Lesson 48 ----- Introduction to Sandhi. | Lesson Index

                                                                                  Lesson 48. Introduction to Sandhi.                                                                   

 

Ever tried to say प्रति and एक together as FAST as your tongue will allow? No? Well, try it. What did you get? प्रत्येक !!! My dears, what you have just done is a सन्धिः  ।
Classical Sanskrit came up with Sandhi and Samaas as a natural development of the spoken language.
Sandhi brings words together in the manner described above.

 

It must be noted here that we do not speak as per sandhi rules, but rather  the sandhi rules follow what is our natural pronunciation—as illustrated by   प्रति and एक above. So, the great grammarians observed the way we speak and codified the same for the beginners in the study, to follow.

 

Here is how Samaas emerged.......What with every word having to be vibhaktiofied before being used, people felt that if root words were put together (without first adding the vibhakti) the whole worrisome effort of having to remember the vibhaktis could (almost but not quite) be dispensed with. For example, instead of saying  रामस्य भ्राता for Ram's brother, why not just say रामभ्राता ?

 

Also, they were sure that people were smart enough to figure out the resultant new word. For example  i could describe someone's doe eyed beauty by simply saying मृगलोचनी instead of a long and winding मृगस्य लोचने इव लोचने यस्याः सा ।
Do you see how simple it can really be? The difficulty is in breaking the Samaas and Sandhi to make words of sense. THAT, my dears, requires practice and we shall begin right now.

 

Sandhi and Samaas are HUGE topics to be covered all in one go. So it's easier on the brain, our one and only intellectual faculty, if we do a little bit at a time.

Let's handle just a little Sandhi today.

 

Sandhi is combining words arithmetically. You take the last letter of the first word and ADD it to the first letter of the next word to form a single word.
Naturally, the letters may be either vowels स्वर s or consonants व्यञ्जन s.
If you combine two swara-s, you have a स्वरसन्धिः ।
If you combine two vyanjana-s, you have a व्यञ्जनसन्धिः ।
And if a visarga is involved in the matchmaking, you have a विसर्गसन्धिः ।
Each sandhi is further divided into "sub" sandhis.
i wish to handle only the स्वरसन्धिः in the next few lessons. व्यञ्जनसन्धिः can be covered later.

 

 

                                                                                            ...........

 

स्वरसन्धिः
Have a look at the swaras:

अ आ इ ई उ ऊ ऋ ॠ लृ लॄ ए ऐ ओ औ ।
Some of these are pronounced with very little effort. They take about a second to be spoken aloud. These are called ह्रस्वस्वराः and are...अ, इ, उ, ऋ, लृ ।
Those that need two seconds to be pronounced are called दीर्घस्वराः and are... आ, ई, ऊ, ॠ, लॄ , ए , ऐ , ओ and औ ।
Sometimes, it is required to pronounce swaras three times longer than the ह्रस्वस्वराः and they are then called प्लुतस्वराः।
These are how they are represented: अ३, इ३, उ३, ऋ ३, लृ३, ए३, ऐ३, ओ३ and औ३।

You will now see how आ is actually a longer pronunciation of अ.  In that sense they become सवर्ण .....letters of the same kind/type.
इ and ई,  उ and ऊ, ऋ and ॠ , लृ and लॄ, each pair is a सवर्ण ।

Having understood this, we are in a position to study one form of स्वरसन्धिः called the सवर्णदीर्घसन्धिः ।

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