Anyone who has been dabbling in the Sanskrit language, or indeed in Linguistics in general, would not have failed to come across the name of Panini, that famed grammarian of the pre-Christian era. Like all other authors in ancient India, not much is known about him, except that he must have been one in a long chain of highly accomplished and learned scholars. Classical Sanskrit was described by him in a work of 4000 aphorisms, ‘sutra’, arranged in eight chapters or adhyaya: hence known as the ‘Ashtadhyayi’, the eight-chaptered. Scholars are stunned at the brevity of his formulations, the imaginativeness of the technical words he coins, at the elegance of the concept itself. Many draw parallels with computer flow-charts, as Panini apparently tried to account for each form and every variation he knew, through a sequential series of operations on root words or lexemes. Students of Linguistics are told that the very discipline of Phonetics owes its conception to Panini, discovered by the astonished Indo-Europeanists in the middle of the 19th century with such fabled names as Bopp, Grimm, William Jones, Monier-Williams, Max Muller and so on.
Unfortunately, few of us have any more detailed acquaintance with this fabulous intellectual heritage. Some of us (Indians, basically) with a little Sanskrit in our school days, probably know some of the technical terms used for the tenses and moods of verbs: the mnemonic verse “Lat vartamane, Let Vede, bhute Lang Lung Litasthata…”. At school, we would drill in at least the simple verb and noun forms.
Why would Panini use such ‘nonsense’ terms for the tenses or other categories and entities? Why not nice simple explanatory names like the English ‘present tense’, ‘past tense’, etc? It’s probably because Panini was optimizing the terminology for oral recording and transmission, writing media obviously being in short supply. The strength of the oral drilling is evident in the fact that after all these years, even a poor student like me has those basic forms imprinted on the mind and can reproduce them off the cuff (printed page unseen). To compress a complex language like Sanskrit into a manageable set of expressions, that could be readily mugged up and readily alluded to in instantly recognizable formulae, probably required the coining of such outlandish ‘words’ and phrases. Indeed the learner of Sanskrit or any other inflectional language would probably have to mug up such tables of noun and verb firms, although repetition of basic sentences would help start the process.
This blog documents my own traverse of the Ashtadhayi. This will record my effort to achieve some acquaintance with the work, starting from a position of almost complete ignorance, to see how much effort is required to make sense of these incantations! I hasten to say that I claim no scholarship in Sanskrit, and I hope professional Sanskritists will bear with me if I blunder badly, and I do hope fellow-learners will help out along the way. Sometimes a naïve approach may be useful in laying bare difficulties and inconsistencies, which may actually lead to a deeper understanding.
In getting to grips with the Ashtadhyayi, it appears to me that one has to mull over the aphorisms and repeatedly read the commentaries and explanations over a period of time. Like reading a complex piece of legislation, new insights and connections occur to the mind at each reading. The ancient Sanskrit scholars’ method of hanging their ideas on terse aphorisms is also effective, as each of these couple of words serves to ‘unlock’ a whole ttrain of thought and argument. Thus the Ashtadhyayi by itself (the bare aphoriisms) should be looked at as only an aid to memory and understanding. Much collateral study is also required.
In my own ‘odyssey’ into the Ashtadhyayi, I started sequentially with the first Book or Adhyaya, and have covered most of these up to the Post No.33. Subsequently, I have switched to the Siddhanta-Kaumudi of Bhattoji, and the Laghu-S-K of Varadaraja (disciple to Bhattoji), prepared sometime in the 17th century. These works rearrange the sutras, by subject matter, which is very helpful to the student to get an idea of the structure of the grammar. Because they pull in sutras from different parts of the original, based on relevance to the theme of each section, it enables us to get into the inner parts of the Ashtadhyayi right from the start. We do not have to wade through the entire 4000 sutras to get an overall view. It’s still an onerous undertaking: Even the Laghu (the ‘Lite’ version) has as many as 1383 sutras in Ballantyne’s edition, apart from commentaries and explanations.
Because of the obscure nature of these ideas, I am afraid one will have to go through these posts in sequence from the first onwards. I have provided links to some of the printed versions on the web (also in the Resources page, here http://readingpanini.blogspot.com/p/resources.html). I assume that some readers may stumble upon this blog as they Google this subject or some of the terms and keywords. I have tried to give some keywords for each post, but this has not been entirely successful in my view, as the ideas dealt with in each post are so specific and technical. The object here is to see how India’s ancient grammarians approached the subjct. It will not serve as a learning aid to the grammar of the language. For learning the language itself, you will be better served by some of the books listed in the Resources page (here http://readingpanini.blogspot.com/p/resources.html). Nowadays there are also a number of videos on YouTube; I would warmly recommend Samskrita-Bharati’s series of lessons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuGNXKOVlHU&list=PLQ5oNpr1XhOTUu4t-DE3s8CSpOJmm9SIs. You will get the proper pronunciation and intonation, as well as access to their distance learning courses, www.samskritabharati.in. I have adopted the standard system of transliteration (as used, say in Rama Nath Sharma’ volumes). Long vowels are denoted by a line on top, ā ī ū for instance. The letter c stands for the sound ch in chat. I will be adding a page to explaining this system.
