit.in (Phone +9144 2498 5320), well worth the trouble of getting these rare books. One hopes they will put them out on the web!

archive.org has other interesting works for download, e.g.

https://archive.org/details/Siddhanta_Kaumudi_English_Translation-SC_Vasu

https://archive.org/details/TheAshtadhyayiOfPanini-RamNathSharma

11. Carrying a direction (anuvŗtti) over a span of sutras: anuvrtti

The span of sutras 1.1.11 to 1.1.19 (see posts 7, 8, 9) is an illustration of the way a new concept or idea or proposition is introduced, and made implicit in a series of successive sutras, sometimes in a nested manner. Thus, 1.1.11 (see post 7) introduced a species called pragŗhyam (unaltered in sandhi, held in check), by presenting one category of it: dual words ending in long vowels īT ūT eT. The next sutra, 1.1.12 (see post 8), presents another variety of it, expressed concisely by the phrase adaso māt, but we have to supply the word  pragŗhyam to complete the idea. This is a carrying forward of a concept from the starting sutra of a chain, to the subsequent sutras which make sense only when the carried-forward word or phrase is supplied in our mind. This carry-forward is termed anuvŗtti.

I like to make some worldly sense out of these technical terms in Sanskrit grammar, because that may fix the meaning of these mysterious words better in our mind. After all, the grammarians of old must have chosen these technical names with some idea of the nature of the function or character of the species described. For denoting the function of carrying forward of a term from earlier to following sutras, why didn’t they choose some other, descriptive word like ‘cup-bearer’ or ‘chariot-driver’ or ‘repeating performance’ or something like that? The word anuvŗtti must, after all, mean something connected to the concept.

The word vŗtti  is explained in the vocabulary given at the back of Michael Coulson’s Teach Yourself Sanskrit in the following terms:

vŗtti f. behaviour, conduct; (grammar) synthetic expression (i.e. by cpds.). 

A host of words are related to the root

vŗt (I vartate) proceed, currently exist, abide, happen; (of promises, etc.) be entered upon. 

Guna (first augmentation or lengthening of the ŗ short vowel) gives vart, which leads to the verb forms of ‘to be’, as well as the sense of ‘turning’ (as in English revert). The famous text on horse-whispering in the Mitanni court used obviously Indo-Aryan or Sanskrit terms to denote the circuits of the training ground by the animals: eka-vartana, panca-vartana, and so on. The second augmentation or vŗddhi gives vārt, from which we have vārtta, news, a reflection of what exists, vartate.

The particle anu- denotes movement towards, or following, or a partiality to, something; it gives a benign and meliorative colour to the following word. So anu-vŗtti would denote something like ‘following (some preceding element) in character’, and in fact Coulson’s vocabulary does have a specific entry for the verb:

anuvŗt anu+vŗt (I anuvartate) go after, attend upon   

and anuvŗtti would be the character or nature of following upon (a preceding element). Indeed my supplying the last phrase (within brackets) itself is a faint echo and an illustration of anuvŗtti! Rama Nath Sharma gives it the label recurrence (chapter 4 of volume I of his treatise, see the Resources page on tabs above). A last thought on the meaning of the word anuvŗtti would be to think of it as an ‘enveloping’ statement (the echo of the sounds n and v may help relate the Sanskrit term and the meaning in English!).

The starting sutra or rule 1.1.11 is termed the adhikāra-sūtra (directing sutra). We carry forward the terms  īT ūT eT pragŗhyam as an anuvŗtti to the second sutra in this block or domain, 1.1.12 adaso māt, supplying the complement pragŗhyam, thus īT ūT eT  adaso māt pragŗhyam (but not the term dvivacanam or dual number from the head sutra, which we may sense from the fact that forms of adas with the stem ending –m- are not necessarily dual). This implies that we may have to choose the exact words to carry forward in anuvŗtti from the sense of the successive sutras and how the ideas are being built up.  This is also noticeable in sutra 1.1.13, śe (see post 8), where carry-forward (anuvŗtti) supplies only the term pragŗhyam. Similar is the case in 1.1.14 nipāta ekāc anāŋ, where we supply only the term pragŗhyam to complete the thought: there is no intent to carry forward īT ūT eT (long vowel ending) or dvivacanam (dual number) as conditions for a particle (nipāta) to be pragŗhyam (unaltered in sandhi), as long as the particle is not a meaningful āŋ (see Post 9!).

