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Karthik Vaidhinathan
The language Sanskrit has immense significance in our tradition. Starting from the Vedas, which form
the bedrock of our culture and civilization, it has been the primary vehicle for the expression of ideas,
knowledge etc. through the ages. Thus an understanding of Sanskrit language is the key to unlocking
the treasures that lay buried in our scriptures. "1
:. Learning Sanskrit grammar is the best bet for us to be able to read, understand and
appreciate the original works of our tradition, be it the of the sage ~: or the works of
-s :.
The grammar of Sanskrit language has been originally composed by three sages -
. The first
and foremost of these three is :. His Magnum Opus 8 (group of eight chapters) is the
primary source book of the grammatical tradition. There were other grammatical systems before and
after that of :, but his work has gained such universal acceptance that it has completely
obscured the others.
The 8 is in the form of terse rules or aphorisms (called
.
They form the "A, B, C" of the Sanskrit language. One cannot begin to understand the grammar of the
Sanskrit language without comprehending the terminology of the +-
,
,
,
and
refer respectively to the - :, - :, - :, - : and
- :. Below are the regular arrangement and the arrangement in the +-
Regular Ordering
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1
2
3 s
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
The reason for this re-ordering of the sounds (or letters) in the form of +-
is to create short
mnemonics for groups of sounds. Closely related sounds, when they enter into similar grammatical
operations, would undergo similar changes. If one could have technical terms that refer to these sounds
in a brief manner, the grammatical operation can then be explained very easily in a short
. Since
our tradition is an oral one, memorization played an important part in it. Therefore, shorter the rules,
easier would it be for the student to memorize these grammar texts. By rearranging the letters in the
order in which they appear in the above
( , , s, , , , , , , , , , , ) is only
a marker. The nasal in the
7: or . Also, the vowels at the end of each of the consonants from the fifth
onwards
(except for the in ) are only for the sake of pronunciation. So for example only refers to the
letter 7. The mnemonic for any group of sounds is made up of one sound from these
and one
marker. The term that is so generated is then the mnemonic for all the sounds that are in between the
ending marker and the beginning sound of the mnemonic. The beginning sound is also included.
Let us take an example. Consider the mnemonic . This mnemonic is made up of one sound that
occurs in the eighth
. If we count
from up to the marker we get the sounds marked in bold below:
s
Leaving out the that are only for pronunciation, the -9c therefore represents U, ,
, , and . They are the second and first column letters of the - : ( , , , , U UU U, , , ); - :
( , , , , , s, d, ) and - : ( , , , , , d, , ).
The other 9c: required are also formed in a similar fashion. Two salient features of the
to
be noted are:
1) Only short vowels are indicated in the
, the grammatical
tradition makes use of only 44 of these.
3) The marker occurs twice in the
. The marker is only used in the -9c: and the -9c:. The in
always stands for the first one except in one
.
However, the -9c is always counted from the first , making the name stand for all
consonants. This is obviously so, because otherwise the -9c would refer to the single letter 7
and serve no purpose.
Here are a few questions based on the +-