 I welcome you all to this lecture in the course Introduction to Paninian Grammar. So far we have studied several aspects of the Paninian grammar. In today's lecture we shall begin the study of the sutras and we shall take up each of these questions and we will try to answer. Let me read out the questions for you which are displayed on the slide. The first question is what is a sutra? What are the types of sutra? This is the next question. What are the types of sutra? Then we have another question. What is the reasoning behind classifying sutra in this particular form in these types? Then how to make the meaning of the sutra? How to decode what is stated in the sutra? What is the speech form generated by the sutra? The earlier bullet how to make the meaning of the sutra related to the interpretation of the sutra itself and how to bring together words and make a proper meaning of the sutra. Now this sutra accounts for a speech form. What is that speech form which is generated by the sutra? Similarly, which is the speech form which is not generated by the sutra and a very, very important question and then what is the derivation process supported by the sutra? So in the derivation process we shall see that the initial enunciation is the starting point followed by the application of sutras whose conditions fulfill as far as that initial enunciation is concerned and then one sutra at a time processes the stage, the input and returns the output which becomes the input for another sutra and then it processes the sutra according to its own conditions and returns the output and this process recursively continues until no more sutra in the text of the ashtadhyay can apply on that derivation and step and so this finished final step is returned as an output of this entire derivation process. We shall study this process in detail later on. So what does this grammar derive? The speech form that we were discussing just now and the derivation process which derives this speech form what is it that this grammar derives? The grammar derives sentence or sentences. These sentences have different structures. So this grammar derives sentences of different structures. What is this grammar composed of? This grammar is composed of lists that is lexicon and also rules. Lists become part of the rules. Lists are processed, lists are also tagged according to which rules operate on them and return the combinations as the derived form which is the speech form that is ultimately spoken by that speech community where some script speakers community. This is what these grammars do in a nutshell. Lists and rules takes the lists as input, applies the rules, selects the combinations and returns the speech form that is spoken. Now the lists are of two types. Roots lists and affixes list. The roots have two types of lists. One the list of verbal roots, thatoos approximately 2000 and the list of nominal roots. Frasipadikas these are innumerable. And the second list is that of affixes or pratyayas these are finite in number. These two lists form the base of this grammar to operate on. What about the rules? There are approximately 4000 rules divided into 8 chapters, each chapter is further divided into 4 sub chapters thus there are 32 sections, longest being 6.1, shortest being 2.2. We have already seen some of this information. We have been regularly reading the first 5 sutras of each pada in every second lecture of this course. So we are aware of these subdivisions and divisions. Now what do these rules do? Approximately 4000 rules what do they do? They apply on the input into layers sequentially as well as simultaneously. How? So as far as the sequential application is concerned the input is the lists of roots and affixes and the application provides an output namely the bigger unit namely the word technically called pada as output. Then it takes the words or pada as input and returns sentence as an output. This happens sequentially. Rules apply sequentially. First from the list of roots and affixes words are generated and then from the words the sentence is generated. This is the sequential application of rules in these 2 layers. When we talk about the simultaneous application we talk about the embedded layers on which the rules are applied simultaneously. So the input is the entire word collection of words or the pada whereas the output is sentence this is the broad framework. So we are generating sentence and we are generating the sentence from the list of roots and affixes. So this first input which is words or pada its part is 1.1 which is the input of lists which is the input namely lists of roots and affixes and output is the bigger unit namely the word technically called pada as output. So this is how these rule function sequentially as well as simultaneously. In the simultaneous process the broad picture is the derivation of sentence at one go and as a part of this the words are derived whereas in the sequential derivation we derive first the words and then we continue deriving the sentence based on the words. So let us take a concrete example. This is a picture which does convey something to the audience the human being the question is how will you describe this picture. So one can observe that in this picture the action of going is happening the action of going this seems to be reasonable. So this picture describes the action of going if we say this we would not be wrong. Now this action of going along with it we also note that there are female students and there is probably a school which are also related to the action of going. It is the female student we now search for a word in Sanskrit for female student we use lexicon and by using a lexicon now we decide that we want to use the word chhatra to indicate the meaning of female student. We want to use the word pathashala to indicate the meaning a school and we want to use the verbal root gum in order to indicate the action of going. Now we also decide that the students the female students they are the performers of the action of going and the school is the place where the female students are going. After having decided this we now decide that the students are the performers of the action of going and in order to express this we select a word which is us which indicates the female performers this is done by 412 and also um that is the word which indicates where the