phonology, they are sometimes similar or almost the same as some Pra ̄tis ́a ̄khya
rules, e.g., the definition of “homorganic”:
(Homorganic is) having the same place, producing organ, and effort of
articulation in the mouth. (2)Here “place” refers to “throat,” “palate,” “teeth,” etc., “producing organ” means
“tip of the tongue,” “rolling back the tip of the tongue,” “tip of the teeth,”
“middle of the jaw,” etc. “Effort of articulation” refers to “closed,” “semi-closed,”
“open,” etc. – all Pra ̄tis ́a ̄khya concepts. Pa ̄n.ini (or earlier grammarians eclipsed
by him) added to the study of phonology that of morphology, syntax and seman-
tics. Pa ̄n.ini then freed himself from the notion of a finite corpus like that of the
Vedic mantras, and began to treat Sanskrit as a creative and infinite energeia in
the sense in which that Greek concept is now associated with von Humboldt or
Chomsky.
Pa ̄n.ini started his grammar with a new classification of sounds, the result of
an at first sight surprising overhaul of the Pra ̄tis ́a ̄khya classification. He replaced
the two-dimensional varga system by a linear sequence, later called the S ́ivasu ̄tra:
a i u N./ r.l.K / e o N.
/ ai au C /ha ya va ra T./ la N./ ña ma n.a n.a na M
/ jha bha Ñ / gha d.ha dha S./ ja ba ga d.a da S ́/ kha pha cha t.ha tha ca
t.a ta V / ka pa Y / s ́a s.a sa R / ha L // (3)The sounds I have expressed here by small letters are the sounds of the Sanskrit
object-language. They consist of vowels and consonants (including semivowels),
the latter followed by a short a. Capitals are part of the metalanguage: they refer
to metalinguistic markers to which I will return. The five vowels with which (3)
starts may be long or short (.randl.in their short form sound approximately like
ryin “crystal” and liin “Clinton”).
Pa ̄n.ini used short vowels (a, etc.) to refer to both short and long vowels (aand
a ̄, etc.) because of an important generalization that he would otherwise miss. It
happens to be a fact about Sanskrit (and some other languages) that many rules
of grammar that apply to vowels, apply to them whether they are long or short.
For example, a+a,a+a ̄,a ̄+aanda ̄+a ̄, all become long a ̄(e.g., atra +agni >
atra ̄gni“here, Agni!”, va ̄+agni >va ̄gni“or Agni,” etc.).
To express this by four rules would not only be unwieldy; it would be unnat-
ural for it would fail to express a generalization that captures a feature of the
language. Pa ̄n.ini, therefore, uses in his metalanguagea single vowel to express the
short and long forms ofthe object language. This enables him to express by a single
rule of the form “a+a>a ̄”, all four combinations of long and short. He gener-
alizes further, because this lenghtening applies to the other vowels: e.g., the iin
dadhi+indra >dadhı ̄ndra (“milk, Indra!”). We shall see in a moment how he
expressed these facts.
What happens to grammatical rules that apply to a short or long vowel only?
Pa ̄n.ini marks them with Tin accordance with metarule (4):
the science of language 353