BY MAHAMAHOPADHYAYA S. KUPPUSWAMI SASTRIGAL, M.A., I.E.S. (Retired)
Honorary Professor of Sanskrit and Dean of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, Annamalai University.
The Svarasiddhantacandrika by Srinivasa Dikṣita is a copious and complete commentary on the Svarasutras of Panini. The author was a disciple of Ramabhadra Dikṣita, a famous grammarian and poet, who flourished in the village called Tiruviśalur, on the bank of the Kaveri, in the Tanjore District, towards the close of the seventeenth century.
It is the considered opinion of modern philologists that Panini’s contribution to the grammar of the Vedic language is defective and incomplete in many respects and exhibits several weak spots; and that it stands out in marked contrast with the perfectly artistic and scientific skill which is distinctive of the bulk of the Aṣṭādhyayi in regard to the secular non-vedic side of the Samskṛta language.
Indian tradition, however, has evolved a highly ingenious system of speculative exegesis in the sphere of the Vyakarana-Sastra; and through the help of this system, Indian Vaiyakaranas find it possible to bring within the scope of the Aṣṭādhyāyi, without any hitch whatever, all the peculiarities of the Vedic language. With the help of the traditional system of Vaiyakarana exegesis and the Pratiśākhyas and in the light of the theory and practice of Vedic recitation current in South India, the Svarasiddhantacandrika endeavours, with remarkable success, to interpret the Svarasutras of Panini so as to exhibit them in the form of a methodical and complete exposition of the Indian system of accentuation in its application to the different phases of the Indic language.
The chief value of the Svarasiddhantacandrika consists in a judicious correlation of Panini’s Svarasutras with the PratiSakhyas and the text of the Yajur-veda wherever necessary, in freeing Panini’s Svarasutras from the thraldom of the Rg-veda text, to which they came to be subjected as a result of the somewhat one-sided emphasis laid on the Rg-veda by some Vaiyakaranas like Bhattoji Diksita, and in the critical review of earlier works on Panini’s Svarasutras, like Nrsimha’s Svaraman jari.
I heartily congratulate Brahmaśri K. A. Sivaramakrishna Sastrigal on the substantial contribution which he has made to the printed literature available in Sanskrit, concerning the traditional exposition of the theory and practice of Vedic accentuation, by bringing out a carefully prepared edition of this great work-Starasiddhantacandrikā. In a scholarly introduction prefixed to this edition, the learned editor discusses, in an able manner, several questions relating to svaras and elucidates clearly the nature of the svarita in particular, about which there has been much doubt and confusion in certain grammatical works written by foreign scholars.
ANNAMALAINAGAR,
19-8-1936.
S. KUPPUSWAMI SASTRI.