Intro
1. It is a well-known fact that Panini(P.), the doyen among descriptive linguists in Ancient India, devoted 380 rules to a systematic study of accentuation of the sacred language (Chandas) and Bhāṣā in the Aṣṭādhyayi (=A.). Although Katyayana and Patanjali attempted to interpret P.’s accentual calculus, later investigators have simply assigned a marginal niche to P.’s system of accentuation.
2. The Paninian approach was embodied in a number of subsequent manuals on accentuation such as svarasiromani, svaraprakriya, svarakaumudi, svaramanjari and the svarasiddhantacandrikā (=SSC).
Śrīnivāsayajvan
3.1 Śrīnivāsayajvan, the celebrated author of the SSC was a Sanskrit polymath of the seventeenth century. studied the Taittiriyasamhita (=TS), Taittiriyaprātišākhya and the Veda Bhāṣya, as a competent Vedist. As a disciple of Ramabhadra Dikṣita who flourished at Tiruvishalur (Tanjore District, Tamilnadu) towards the close of the 17th century, Srinivasa became a qualified specialist in the Sastras-Vyakaraṇa, Nyaya and Mimāmsā.
Both as an outstanding Vedist and Paninist, he experimented with an eclectic combination of the Paninian system with the accentuation of the TS.
Arrangement
He drew illustrations of P.’s 378 accentual rules-excerpted by him from the A, against Bhattoji’s count of 329 rules in the Svaraprakaraṇam of the Siddhantakaumudi, from the TS (including its Brāhmaṇa and Aranyaka).
As against Bhattoji’s six divisions of P.’s accent rules, Srinivasa organised the materials in twelve groups dealing with the accentuation of root, suffixes, compounds, verbal forms, case-endings and so on, and that of Phitsutras.
He examined the logical relation between a general accentual rule and its exception. Of course, he drew his interpretative materials from Patanjali, Kaiyața, Haradatta, Bhattoji Dikṣita and BhaTTabhaskara (=BhB), the celebrated commentator [[ii]] of the TS.
Criticism
At several places in the SSC he lampooned the author of the svaramanjari for the omission of several accentual rules, the hackneyed examples cited and some erroneous explanations given by Nrsimha. He did not even spare BhaTTabhaskara. I may now cite an illustration in support of this argument.
3.2. In his critique on A 6,1,200, Srinivasa raises the question of justifying the double accent of voḍhave occurring at TS 1,6,2,1. BhaTTabhaskara takes resort to A 6,1,200 to justify the accent falling on the initial and final syllables of the word simultaneously, since, according to him, the suffix tave N includes tavai by implication (upalakṣaṇa-).
If this were to be the case, wherever taveN occurs in TS, it should also include tavai and cause the double-accent. But the infinitive formed with tave N occurs as a barytonic word at TS 3,5,11,1-d.
Consequently BhB’s explanation sounds arbitrary and unsatisfactory to the author of SSC.
Subsequently he refers to the opinion of Nrsimha who inadvertently reads voḍhave in the class of compounds headed by vanaspatiwhich is a double accented formation. Śrīnivasa rejects this opinion, since the sphere of operation of A 6,2,140 is restricted only to compounds. Finally he justifies the double-accent of the Vedic infinitive on the ground of P.’s characteristic tool of vyatyaya—(A 3,1,85; see SSC., pp. 144-5).
Sparsity of study
4. Although the subject of accentuation forms one of the most important linguistic features of P.’s grammar, yet it has remained an unexplored field since the fifth century A.D. Candra and other non-Paninians eliminated P.’s Vedic and accentual postulates in their new systems of grammar.
Even the later adherents of P.’s school refrained themselves from testing the accuracy of the Vedic accentual experiments which were successfully conducted in P.’s laboratory, perhaps due to the magnitude involved in this task.
This situation continued upto the time of Srinivasa who candidly admitted that-as Patanjali put it-the science of grammar was regarded as difficult and complicated; and, moreover, the system of [[iii]] accentuation appeared hard and unintelligible even to the master-minds.
To quote from SSC (p. 3; vs. 10):
कष्टं व्याकरणं पतञ्चलिरपि प्राह स्म तत्राप्यसौ
दुर्ज्ञाना मतिमद्भिर् अप्य् अतितरां कष्टा स्वरप्रक्रिया।
He portrayed accurately the state of affairs which existed in his time that those who acquired mastery over the Vedas did not, generally speaking, qualify themselves in grammar. Even the specialists in Veda and grammar were not thoroughly acquainted with the systematic technique of accentuation. This is expressed in the following terms (SSC, vs. 13):
आम्नाये ये प्रवीणाः परिचयरहिताः प्रायशस्ते पदाब्धौ
ये स्युस् तत्रापि दक्षाः शिथिल-परिचयास्ते स्वरप्रक्रियायाम् ।
5. The entire credit goes to Srinivasa for having shown the application of P.’s accentual rules to the Taittiriya system of accentuation, because he was a qualified Vedist and a perfect Pāṇinist. As such he alone could undertake the difficult task of writing an exhaustive commentary on P.’s accentual rules. He could point out the one-to-one-correspondence between P. and TS and mark out the apparent divergencies between the accentual systems (See SSC, pp. 104; 119; 121; 123 et passim).
