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Shiva Sutra
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The Shiva Sutras (IAST: ; Devanagari: ) or Maheshvara Sutras (Devanagari: ?????????? ????????) are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit language as referred to in the of , the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar. Within the tradition they are known as the , "recitation of phonemes," but they are popularly known as the Shiva Sutras because they are said to have been revealed to Pa?ini by Shiva (also known as Maheshvara).
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The Shiva Sutras (IAST: ; Devanagari: ) or Maheshvara Sutras (Devanagari: ?????????? ????????) are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit language as referred to in the of , the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar. Within the tradition they are known as the , "recitation of phonemes," but they are popularly known as the Shiva Sutras because they are said to have been revealed to Pa?ini by Shiva (also known as Maheshvara). They were either composed by Pa?ini to accompany his A??adhyayi 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 | Devanagari |
|---|
1. a i u ?
2. ? ? K
3. e o ?
4. ai au C
5. h y v r ?
6. l ?
7. ñ m ? ? n M
8. jh bh Ñ
9. gh ?h dh ?
10. j b g ? d S
11. kh ph ch ?h th ca ? t V
12. k p Y
13. s ? s R
14. h L |
?. ? ? ?? |
?. ? ? ?? |
?. ? ? ?? |
?. ? ? ? ? ?? |
?. ? ?? |
?. ? ? ? ? ? ?? |
?. ? ? ?? |
?. ? ? ? ?? |
??. ? ? ? ? ? ?? |
??. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? |
??. ? ? ?? |
??. ? ? ? ?? |
??. ? ?? |
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Each verse consists of Sanskrit phonemes followed by a single 'dummy letter' or anubandha, conventionally rendered by capital letters in Roman transliteration. This allows Pa?ini to refer to groups of phonemes with , which consist of a phoneme-letter and an anubandha (and often the vowel a to aid pronunciation) and signify all of the intervening phonemes Pratyaharas are thus single syllables, but they can be declined (see A??adhyayi 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 ? ? e o ai au); haL to consonants, and so on. Note that some pratyaharas are ambiguous. The anubandha ? occurs twice in the list, which means that you can assign two different meanings to pratyahara a? (including or excluding ?, etc.); in fact, both of these meanings are used in the A??adhyayi. On the other hand, the pratyahara haL is always used in the meaning "all consonants"---Pa?ini never uses pratyaharas to refer to sets consisting of a single phoneme.
From these 14 verses, a total of 281 pratyaharas 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 Pa?ini does not use single element pratyaharas) 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 Pa?ini uses only 41 (with a 42nd introduced by later grammarians, ra?=r l) pratyaharas in the A??adhyayi.
The Shiva Sutras put phonemes with a similar manner of articulation together (so sibilants in 13 sa ?a sa R, nasals in 7 ñ m ? ? n M). Economy (Sanskrit: ) is a major principle of their organization, and it is debated whether Pa?ini deliberately encoded phonological patterns in them (as they were treated in traditional phonetic texts called Pratisakyas) or simply grouped together phonemes which he needed to refer to in the A??adhyayi and which only secondarily reflect phonological patterns (as argued by and , for example). Pa?ini 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 A??adhyayi 6.1.77: iKo ya? aCi. iK refers to the phonemes i u ? ?, and is in the genitive case, which in the A??adhyayi marks a string to be substituted; aC refers to vowels, as noted above, and is in the locative case, which marks the left-hand context for an operation. ya? refers to the semivowels y v r and l and is in the nominative, which marks a subsitution. Hence this rule replaces a vowel with its corresponding semivowel when preceded by another vowel.
Legend
Nrittavasane Natarajarajo nanadadhakkam navapanchavaram |
uddhartukamah sanakadisiddhan etadvimarshe sivasutrajalam ||
??????????? ?????-??? ???? ?????? ??-????-????? |
???????????? ??????-???????? ????-??????? ???-?????-????? ||
" 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."
See also
Other languages
External links
- Paper by Paul Kiparsky on 'Economy and the Construction of the Siva sutras'.
- Paper by Wiebke Peterson on 'A Mathematical Analysis of Pa?ini’s Siva sutras.
- [A translation http://www.shivashakti.com/sutras.htm]
- [Two translations http://www.osholeela.com/poetry/shiva.html]
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