16. Introducing pronominals – sarvanāman

Moving over a couple of sutras defining species called nișţhā, and picking up the pace a little, we cover the sutras 1.1.27 to 1.1.36, dealing with pronominal words, called sarvanāma in Sanskrit. This span or domain of sutras demonstrates the overall structure of the Ashtadhyayi, in which the first adhyāya or book serves to introduce various types of grammatical categories or ‘species’, as I have been calling them, essentially by defining them. That is, Book One is an introductory, stage-setting portion of the grammar, and the operational rules are going to be encountered only after we get past this stage.

A second character of Panini’s approach seems to be that he is not principally concerned with the meanings underlying the categories and technical terms he uses. It’s not clear how many of the category names and technical terms he uses were prevalent as common words, and which of them he either coined or used in a particular, technical sense for the first time. In the case of sarvanāma, for instance, he does not define them as ‘words standing in for other persons or things’, or some such statement. For the purpose of Book One, sarvanāma is defined as a list of words starting with sarva. Similar formulations are made for other lists as well in various sutras.

And where are these lists to be found? They are provided as appendices to the main work, and called the Dhātupāţha (the reading of roots) and the Gaņapāţha (the reading of groups). These are, respectively, the list of roots (the core of verb formations), and the list of nominal bases or stem forms (both representing the abstract form of the word, without any ‘inflectional’ endings  in the case of verbs, or declensional endings in the case of nouns).

With this introduction, we can rapidly transit the sarvanāma sutras, starting with:

1.1.23 sarvādīni sarvanāmāni

Both the phrases are in 1^st case (nominative), plural number (1/3), neuter gender.

Vrtti: sarva śabdah̨ (the word sarva) ādih (starting, head) yesām (whose) tānīmāni (those nominals)  sarvanāma samjñāni (sarvanāma ‘species’) bhavanti (are). (Note: the term ‘species’ for samjñam is my own innovation, not from any standard text!)

The paraphrase is that the words called sarvanāman are defined as the words listed in the group starting (ādi) with sarva. And what are these words? Vasu very helpfully gives the full list: they are sarva ‘all’, vișva ‘all’, ubha ‘both’, ubhaya ‘both’, words with suffix (d̨a)tara and (d̨a)tama like  katara ‘which of two, katama ‘which of many’, anya ‘other’, anyatara ‘either’, itara ‘other’, tvat ‘other’, tva ‘other’, nema ‘half’, sama ‘all’, sima ‘whole’, tyad ‘he, she, it’, tad ‘he, she, it’, yad ‘who’, etad ‘this’, idam ‘it’, adas ‘that’, eka ‘one’, dvi ‘two’, yușmad ‘you’, asmad ‘I’, bhavatu ‘you’, kim ‘what’. Then there are some words of direction and precedence used in terms of time or place (but not when they are used as names), pūrva ‘east’, ‘prior’, para ‘subsequent’, avara ‘west’ or ‘posterior’, dakșiņa ‘south’ or ‘right’, uttara ‘north’ or ‘subsequent’, apara ‘other’ or ‘inferior’, adhara ‘west’ or ‘inferior’, antara ‘outer’ or ‘under or lower garment’. Another, sva, is a sarvanama when used in the sense of ‘own’, but not when used in the sense of ‘treasure’ or ‘kinsman’ (‘agnate’).  

Then follow a number of exceptions and special cases to qualify the broad definition. Before going into these, it would be as well to clarify what the speciality is about these types of words that requires a special appellation. Sharma lists these specialities as the following three: 1) the nominative plural which is termed Jas is replaced by the ending Śī (as per the rule 7.1.17); 2) the dative singular ending Ńe is replaced by –smai (rule 7.1.14); 3) the locative singular ending Ńi is replaced by –smin (rule 7.1.15).  Vasu gives more explanation for the student: which makes his work more helpful and illuminating for the beginner on the whole (we saw this in the preceding post as well). Vasu explains that the declension (of nouns; for verbs, we talk of inflections) is modified in the case of these sarvanāma words. For instance, we remember the first declension we learn of  nouns ending in –a, like rāma: nominative (first) case rāmah rāmau rāmāh, accusative (second) case rāmam rāmau rāmān. We would expect a word like sarva ‘all’ to follow the same paradigm. But being a sarvanāman, it replaces the nominative plural ending –āh (which is referred to by Panini as Jas, which is the iT or handle that Sharma uses above), by the ending –e (technically, a Śī). Thus, instead of sarvah sarvau sarvāh, we have sarvah sarvau sarve, as in sarve sukhino bhavantu, ‘may all be happy’. How Jas is transformed into –āh, or Śī into –e (or the transformation of Ńe and Ńi), is not the concern of sutra 1.1.27; that is dealt with in sutra 7.1.14 and following. In fact, 1.1.27 does not even refer to the modified declensions (endings) at all; we have added that in the discussion only because the commentators have already gone through the whole work and are able to correlate the rules across the books and sections. At the first reading, all that the sutra 1.1.27 is concerned with is that the species defined as sarvanāman by the list sarvādīni, will behave as provided in subsequent parts of the canon.

Apart from nominative plural sarve and similar forms for the others, endings are modified in dative , ablative and locative singular: instead of sarvāya and sarvāt (on analogy with rāmāya, rāmāt) and sarve (analogous to rāme, in Rama), we have sarvasmai, sarvasmāt and sarvasmin. Plural forms include genitive sarveșām (rāmāņām). Suggestively, the rāma declension does have the intervening sibilant in genitive singular rāmasya, and locative rāmeșu; whether this is a vestige of an underlying older pattern I cannot say without further study.

There are some additional transformations enabled by the appellation of sarvanāman, which we need not go into at this initial reading. A last interesting feature which occurs to me is the closeness of these tiny words to cognates in other indo-european languages, especially Russian: tat, etat, katara, ubhaya, will be understood without modification!

After introducing the definition, Panini proceeds to state some exceptions and reservations, in sutras 28 to 36, which will also illustrate the mechanism of anuvŗtti (carrying forward of repeating phrases from sutra to sutra, without having to repeat them each time), which I believe is termed ellipsis or ellipse, as used in a different context by Michael Coulson on page 47 of his superb book in the Teach Yourself series (Coulson, 1976, see references page).