In order to understand the vedas, the texts handed down to us by means of oral transmission, six auxiliary disciplines were originated aptly reffered to as vēdāṅgas (an essential part of vedas). Out of the six vēdāṅgas viz. śikṣā, vyākaraṇa, chandas, nirukta, jyōtiṣa and kalpa, the first four are concerned with language studies. śikṣā deals with pronunciation, vyākaraṇa with grammatical aspects, chandas with prosody and nirukta with etymology. Among all these the importance of vyākaraṇa is long recognised and is evident from the enormous literature on vyākaraṇa. It has a major role to play in understanding how a language communicates thoughts from one human being to the other.
Panini consolidated the existing grammars into a well structured Aṣṭādhyāyī which served as a benchmark to test the well-formed-ness of a Sanskrit word. The Aṣṭādhyāyī consists of around 4000 sūtra and 4 ancillary texts viz. Dhātupāṭha, Gaṇapāṭha, Uṇādipāṭha, Liṅgānuśāsana. Of all these, Dhātupāṭha deserves an important place, especially in the light of Yask's assertion of all the nouns being derived from the dhātus (verbal roots). The Dhātupāṭha serves two main purposes: the first one is to provide the values of various parameters so as to generate correct forms with correct accent while the second one is to know the meaning of verbal roots. The first task is achieved mainly with the use of three parameters viz. the it markers, the classification of verbs into different gaṇas, and sometimes with variations in the form of dhātu so as to make it compatible with the sutras in Aṣṭādhyāyī1. The dhātupāṭha also adopts a sūtra style, and provides other necessary information for the generation of forms in the form of various parameters such as sēṭ-aniṭ, parasmaipada-ātmanepada, and the svara information viz. udātta, anudātta and svarita.
Over the period of time, the verbal forms and their meanings have undergone changes, as is evident from the various dhātuvr̥ttis. There have been notable efforts2 in the consolidation of various dhātuvr̥ttis, and their comparative studies.
Dr. Shukla, in this work, has presented an edited version of an unpublished manuscript entitled Śābdikābharaṇam. This piece of work is claimed to be of 12th century. The author had access to three manuscripts of Śābdikābharaṇam. The variations in the texts of different manuscripts are indicated by standard manuscript editing conventions.
Śābdikābharaṇam begins with a lucid summary of the 'Paspaśāhnika' of the Mahābhāṣya followed by the discussion on the meaning of various lakāras. Then follows the detailed discription of selected dhātus in the order of gaṇas. Total number of dhatus that are described in this work is 1170. In addition it also describes the kaṇḍvādi and sautra dhātus. For each of the dhātus, after describing its meaning, its forms in various lakāras are given. For the very first dhātu bhū, the Paninian process of derivation for various forms is described in full. In case of second dhātu, the process is described very briefly, and later on only various forms of the dhātu are listed. Wherever some special reference/application of Panini's sutra under certain dhātus is needed, the relevant sutra is mentioned with a brief explanation.
The task of publishing the manuscripts is important, especially when such manuscripts contain wealth of information. With the advent of computer technology, now the manuscript publishing can assume another dimension. The manuscripts usually contain a wealth of information in the form of margin notes, diagrams, use of different colors, etc. It is now possible to preserve this information using the digitisation, and link the content to the editable texts. The advances in the field of computational linguists, and the availability of language analysis tools further makes it possible to provide the various level of linguistic analysis.
I hope the researchers in this field take an advantage of the technological advances to bring in the revolution in the publications of manuscripts.
Amba Kulkarni
Head Department of Sanskrit
University of Hyderabad
Central University
Hyderabad 46