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Post No.7710
Date uploaded in London – 18 March 2020
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Kanchi Shankaracharya Sri Chandrasekara Indra Sarasvati (1894-1994) was a great scholar in Sanskrit and Tamil. He spoke other languages too. The way he explains things is very interesting. He gives lot of information while explaining something. We may even forget the context. But he will bring us back to the original thread.
While he explained the six subjects studied along with the Vedas, he described the matters allied to grammar. It is one of the six subjects studied by the Vedic students.
Here is the story of Panini in his own words:-
Nataraja has a drum in one hand, called the dhakka or damaruka. When Nataraja dances, Sanaka and his brother sages Patanjali and Vyaghrapada and so on stand around him. Nataraja’s dance can be seen only by those who has inner vision of Jnana. Sanaka and others saw the dance with their real eyes. Vishnu played the drum and Brahma kept the time. At the close of the dance the concluding beats produced fourteen sounds. Branches of Vedic learning are also the same number — Caturdasa Vidyaa.
The fourteen sounds produced by Nataraja’s drum are the means by which the reality of Siva is to be known and experienced within us in all its plenitude. Nandikesvara has commented upon the fourteen sounds in his Shivabhakti Sutra.
Among those present at Nataraja’s dance was Panini. His story is told in the Brhatkatha which was written by Gunadhya in the Prakrit called Paisaci. Ksemendra produced a summary of it in Sanskrit , and based on it, Somadeva Bhatta wrote the Katha Sarit Sagara. It is the source of some of the stories of The Arabian Nights, Pancatantra and Aesop’s fables. Perunkatai is a Tamil version.
The story of Panini is told in the Katha Sarit Sagara – (ocean of stories). In Pataliputra in Magadha, modern Patna (in Bihar), there were two men called Varsopadhyaya and Upa varsopadhyaya, the second was the younger of the two. Upaa kosalaa was the daughter of Upavarsopadhyaya. Panini and Vararuchi were Varsopadhyaya’s students. Panini made little progress in his lessons. So his teacher asked him to go to the Himalayas and practise austerities. The student did so and through the grace of Iswara (Shiva) received the power to see the Tandava dance of Nataraja. With this divine gift of the Lord, Panini indeed saw the Tandava and heard the fourteen sounds at its conclusion. For him these fourteen sounds meant the fourteen cardinal Sutras of grammar and on them he based his Ashtadhyayi. As its very name suggests, this work which is the source of Sanskrit grammar, has eight chapters (Ashta+ Adhyaya).
The fourteen sounds are recited at the Upakarma (Sacred Thread) ceremony. Since they emanated from the drum of Maheswara, they are called Maheswara sutras.
How did panini make use of the fourteen sounds? He created an index from the sutras to vocalise the letters or syllables together. According to the arrangement made by him, the first letter or the syllable of a Sutra voiced with the last letter or syllable of another Sutra will indicate the syllables or letters in between. For example, the first syllable of the Hayavarat, the first letter ‘ha’ and the last letter of Hal’ I’ together make ‘Hal’. This embraces all the consonants in between. Similarly, the first letter of the first Sutra ‘a’ and the last letter of the fourth Sutra together form ‘ac’. — that includes all the vowels. The first letter of the first Sutra and the last letter of the fourteenth Sutra together form al— it includes all letters.
Fourteen Maheswara Sutras are
1.a i u ṇ
2. Ṛḷ k
3. e o ṅ
4. ai au c
5. ha ya va ra ṭ
6. la ṇ
7. ña ma ṅa ṇa na m
8. jha bha ñ
9. gha ḍha dha ṣ
10. ja ba ga ḍa da ś
11. kha pha cha ṭha tha ca ṭa ta v
12. ka pa y
13. śa ṣa sa r
14. ha l
tags Panini Story, fourteen , sutras, Maheswara Sutrani
–subham–
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Tamil and Vedas 
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