A related phenomenon is the nesting of rules by successive anuvŗtti in what computer programmers may call an indented arrangement. In sutra 1.1.15 is provided the single word ot, to which we have to add, by  anuvŗtti, the terms nipāta (particle) from 1.1.14, as well as of course pragŗhyam from the first in the series or domain of the head rule or adhikāra-sūtra (directing sutra). Sutra 1.1.16 carries ot from 1.1.15 and the original pragŗhyam, but not nipāta from 1.1.14. Sutra 1.1.17 and 1.1.19 carry the terms śakalyasya anārşe from 1.1.16, meaning ‘according to Sakalya in non-Vedic’ (interesting word, applying vrddhi to ŗşi, sage, with a negative prefix, an-), but not nipāta from 1.1.14 or ot from 1.1.15.   Sutra 1.1.19, the last in this domain, carries the term pragŗhyam from the head of the series, but not śakalyasya anārşe from 1.1.16, or  ot from 1.1.15, or nipāta from 1.1.14. There does not seem to be any clear instruction about this, and thus it appears that a certain amount of prior knowledge may have to brought into play to decide which terms are to be carried forward by anuvŗtti for each given sutra in a domain or sub-domain.

10. Published editions of Panini's Ashtadhyayi

I find the best detailed exposition to be the 5-volume work of Rama Nath Sharma, The Ashtadhyayi of Panini (without the diacritical marks, which unusually are incorporated in the printed title, no doubt a cataloguer’s nightmare!), published in 1987 (first edition) and revised and enlarged (second edition) in 2002, by Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi (see it on Google Books). Of course, being a detailed exposition in five volumes, it is for a serious pursuer of the subject! Volume 1 is a long (200-page) essay, covering such historical and biographical information as exists, then the various texts, commentaries and elucidations, both traditional and modern, theoretical considerations, various technical topics, and so on. Copious indexes, bibliographies, glossaries, etc. accompany the text. The sutras are given in both the Sanskrit type (Devanagari) as well as English transliteration.

Another well-known (and the earliest) modern  translation is Srisa Chandra Vasu’s Ashtadhyayi of Panini in 2 volumes (again, given here without the diacrictical marks that are very much there on the title page of the book!), originally published in 1891, and reprinted and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi from 1962 (the copy I have seen is the 2009 reprint). According to Rama Nath Sharma, Vasu was the “only  English translation” of the Ashtadhyayi before his own work. He finds Vasu generally “trustworthy”, but is concerned that Vasu “takes a great deal for granted”, “omits glosses”, “misses explanatory details of terms and principles”, has a “pedantic style” of “archaic English”, and so on. My own feeling is that Vasu may be good for a first reading, whereas Sharma really goes into the details and has very subtle chains of reasoning, and may probably address the natural doubts of the learner better. Vasu is let down, I feel, by the fuzziness of its Devanagari typeface, which (at least for my bleary old eyes!) calls for the magnifying glass most of the time! Vasu’s Ashtadhyayi can be downloaded here (comes in 8 files):

https://archive.org/details/ashtadhyayi

I also happen to own an interesting Hindi translation Ashtadhyayi-Bhashya-Prathamavrtti in three volumes by Pandit Brahmdatta Jijnasu published by Ramlal Kapur Trust, Sonipath  (Haryana), which Rama Nath Sharma also refers to (not disapprovingly!). The interesting thing about having translations in different languages is that they sometimes tell us the different ways  in which the same technical terms or ideas can be interpreted and made less mysterious to us. I haven’t yet (December 2014) studied Jijnasu, but I did look up his translation of the term pragrhyam in sutra 1.1.11 (see Post 07); he also translates it as  - pragrhyam, which does not throw light on the common meaning of the term!

