Shiva Sutras
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The Shiva Sutras (IAST: Śivasūtrāṇi) or Māheśvara Sūtrāṇi are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of Sanskrit as referred to in the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar.
Within the tradition they are known as the Akṣarasamāmnāya, "recitation of phonemes," but they are popularly known as the Shiva Sutras because they are said to have been revealed to Pāṇini by Shiva. They were either composed by Pāṇini to accompany his Aṣṭādhyāyī or predate him. The latter is less plausible, but the practice of encoding complex rules in short, mnemonic verses is typical of the sutra style.
Text
| IAST | Devanāgarī |
|---|---|
|
1. a i u ṇ |
१. अ इ उ ण्। |
Each verse consists of a group of basic Sanskrit phonemes (i.e. open syllables consisting either of initial vowels or of consonants followed by the basic vowel "a") followed by a single 'dummy letter' or anubandha, conventionally rendered by capital letters in Roman transliteration. This allows Pāṇini to refer to groups of phonemes with pratyāhāras, which consist of a phoneme-letter and an anubandha (and often the vowel a to aid pronunciation) and signify all of the intervening phonemes Pratyāhāras are thus single syllables, but they can be declined (see Aṣṭādhyāyī 6.1.77 below). Hence aL refers to all phonemes (because it consists of the first phoneme a and the last anubandha L); aC refers to vowels (i.e., all of the phonemes before the anubandha C: a i u ṛ ḷ e o ai au); haL to consonants, and so on. Note that some pratyāhāras are ambiguous. The anubandha Ṇ occurs twice in the list, which means that you can assign two different meanings to pratyāhāra aṆ (including or excluding ṛ, etc.); in fact, both of these meanings are used in the Aṣṭādhyāyī. On the other hand, the pratyāhāra haL is always used in the meaning "all consonants"---Pāṇini never uses pratyāhāras to refer to sets consisting of a single phoneme.
From these 14 verses, a total of 281 pratyāhāras can be formed: 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 Pāṇini does not use single element pratyāhāras) minus 10 (as there are 10 duplicate sets due to h appearing twice); the second multiplier in each term represents the number of phonemes in each. But Pāṇini uses only 41 (with a 42nd introduced by later grammarians, raṆ=r l) pratyāhāras in the Aṣṭādhyāyī.
The Shiva Sutras put phonemes with a similar manner of articulation together (so sibilants in 13 śa ṣa sa R, nasals in 7 ñ m ṅ ṇ n M). Economy (Sanskrit: lāghava) is a major principle of their organization, and it is debated whether Pāṇini deliberately encoded phonological patterns in them (as they were treated in traditional phonetic texts called Prātiśakyas) or simply grouped together phonemes which he needed to refer to in the Aṣṭādhyāyī and which only secondarily reflect phonological patterns (as argued by Paul Kiparsky and Wiebke Petersen, for example). Pāṇini does not use the Shiva Sutras to refer to homorganic stops (stop consonants produced at the same place of articulation), but rather the anubandha U: to refer to the palatals c ch j jh he uses cU.
As an example, consider Aṣṭādhyāyī 6.1.77: iKo yaṆ aCi:
- iK means i u ṛ ḷ,
- iKo is iK in the genitive case, so it means ' in place of i u ṛ ḷ;
- yaṆ means the semivowels y v r l and is in the nominative, so iKo yaṆ means: y v r l replace i u ṛ ḷ.
- aC means all vowels, as noted above
- aCi is in the locative case, so it means before any vowel.
Hence this rule replaces a vowel with its corresponding semivowel when followed by any vowel, and that is why dadhi together with atra makes dadhyatra. To apply this rule correctly we must be aware of some of the other rules of the grammar, such as:
- 1.1.49 ṣaṣṭhii sthaneyogaH that shows that the genitive case in a sutra shows what is to be replaced
- 1.1.50 sthane 'ntaratamaH that shows that the substitute of i is the semivowel that most closely resembles i, namely 'y'
- 1.1.71 aadir antyena sahetaa that shows that i with the K at the end stands for i u ṛ ḷ because the Shiva sutras read i u ṛ ḷ K.
Also, rules can be debarred by other rules. Rule 6.1.101 akas savarNe dīrghaH teaches that when the two vowels are alike a long vowel is substituted for both, so dadhi and indraH make dadhīndraH not *dadhyindraH. The akas savarṇe dīrghaH rule takes precedence over the iKo yaṆ aCi rule because the akas is more specific.
Traditional story of origin
Panini was a student at a Gurukula (a system of education in the 4th century BC). He was a dull student, and was often teased by many of his friends. So, worried about his situation, the Gurumata (the wife of the Guru) advised him to go to the Himalayas to do tapas. So he went to the Himalayas and started meditating on Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva, pleased with Panini's strong tapas, came and danced before him . While dancing, the sound from his Damaru (the small drum like musical instrument that Shiva plays) was heard by Panini as the Maheshwara Sutrani. Thus, Panini wrote the Maheshwara Sutras and formed the Sanskrit grammar.[citation needed]
See also
- Other languages
- Alphabet song
- Iroha, Japanese poem with similar function
- Thousand Character Classic, Chinese poem with similar function, esp. used in Korea
External links
- [1] Paper by Paul Kiparsky on 'Economy and the Construction of the Śiva sūtras'.
- [2] Paper by Andras Kornai relating the Śiva sūtras to contemporary Feature Geometry.
- [3] Paper by Wiebke Petersen on 'A Mathematical Analysis of Pāṇini’s Śiva sūtras.'
- [4] Paper by Madhav Deshpande on 'Who Inspired Pāṇini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-Claims.'
