Before going further, let me provide more evidence to support my interpretation of para. The meaning of para in 1.4.2 can be confirmed by looking at the meaning of para in the rest of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. The term para has been used by Pāṇini on many occasions. Its occurrences can be classified into two groups:
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Group A: 1.1.34, 1.4.109, 3.2.39, 3.3.138, 3.4.20, 4.3.5, 5.2.92, 5.3.29, 6.3.8.2
Group B: 1.1.47, 1.1.51, 1.1.54, 1.1.57, 1.1.70, 1.2.40, 1.4.2, 1.4.62, 1.4.81, 2.1.2, 2.2.31, 2.4.26, 3.1.2, 6.1.84, 6.1.94, 6.1.112, 6.1.115, 6.1.120, 6.2.199, 6.4.156, 7.3.22, 7.3.27, 7.4.80, 7.4.88, 7.4.93, 8.1.2, 8.1.56, 8.2.92, 8.3.4, 8.3.6, 8.3.26, 8.3.27, 8.3.35, 8.3.87, 8.3.110, 8.3.118, 8.4.283, 8.4.58.4
Let us consider an example from Group A. 1.1.34 pūrva-parāvara-dakṣiṇottarāparādharāṇi vyavasthāyām asaṁjñāyām (vibhāṣā jasi sarvanāmāni) teaches that the terms pūrva, para etc. are called sarvanāma optionally when followed by Jas. In 1.1.34 and in the other rules belonging to Group A, para is used as an ordinary word of the object language Sanskrit. In these rules, it does not have any special technical connotation with respect to Pāṇini’s derivational system. We are not interested in Group A, because 1.4.2 belongs to group B.
Let us consider some examples from Group B. 1.1.47 mid aco’ntyāt paraḥ teaches that an item marked with anubandha M is placed after, i.e., to the right-hand side of, the last vowel of the item to which it is added. 1.1.51 ur aṇ raparaḥ teaches that r is added after, i.e., to the right side of the vowels a, i, u when they are substitutes of r̥. 1.1.54 ādeḥ parasya teaches that a substitute taught for the following or right-hand side item replaces its first sound. From these examples, it becomes clear that in the rules I have listed under group B, para is used to mean ‘right-hand side’ in the context of Pāṇinian derivations.
Furthermore, we also see that in the Aṣṭādhyāyī the term pūrva, the antonym of para, when used specifically in the context of Pāṇinian derivations, means LHS. For example, consider the pair of rules 1.1.66 tasminn iti nirdiṣṭe pūrvasya and 1.1.67 tasmād ity uttarasya.
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1.1.66 teaches that when an item is taught (nirdiṣṭe) in the locative (tasminn iti), it means that the item to its left-hand side (pūrvasya) undergoes an operation, and 1.1.67 teaches that, when an item is taught in the ablative (tasmād iti), it means that the item to its right-hand side (uttarasya)1 undergoes the operation6.
Let us confirm this by considering some rules which contain both pūrva and para. 6.1.84 ekaḥ pūrvaparayoḥ teaches that (in the following rules) a single sound replaces both the LHS sound and the RHS sound in case of saṁhitā ‘immediate proximity’. Similarly, 1.1.57 acaḥ parasmin pūrvavidhau teaches that a substitute for a vowel, if it is conditioned by an RHS context, is treated like its substituendum with respect to an operation on an LHS element.
Besides, the word kāryam in 1.4.2 also gives us some crucial information. We know that in the Aṣṭādhyāyī, Pāṇini does not generally use finite verbal forms in his rules. For example, in 6.1.77, he does not say iko yaṇ aci bhavati / kāryam, but simply iko yaṇ aci. So, in the case of 1.4.2 too, we can safely interpret kāryam as a noun rather than interpreting it as an optative passive participle meaning ‘should be done’. What does the noun kārya generally mean? It means ‘operation’, not ‘rule’. If Pāṇini wanted to say what the tradition interprets him as saying, I think he would have simply said vipratiṣedhe paraṁ sūtram and not vipratiṣedhe paraṁ
kāryam. All this corroborates my interpretation of para in 1.4.2.
Let me summarize this topic now. In ordinary speech, para means ‘following, something that lies after’. Accordingly, in 1.4.2, para actually means ‘that which comes after’ in the left-to right sense in the context of derivations. However, the tradition took it as ‘that which comes after’ in the top (first)-to-bottom (last) or beginning-to-end sense in the context of the serial order of rules. And so, while para in 1.4.2 refers to the operand or operation that lies after, or on the right-hand side relative to another operand or operation, the tradition misunderstood it as the rule which comes after the other rule in the serial order of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.
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This leads to an important question: if traditional scholars interpreted para as ‘RHS item/operation’ in so many metarules as shown above, why did they interpret it as ‘the following rule’ in 1.4.2?2 I think this misunderstanding possibly arose because another metarule, 8.2.1 pūrvatrāsiddham, uses pūrva, the opposite of para, to mean ‘preceding rule’.+++(5)+++ 8.2.1 teaches that from 8.2.1 onwards, a preceding rule treats a following rule as suspended. This may have led Kātyāyana, the first scholar to comment upon Pāṇini’s sūtras, to think that, in sūtras dealing with relationships between rules such as 8.2.1 and 1.4.2, pūrva and para mean preceding rule and following rule respectively. However, upon closer examination, one realizes that when Pāṇini wants to indicate that he is referring to the relationship between preceding and following rules rather than operands, he adds the affix traL8 to the base: he says pūrva-tra in 8.2.1.9 This topic deserves our meticulous attention, and we will discuss it in greater detail in chapter 5. Here is the summary of my comprehensive solution:
Same Step Rule Interaction (SSRI)3
- Type 1 (SOI)
- the exception rule wins
- Type 2 (DOI = vipratiṣedha ‘mutual opposition’)
- RHS (para) operation wins
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Here uttara is a synonym of para. ↩︎
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While I will discuss this in detail in chapter 6, I must mention here that Kātyāyana mentions that para in 1.4.2 could mean ‘RHS’ in vt. 12 on 6.1.158 anudāttaṁ padam ekavarjam. He says: śāstraparavipratiṣedhāniyamād vā śabdaparavipratiṣedhāt siddham ‘[in the event of vipratiṣedha between two operations] because it has not been [explicitly] mandated that paratva of rules [alone should be used to resolve] vipratiṣedha, alternatively paratva of sounds [may also be used to] accomplish [the task of resolving] vipratiṣedha’ (Mbh III.100.12). ↩︎
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As stated before, by ‘rule’, here I specifically mean vidhi sūtra ‘operational rule’. ↩︎