माहेश्वरसूत्राणि — the fourteen sūtras and every pratyāhāra

The problem these solve

Orientation

A grammar of Sanskrit has to say things like "a short vowel is lengthened before …" or "a stop becomes voiced when …" hundreds of times. Spelling out the members every time would make the Aṣṭādhyāyī several times its length and impossible to memorise — and it was composed to be memorised, not read.

So Pāṇini opens with a list. Fourteen lines, each ending in a consonant that is not part of the list but a marker. Any two points on that list — a sound, and one of the markers after it — name everything in between. That two-letter name is a प्रत्याहार, literally a "drawing together".

Why they are called माहेश्वर. Tradition holds that Śiva (Maheśvara) sounded his डमरु fourteen times at the end of his dance, and that these are the sounds that came out. The name is devotional, not technical; Pāṇini himself calls them nothing at all. What matters grammatically is only the order, which is not the order of the alphabet and is not arbitrary — sounds that pattern together are placed together, so that useful sets come out contiguous.

How a name is formed

1.1.71

Three sūtras do all the work, and two of them are about the markers.

इत्The marker, and its disappearance

First: which letter is a marker

— 1.3.3: a final consonant in an उपदेश (a form as the grammar states it, before any rule has applied) is an इत्. In अइउण् the final ण् is therefore a marker; the sounds being taught are only अ इ उ.

Second: markers vanish

— 1.3.9: what has been called इत् is elided. It leaves no trace in any form, but it has already done its job by being there for the naming.

Third: the naming convention itself

— 1.1.71: an initial sound together with a following इत् denotes itself, that marker, and everything between. That is the entire mechanism.

Read the sūtra's own words. आदिः — the first sound. अन्त्येन — by the last, i.e. by a marker. इता — being an इत्. सह — together with. Pāṇini is not describing an alphabet here; he is defining a pair of coordinates.

Watch one being formed

Pick a name. Each step is licensed by a sūtra; nothing is stipulated.

The board

Interactive

The fourteen sūtras, in order. Markers are set apart — they are not sounds being taught. Choose a प्रत्याहार below and its span lights up; or click any sound to see every name that contains it.

अच्

Every pratyāhāra the grammar actually uses

Coverage

Name	Members	First used at	Board

Where these come from. The list, the members and the sūtra that first uses each are the corpus's own; the Board column is this site checking them — expanding the fourteen sūtras mechanically and comparing. Agreement is not assumed, it is reported.

Two places it does not come out clean

Honest

A first course usually presents the board as a tidy machine. It is very nearly one, and the two places it is not are worth meeting early — because both are discussed by the commentators, at length, and you will run into them.

ह्The sound that appears twiceśivasūtra 5 · 14

ह् occurs in the fifth line (हयवरट्) and again in the last (हल्). It is one sound written in two places, and it is there twice so that different spans can pick it up — हश् needs it grouped with the semivowels and voiced stops, हल् needs it heading all the consonants.

The consequence is that a span is not always uniquely determined by its two endpoints. For some names the board offers more than one reading, and the grammar picks by what the rule needs.

अण्The name that means two different things

Take अ and run to a ण्. There are two: the one closing the first sūtra (अइउण् → अ इ उ) and the one closing the fifth (हयवरट्… no — the ण् of लण्), which sweeps up the vowels and the semivowels.

Both are real, and the grammar uses both. Which one is meant is settled by the rule that cites it — and 1.1.51 exists partly to manage exactly this.

The practical rule. When you meet अण्, do not expand it from the board and move on. Read the sūtra it stands in and ask which set makes that sūtra true. This is the first place in the grammar where context outranks mechanism, and it will not be the last.

Check yourself

अभ्यासः

Six questions. Pick an answer to see which sūtra decides it.