 Welcome, I welcome you all to this lecture in the course Sandhi in Paninian Grammar. In this course so far we have studied the overall topics that we are going to study in the course. We also studied the process of speech production which is the basis for the Sandhi phenomenon. We also took some examples in which Sandhi is done. These were taken primarily from the Shreemad Bhagavad Gita and today in this lecture we shall be approaching the topic of this course by asking a question what is a Sandhi and we shall try to answer this question and thereby explain what is a Sandhi. The previous discussion in this course should be viewed as a background for understanding better what is a Sandhi. The previous discussion which consisted of the discussion of the process of speech production in which the cognitive stage acts as the cause and the audible speech which appears at the external most end is the result or the effect. It is this audible speech which is made a topic of study which is subjected to scrutiny and there are also other branches which go deeper inside and study the internal processes which generate the audible speech. Paninian grammar has its own way of describing this internal process and also the external processes. The concept of prasanga is very much relevant over here where the meaning and its cognition provide for the Sandhi to take place. So let us see how the word Sandhi is derived in the Paninian grammar. This is the derivation. You have the verbal root dha dharana poshana yoho to hold preceded by the preverb sam which generally indicates togetherness followed by the suffix ki in the sense of bhava by the sutra upasarge ghokki 3 392. Now this ker which appears at the initial position of the suffix. This ker becomes ith and then is deleted by 138 and 139. So we have some plus dha plus e. Now because this e is kith has ker as a marker. So the sutra 6464 atholopa ithichar ajat deor aarth dhaatu kayohok niditok parayohok atholopas yaath. So this a is deleted because this is kith and then we have some dha e. Then this ma becomes an anasvara by the application of 8324 and then this becomes na by 8459 and so you get the form Sandhi. What is the meaning of Sandhi? The state of being holding something together. That state is called Sandhi. Holding something together. The question is what do you hold together? What does Sandhi hold together? You hold together the words. The Sandhi holds together the words. The words that are uttered in close combination, one after the other in the form of a sentence and in this sentence the word boundaries get erased and the sentential effects take place. It is extremely important to note this fact that the Sandhi holds the sentential effects. Now what are these sentential effects? Once again we revisit the example from the Bhagavad Gita in which sentential effects are clearly demarcated. So on the right hand side you have karmani after that there is a dhanda indicating the full stop. So you take a long pause then you have the word eva, another long pause then you have the word adhikara, another long pause and so on and so forth. Up to you reach the end of the verse a karmani. Each and every element separated by this vertical bar also known as dhanda is to be pronounced separately in isolation without having any effect of the combination of any other element, karmani. Karmani is not linked, not associated with eva. Although eva is the next word there is a huge gap in between and so they are not linked. So there is no effect of eva coming immediately after this karmani. Now these are the padha boundaries which are stated over here. These are the padha boundaries. Now when these boundaries are erased, so karmani and eva when they come together what happens is this knee gets transformed into knee. So this knee we get, knee, v. Now this eva and adhikara, when these two come in contact, close contact then there is this eva, karmani eva. This is what is the result. Once again this can be called a sentential effect. This is what primarily the sandhi is. Similarly adhikara te and it becomes adhikaras te. ma phaleshu kadachana, ma karma phala hetur bhur. So once again hetuhu and bhuhu. Bhuhu and ma. So bhur ma, sangah astu and akarmani becomes sangostvakarmani. So these are the sentential effects that we were talking about. So sandhi holds together the sentence as one unit because the sandhi brings about or sandhi is about these erasures of the padha boundaries and coming of the sentential effects. This is what sandhi is all about. This is how the sandhi, the word sandhi is apt to describe this process which holds together the elements. So this knee and a, they both are brought together and this knee is the effect of the combination. So this sentential effect knee eva holds together two words karmani and eva. Similarly eva and adhikaraha. This a which is a sentential effect, this holds together, this a holds together, this eva and adhikaraha and so on and so forth. Adhikaraha and te, adhikaras te, this sir which is an additional effect, this holds together these two words. In this way sandhi holds together different words in the form of the sentence and the words they get merged. Their boundaries