On the grammatical-information blocks in the ‘List of [verbal] roots’ by Pāṇini

Abstract

The paper is dedicated to analysis of the problems of presenting the grammatical information in the text of ‘Dhātupāṭha’ which is treated by the Indian grammatical tradition as created by Pāṇini himself (V cent. b.c.) in the form of an ‘Appendix’ to his Sanskrit Grammar ‘Aṣṭādhyāyī’. Having shortly characterized certain historical problems associated with ‘Dhātupāṭha’, the author puts special stress on the fact that all the nowadays available versions of the ‘Appendix’ have reached us in presentation of the later commentators and grammarians, and thus the problem of Pāṇini’s authorship of the treatise is still remaining unsolved. The grammatical information found in ‘Dhātupāṭha’ and not quite consistently presented in it needs to be explicitly opened. That is why the most basic tenets of Sanskrit verbal grammar are — in the shortest way possible — explicated in the paper.- Thus, the paper is supplied with the data concerning verbs’ classification into 10 classes through the help of the so called “presence basis”; the roots are characterized in accordance with their correspondences with the grammemes of Active and Middle voices; the information on the so called “accentuation” in verbal roots and in forms produced from them and on the meta-lingual properties of Sanskrit tones is given; the principles of the distribution of the ‘Dhātupāṭha’ roots into 3 different groups (‘seṭ’, ‘ániṭ’and ‘veṭ’) in accordance with their interaction with the connective ‘-i-‘ are explained; the information concerning the meanings references applied to a number of roots in the ‘Dhātupāṭha’ is also provided. In conclusion, the devices of coding the grammatical information which has been important for ‘pāṇinists’ of all times and which is present in the treatise are explained through the help of the two illustrative samples extracted from one of the versions of ‘Dhātupāṭha’ (S.Katre’s).

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