9. Wrapping up the vowel terminations (pragŗhyam) that block sandhi changes

We are looking at the series of sutras starting from 1.1.11, which give the different circumstances under which word-ending long vowels īT ūT eT (long ī, long ū, and long e)  are left unmodified by the normal sandhi rules (given elsewhere in Panini), in which case they are termed pragŗhyam (which I fancifully translate as “constrained”). We saw the following conditions so far: sutra 1.1.11 says that a dual form (could be a verb or noun) ending  in the long vowel will not take part in sandhi, i.e. will be pragŗhyam; next, in 1.1.12, we were told that forms of adas “that” having endings –m+long vowel would be pragŗhyam; and in 1.1.13, certain Vedic pronoun forms ending in e like asme, yuşme, are also pragŗhyam, i.e. they are not combined with following vowels under usual sandhi rules (which introduce a y sound for an i, or  v sound in place of u, but that is a different sutra, 6.1.77 iko yaņ aci which we will keep for later).

Now the next three sutras give some more contexts in which a terminal long vowel (īdūded or rather, īdūdet if we quote the string without sandhi modification of the final sound) is pragŗhyam, constrained. These are given below and discussed briefly:

1.1.14 nipāta ekāc anāŋ (the symbol ŋ stands in for the ng sound)

This is interesting both for the principle it establishes, and for the brevity of the terminology. The import is straightforward: a particle (nipāta) of one (eka) vowel (aC, which we know from our Siva-sutras, see Page above) except (an-) the long ā (āŋ or āŊ to show the second letter is a nonsense marker, an iT). We supply the predicate to complete the idea, which is pragŗhyam, constrained, i.e. does not get modified by sandhi.

Terms like ekāc and anāŋ are delectable, as they express a whole phrase (except for…, which is not…) by such a concise formulation. Examples given with i, u, e denote the single vowel (ekāc) as exclamations, like ‘O adversity’ which would not be pronounced as ‘Ovadversity’ with sandhi: a apehi “hey, stay away”. But there is a complication about the particle ā; in some cases it is still a pragŗhyam, in apparent disregard of the sutra, and will remain unmodified. In such cases it is not technically āŋ, and therefore behaves like any other single vowel ekāc. So what are these mysterious anāŋ (not- āŋ) that buck the rule? They are used like a preposition meaning “a little” or a pre-verb meaning  “up to” rather than being just an exclamation or a sigh:   ā uşņam = oşņam, a little hot. Not a pragŗhyam!

The next sutra

1.1.15 ot

assigns pragŗhyam character to a particle (nipāta, supplied from the preceding sutra) ending in the long vowel o: āho iti “emphatic interrogative particle”, āho atra “what now!”. The particle need not be of one syllable (ekāc). 

The next three sutras refer to forms of vocative case (hailing, calling someone) ending in o (carried from the previous sutra), or ending in u, or in a nasalized ū (we don’t have a simple symbol for this), before a “non-Vedic” iti. These are special cases which need not detain us here, but they do say something about how closely the sage has observed the spoken tongue.

The next sutra, and the final one in this span of sutras on the contexts of   pragŗhyam (constrained endings) is a little more interesting:

1.1.  19  īdūtau ca saptamyarthe

Here is our old friend īT, now attached to the companion ūT, and the compound word put in nominative case, dual number (1/2), hence meaning “the two vowels long ī and (ca) long ū”. What of them? When they are word endings in the seventh (saptami) case meaning (arthe), i.e. in the locative case, they will be  pragŗhyam (constrained endings), i.e. they will not be modified as per sandhi rules when another vowel follows (as has happened to the short i in saptami+arthe= saptamyarthe in the sutra!).

The span of sutras 1.1.11 to 1.1.19 displays many characteristics of Panini’s styles and conventions: the coining of compact words to denote conditions (e.g. ekāc, anāŋ) taking advantage of the ground already laid by his intelligent (crafty!) grouping of letters and giving them range names by interposing iT markers (ekāC, anāŊ); the carrying over of words from previous sutras by implication, and which have to be supplied mentally by the reader; the inter-relation between sutras in different parts of the treatise; and so on. Above all, is the overwhelming austerity of thought and expression: almost as if the man wished to be ever ready to go to his Maker, so sparse was his verbal baggage. But this very austerity of expression meant that various aids were required to keep Panini’s thought alive: we shall touch on these in the next post.

(A question to explore: in the term anāŋ, we understand āŋ to stand for the sound ā alone; what determines the choice of the terminal iT, is it random, or does the choice of  ŋ (Ŋ) rather than say t (T) signify something technical?)

