CHAPTER 16
The Science of Language
Frits Staal
The assertions and propositions of many Indian sciences are formulated by
means of brief expressions called su ̄tra, literally “thread” and often translated as
“rule.” The earliest su ̄trasare the S ́rauta Su ̄trasof the science of ritual (kalpa); the
most perfect su ̄trasare those of Pa ̄n.ini’s grammar of Sanskrit. Both sciences
include, along with the notion of rule, those ofparibha ̄s.a ̄or “metarule,” that is,
a rule about rules; and ofrule order, a requirement often formulated by means
of a metarule of the form “Rule A precedes Rule B.” A simple example from ritual
is that the rules about lighting the ritual fire precede those that describe how
oblations are made into it.
Some of the early discoveries of ritualists and grammarians anticipate rules
or techniques in modern linguistics, logic, mathematics or computer science. An
example is the notion ofdefault. The ritualA ̄pastamba S ́rauta Su ̄tra (24.1.23–6)
singles out default options for oblations, priests, and implements. It specifies that
the default oblation is clarified butter; the default priest, the Adhvaryu; and the
default implement, the juhu ̄ladle. There are degrees of default: when the juhu ̄is
already used, and no other implement is specified, the oblation is made with the
help of the sruva. The notion of multiple default echoes or is echoed by Pa ̄n.ini’s
metarule 2.3.1 which deals with ka ̄rakaor syntactic relations: “(the following
rules apply) when it [i.e., the ka ̄raka] is not (already) expressed.”
Using metarules and rule order, the ritual and grammatical systems express
recursiveness, that is, they describe an infinite domain of facts with the help of a
finite number of rules. Pa ̄n.ini’s commentator Patañjali compares the expressions
of language to rituals of infinite duration and explains (by telling a story about
Br.haspati, Professor of the Gods, trying to teach Sanskrit to Indra) why an
attempt to enumerate all the forms of language can never reach an end. He con-
cludes that “a work containing rules has to be composed.”
Rules can only operate on units that are clearly demarcated. This requirement
was met in the oral transmission of the Vedas: for Vedic mantras are recited in