India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.78

c6.78

Some also discuss that the original text of the *Ashṭādhyāyī* contained (1) the sign of nasalization marked on indicatory vowels (*Upadeśe'janunāsika it*, I.3.²); (2) the sign of *svarita* accent to denote *adhikāra* (*Svariten-ādhikāraḥ*, I.3.11); (3) accentuation of the text as in the case of Vedic works (*traisvarya-pāṭha*); and (4) the *Saṁhitā-pāṭha* or arrangement by which the *sūtras* of each *pāda* are read in continuation and are joined to each other by *Sandhi*. But there is also the view that these features were not a part of the original text of Pāṇini, but only assumed by teachers. We know that in the case of the nasal and *svarita* marks the followers of the Pāṇinīya school now take recourse to oral tradition, to indicate where such marks existed in the *sūtras*. This suggests an oral transmission from the time of Pāṇini's *upadeśa* or first instruction. The *Ashṭādhyāyī* with an accented textual tradition, is not known. Kaiyaṭa is in favour of the hypothesis of *ekaśruti* or unaccented text from the beginning. The theory of *Saṁhitā-pāṭha* which was being discussed even before Patañjali (*cf*. *Śloka vārttika* on I.4.56 discussing *rīśvara* and *vīśvara*, the latter form being possible only in *Saṃhitā-pāṭha*, *Bhāṣya*, I.340) appears to have been adopted more as a convenient device to get over stray cases of difficulty of interpretation rather than as a textual reality.¹