Comment by nsenifty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nsenifty | Hacker News Reader

> Pāṇini, during his twelve-year-long tapas (fervour, ardour) to Śiva, hears the ḍamaru beat fourteen times. Fourteen classes of syllables drop, resonant, into his fervent ears.

    a i u ṇ
    ṛ ḷ k
    e o ṅ
    ai au c
    ha ya va ra ṭ
    la ṇ
    ña ma ṅa ṇa na m
    jha bha ñ
    gha ḍha dha ṣ
    ja ba ga ḍa da ś
    kha pha cha ṭha tha ca ṭa ta v
    ka pa y
    śa ṣa sa r
    ha l

47 syllables in Shiva Sutra by Panini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Sutras), so similar to Japanene Iroha (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha). Coincidence?

> It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering for the syllabary, in the same way as the A, B, C, D... sequence of the Latin alphabet.

This article [0] proves that the Pāṇinian Shiva Sutras are optimal in some mathematical sense. I'm just learning to get into this, learning Sanskrit grammar, etc. and get a sense of the Asthadyaayi [1] so that I can approach it later in more detail. There are various ways to approach it and some online sites make an attempt, but as per an acquaintance who has been taught under a teacher, it [1] is almost impossible to understand without a teacher. Still, this document [2], seems to give a good understandable overview with pointers for further study.

[0] https://user.phil.hhu.de/~petersen/paper/petersen_jolli_proo... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C... [2] https://learnsanskrit.org/vyakarana/

Shiv sutra contains all sounds of classical Sanskrit exactly once.

It does not contain all sounds of verify Sanskrit though. For example, retroflex L is missing.

Counterintuitively, shiv sutra does not contain all sounds of modern Indian languages like Hindi or Marathi either.

Modern Indian languages derive vocabulary and phonemes from both prakrit ("natural") and Sanskrit ("well-done").

Could you elaborate on the similarities between Shiva Sutra and Japanese Iroha?

I didn't know about Shiva Sutra until today, but I just thought it was interesting they both have 47 syllables, although not identical.

I could be wrong but from what I understand, the Shiva Sutras are just the ordering of letters (like, an alphabet), while Iroha is supposed to be poetry.

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