Shiva Sutras - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Shiva Sutras
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Shiva Sutra) The Shiva Sutras (IAST: ivastri; Devangar: ) or Mheshvara Sutras (Devangar: ) are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit language as referred to in the Adhyy of Pini, the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar. Within the tradition they are known as the akarasammnya, "recitation of phonemes," but they are popularly known as the Shiva Sutras because they are said to have been revealed to Pini by Shiva (also known as Maheshvara). They were either composed by Pini to accompany his Adhyy 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.

Contents
1 Text 2 Origin 3 Traditional story of origin 4 See also 5 External links

Text
IAST 1. a i u 2. k 3. e o 4. ai au c 5. ha ya va ra 6. la 7. a ma a a na m 8. jha bha 9. gha ha dha 10. ja ba ga a da 11. kha pha cha ha tha ca a ta v 12. ka pa y 13. a a sa r 14. ha l Devangar . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . | . |

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 Pini to refer to groups of phonemes with pratyhras, which consist of a phoneme-letter and an anubandha (and often the vowel a to aid pronunciation) and signify all of the intervening phonemes Pratyhras are thus single syllables, but they can be declined (see Adhyy 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 pratyhras are ambiguous. The anubandha occurs twice in the list, which means that you can assign two different meanings to pratyhra a (including or excluding , etc.); in fact, both of these meanings are used in the Adhyy. On the other hand, the pratyhra haL is always used in the meaning "all consonants"---Pini never uses pratyhras to refer to sets consisting of a single phoneme. From these 14 verses, a total of 281 pratyhras 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 Pini does not use single element pratyhras) 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 Pini uses only 41 (with a 42nd introduced by later grammarians, ra=r l) pratyhras in the Adhyy.

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The Shiva Sutras put phonemes with a similar manner of articulation together (so sibilants in 13 a a sa R, nasals in 7 m n M). Economy (Sanskrit: lghava) is a major principle of their organization, and it is debated whether Pini deliberately encoded phonological patterns in them (as they were treated in traditional phonetic texts called Prtiakyas) or simply grouped together phonemes which he needed to refer to in the Adhyy and which only secondarily reflect phonological patterns (as argued by Paul Kiparsky (http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/siva-t.pdf) and Wiebke Petersen (http://user.phil-fak.uniduesseldorf.de/~petersen), for example). Pini 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 Adhyy 6.1.77: iKo ya aCi: iK means i u , iKo is iK in the genitive case, so it means in place of i u ; ya means the semivowels y v r l and is in the nominative, so iKo ya means: y v r l replace i u . 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 ahii 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 because the Shiva sutras read i u K. Also, rules can be debarred by other rules. Rule 6.1.101 akas savarNe drghaH teaches that when the two vowels are alike a long vowel is substituted for both, so dadhi and indraH make dadhndraH not *dadhyindraH. The akas savare drghaH rule takes precedence over the iKo ya aCi rule because the akas is more specific.

Origin
Shiv sutras are believed to be originated from Shivs Tandav dance. At the end of His Cosmic Dance, Shiva, the Lord of Dance, with a view to bless the sages Sanaka and so on, played on His Damaru fourteen times, from which emerged the following fourteen Sutras, popularly known as Shiva Sutras or Maheshwara Sutras.

Traditional story of origin

Panini was a student of a gurukula (system of education in 4th century BC). He was a dull student, and was teased by many of his friends. So, worried of his situation, the guru maataa (wife of guru) advised him to go to Himalayas and do tapas. So he went to Himalayas and started meditating to lord Shiva. Lord Shiva was pleased with his strong tapas. He came and danced before Panini. While dancing, the sound from his damaru (the small drum like music instrument that Shiva has) was heard by Panini as the maheshwara sutrani. Panini wrote the maheshwara sutras and formed the Sanskrit grammar.

See also
Sanskrit Adhyy Shiksha Other languages Alphabet song

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Iroha, Japanese poem with similar function Thousand Character Classic, Chinese poem with similar function, esp. used in Korea

External links
[1] (http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/siva-t.pdf) Paper by Paul Kiparsky on Economy and the Construction of the iva stras. [2] (http://kornai.com/Papers/mol2.pdf) Paper by Andras Kornai relating the iva stras to contemporary Feature Geometry. [3] (http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~petersen/paper/petersen_jolli_proof.pdf) Paper by Wiebke Petersen on A Mathematical Analysis of Pinis iva stras. [4] (http://www.scribd.com/doc/81266812/Who-Inspired-Panini-Reconstructing-the-Hindu-and-Buddhist-Counter-ClaimsMadhav-M-Deshpande) Paper by Madhav Deshpande on Who Inspired Pini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-Claims. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Shiva_Sutras&oldid=577438311" Categories: Vyakarana Collation
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