8. Further cases of pragŗhyam, blocking sandhi changes to long vowels

We are grappling with the series of sutras starting with 1.1.11,

1.1.11      īdūdeddvivacanapragŗhyam

which is parsed as

īT ūT eT dvivacana pragŗhyam

which has the sense of “entities ending in the long vowels ī, ū or e in the dual number are pragŗhyam“. The last word is a technical term, indicating that the normal rules of sound-join, sandhi, are suspended when the first word ends in one of these long vowels. The examples given are dual forms like

agnī atra “two fires here”
pacete iti “they (two) cook”

In these cases, the usual sandhi join of the final sound of the first word and the initial sound of the latter word, is not done: it is held back, pragŗhyam.

The next sutra in this stretch is

1.1.12    adaso māt

The first word is actually adasah, if we take off the sandhi, and it is in the sixth, or genitive (of), case (vibhakti), singular number (indicated by 6/1). The second word is in the fifth (ablative, from) case, singular, indicated as 5/1: the ending t of māt is part of the case ending and not one of the nonsense terminators or iT. The phrase would mean something like “of the word adas, from the sound m”. We have to provide the previous sutra’s context to make it meaningful: that is, the forms of adas which end in m followed by one of the long vowels ī, ū or e, are pragŗhyam, i.e. they do not get modified according to the normal sandhi rules but are kept “reserved” or pragŗhyam. (We do not apparently have to add the dvivacana specification, because the forms coming under this sutra include plural as well as dual, as we see below).

What are these forms of adas ending in m- followed by long vowels īT ūT eT? The word adas is the lexeme for “that”, as we may remember from that famous saying in the Brihadāraņyaka Upanishad talking about the Infinite (Brahman):

Om
purnam adah, purnam idam, purnat purnam udacyate

Or, with diacritical marks,

pūrņam adah, pūrņam idam, pūrņāt pūrņam udacyate

“that is fullness, this is fullness, from fullness fullness comes forth” 

The dual forms occur as follows because the declension of adas is very irregular:

Adas “that”, masculine:
nominative asau amū amī
accusative   amum amū amūn

“that”, neuter:
nominative adah amū amūni
accusative   adah amū amūni

“that”, feminine:
nominative asau amū amūh
accusative   amum amū amūh

So forms like amū and amī fall into the category of ending in long vowels, and hence pragŗhyam. They do not get modified when followed by another vowel as per normal sandhi rules (which would apply to words ending in short i or u, but that is obviously covered in some other sutra in the 4000 odd of Panini’s Ashtadhyayi or eight-cantos). The examples provided are such as the following phrases: 

amī atra, “those people (plural) are here” 

amū atra “those two people are here”. 

We don’t see forms like am(i)yatra or am(u)vatra which we would expect with sandhi involving short vowel-endings. The question arises in our mind (as a first time reader!) why this case should not be covered by sutra 1.1.11 itself. The answer is somewhat complex, and involves operation of different rules from other areas of the Ashtadhyayi that generate these m- forms of adas, but which would have nullified application of 1.1.11 were it not rescued by this specific pointing to adas forms in 1.1.12. These are somewhat convoluted reasonings which we will not go into at this first reading.

The next sutra adds another case or context for pragŗhyam:

1.1.13 śe

This is a short one indeed! The entity is in nominative vibhakti, singular (1/1). (The ś is the palatal flat-tongued spirant sound, not the retroflex curled-tongue variant represented by şşş). Again, we have to supply the relevant words from the opening sutra of this run or span, pragŗhyam, which means, on the whole, that “the form (word) ending in a Śe is a case of pragŗhyam, i.e. the ending will not be modified by the normal sandhi rules given elsewhere in the Ashtadhyayi”.

