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Discovery of the lost Phonetic Sutras of Panini

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The Taittīnya-Āraṇyaka mentions, for the first time, the various constituents of the ancient science of phonetics:

Prap. vii, An. 2.

At the present day no Śikṣā work contemporaneous with the above and comprising all the said parts is to be traced. In general, the Prätiśākhyas and the still later Śikṣās deal at sufficiently great length with traditional Sanskrit phonetics of their own times; but the common source from which Patañali derived most of his quotations, which was afterwards used by Candragomin to form his Varṇa-sūtras, and which has been extensively quoted and reproduced by subsequent commentators of such high repute as Jayāditya, Jinendrabuddhi, the author of Prakriyā-Saṅgraha of the Jain Śākaṭāyana School, Sṣṭridhara and a host of others, was little known till recent times.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1931

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References

page 653 note 1 See notes on the text in the following pages. It is most significant that in Sabda-kaustubha, a commentary on Aṣṭ., Bhaṭṭojidīṣita quotes the sūtras of this Sikṣā, but in Siddhānta-kaumudī, where he has arranged the Aṣṭ. sūtras according to his own plan, he gives different phonetic sūtras. These are attributed by the author of the commentary Bālamanoramā to Bhaṭṭojīdikṣita himself.

page 653 note 2 v.s. 1936 = a.d. 1879–80.

page 654 note 1 This book was edited by Pt. Viśvabandhu for the Panjab University Oriental Series.

page 655 note 1 See the commentary published in the Benares edition of Śikṣāsaṁgraha:

page 658 note 1

page 659 note 1

page 659 note 2 Kaṭha-Up., iii, 15; Śvet.-Up., in, 12; Muṇḍ.-Up., i, 1, 16, etc.

page 659 note 3 Sv. Day.'s edition gives before this passage the sūtra which is followed by a list of the letters of the alphabet, which include the pluta vowels, and read the diphthongs in the order e, o, aī, au. The four yamas are here given as the hrasva and dīrgha anunāsikas, the nāsīkya (i.e. the nasalization in a vowel), and the letter . This interpretation of the yamas by Sv. Day. is not supported by any authority.

page 660 note 1 Jin. concludes the quotations from this Śikṣa with ;, etc.

page 660 note 2 Pat.: :

page 663 note 1 Pat. (vol. i, p. 61) takes a and hence the kaṇṭhya letters (?) to be outside the mouth (āsya).