The Shiva Sutras

In Sanskrit grammar, it's important to know about different kinds of sounds. Some rules apply only to vowels, and others apply only to consonants. Some rules apply only to simple vowels, or only to sibilants.

We can define different groups by using terms like “voiced consonants,” ”unvoiced stop consonants,” and the like. But from the Paninian perspective, these terms are long and cumbersome.

How can we refer to different sound groups concisely? Let's enter the Paninian system by seeing how it answers this question.

An example

Suppose we visit a market that sells different kinds of fruits. Perhaps it sells the following:

• mangoes

• coconuts

• jackfruit

• oranges

• apples

• lychee fruits

• papayas

Let's say that we want to buy mangoes, coconuts, jackfruit, and oranges. One way to ask for these would be to just name each fruit we want. That would take a long time to say. But if the sellers at the market know the list above, we can just say “mangoes to oranges” to get the fruits we want.

Now suppose we want to order just mangoes, jackfruit, and papayas. These items are spread out far apart in our list. We can't say something like “mangoes to papayas” because that includes too many fruits that we don't want. So the order of fruits in our list is important. If we order our list well, we can make sure that common orders can be made quickly. If we order it poorly, then perhaps we are just creating more work for ourselves.

Panini organizes the Sanskrit sounds in a similar way to this list of fruits. This grouping makes it easy and efficient to refer to large groups of sounds quickly:

Some say that this arrangement was inspired by the beat of Shiva's drum. So these rules are often called the Shiva Sutras. But how do the Shiva Sutras actually work?

Each rule in this list has two parts. The black letters are ordinary sounds. And the red letters at the end of each rule are special letters called its. These it letters are not part of our list of sounds. Instead, they just mark the end of each rule.

Let's say that we want to refer to all of the vowels. We start by choosing the first item we want, which is a. Then we choose one of the it letters to mark the end of our list. So we would choose c, since c follows the last vowel in the list. The combination of these two is ac. So that is the name for all of the Sanskrit vowels: ac.

Likewise, we can quickly refer to other groups of sounds:

But before we go on, perhaps you've noticed a few potential issues with this list:

• The vowels ā, ī, ū, and ṝ are missing. We will explain this in the next lesson. For now, just know that a refers to both the short vowel a and the long vowel ā. Likewise for the other vowels

• ha appears twice. The second ha makes it easier to quickly refer to the four sibilant sounds (śal). And when we use this list, any new name we create must include more than one sound. So hal will always refer to all consonants, and never to just the sound ha.

• ṇ ends two different rules. This is a real ambiguity, and we must rely on context and commentaries to make the usage clear. Perhaps Panini ran out of it letters and was forced to reuse one.

Review

Overall, the Shiva Sutras give us a clean and concise way to refer to different groups of Sanskrit sounds. How well does it actually work for the rest of the Paninian system? According to one mathematician, this arrangement is mathematically optimal.

But we still have some questions worth answering:

• In the Shiva Sutras, why does the sound a refer to both short a and long ā?

• What is an it letter, really?

The next two lessons will answer both of these questions.