Information AboutAshtadhyayi |
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Panini's work had a phenomenal success, and later Sanskrit grammarians were essentially reduced to the role of his commentators. His work is still used, or at least referred to, in the teaching of Sanskrit today. Panini's grammar consists of several parts, of which the Ashtadhyayi contains the Morphological rules:
The Ashtadhyayi consists of 3,959 sutras (''sutrani'') or rules, distributed among eight chapters, which are each subdivided into four sections or padas (''padani''). From example words in the text, and from a few rules depending on the context of the discourse, additional information as to the geographical, cultural and historical context of Panini can be discerned. THE RULES The first two sutras are as follows: :1.1.1 '''' :1.1.2 '''' In these sutras, the capital letters are special meta-linguistic symbols; they are called ''IT'' markers (see below). The ' and ' refer to Shiva Sutra s 4 and 3, respectively, where the same markers occur, forming what is known as the ''pratyahara''s '''', ''''. They denote the list of phonemes {''ai'', ''au''} and {''e'', ''o''} respectively. The ''T'' appearing in both sutras is also an ''IT'' marker: It is defined in sutra 1.1.70 as indicating that the preceding phoneme is ''not'' representing a list, but a single phoneme, encompassing all supra-segmental features such as accent and nasality. For further example, ' and ' represent {''''} and {''''} respectively. Therefore, the two sutras consist of a term, followed by a list of phonemes; the final interpretation of the two sutras above is thus: :1.1.1: the technical term '' Vrddhi '' denotes the phonemes {'''', ''ai'', ''au''}. :1.1.2: the technical term '' Guna '' denotes the phonemes {''a'', ''e'', ''o''}. At this point, one can see they are definitions of terminology: ' and ' are the terms for the full and the lengthened Ablaut grades, respectively. LIST OF IT MARKERS
EDITIONS
SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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