Some additional aids in using this blog include the list of older posts in the Archive on thee right, the list of ten popular posts, and the Search facility at the top.
I will also be developing a Contents page which will list (and link) the posts in the natural order (oldest first), as opposed to the Archive list (which is recent to old posts).
Thanks for looking in, and do send any suggestions to me at pjdilip@gmail.com.
Unfortunately, few of us have any more detailed acquaintance with this fabulous intellectual heritage. Some of us (Indians, basically) with a little Sanskrit in our school days, probably know some of the technical terms used for the tenses and moods of verbs: the mnemonic verse “Lat vartamane, Let Vede, bhute Lang Lung Litasthata…”. At school, we would drill in at least the simple verb and noun forms.
Why would Panini use such ‘nonsense’ terms for the tenses or other categories and entities? Why not nice simple explanatory names like the English ‘present tense’, ‘past tense’, etc? It’s probably because Panini was optimizing the terminology for oral recording and transmission, writing media obviously being in short supply. The strength of the oral drilling is evident in the fact that after all these years, even a poor student like me has those basic forms imprinted on the mind and can reproduce them off the cuff (printed page unseen). To compress a complex language like Sanskrit into a manageable set of expressions, that could be readily mugged up and readily alluded to in instantly recognizable formulae, probably required the coining of such outlandish ‘words’ and phrases. Indeed the learner of Sanskrit or any other inflectional language would probably have to mug up such tables of noun and verb firms, although repetition of basic sentences would help start the process.
This blog documents my own traverse of the Ashtadhayi. This will record my effort to achieve some acquaintance with the work, starting from a position of almost complete ignorance, to see how much effort is required to make sense of these incantations! I hasten to say that I claim no scholarship in Sanskrit, and I hope professional Sanskritists will bear with me if I blunder badly, and I do hope fellow-learners will help out along the way. Sometimes a naïve approach may be useful in laying bare difficulties and inconsistencies, which may actually lead to a deeper understanding.
In getting to grips with the Ashtadhyayi, it appears to me that one has to mull over the aphorisms and repeatedly read the commentaries and explanations over a period of time. Like reading a complex piece of legislation, new insights and connections occur to the mind at each reading. The ancient Sanskrit scholars’ method of hanging their ideas on terse aphorisms is also effective, as each of these couple of words serves to ‘unlock’ a whole ttrain of thought and argument. Thus the Ashtadhyayi by itself (the bare aphoriisms) should be looked at as only an aid to memory and understanding. Much collateral study is also required.
In my own ‘odyssey’ into the Ashtadhyayi, I started sequentially with the first Book or Adhyaya, and have covered most of these up to the Post No.33. Subsequently, I have switched to the Siddhanta-Kaumudi of Bhattoji, and the Laghu-S-K of Varadaraja (disciple to Bhattoji), prepared sometime in the 17th century. These works rearrange the sutras, by subject matter, which is very helpful to the student to get an idea of the structure of the grammar. Because they pull in sutras from different parts of the original, based on relevance to the theme of each section, it enables us to get into the inner parts of the Ashtadhyayi right from the start. We do not have to wade through the entire 4000 sutras to get an overall view. It’s still an onerous undertaking: Even the Laghu (the ‘Lite’ version) has as many as 1383 sutras in Ballantyne’s edition, apart from commentaries and explanations.
Because of the obscure nature of these ideas, I am afraid one will have to go through these posts in sequence from the first onwards. I have provided links to some of the printed versions on the web (also in the Resources page, here http://readingpanini.blogspot.com/p/resources.html). I assume that some readers may stumble upon this blog as they Google this subject or some of the terms and keywords. I have tried to give some keywords for each post, but this has not been entirely successful in my view, as the ideas dealt with in each post are so specific and technical. The object here is to see how India’s ancient grammarians approached the subjct. It will not serve as a learning aid to the grammar of the language. For learning the language itself, you will be better served by some of the books listed in the Resources page (here http://readingpanini.blogspot.com/p/resources.html). Nowadays there are also a number of videos on YouTube; I would warmly recommend Samskrita-Bharati’s series of lessons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuGNXKOVlHU&list=PLQ5oNpr1XhOTUu4t-DE3s8CSpOJmm9SIs. You will get the proper pronunciation and intonation, as well as access to their distance learning courses, www.samskritabharati.in. I have adopted the standard system of transliteration (as used, say in Rama Nath Sharma’ volumes). Long vowels are denoted by a line on top, ā ī ū for instance. The letter c stands for the sound ch in chat. I will be adding a page to explaining this system.
Some additional aids in using this blog include the list of older posts in the Archive on thee right, the list of ten popular posts, and the Search facility at the top.
I will also be developing a Contents page which will list (and link) the posts in the natural order (oldest first), as opposed to the Archive list (which is recent to old posts).
Thanks for looking in, and do send any suggestions to me at pjdilip@gmail.com.
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