are erased and they get merged in the form of a sentence. This is the significance of the meaning of the word sandhi as well. Now in order to study the term sandhi, we must take a quick look at the use of the term sandhi in various shastras available to us. We select the two prominent ones in which the term sandhi is prominently used. The term sandhi is used in texts like Natya Shastra and also Artha Shastra. Natya Shastra composed by Bharatamuni and Artha Shastra composed by Chanakya or Kautilya. Natya Shastra as we all know is a text that deals with dramaturgy and Artha Shastra deals with political science. So in these two texts, the word sandhi is used in the technical sense and this technical sense applies to a restricted domain. Even if the meaning of the term sandhi is different to different restricted domains, the common thread remains, holding something together. That remains even in these. So if we look at sandhi in Natya Shastra, it is described as the segment of the plot or iti vritta and various types of plays or dramas have different kinds of different numbers of sandhis. So on this slide, we have quoted a verse from the Natya Shastra which says that So in the Natya Shastra which is a part of the drama or rupaka, there are five sandhis, five segments of the plot. They are mukha or pratimukha, then garbha, then vimarsha, and finally nirvahana. This is how the plot gets developed. This is very important and it is these segments which hold the entire content of the play together. So the construction of all these five sandhis, segments, joints is extremely important and is paid serious attention to by professionals. Then we come to the term sandhi which is used in the Artha Shastra. In the Kautilya Artha Shastra, we have a concept Shardgunya in which sandhi occupies the first place. Sandhi means peace, that is the first of the six gunas. Stated like this According to the previous teachers, sandhi, vigraha, asana, yana, samshraya and dvahidhi bhaava, these are the six gunas, shardgunya. And the sandhi is described and defined there as agreement with pledges is peace. This is how sandhi is described in the Artha Shastra. Then there are various types of sandhis also described in Artha Shastra, which I request you all to go through through the original sources as well as the secondary material that is available in the form of several articles written on this particular topic, sandhi in Artha Shastra. So the term sandhi is popular in various Shastras and is in fact actively used in order to explain the structure and nature of various phenomena related to these different fields. Artha Shastra deals with the field of political science and Natya Shastra deals with the concepts of dramaturgy, namely the art. But still in both these fields, in both these texts the word sandhi and the concept of sandhi is very effectively used. For the present purpose, we will restrain ourselves to the study of sandhi in the Vyakaran Shastra only. We leave the study of the concept of sandhi in the Artha Shastra as well as Natya Shastra. We leave that to the competent authorities. We also request you to study these concepts in detail. We will focus in this lecture and in this course on Sandhi in the Vyakaran Shastra, which also assumes quite an important status as far as the overall Vyakaran Shastra is concerned, its arrangement is concerned. In Paninian grammar, sandhi is generally considered a substitute. This is very important. Now how is sandhi treated as a substitute? In order to understand this, we need to have some background of the Paninian grammar. So, Paninian grammar describes Sanskrit language in an exhaustive manner, wherein it covers my newest details of Sanskrit language prevalent at Panini's times. The details consist of variations of forms which express the same meanings. The forms which are prevalent in most of the cases become the by default forms and are stated in the same fashion as by default forms. Now the forms which vary in some cases are explained using the technique of substitution where the same meaning background acts as the base for this substitution to take place, in which the concept of prasanga plays a crucial role and it is these meaning elements which in this case act as prasanga. Paninian grammar describes the Sanskrit language using the methodology of substitution. What does substitution mean? It means that in a given environment, a particular element gets substituted by another particular closer element in a given environment. Now this environment could be on the left hand side or the environment could be on the right hand side of the element to be substituted. Also the meaning acts as as I said earlier, the meaning acts as a very important base for this substitution to take place. So, meaning works as the prasanga in this particular case. So, if we want to show this using this particular notation, we can say that if we have a situation like x plus y plus z and all x and y and z are put in square brackets, what it means is that x is the left hand side environment and z is the right hand side environment. In these environments x on the left hand side and z on the right hand side, y the substituent is to be