performer goes and this corresponds with the school which is the place where the students are going and of course anthi namely the performer of the action according to the rule 3478 and 713. So now this is the correspondence between the meanings that we selected to express and the actual words that are selected for the expression. As we bring together chhatra plus us plus pathashala plus um a plus gum plus anthi and here are the rules which help us in bringing together these elements. These elements are mentioned in square brackets indicating that they are others that they are one unit and what we are going to derive is one big unit called a sentence from these subunits. It is these red plus signs which indicate that these are going to be united in the form of a sentence. Then by applying some rules chhatra plus us we apply 6101 pathashala plus um we apply 6107 gum plus anthi we apply 3168 and 7378 and so on we get the following unit chhatra and this is one unit this fact is indicated by the vertical bar that comes at the end in some script. So chhatra is now the one unit that we derived with the help of the rules as well as the lexicon. Now if we replace the left hand side elements with the following elements balaka a boy pustaka a book and patha to read then and if we fill those left hand side elements in this structure dash dash plus us this is one padha dash dash plus um this is another padha dash dash plus anthi this is the third padha each padha indicated by a square bracket and this is the big sentence which is indicated by a big square bracket at the end and also at the beginning. Now if we replace these dashes with balaka pustaka and what we get the following sentence balaka us takam patha anthi earlier it was chhatra a patha shalaam gachanthi now we get balaka a us takam patha anthi. Similarly we can generate n number of such sentences with the same structures we can generate n number of sentences with different structures as well by replacing the right side elements as well this is directed by the rules that are stated in the paninian grammar this is how the sentences get derived. Now what are these rules the rules assume certain conditions or certain environments these are of meaning meaning form to begin with as we have already seen in the process of speech production then these conditions or the environments are also of the word form in bigger units and then also various constituent word forms in the smaller units and then also the sounds individual sounds as well as accents all this becomes a condition or an environment the rules assume these conditions and also these environments and this is how these rules get triggered first of all and then apply themselves and process the input and then return the output the output of the rules is of the following kind the rules return the output in the form of next step in the derivation process this output becomes an input for another rule the rules return the final output in the form of a finished word form fit to be used in a sentence this is the final output that is produced by the rules the rules are stated by sutras in the paninian grammar sutras and now we shall study what is a sutra literally sutra means a thread a thread in which items are woven together the idea behind the concept of sutra is that one remembers the thread and the items that are woven together are also remembered so if one remembers the rule one easily remembers the forms that are generated by the rule the forms that are not generated by the rule and so on and so forth that is the reason why this rule is stated by the sutra in the paninian grammar let us now look at the definition of the sutra provided in the paninian grammatical tradition the sutra is defined in the following manner it says alpaksharam asandhigdham saravat vishvatomukham astobham anavadyamcha sutram sutravidho viduhu I will repeat alpaksharam asandhigdham saravat vishvatomukham astobham anavadyamcha sutram sutravidho viduhu so in the first line are stated several features which make a sutra the first thing is alpaksharam alpaksharam having small number of letters that is very brief so brevity is extremely important at the same time it should not be ambiguous asandhigdham unambiguous in nature saravat sar is an essence so saravat means possessing the essence vishvatomukham should be applicable universally astobham should not be unclear should not be humming it should be very clear so non humming anavadyam anavadya refers to being flawless there shouldn't be too many mistakes in it so this is how the knowledgeable the wise know the sutra of so alpaksharam asandhigdham it should be brief but it should be unambiguous it should contain the essence it should have a general universal application it shouldn't be unclear and it should not contain errors it should be error free free it should be flawless this is how sutra is understood by the knowledgeable people who know the sutra and this is very much true about the sutras in the paninian grammatical tradition because they also fulfill these conditions alpaksharam etc. so now along with the sutras there are some supporting statements available in the paninian grammatical tradition namely vartika and bhashya and also vyatthana let us look at these one by one these are the comments made on the sutra so these sutras in our case were made around 350 500 BCE and then in the course of time a scholar called kathya jana wrote these vartikas which are the supporting statements which commented upon the sutras and the vartika is defined as ukta nukta durukta naam chinta yatra pravartate tam grandham vartikam prahu vartikadnyaha mani sanaha I repeat ukta nukta durukta naam chinta yatra pravartate tam grandham vartikam prahu vartikadnyaha mani sanaha so ukta is what is stated anukta is what is not stated durukta is something stated in a flawed manner so chinta is the thought so the knowledgeable scholars who know what a vartika is term that text a vartika in which thought is given to what it said what is not said and what is wrongly said panini sutras were commented upon by kathya jana in the course of time he found out that certain elements in the paninian sutras may not be required because the language changes and so he thinks about what is stated in the sutra because the language change happens there are certain other usages that come up which are not accounted