This sutra is difficult to grasp at this first reading, because the Śe referred to is a technical ending derived by the operation of other rules in specified circumstances, and not just any sound śe. Indeed the first letter Ś is actually a marker, an iT, which is why it has to be capitalised. The distant sutras hinted at here specify that the Śe occurs in the Vedas. The sutra 1.1.13 is therefore referring not to all words ending in the sound śe, but to specific words derived by the rules governing Śe that give us certain forms ending in long –e in Vedic, such as asme (dative and locative of first person plural, “to us, in us”); yuşme (dative and locative of second person plural, “to you, in you”); me (locative of first person singular, “in me”); tve (locative of second person singular, “in thou”) in Vedic . The examples given are

asme indrābŗhaspatī (from Ŗg Veda)
yuşme iti
me iti
tve iti

We will have to defer a deeper and real understanding of this sutra till we have looked at those distant parts of the treatise that generate these forms like Śe and adaso māt to grasp why Pannini has had to provide specially for them rather than subsuming all into one main sutra. This gives us, however, a feel of the way the sutras are inter-twined, and that too across vast gulfs from different corners of the galaxy of the Ashtadhyayi. Obviously, the entire work has been fashioned by a recursive process and what we see is a certain state of perfection (but this being a man-made thing, a Smŗti rather than a divine revelation, a Śruti, there are still deficiencies which subsequent analysts have not failed to point out over the centuries!).

We will look briefly at further contexts which are classed by Panini as pragŗhyam (without necessarily getting a full, deep comprehension), and then use this span of sutras to talk about the traditional ways of explaining the sutras that parallel what we have been doing in our own unsophisticated way. One thing is sure: no one can really understand Panini without a gloss and a guide, and many such have been produced over the ages, which we will look at shortly.

7. Special sound joins for long vowels in Pāņini

This post of the new series takes up from where I left Panini two years ago, that is with sutra 1.1.11, which gives the definition of something called pragŗhyam. This is also a nice illustration of the way Panini stretches a text over a number of sutras to give a general rule, then some exceptions to it, and then perhaps some special instances which counter the exceptions! It’s like that jingle we all learn in school to remember the number of days in a month: thirty days in September, April June and November (the opening statement); all the rest have thirty-one (the general rule, or exception, whichever way you wish to look at it); except February, twenty-eight (the exception); and one day more once in four (the special condition to moderate the exception). This jingle also demonstrates a tactic that is made much of, that is the omission of the phrase in the preceding sutra to achieve brevity, and which glosses provide for the convenience of the learner. Of course, what it amounts to is that a run of text containing all the parts described above -- the statement, its exceptions, and special cases – is actually broken up among a number of very short sutras for convenience of remembering and understanding. There are technical terms used in Sanskrit grammar for these elements, which will be introduced in a later post.

So coming back to our sutra,

1.1.11      īdūdeddvivacanam pragŗhyam

This sounds even more drivelish than the worst of the previous formulae we have seen. The trouble, as I realized suddenly, is that with our ear trained to the normal sound patterns of Indo-European, we tend to scan this as a series of CV combinations: (Anglo) ee-doo-day- and so on, somewhat like a rap song we all have heard and love. But we need to look at this as a series of codes starting on a long vowel and ending on a terminator: īd-ūd-ed, or, if we split the sandhi,

īt ūt et (Anglo eet-oot-ayt)

These  represent the long vowels, each supplied with the nonsense terminator t (or capitalized T to show that it is a terminator symbol in our convention):

īT ūT eT

The latter part of the first ‘word’, dvivacanam, is easy, as it actually means something: dvi, dual, vacanam, number. The m is supplied with a diacritic not reproduced here (a small dot or comma under the character) to indicate it is a nasal (probably) rather than a full closed sound. The first part means, on the whole,

īT ūT eT dvivacanam 

a dual (verb or noun form) ending in the long vowels ī ū or e

The second word,

pragŗhyam

is a technical term, and is translated in the books I have seen as – pragŗhyam! I wish somebody had hazarded a guess at what this term means in everyday language, and why Panini thought to apply this particular term, which sounds as though it could mean something rather than being a made-up word. From the sound of it (related to grah, hold or seize or grab), I would like to attribute something like ‘reserved’ or ‘restrained’ to this term.

So this first sutra in the section only defines a pragŗhyam as a dual form ending in the long vowels specified. What Panini uses this term for, will be explored in the next sutra (and why I fancy that the term pragŗhyam means something ‘restrained’!).

(It’s been a couple of years since I last posted: I got through my retirement in the meantime, and am now back chipping away at this large block of granite to see if there’s something awesome inside it! Thanks to the kind people who actually seem to have had some interest in this attempt of mine, unschooled though it may be, and who have refrained from blasting it to perdition. I just hope that one day we will be able to look back and wonder whether we really were that callow!)