Before going on to an alternative arrangement of the sutras as found in the Siddhanta-Kaumudi of Bhattoji or the short version, the Laghu- Siddhānta-Kaumudi of Varadarāja, let’s take a look at the general structure and arrangement of themes in the Ashtadhyayi itself (assuming that there is some method in the madness!).
According to Ram Nath Sharma (Vol.I, p.74 onwards, see the References Page), the method in Panini’s arrangement is to group sutras in domains, so as to mark off the range of action of particular directions. He sees another motivation in this, that of developing a metatheory, which to me is seems a bit obscure as a concept. The thematic content is arranged as follows according to Sharma:
Book I:
(a) major definitions and interpretational rules
(b) rules dealing with extensions (atideśa)
(c) rules dealing with ātmanepada nad parasmaipada
(d) rules dealing with the kāraka’s
Book II
(a) rules dealing with compounds
(b) rules deletion with nominal inflection
(c) rules dealing with number and gender of nouns
(d) rules dealing with replacements relative to roots
(e) rules dealing with deletion by LUK
Book III
(a) rules dealing with roots ending in affixes saN, etc.
(b) rules dealing with derivation of items ending in a Kŗt
(c) rules dealing with derivation of items ending in a tiŊ (basically, verb forms)
And thus it goes on. So basically, the definitions of terms (called saɱjña) and many of the metarules – the conventions about technical terms and operants – is contained in the first quarter of Book I. Because of the “dominance of the terms”, Sharma says that Book I is labeled as saɱjñādhikāra, ‘domain of names’.
One issue with this separation of terms and applications is that we will have to bring together sutras from far corners to make sense. In the last article, I suggested that if we have defined a vŗddham (a word having a long vowel ā or diphthong ai, au as the first of its vowels), it would be nice if we immediately came upon a note at least alluding to its applications. This the grammar does not furnish (no doubt because of the aphoristic character of Panini’s work, essential to fix the sutras in the mind with least difficulty), and it is the commentator who has to supply these cross-references. The sutras are like bare formulae, and the whole exercise of studying them is to remember the cross-references, exceptions and conflicts, prohibitions and hierarchies or orders of precedence in the subsequent applications.
Further discussion on the structure will not make much sense until we have gone through more of the chapters: it will be like those scientific definitions of a common object which fail to strike a bell, but which become obvious once the answer is revealed (this characterizes certain exaggeratedly scholastic works). We will next proceed to the Laghu version of Varadarāja, and see where that leads.
According to Ram Nath Sharma (Vol.I, p.74 onwards, see the References Page), the method in Panini’s arrangement is to group sutras in domains, so as to mark off the range of action of particular directions. He sees another motivation in this, that of developing a metatheory, which to me is seems a bit obscure as a concept. The thematic content is arranged as follows according to Sharma:
Book I:
(a) major definitions and interpretational rules
(b) rules dealing with extensions (atideśa)
(c) rules dealing with ātmanepada nad parasmaipada
(d) rules dealing with the kāraka’s
Book II
(a) rules dealing with compounds
(b) rules deletion with nominal inflection
(c) rules dealing with number and gender of nouns
(d) rules dealing with replacements relative to roots
(e) rules dealing with deletion by LUK
Book III
(a) rules dealing with roots ending in affixes saN, etc.
(b) rules dealing with derivation of items ending in a Kŗt
(c) rules dealing with derivation of items ending in a tiŊ (basically, verb forms)
And thus it goes on. So basically, the definitions of terms (called saɱjña) and many of the metarules – the conventions about technical terms and operants – is contained in the first quarter of Book I. Because of the “dominance of the terms”, Sharma says that Book I is labeled as saɱjñādhikāra, ‘domain of names’.
One issue with this separation of terms and applications is that we will have to bring together sutras from far corners to make sense. In the last article, I suggested that if we have defined a vŗddham (a word having a long vowel ā or diphthong ai, au as the first of its vowels), it would be nice if we immediately came upon a note at least alluding to its applications. This the grammar does not furnish (no doubt because of the aphoristic character of Panini’s work, essential to fix the sutras in the mind with least difficulty), and it is the commentator who has to supply these cross-references. The sutras are like bare formulae, and the whole exercise of studying them is to remember the cross-references, exceptions and conflicts, prohibitions and hierarchies or orders of precedence in the subsequent applications.
Further discussion on the structure will not make much sense until we have gone through more of the chapters: it will be like those scientific definitions of a common object which fail to strike a bell, but which become obvious once the answer is revealed (this characterizes certain exaggeratedly scholastic works). We will next proceed to the Laghu version of Varadarāja, and see where that leads.
No comments:
Post a Comment