Needless to say, the SSC is to be commended as a comprehensive exhibition of the accentual facts of which it treats.
Sivaramakrishna Sastri
- The year 1936 brought an important contribution to accentual studies, when Professor K.S. Sivaramakrishna Sastri critically edited the SSC-an undertaking which has found regrettably few followers.
In a lengthy and learned introduction (in Sanskrit and English) to his edition, Professor Sastri dealt with tone, use of accents, the origin of accent, nada, character of svarita and other pitch accents, variations of accents, relation between Vedic pitch accents and the musical notes, accents common to Vedic and classical Sanskrit, traisvarya in the Vedas, monotonic recitation of the Veda[[iv]], a note on the author of the work and the SSC.
He vigorously championed the cause of P., the Prātišākhyas and the traditional and time-honoured Vedic recitation. Of special interest to students of accentology is the way in which he critically examined Whitney’s hypothesis that the circumflex intonation was the middle tone.
Bio
7.1 Sivaramakrishna Sastri was born to the celebrated Yajurveda Pandit, Anantarama Sastri and Sitalakshmi in a village near Palghat on April 26, 1898. Having studied the TS by rote together with its Brāhmaṇa-Aranyaka-Upanisad, the Pratiśākhya and other branches of Vedic literature, Sastriji went on to acquire mastery over Vyakaraṇa, Vedanta and other Sāstrās. He joined the Minākṣi Sanskrit College, Chidambaram in July 1924 and taught Sanskrit till 1929. During the same year the Annamalai University was founded, and he joined the Department of Sanskrit as a lecturer. He taught Vyakaraṇa, Nyāya, Vedānta, Sahitya and other subjects Siromani courses but and M.A. classes at March 1958 he was not only to students of the traditional also to students of the B.A. Honours the University for three decades. In invited to join the Sanskrit Dictionary Project by Dr. S.M. Katre, the then Director of Deccan College, Poona, and he retired as one of the editors of this Project in 1982.
7.2 Professor Sastri’s association with such stalwart Sanskritists as Mm. Sāstrācārya S. Dandapaniswamy Dikshitar of Chidambaram and other scholars, gave him the necessary impetus to follow the svadhyaya-pravacana-methodology in teaching Sanskrit sastras and maintain high academic standards in Sanskrit education. He is an erudite scholar, an able teacher, an eloquent speaker in Sanskrit, English and other Dravidian languages.
7.3 He edited Srinivasa’s SSC (1936), Mandanamiśra’s Bhāvanāviveka (1950), Mukura of Mm. Ganapati Sastri (Journal of Ann. Univer. Vol. viii. No. 2) and the Bhāmatīvivaraṇa of V. Subrahmanya Sastri, and wrote some learned papers.
7.4 Professor Sastri was honoured with the titles of Sastraratna and Vyakaraṇārnava and he won the President’s Award in 1976 for his outstanding contribution to Sanskrit scholarship. The All-India Oriental Conference at its Twentyninth session held at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona in June 1978, elected him as President of the Pandita Pariṣad, and in his scholarly address in Sanskrit, he appealed to Sanskrit scholars to accomplish a symbiotic combination of traditional learning and critico-analytical research in P., Vedas and Sāstrās.
Without going into further details, I can sum up-as one of his disciples who, sat at the feet of the Master to learn Vyakaraṇa and other Sastras-by saying that Professor Sastri is one of the Sanskrit polymaths of the present generation. The critical edition of SSC is one of the debts Sanskrit scholarship owes to Sastriji.
Reprinting
8.1 Professor Sastri with his rich training in the twin fields of Veda and Vyakaraṇa, brought out the first critical edition of SSC which was published by the Annamalai University under Sanskrit Series No. 4 in 1936. He collated eight Mss. and critically constituted the text. But this edition has long gone out of print. Consequently the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan accorded permission to the Tirupati Vidyapeetha to reprint this work by photo offset process, and it now appears as K.S.V. Series No. 34.
8.2 Even in the ripe old age of 85, Sastriji sat with the SSC, revised the Errata and sent his draft for favour of publication in the reprinted volume. I owe an incalculable debt gratitude to him for his advice in reprinting this edition.
9. I thank Dr. R.K. Sharma, Director of the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan for evincing encouraging interest in tl.: research and publication activity of the Vidyapeetha. I a obliged to the authorities of Annamalai University, Annamalainagar, for having accorded permission to the Tirupati Vidyapeetha to reprint the SSC. The Udhaya Printers, Madras, did a fine job in reprinting this work in record time. Now the SSC is placed at the hands of Paninists cum Vedists to judge the importance of accentuation, and as has been shown in the following verse (No. 21, SSC, p. 3), the entire domain of the Science of grammar stands for serving the sole purpose of expounding the system of accentuation, just as the Vedas exist only for the glorification of the one-and-only-Brahman:
किंबहुना श्रुतिरखिला ब्रह्माद्वैतैकतत्परा यद्वत् ।
तद्वद् ध्य् आकृतिर् अखिला स्वर-बोधक-प्रयोजना जयति ॥
TIRUPATI
5–3-1983
M.D. BALASUBRAHMANYAM