| content |
 |
This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text. |
The Shiva Sutras (Sanskrit: Maheśvara sūtra महेश्वर सूत्र) contain the system of phonemic notation which was used to organize the Aṣṭādhyāyī, the Sanskrit grammar of Pāṇini. The notational system introduces different clusters of phonemes that serve special roles in the morphology of Sanskrit, and are referred to throughout the text. Each cluster, called a pratyāhara ends with a 'dummy sound' or 'marker' called an anubandha (the so called IT index), which acts as a symbolic referent for the list. Within the main text, these clusters, referred through the anubandhas, are related to various grammatical functions.
This type of initial notational verse is a standard structure in the sutra style, which focuses on creating short, mnemonic verses that encode complex rules. Often additional sounds may be added to the indices to make the overall string pronunciable.
For example, list 13, symbolized by r, refers to the three sibilants. List 4, marked by c, refers to the diphthong vowels ai and au.
To keep the list compact, naming one phoneme and one marker, indicates the list of all intervening phonemes, allowing the grammar to refer to classes of sounds by just one syllable. These syllables referring to lists of phonemes are called pratyāharas, and the sutras themselves are also known as pratyāhara-vidhāyaka-sutrāṇi (Sutras forming Pratyaharas).
For example, al refers to the list of all phonemes (since a is the first alphabet and l is the marker for the last. ac refers to all vowels, hal to all consonants and ñam to all nasals - the purpose of the a in hal etc. is to ease pronunciation.
In the main text, a rule reads: iko yNa aci (verse 6.1.77). The symbol ac here (as in the rest of the Aṣṭādhyāyī) refers to all the vowels, and the ending vowel i makes it pronunciable. This rule deals with the sixth and seventh vibhaktis (karaka case markers), and specifies how the vowels, in these situations, are to be replaced by the suitable sounds like y.
Contents |
Legend
Nrittāvasāne Natarājarājō nanādadhakkām navapanchavāram |
uddhartukāmah sanakādisiddhān etadvimarshe sivasūtrajālam ||
नृत्तावसाने नटराज-रजो ननाद ढक्कां नव-पञ्च-वारम् |
उध्दर्तुकामः सनकादि-सिद्धान् एतद्-विमर्शे शिव-सूत्र-जालम् ||
" With an ambition to uplift sages Sanaka and others, Nataraja (Shiva in the form of divine dancer), at the finale of his Tandava, sounded his damaru fourteen (nine+five) times. Thus came out the Shiva Sutra's."
According to legend, these fourteen sutras were revealed to Pāṇini by Shiva, who then composed his grammar to be dependent on them. They are also called the Māheshvara Sutras, using an alternate name for Shiva. Legend also claims that these sounds spilled from Shiva 's damaru, or hand-drum, as he played and danced. Though the legend claims that these sutra's were revealed to Panini, this sholka does not refer to Panini at all.
Shiva Sutras Text
The 14 sutras are (the IT sounds are at the end of each sutra, transcribed in boldface):
| IAST | Devanagari |
|---|---|
|
1. a i u ṇ (simple vowels) |
१. अ इ उ ण् | |
These 14 sutras encompass the phones of the Sanskrit language. The first 4 sutras cover all the vowels, the next two cover the semi-vowels and the remaining 8 include all the consonants. Again, all vowels and consonants of Sanskrit have been arranged in such a way in these sutras that they can be referred to without mentioning them separately.
From these 14 sutra's, a total of 281 { (14*3 + 13*2 + 12*2 + 11*2 + 10*4 + 9*1 + 8*5 + 7*2 + 6*3 * 5*5 + 4*8 + 3*2 + 2*3 +1*1) minus 14 (as Panini does not use single element pratyahara's) minus 10 (as there are 10 duplicate sets due to h appearing twice); the second multiplier in each term represents the number of phones in each Shiva Sutra } pratyaharas can be formed. But Panini uses only 41 (with a 42nd introduced by later grammarians, raṇ={r,l}) pratyaahaara's in Ashtadhyayi. Paul Kirpasky [1] analyzes the rationale behind the above arrangement in his paper 'Economy and the construction of the Shivasutra-s[1]. Wiebke Petersen using set theoretical and graph theoretical approaches, has shown the optimality of the arrangement of the phones. Both these authors have shown that the arrangement is completely determined by the Ashtadhyayi itself without recourse to traditional phonetic texts, the praatishaakhya-s.
Note that some pratyaharas are ambiguous. For example, IT ṇ occurs twice in the list, which means that you can assign two different meanings to pratyahara aṇ (including or excluding ṛ etc.); in fact, both of these meanings are being used in the grammar. On the other hand, pratyahara hal is always used in the meaning "all consonants" - Panini never uses pratyaharas to refer to sets consisting of a single phoneme.
See also
References