for in the sutras of panini and so the statements of kathya jana think of an arrangement because of which the newly arrived usage can be accounted for by the sutras of panini that is anukta chinta and finally there are some elements which do not stand the test of reason which are subjected to reasoning and then are also corrected in the course of time probably they were correct at the time of writing first writing but are probably not correct at the time of writing the same text in the time of kathya jana so kathya jana does give a thought to the sutras of panini from all these three angles and therefore his comments are extremely important because they give us information about about what panini had said what he did not say probably because of the change in language what is missing in this grammar and probably what was proven wrong or what is wrong which was said in the grammar of panini and kathya jana provides us with reasoning which we can own study and subject to scrutiny and come up with our own conclusion which even the mahabhashakara has also done so let us look at what is bhashya an extremely important statement to be remembered along with the sutra. Bhashya is literally a commentary it is defined in the following manner sutrar tho varnyate yatra padais sutra nosari bhi swapadani ca varnyante bhashyam bhashavido viduhu what it means is the knowledgeable scholars who know what a bhashya is termed that text of bhashya in which the meaning of the sutra is explained by the words following the sutra and in which also the own words are explained sutrar tho varnyate yatra where the meaning of the sutra is explained by the words following the sutra so using the words of the sutra only without adding anything to be very faithful with the original text however there are some other own words are added in order to explain those sutras and even those words are explained sometimes they become very difficult for the latest scholars to follow but bhashya explains one's own words in order to be intelligible for the other scholars who are listening so such a text is called bhashya so sutrar tho is described sutra is the primary focus and then you take the words of the sutra and explain them you also use your own words and also explain them this process leads to the generation of a text also known as bhashya so we have in the panemian grammatical tradition the text called vyakaranam mahabhashya which falls into this particular category which explains the sutras using the words of the sutras sometimes the mahabhashya interprets the words with the sutras in multiple ways sometimes it suggests the split of the sutra into two portions to be able to derive the forms the linguistic usage of his own time so the bhashyakara as far as panemian grammatical tradition is concerned is explaining the words that are present in the text of ashtadhyay in multiple ways is also bringing in his own terminology he also uses his own words and also explains them this is the reason why this commentary of the vyakaranam mahabhashya is called bhashya rather it is called mahabhashya because it is the great bhashya with the beautiful style of writing and also the in-depth analysis of sutras make this bhashya a unique bhashya a unique one with also a proper sense of humor one should say patanjali is endowed with the sense of humor which is a very rare combination the other important statement as far as the sutras are concerned is vyakyanam or explanation this is stated by the mahabhashya of patanjali which says that a sutra needs an explanation which is provided by the following categories charchapada for example dissolved words words in the sutra need to be dissolved and here patanjali offers multiple explanations to avoid certain problems as well sthane antaratama urandraparaha these are the two sutras but patanjali offers sthane antaratama to be interpreted in two ways sthane antaratama and sthane antaratame in order to account for certain usages similarly ato yeyaha dissolved in different ways ato yahya or ato yasya and so on and so forth the words are dissolved in peculiar manner by patanjali then the addition of examples is extremely important what is it that the sutra is achieving which is that speech form that is being generated by the sutra this is shown by examples and the scholarly books whose titles are india as known to panini known to patanjali etc they primarily base themselves on the examples which is a very unique store of information historical information so udaharana is very important each and every sutra must possess some examples similarly it should also also possess the counter examples the speech that is not produced by this sutra so the shape of the sutra ensures that certain kinds of examples are produced which are in actual use and certain other kinds of examples are not produced these are called counter examples now if you remove a particular word from the sutra then the resultant form of the sutra would produce would start producing forms that are actually not to be derived which are a counter examples but the absence of a particular sutra particular word in the sutra might start generating such forms that is the reason why a particular word in the sutra is absolutely necessary this is what the later tradition interprets this is how the later tradition interprets the concept of praktidaharanam and then vakyadhyahar certain elements certain contexts which are sentential contexts they are continued in the previous in the subsequent sutras from the previous sutras this is called vakyadhyahar so using all these four charchapada udaharana praktidaharana and vakyadhyahar a vyakhyana takes shape and this vyakhyana helps us understand the nature of the sutra and the output of the sutra the speech form that is generated and also the derivation process this is how the sutras work and this is how the sutras are explained from the definition of the sutra it is clear to us that sutras are brief statements in panini's case they are very terse and definitely need explanation which is provided by kathiyayana by his vartikas patanjali by his vyakharana mahabhasya and of course the vyakhyana which is provided by these three monies as well as the other scholarly commentators this is how the sutras get explained and we shall study these sutras and the types of sutras in the coming lectures thank you for your attention