it letters

What is an it letter, really?

First, let's understand one of the problems that Panini was facing. Suppose we run a clothing store that sells all kinds of shirts, trousers, and dresses. And when our customers arrive, they want to find exactly what they're looking for.

How might we organize this store? One obvious idea is to group similar items together: shirts with shirts, large items with large items, and so on. This is a device that Panini uses extensively.

But one problem with this approach is that there is a limit to how much information this grouping can easily convey. For example, which shirts must be washed in cold water? Which have been imported? Which are on sale?

One elegant solution is to add a paper tag to each item we sell. This small tag can tell us about the price, the country of origin, and whatever other information we need to know. The tag is not part of the shirt; it's just a label that tells us what the shirt is like.

Panini probably didn't run a clothing store, but he certainly faced a similar problem. He wanted to organize all of the terms in Sanskrit grammar so that their roles and functions were clear. Most of these terms are grouped in large lists, just as we might group shirts together in our store. But there are too many important properties that need to be conveyed. These properties include:

• whether certain verbs are allowed specific suffixes

• whether certain suffixes cause any unusual sound changes

• whether certain terms have any unusual accents

Just as we might add tags to items in our store, Panini adds tags to the different terms in the grammar. These tags are not part of the terms they attach to; they're just labels that tell us what the term is like.

And since the Ashtadhyayi is part of an oral tradition, it's only fitting that these tags are other sounds. And the technical term for these sounds is it.

In eight rules, Panini describes which sounds are it and which are not. These rules are so critical to the rest of the grammar that we will study all eight.

Nasal vowels

The term upadeśa (“instruction, teaching”) here refers to the teaching context of vyākaraṇa and the Paninian system. Specifically, it refers to the technical language used within the system. So within this technical context, nasal vowels are called it.

With this rule, we can better understand the term udit that was used in the previous lesson. For example, we learned previously that ku (कु) refers to the five sounds ka, kha, ga, gha, and ṅa. More properly, this is कुँ with a nasal u vowel. (Romanized Sanskrit does not have very good support for nasal vowels, which is why we write this in Devanagari.)

Therefore, the sound k has the vowel u as an it. By rule 1.1.70, the short vowel u is called ut. So, we can say that k is udit (ut-it, “having u as an it“). And since k is udit, it is in scope for 1.1.69, which lets us concisely refer to similar sounds.

Final consonants

With this rule, we can better understand the terms from the Shiva Sutras, as well. In the term ac, for example, the final c is an it sound. Then we can apply rule 1.1.71, which relies on 1.1.68 for context:

Thus rule 1.1.71 defines the basic mechanism of the Shiva Sutras: an initial term is paired with an it and includes all of the terms between them:

Terms that follow this mechanism are called pratyāhāras, and we will see more of them in later lessons.

Next is a small exception for nominal case endings:

Minor rules

For our current needs, the next four rules are minor, and we've left only minor comments on them. Notice the context that carries over from one rule to the next. The order of rules here is not arbitrary; it is arranged to express as much as possible in as little space as possible.

These rules are mainly found on verb roots and usually allow specific suffixes. The new word ādiḥ (“initial”) cancels the force of na (“not”) from rule 1.3.4.

Notice that ṭu literally refers to the sound ṭu, not to the five sounds ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, and ṇa that we would get from 1.1.69. There is a deep argument for how we know that this interpretation is correct. But for now, let's avoid the complication and just take it as given.

A taddhita suffix is used to create nominal stems. We will revisit this rule later.

lopa

Finally, we see what happens to these it letters:

And what is lopa?

Rule 1.3.9 emphasizes a simple fact: these it letters are just a helpful notation. They are not “real” Sanskrit and have no meaning outside the technical world of the Paninian system. The role of a tag is to tell us about the clothes it is attached to; and the role of it letters is to tell us about the terms they attach to.

Review

Coming soon.