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पाणिनीयशिक्षा · वर्णोच्चारणम्

Where each sound
is made

Sanskrit's alphabet is not in alphabetical order. It is in anatomical order — back of the throat to the lips — and once you see that, the whole varṇamālā stops being a list to memorise and becomes a map you can read off your own mouth.

क्
→
जिह्वामूलीयः
tongue-root
स्थानम् — where प्रयत्नः — how सवर्णम् — same place, same effort

Why a grammar cares about your mouth

1.1.9

You could treat this as phonetics — interesting, but optional. It is not optional, because one of Pāṇini's most-used definitions is stated in these terms and nothing in sandhi works without it.

सवर्णम्The definition everything downstream needs

— 1.1.9: two sounds are सवर्ण when their place in the mouth (आस्य) and their effort (प्रयत्न) are the same.

Now read the sandhi rule that depends on it — 6.1.101 , "when an अक् sound meets a सवर्ण one, a single long vowel replaces both". That rule cannot be applied at all until you can say whether two vowels are savarṇa. And you answer that by asking where in your mouth each is made.

मुनि + ईशः → मुनीशःइ and ई: both तालव्य — savarṇa भानु + उदयः → भानूदयःउ and उ: both ओष्ठ्य — savarṇa दधि + अत्र → दध्यत्रइ and अ: तालव्य vs कण्ठ्य — not savarṇa, so यण् instead

That is the whole of this page's practical payoff: the same two vowels behave differently depending on whether they are made in the same place.

One qualification Pāṇini adds at once. 1.1.10 — a vowel and a consonant are never savarṇa, however alike their place and effort. अ and ह् are both कण्ठ्य; they are not savarṇa. Without this, अच् and हल् would leak into each other everywhere.

The eight places

शिक्षा १३

Click any place on the diagram — or any sound in the row beneath it — and the two light up together. The sounds shown are the corpus's, with the Śikṣā verse that assigns each one quoted underneath.

—

The second coordinate — प्रयत्नः

effort

Place alone does not identify a sound. क् ख् ग् घ् ङ् are all made in the same place; what separates them is what the rest of the vocal apparatus is doing. Two of those differences run the whole varga table.

घोषः · प्राणःVoice, and breathशिक्षा 4.2 · 4.5
  • घोषः — voice. Is the vocal cord vibrating? अघोष (voiceless) for columns 1 and 2, घोष (voiced) for 3, 4 and the nasal.
  • प्राणः — breath. How much air? अल्पप्राण (little) for columns 1 and 3, महाप्राण (much — the aspirates) for 2 and 4.

Two binary choices give four cells; the fifth column is the nasal (अनुनासिक), where the air also goes through the nose. That is the entire logic of the five-by-five grid, and it is why the grid is square.

वर्गः
Read a column, not just a row. Rows are places, columns are efforts. क् च् ट् त् प् — the whole first column — are all voiceless and unaspirated; they differ only in where the closure is made. That is exactly the generalisation the pratyāhāra खर् and its relatives are built to exploit.
आभ्यन्तरप्रयत्नःHow closed is the passageशिक्षा 1.21

A second scale, cutting across the first — how far the articulators actually close:

  • स्पृष्टम् — full contact: the twenty-five stops. The passage is shut and then released.
  • ईषत्स्पृष्टम् — slight contact: the semivowels य् व् र् ल्.
  • ईषद्विवृतम् — slightly open: the sibilants and ह्.
  • विवृतम् — open: the vowels.

This scale is why य् is a semivowel and not either one thing or the other — it is made where इ is made, with a little more closure. Which is precisely why इ turns into य् when a dissimilar vowel follows (यण् 6.1.77): the tongue is already there.

Every sound, with its place

Coverage

SoundClassPlaceStated at
Where this comes from. Every place in this table is assigned by the Pāṇinīya- or Vṛddha-Śikṣā, and the citation column names the verse. Where the two disagree — and for a few sounds they do — the corpus records both and this page shows the one it records as primary rather than choosing for you.

Check yourself

अभ्यासः

Six questions, all of which come down to place and effort.