Examples constitute one of the three aspects of a grammar, the other two being rules and a metalanguage. Beginning from this premise, and turning to Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī (the most durably renowned attempt to describe the Sanskrit language) for the rules and technical terms, the authors have embarked on an ambitious project to catalogue exhaustively a large number of examples used in the Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa, “analysis”), each accompanied by its prakriyā: derivation by a step-by-step application of the rules.
In terms of the scope of the larger project, nine volumes are planned: a master index (Volume I) plus eight volumes of examples with derivations. Following Volume 1 (2006), two others have been published: Volume II (samāsaprakaraṇam, “the book on compounds”, 2007) and Volume III.2 (tiṅantaprakaraṇam 2, “the book of conjugated forms 2”, 2009), which treats finite forms of verbal roots derived from other verbs or from nouns. Detail is available in earlier reviews: Peter Scharf reviewed Vols I and II in 2009 (Journal of the American Oriental Society 129, 715–9), and Vol. III.2 in 2011 (JAOS 131, 663–5). See also George Cardona's review of Vol. III.2 (Indo-Iranian Journal 55, 2012, 55–74); Jurgen Hanneder's reviews of Vols I and II (IIJ 51, 2008, 41–3; IIJ 54, 2011, 77–8; and Émilie Aussant's review of Vol. I (Histoire Épistémologie Langage 32, 2010, 174–6).
The present work, Volume IV (2015), continues the project for secondary derivatives – that is, for nouns and adjectives derived from other nouns and adjectives. Pāṇini describes such derivations by means of appending a suffix to a subanta “finished nominal word”. The taddhita suffix, besides adding an additional sound or syllable, drives the removal of the inflectional ending from the original word. The suffix may also result in further changes to the word before it is ready for inflection and use in a sentence. Commonly, for instance, the first of a word's vowels may be strengthened, as for the classic example Aupagavaḥ, which is derived from Upaguḥ (a man's name) by appending an -a, and carries the sense of his (Upagu's) son.
The authors narrow the scope of the entire project to examples provided by Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita in his Siddhāntakaumudī (SK), the most prominent work of the prakriyā (derivation) genre. Many examples are found not in the SK, but in three older and justly celebrated commentaries on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī (the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali, the Kāśikā of Vāmana and Jayaditya, and the Bhāṣāvṛtti of Puruṣottama). For more than 2,250 of these, the authors provide, rather than a full derivation, direction to a similar example in the present work.
Each example word heads an entry; entries are arranged in alphabetical order. (In all, the 3,022 entries illustrate 1,067 sūtras.) Each entry includes the sūtra or sūtras for which this word is given as an example, in all cases for the SK, and, as applicable, for the three commentarial works as well. For each sūtra, the authors indicate the type of example the word provides: direct, counter-, or incidental. (Cardona finds cases, in Vol. III.2, for which such typing is problematic.)
The example word's vigraha – the analysis of its meaning – follows, in Sanskrit, French, and English. The authors lay out a broad disclaimer in the introduction, noting that “the meaning of many of these secondary derivatives is neither clear nor certain”; they call for more studies along the lines of that undertaken by Saroja Bhate, Pāṇini's Taddhita Rules (Pune: University of Poona, 1989).
Next, the authors use a tabular format to present the steps of the word's prakriyā. For each step they give the current status of all the various word-parts or “constitutive elements” (which may be base words, inflectional suffixes, derivational suffixes, augments or substitutes); the sūtra or sūtras governing the transformation from the previous step; and a plain-language description, in Sanskrit, of the operation at hand. Beyond knowing that a particular sūtra is used in a word's derivation, that is, the researcher sees also the interplay of all the sūtras used and, in particular, the order in which they operate.
Below the prakriyā comes a ṭippaṇī – a brief, learned comment. Often the ṭippaṇī mentions words from previous sūtras that are meant to be carried forward (anuvartate) for a complete reading. It may also point out anomalies noticed in the vyākaraṇa tradition, with helpful references to various commentarial sources. The length of the ṭippaṇīs varies, from two lines to 15.
Scharf notes that the overall project makes available “traditional learning in an accessible form”. Certainly this book is a treasure trove for the student of grammar. Complemented by Professor Bhate's groundbreaking contribution, it is an essential resource for anyone wishing to study secondary derivatives. As for the quality of the work, the authors’ analyses are broadly consistent with Bhate's in the cases for which she provides prakriyā detail (leaving aside stylistic variation). The extent to which they agree with other modern authors (Joshi and Roodbergen, and R.N. Sharma, for example, also give explicit prakriyās) I have not yet determined.
The present volume, like the previous ones, ends with useful indices that enable the researcher to trace back to the examples not only sūtras, but also vārttikas, gaṇasūtras, and paribhāṣās; suffixes with their various meanings; and technical terms. These cross-references are wonderfully useful not only for grammarians but also (as Hanneder mentions) for “all non-pāṇinīyas”, including intellectual historians and those tracing intertextualities: What did Bhaṭṭoji gain (or lose) by reordering the Aṣṭādhyāyī? When do examples essentially flow from Pāṇini, by virtue of his special mention? When are they picked up from a well-known poet, or used by one? Of course we should keep in mind that, as Haag et al. have shown, the evidence suggests that examples in the Sanskrit grammatical tradition are less likely, compared to the base text, to be stably transmitted.
The book could be shorter. Certain sūtras are used for every taddhita derivation, and these receive a few lines in each of the 3,000+ entries. The advantage thereto is that each prakriyā stands on its own. Still, a bit more explanation in the introduction could have saved many pages.
Virtually all the Sanskrit in the book appears in the Devanāgarī script. The ability to read technical Sanskrit is necessary in order to extract maximum benefit from the ṭippaṇīs. However, there is great value even to scholars without much Sanskrit, so long as they keep nearby a reliable translation of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, say Katre's or Böhtliṅgk's.
