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Linguistics

Notes 3.8 The Vedas, Brahmins and Aranayakas

Sanskrit linguistics formally must have begun the day the Indian ‘rishis’ and ‘munis’ began to
understand and interpret clearly the Vedic speech. The ancient Indians first turned to the study of
their language for religious reasons to ensure that no corruption or modification should creep into
the sacred texts of the Vedas when they were sung or recited.
The germs of this interest may be traced in the Rigveda, which dedicates two entire hymns to
speech (X. 71 and X.125). It mentions three stages in the development of language: (1) inarticulate
speech, (2) primitive articulate speech, and (3) language proper. The inarticulate speech was the
hissing of serpents, or the humming of insects, the notes of birds, and the sounds made by other
animals. The primitive articulations of speech were first employed by men in imparting names to
objects, thus leading to the third stage, that is, language proper, which “was created by the wise,
as men cleanse cornflour in a cribble” (X. 17,1.). There is another well-known hymn in the Rigveda
(IV, 58,3) in which speech, according to Patanjali’s interpretation (cf. the introduction to his
Mahabhasya), is compared to a bull the sounds of which are attributed to three human organs—’the
lungs, the throat, and the head.’
Aitareya Brahmana attributes speech to Indra, and compares it to the ocean, on account of its
inexhaustible nature. Enough evidence in the Vedic literature is available to prove that the study
of linguistics and phonetics had reached a considerably advanced stage between 1000 and 800 B.C.
The taste grew during the period of the Aitareya, Arnayaka, which describes various sounds in
terms of different objects in nature. It compares the consonants to the nights, and vowels to the
days (II, 2,1), presumably owing to the superior perceptibility of the latter in normal speech.
Furthermore, the consonants are compared to the body, the voice to the soul, and fricatives to the
breath (II, 2, 1). At another place in the Aitareya Arnayaka, the plosives are said to be a form of the
earth, the fricatives of the atmosphere, and the vowels of the firmament (III, 2, 5). Yet in another
passage, the fricatives are compared to breath, plosives to the bones, vowels to the marrow, and
semi-vowels to flesh and blood.
‘Samhita’ was interpreted as the interval between two syllables, the interval by which the accent
or the quantity of two syllables was distinguished. The Samhita-text of the Vedic hymns was
reduced to the Pada-form. In this period of the study of the pada-text rules of phonetic combination
(sandhi), of accent, and of the formations of compounds, samasa were studied elaborately. The
father of Pada-text was Shakalya. In the Pada-text, mantras were divided into pada and shabdas.

3.9 The Pratisakhyas

The Pratisakhyas are the first treatises on phonetics and formal grammar. They provide a scientific
classification of Sanskrit sounds and the ganas (the lists of words remarkable for grammaticality in
any way). These Pratisakhyas are: the Rig Pratisakhya on the Rigveda, the Tetariya Pratisakhya on the
Krishna-Yajurveda, the Vijasney-Pratisakhya on the Shukla-Yajurveda, the Rig-Tantra-Vyakarnha on
the Sam-Veda, and the Atharva-Partisakhya on the Atharva-Veda.
‘Siksha’ implied “general phonetics” while ‘Pratisakhya’ signified “applied phonetics.” It was the
grammatical form of words which constituted the basis for the phonetic observations of the Rig
Pratisakhya. The object of the treatise is to describe the characteristic features of the four parts of
speech—the noun, the verb, the affix, and the particle. One main feautre of the Pratisakhya was
their treatment not of a language of ‘priests who had to be drilled into a proper recital of the
sacred texts’ (as supposed by some Western scholars), but of a living language used and spoken
by the people those days.
No definite historical dates of these Pratisakhyas are available. By and large, scholars say that they
belong to 800-500 B.C., some others put them between 500 and 150 B.C. Nevertheless, they seem
to be older than Panini.

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