In my view, firstly, Pāṇini did not expect us to create the categories ‘tulyabala’ and ‘atulyabala’. Secondly, I think that he taught 1.4.2 as a metarule which, rather than being restricted to a particular section of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, is applicable to the entire Aṣṭādhyāyī.
More broadly, I do not agree with both the traditional and the modern perspectives towards this topic, because instead of trying to decipher the actual meaning of 1.4.2, these approaches try to brush 1.4.2 under the carpet, to make it less effective or to weaken its impact.
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One does it by excluding certain rule pairs from the scope of vipratiṣedha, and the other by reducing the jurisdiction of 1.4.2. This approach which seeks to undervalue Pāṇini’s rule interaction mechanism and replaces it with self-invented methods of ‘rule conflict resolution’ can lead to some success for a limited set or specific type of examples, but does not allow us to understand and appreciate the larger picture.
To get instructions about dealing with rule interaction, I try to rely, as much as possible, upon ‘internal metarules’, that is, those metarules which Pāṇini has taught in his work, setting aside any ‘external metarules’, that is, those metarules that are not found in the Aṣṭādhyāyī, such as nityatva, antaraṅgatva, post-Pāṇinian paribhāṣās from the Paribhāṣenduśekhara, vārttikas that discuss rule interaction etc. In this thesis, I have come up with my own interpretation of 1.4.2 and, using that, I have reinterpreted Pāṇini’s derivational mechanism. I have attempted to show that Pāṇini’s grammatical machine is self-sufficient, that is, its own (internal) metarules, are able to run it with remarkable perfection, and that no external metarules are able or required to aid this process.
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