Sunday, January 16, 2011

5. Back to Basics: Shiva-sutras and the Lists of Vowels and Consonants

In an earlier piece, we came across the basic building blocks of Paņini’s technical jargon, which was to arrange the sounds (letters) in a particular sequence, called the Shiva-sutras, denoting the end of each sub-set by a nonsense letter called an it (what else!), which we show in upper-case in our Roman transliteration. We may select and name sub-sets which may start at any letter in a given Shiva-sutra, and may even go over a Shiva-sutra boundary it into a subsequent Shiva-sutra, finally ending in a given boundary-marker (it). The name is given by combining the initial letter and the final boundary it. Intermediate its do not figure, as they do not have any significance in themselves. We saw two such sub-sets named right at the start of the work, 
1.1.1      vŗddhir ādaic
The set of ‘super-augmented’ vowels consisting of the long sound ā, termed āT with a nonsense ending, and the span of Shiva-sutra 4, ai au (ending in C, the boundary-marking it, hence āT plus aiC equals ādaiC).
The second sutra:
1.1.2          aden̊ guņah
defines the set of ‘singly-augmented’ vowels, consisting of short a (termed aT with a nonsense ending), plus the span of Shiva-sutra 3, e o and the marker N̊ (sounded like a velar nasal ng); aT plus eN̊ equals adeN̊ by the rules of sandhi.
Apparently the entire terminology is built up on these Shiva-sutras and the sandhi rules which govern word-joins. Why Paņini arranged the letters in precisely this sequence will be known only as we delve into his treatment of the rules; what is obvious is that the arrangement is different from the alphabet we learn in school. Further, certain sounds are left out, such as the long vowels ā, ī̄, ū, ŗ̄; the nasals N̊ (velar), Ñ (palatal), Ņ (retroflex alveolar), N (dental-alveolar) and M (bilabial), are used as end-markers or its (hence shown in upper-case here), and there is some repetition (Ņ occurs in two Shiva-sutras, 1 and 6, as end-marker, which may give cause for some confusion unless reference is made to the context; k occurs as a sound ka in Shiva-sutra 12, as well as an end-marker K in Shiva-sutra 2; etc.).
These are then the 14 Shiva-sutras (Śs):
1.       a i u Ņ (retroflex Ņ!)…obviously the short vowel sounds, a and i and u, Ņ an it symbol to show the end of that sequence;
2.       ŗ ļ K … the liquid half-consonants, ŗ and ļ, K ending the sequence;
3.       e o N̊…two medium-long vowels e and o (diphthongs in English?; there are no short e and o in Sanskrit, though there are in Tamil and other Dravidian languages);
4.       ai au C (C palatal, as in chair)… some  real diphthongs, ai and au, symbol C ending the set (an it);
5.       ha ya va ra Ţ (strarting the non-vowels, Ţ the end-marker; the superscript a to denote the small a-sound with each consonant, whereas the end-markers do not have it);
6.       la Ņ;
7.       a maaa na M (the nasals);
8.       jha bha Ñ (some voiced consonants, aspirated);
9.       gha ḑha dha Ş (voiced aspirated, end-marker retroflex spirant Ş);
10.   ja ba gaa da Ś (voiced unaspirated, end-marker palatal Ś);
11.   kha pha cha ţha tha caa ta V (unvoiced, some aspirated, some not);
12.   ka pa Y (unvoiced, unaspirated);
13.   a  a sa R;
14.   ha L.
All the common vowels are referred to by the code aC, which indicates the span from the first letter a of Śivasutra 1 to the end-marker C of Śs 4; the long vowels do not occur explicitly (but there is a Sutra which accounts for this apparent omission). All the king’s consonants are covered in the span ha L, from the initial ha of Śs 5 to end-marker L of Śs 14 (but introducing some ambiguity, because Śs 14 itself starts with ha!).  Everything together, from the initial a of Śs 1 to end-marker L of Śs 14 is aL (literally, all!). There are said to be 41 such subset codes (technical term pratyāhāra) in Paņini’s system, plus a few more here and there. Frequent usage over time will no doubt make these terms old friends to the student. They sure do add to the exotic nature of the meta-language used in the work!
Incidentally, the individual sounds are termed varņa; we already saw that the end-markers are termed iT

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