Page A4 asked what happens when a later rule sees an earlier rule's output — that is order. This page asks the sibling question: what happens when two rules stand at the same point in a derivation, both satisfied, both wanting the word — that is conflict, and the Aṣṭādhyāyī needs a referee for it precisely because it is stated as roughly four thousand independent if–then rules with no announced priority among them.
No field in this corpus says "here 6.1.97 and 6.1.101 both apply to the same word, and this one wins." sutra_rec() gives a sūtra's text, its padaccheda, the words it inherits by anuvṛtti, the adhikāras governing it — never a list of rules it conflicts with. Rule conflict is not a field; it is an argument, made by the commentators case by case, and this page can only report that argument, never derive it.
What does exist is C.paribhasha() — Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa's परिभाषेन्दुशेखरः, metarules, each with the short maxim (परिभाषा) it is known by and the exposition (वृत्तिः) Nāgeśa wrote to justify it. This is a 17th-century compilation reading a 5th-century-BCE text — the tradition's own account of how it resolves itself, not a rule inside the grammar. Every principle below is a citation to one of these 133, by number, never a paraphrase presented as the grammar's own words.
Four principles cover most of the ground. Each is quoted by its paribhāṣā number — not summarised — with the tradition's own worked example where the corpus can supply one.
— 1.4.2, quoted in full above. This is the one principle stated inside the Aṣṭādhyāyī itself: when two rules are तुल्यबल — equally strong, both genuinely applicable at the same point — the one numbered later in the text wins. The Kāśikā glosses विप्रतिषेधः exactly this way:
Its own worked example — वृक्षेभ्यः, never *वृक्षाभ्यः — is walked in full in §4 below, because it deserves the room.
— परिभाषा . A नित्य operation is one that would apply regardless of whether some other, competing change had already happened — कृताकृतप्रसङ्गि नित्यम्, "nitya is what reaches its case whether [the other thing] is done or undone." Nāgeśa's own example is quoted here in full, not excerpted:
The form named is तुदति — the same तुदादि class-6 verb this series' page 12 already derived (श-विकरण, no guṇa). Nāgeśa's point is narrower than that page's: even where a later (पर) rule would give guṇa, the śap-affixation step is नित्य and wins regardless — नित्यत्व outranks परत्व. The full chain of which rule that is contesting guṇa here is Mahābhāṣya-level detail this page does not unpack further; the maxim and its named example are quoted exactly as Nāgeśa gives them.
— परिभाषा , "what is bahiraṅga [outer] is treated as not-yet-accomplished where an antaraṅga [inner] rule is concerned." Nāgeśa's prelude states the ranking outright:
अन्तरङ्ग — a rule whose triggering condition is built from material wholly inside the word being formed; बहिरङ्ग — one that needs something from outside that inner circle. Nāgeśa's own exposition names the exact spot this series has already stood on:
The two citations inside that passage — खरवसानयोः 8.3.15 and असिद्धवत् 6.4.22 — are page A4's own आभीयम् pocket. That is not a coincidence: असिद्धत्व's local wall is antaraṅgatva's mechanism — inside 6.4.22–129, a bahiraṅga rule is held asiddha precisely so an antaraṅga one gets first refusal. The passage goes on to a second, denser dispute — इको यणचि 6.1.77 against guṇa, argued in Patañjali's bhāṣya on 1.1.72 — which this page quotes but does not referee: it is exactly the kind of case Nāgeśa himself is still arguing about, sentence by sentence, and a tutorial paraphrase would flatten it.
— परिभाषा : "the rule framed for a case the general rule would not otherwise reach is what blocks that general rule." This is the operational test for अपवाद — not "the shorter rule" or "the one mentioning fewer conditions," but the one whose entire domain the general rule's own wording would have missed. Nāgeśa's example anchors it to a real sūtra:
This is उत्सर्गापवादौ — general rule and exception — the pairing a reader of this series meets daily: a wide rule stating the default, a narrow one carved out for a sub-case, the narrow one always winning inside its own territory. §5 below walks a full pair — पचन्ति against यान्ति — with the live derivation engine checked against the claim.
Four ways to referee a conflict is itself a source of conflict: what if परत्व and नित्यत्व disagree about the same pair of rules? The tradition states the ranking as its own numbered paribhāṣā — quoted, not paraphrased into a bullet list.
Read as a compound of four names in rising order: पूर्वपर (the base case — later beats earlier), नित्य, अन्तरङ्ग, अपवाद — "each successive one is the stronger." परत्व is the floor; अपवादत्व outranks all three of the others.
A grammar of roughly four thousand rules that says, in rule 1.4.2, what to do when its own rules collide — eight words, and they are unusual for what they are about: not Sanskrit, but the grammar's own operation. The corpus's own classification agrees this is a different kind of sūtra: type (), one of such sūtras in the whole text.
The Kāśikā does not leave 1.4.2 abstract. It picks two real rules and shows them colliding on one word:
Rule one — 7.3.101, continued by 7.3.102: after अ, before यञ् or before any सुप् affix, दीर्घ. Its own territory:
Rule two — 7.3.103: in the बहुवचन, before a झल्-initial सुप्, एत्व instead. Its own territory:
चतुर्थी/पञ्चमी बहुवचन of वृक्ष — the ending भ्यस् — is सुप् (so rule one's domain reaches it) and बहुवचन, झल्-initial (so rule two's domain reaches it too). Both are genuinely satisfied at once. 7.3.103 is later in the text than 7.3.101–102, so by 1.4.2 it wins: the attested form is , not the *वृक्षाभ्यः a reader who only knew rule one would predict. Compare चतुर्थी/पञ्चमी द्विवचन, where रुल two's बहुवचन condition never applies and no conflict arises: , exactly as rule one alone predicts. And सप्तमी बहुवचन, which is only ever rule two's own territory, needing no referee: .
The Kāśikā's gloss on 6.1.97 is explicit: — this rule is इस अपवाद to 6.1.101. Rather than take that label on faith, both derivations below were run on the live vidyut-prakriya engine at Grammar/site/prakriya.html, driven over CDP, and the rule-history the engine returned is what the player quotes.
Filter by whether the maxim itself names one of the three ideas §2 covers by keyword — a narrow, literal test on the eight-to-twenty-word maxim, not the long exposition, so it under-counts on purpose rather than guessing at a theme. Click any row to read Nāgeśa's own exposition.
| सङ्ख्या | परिभाषा |
|---|
Click a row above to read it.
core/paribhasha.json. Every maxim in the browsable index is quoted in
full; the exposition (वृत्तिः) is capped for file size and, where
capped, ends in an ellipsis rather than being silently cut without a mark. The four
section-2 principles, the ordering statement and its three pairwise confirmations are
all named paribhāṣā numbers, checked against PB_BY_NUM at
build time — a wrong number fails the build. The 1.4.2 worked example's sūtra texts,
Kāśikā excerpts and वृक्ष paradigm cells are sutra(),
layer('kashika', …) and paradigm()
calls, respectively. The अपवाद worked example's rule-firing order is not a
corpus field — it was read off the vidyut-prakriya engine over CDP, transcribed once,
and is reported as an engine observation, not a corpus citation. Nothing on this page
claims to explain every conflict the grammar contains — only the four
principles the tradition names, and two conflicts real enough to check.Six questions. Each one asks which principle is doing the work.