Shiva Sutra
Encyclopedia
The Shiva Sutras also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
: ) or Māheshvara Sutras (Devanāgarī
Devanagari
Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
: माहेश्वर सूत्राणि) are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
language as referred to in the of , the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar
Sanskrit grammar
The grammar of the Sanskrit language has a complex verbal system, rich nominal declension, and extensive use of compound nouns. It was studied and codified by Sanskrit grammarians from the later Vedic period , culminating in the Pāṇinian grammar of the 4th century BC.-Grammatical tradition:The...
. Within the tradition they are known as the , "recitation of phonemes," but they are popularly known as the Shiva Sutras because they are said to have been revealed to Pāṇini by Shiva
Shiva
Shiva is a major Hindu deity, and is the destroyer god or transformer among the Trimurti, the Hindu Trinity of the primary aspects of the divine. God Shiva is a yogi who has notice of everything that happens in the world and is the main aspect of life. Yet one with great power lives a life of a...
(also known as Maheshvara). They were either composed by Pāṇini to accompany his Aṣṭādhyāyī or predate him. The latter is less plausible, but the practice of encoding complex rules in short, mnemonic verses is typical of the sutra
Sutra
Sūtra is an aphorism or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. Literally it means a thread or line that holds things together and is derived from the verbal root siv-, meaning to sew , as does the medical term...
style.
Text
| IAST IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration is a transliteration scheme that allows a lossless romanization of Indic scripts as employed by the Sanskrit language.-Popularity:... |
Devanāgarī Devanagari Devanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal... |
|---|---|
1. a i u Ṇ 2. ṛ ḷ K 3. e o Ṅ 4. ai au C 5. ha ya va ra Ṭ 6. la Ṇ 7. ña ma ṅa ṇa na M 8. jha bha Ñ 9. gha ḍha dha Ṣ 10. ja ba ga ḍa da Ś 11. kha pha cha ṭha tha ca ṭa ta V 12. ka pa Y 13. śa ṣa sa R 14. ha L |
१. अ इ उ ण् > |
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
Transliteration
Transliteration is a subset of the science of hermeneutics. It is a form of translation, and is the practice of converting a text from one script into another...
. This allows Pāṇini to refer to groups of phonemes with , which consist of a phoneme-letter and an anubandha (and often the vowel a to aid pronunciation) and signify all of the intervening phonemes Pratyāhāras are thus single syllables, but they can be declined
Declension
In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
(see Aṣṭādhyāyī 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 ṛ ḷ e o ai au); haL to consonants, and so on. Note that some pratyāhāras are ambiguous. The anubandha Ṇ occurs twice in the list, which means that you can assign two different meanings to pratyāhāra aṆ (including or excluding ṛ, etc.); in fact, both of these meanings are used in the Aṣṭādhyāyī. On the other hand, the pratyāhāra haL is always used in the meaning "all consonants"---Pāṇini never uses pratyāhāras to refer to sets consisting of a single phoneme.
From these 14 verses, a total of 281 pratyāhāras 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 Pāṇini does not use single element pratyāhāras) 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 Pāṇini uses only 41 (with a 42nd introduced by later grammarians, raṆ=r l) pratyāhāras in the Aṣṭādhyāyī.
The Shiva Sutras put phonemes with a similar manner of articulation
Manner of articulation
In linguistics, manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, jaw, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants, even though the movement of the articulars will also greatly alter the resonant properties of the...
together (so sibilants in 13 śa ṣa sa R, nasals
Nasal consonant
A nasal consonant is a type of consonant produced with a lowered velum in the mouth, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasal consonants in English are and , in words such as nose and mouth.- Definition :...
in 7 ñ m ṅ ṇ n M). Economy (Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
: ) is a major principle of their organization, and it is debated whether Pāṇini deliberately encoded phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
patterns in them (as they were treated in traditional phonetic texts called Prātiśakyas
Shiksha
Shiksha is one of the six Vedangas, treating the traditional Hindu science of phonetics and phonology of Sanskrit.Its aim is the teaching of the correct pronunciation of the Vedic hymns and mantras...
) or simply grouped together phonemes which he needed to refer to in the Aṣṭādhyāyī and which only secondarily reflect phonological patterns (as argued by Paul Kiparsky and Wiebke Petersen, for example). Pāṇini does not use the Shiva Sutras to refer to homorganic stops (stop consonants produced at the same place of articulation
Place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation of a consonant is the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract between an articulatory gesture, an active articulator , and a passive location...
), but rather the anubandha U: to refer to the palatals c ch j jh he uses cU.
As an example, consider Aṣṭādhyāyī 6.1.77: iKo yaṆ aCi. iK refers to the phonemes i u ṛ ḷ, and is in the genitive case, which in the Aṣṭādhyāyī marks a string to be substituted; aC refers to vowels, as noted above, and is in the locative case, which marks the left-hand context for an operation. yaṆ refers to the semivowels y v r and l and is in the nominative, which marks a substitution. Hence this rule replaces a vowel with its corresponding semivowel when preceded by another vowel.
Origin
Shiv shutras are believed to be originated from ShivShiv
The word Shiv or shiv may refer to:* Shiv , a type of sharp weapon* Shiva, a Hindu deity* A fictional location in Magic: The Gathering, see Dominaria* Shiv, a villain in the animated series Static Shock...
's Tandav dance.
नृत्तावसाने नटराजराजो ननाद ढक्कां नवपञ्चवारम्।
उद्धर्त्तुकामो सनकादिसिद्धादिनेतद्विमर्शे शिवसूत्रजालम्॥
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.
See also
Sanskrit- Aṣṭādhyāyī
- ShikshaShikshaShiksha is one of the six Vedangas, treating the traditional Hindu science of phonetics and phonology of Sanskrit.Its aim is the teaching of the correct pronunciation of the Vedic hymns and mantras...
Other languages
- Alphabet songAlphabet songAn alphabet song is any of various songs used to teach children an alphabet, used in kindergartens, pre-schools and homes around the world. Alphabet songs typically follow the alphabetic principle...
- IrohaIrohaThe is a Japanese poem, probably written in the Heian era . Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period. The first record of its existence...
, Japanese poem with similar function - Thousand Character ClassicThousand Character ClassicThe Thousand Character Classic is a Chinese poem used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children. It contains exactly one thousand unique characters. It is said that Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty commissioned 周興嗣 to compose this poem for his prince to practice calligraphy...
, Chinese poem with similar function, esp. used in Korea
External links
- http://www.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/siva-t.pdf Paper by Paul KiparskyPaul KiparskyRené Paul Viktor Kiparsky is a professor of linguistics at Stanford University. He is the son of the Russian-born linguist and Slavicist Valentin Kiparsky....
on 'Economy and the Construction of the Śiva sūtras'. - http://kornai.com/Papers/mol2.pdf Paper by Andras KornaiAndras KornaiAndrás Kornai is a well-known mathematical linguist. He earned his mathematics PhD in 1983 from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest where his advisor was Miklós Ajtai...
relating the Śiva sūtras to contemporary Feature Geometry. - http://user.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/~petersen/paper/petersen_jolli_proof.pdf Paper by Wiebke Petersen on 'A Mathematical Analysis of Pāṇini’s Śiva sūtras.