substituted by say a in this case. So, the output of this particular process would be x plus a plus z and sometimes it so happens that you have x plus a as the output. Sometimes it also happens that you get the output in the form of a plus z. So, a replaces two elements in this particular case and then this a will be called the sandhi. If you have x plus y plus z where y is replaced by a and you get the output x plus a plus z, a is called sandhi in this particular environment. In some cases the combination would be x plus y and so the output of the process would be a plus y. So, in place of x we have a. In some cases the combination would be x plus y which means that there is no left hand side environment. There is only right hand side environment. In both these cases, y is acting as the right hand side environment. But in case of the first case x got replaced by a. Now in this particular case a is getting substituted in place of both x and y. So, then input is x plus y and the output of this particular process would be just a. a being replacing x and also y. So, in this case a will be called the sandhi in both these cases. Whether the substitute is 1 and the substitute is 1 or whether the substitutes are 2 and the substitute is 1, this 1 in this case a is called sandhi. Let us take the concrete examples once again from the verse in the Bhagavad Gita which was cited earlier. And we have Karmani followed by Aver. Now what it eventually means is that there is e followed by a and in this case where you have x where you have y followed by z e gets substituted by a. So, e plus a becomes a plus a and so Karmani plus Aver becomes Karmani plus Aver. What it means is that you have y plus z where y is substituted by a and you get a plus z as the substitute. So, this a in this case is e and so e is called a sandhi. Karmani Aver we have here sandhi. It is called yansandhi in the Paninian terminology. Similarly, if we look at sangha and astu, now here we have a at the end of sangha followed by a visarga and followed by a which is part of astu. So, we have a plus visarga plus a which generally follows the pattern namely x plus y plus z and then this visarga gets substituted by u both the environments remaining unchanged. So, we have once again a plus visarga plus a is substituted by a plus u plus a. So, this is nothing but x plus y plus z is equal to x plus a plus z and then we have sangha astu which has sangha plus visarga plus astu getting substituted by sangha plus u plus astu. Now, we say that this u is called sandhi. This u which comes in place of the visarga is indeed the sandhi. Then this sangha astu, this becomes an input and this is of the following kind. You have sangha which has a at the end followed by u and now you have y plus z and in place of both of them comes a. So, a plus u and in place of both these sounds comes the closer one namely o. So, we get sangha u astu transformed into sangha astu and then once again we apply the rules and we have the output in the form sangha astu. What is to be remembered over here is the o in sangha is nothing but a sandhi as explained by paninian grammar and then sangha astu is in combination which is nothing but o followed by a and the resultant form described in the sutras is o. So, we have y plus z and we have y. So, we get sangha astu as the output from sangha astu. So, now we say here that o is a sandhi. This is the purvarupa sandhi. Thus it is clear to us that sandhi is nothing but an al-vidhi. Al-vidhi is a vidhi based on al. Al stands for all the sounds. Al is a pratyahara and it covers sounds from a to l, l is in the 14th sutra. So, al stands for all the sounds any sound. So, al-vidhi is a sound that is related to any sound. So, sandhi is described as an al-vidhi an operation based on the combination of the sounds also an operation based on the properties of the sounds. This is very important. It must be noted here that the sandhi is programmed at the cognitive level and hence is dependent on it. It can be also explained by physical processes involved in the oral cavity and also by the position of the tongue. So, what are the basic preconditions of sandhi? The basic preconditions are that the words are used in a combination such that they are uttered in close proximity reducing the gap between the utterance of the two sounds to a bare minimum and this close proximity is also known as samhita as we shall study it in the next lecture. And the second basic condition is that the desire to speak in the samhita mode. This desire to speak we have studied corresponds with the notion of vivakasha. In fact, vivakasha means desire to speak. So, this desire to speak namely desire to speak in the samhita mode is extremely important basic condition of the sandhi. To summarize the term sandhi is used in many domains and many disciplines. In the paninyan grammar it is used in the sense of a substitute that comes in place of one sound or sometimes two sounds in a given environment of sounds. One sandhi can become input to generate the output in the form of the other sandhi as we have seen in case of and so on. We shall deal with some of these basic conditions in the next lecture to come. Thank you.