Dear Colleagues,
I pray my colleagues take the utterances in this mail lightly.
We were supposed to learn the list of aniṭ dhātus during our MA classes
while going through the sūtras in the Siddhānta Kaumudī meant for the Ātmanepada prakriyā. I remember,
now with amusement but at that time with chagrin, the utter despondency among
students not knowing how and why to handle these dry kārikās. To his credit the
great teacher thought that we would understand the SK just by hearing its
recitation from him. Naturally his fluent and non-stop recitation of the sūtras
without any explanation was actually no aid for us. My very close friend
Swaminath Pandey (later, as far as I know, university Professor in central UP) was very
nervous and came to my house with prayer for advice/help. One blind man led
another and the immediate result was further despondency. However, we were
saved by a friendly young part-time teacher who advised that the kārikās were
not needed for an explanation ekāca upadeśe’ nudāttāt but might be necessary
later for writing Sanskrit.
At the Calcutta University it was compulsory in those days to write answers
in Sanskrit. But somehow we did not need the list of kārikās.
Later, like all my colleagues, when the need for knowing if a dhātu at hand
was seṭ or aniṭ arose, there was a very simple and sure route to never failing
knowledge – the index of the Siddhānta-kaumudī which listed all the dhātus with
indication whether they were seṭ, aniṭ or veṭ.
I saw very very few university-trained scholars who had committed the list
to memory and did not use an index of the Dhātupāṭha for the requirements
regarding a root’s employment. But, to be fair, most of the traditionally
trained scholars I know, depend on the list -- which they got by heart in student
days – either from the Siddhānatakaumudī or from the Kāśikā.
Scholars might know that the seṭ roots drew little attention of earlier
Western linguists. Pāṇini's iṭ was called ‘the connecting vowel’ which none
tried to historically explain. Later, after the thirties, a discovery, that of
the lost consonants called laryngeals, drew the attention of scholars to
Pāṇini’s seṭ roots. For, linguists discovered with astonishment that it is a
lost laryngeal that generated the iṭ vowel enjoined by Pāṇini in ārdhadhātukasyeṭ
valādeḥ. However, they admire the list, but I saw none of them getting the said
kārikās by heart. They too take the easier and shorter route mentioned above.
At present independent lists are used in the West.
Sorry for troubling you
Best wishes
Dipak Bhattacharya