chunk 102: sandhi tutorial chunk 102: sandhi tutorial
metronymic
About castes.
Sixteen-vowel style.
decoration before pause
eight-vowel style
"Do not break" lines.
about the letter
badly split lines
proto-indo-european
About "limb".
"moonfaced" means beautiful
some vedic chanting videos
There are two sorts of
conjugation of
About
^ 
A metronymic is a variant of a word that is only used to make a verse fit.
For instance, the
or replace the name of queen
In some cases the metronymics in the epics break the grammar. For instance, in the last word of this line of the rAmAyaNa --
rule luGlaG should have worked, but that would have screwed up the metre.
^
Old Indian societies were divided in four endogamic castes. From high to low, they were --
brAhmaNa- intellectuals -- priests, teachers
kSatriya- government -- politicians, military, police
vaizya- capitalists -- landowners, traders
zUdra- servants of the above three
The three first castes are called the upper castes.
See also Wikipedia on Caste system in India.
^ 
In the laT laG liG, the root dA turns into
and into
this happens because of rule znA;'bhyastayor AtaH, that erases the
Notice that other zluclass roots that end in
^
There are three
te' fn "those two, they", from tad- fn + au, which is not a hanger
as in
te'' "you, to you, your", a hanger
as in
te'''' "those, they", from tad- m + jas, which is not a hanger
as in
and one
te''' as in
^ 
Natvam (literally "
These are some of the rules, and an example of each --
84001 raSA --
84002 aTkupvAGnu -- even if certain other letters come in between
84037 padAntasya -- wordfinal
kR + laG jhi 
no
^
Satvam (literally "
Some notes:
The Natvam change happens absolutely always. But the Satvam change only happens after a suffix has been added, or when a Sa-root is involved (see Adezapra).
The wordfinal
The
Unlike the Natvam change, the Satvam change only happens right after the letter that triggers it.
There are a few exceptions:
kathA 0105013c
^ 
Sometimes zlokas are chanted as two verses of sixteen syllables each, with no pause in the middle.
Let's listen to two examples.
First, we will listen to the
It is in this video, from 0:03 to 0:15 --
Guru Brahma Guru Vishnu - Vedic Chants - Guru Mantra - Pudukkotai Mahalinga Sastri
Now we'll listen to the first zloka of the
Here it is in the voice of Ishaan Pai --
Vishnu Sahasranamam | Vande Guru Paramparaam | Ishaan Pai
A zloka line has sixteen vowels and a pause at the end, and the vowel before the pause gets a decoration before pause . This "decoration" thing means that the syllables
Next: eight-vowel style .
^ 
When chanting verses or sutras, the last letters before a pause are seldom chanted in the same way they are written. Instead, the grammatically correct form of the last vowel is replaced by a "decorated" version, that is always longer.
When chanting, before a pause, --
1. A short vowel is always lengthened.
2. Long vowels too are lengthened.
3.
4.
5.
6. Final
7. Many people like to lengthen the final
8. Other people will read everything spelled as
These changes are not taught by grammarians. Your chanting teacher teaches you to chant this way.
As different teachers have different opinions, not everybody follows points 1 to 8 above. Those points are a general guide that will come in handy if you listen at chanters in, say, Youtube videos. But when you chant yourself you have to follow the instructions of your teacher, not those eight points.
Example. Listen to this kid chanting
Vishnu Sahasranamam | Vande Guru Paramparaam | Ishaan Pai
The last words of these two verses must be chanted as
Yet, they are invariably written as
Why? Because according to
How do I know that? Because otherwise, we would have a
^
Nowadays, most zlokas are chanted as four groups of eight vowels each, with a full pause after each group. The last vowel of each group gets a decoration before pause .
Let's listen to the same
In a female voice --
Guru Shloka | Authentic Chant | Lakshya Yoga
in a male voice --
Guru Shloka, meaning with Hindi & English || Karthik athreya
(The second has
IMPORTANT WARNING. Even though the eight-vowel style is the most common way of chanting nowadays, all zlokas are always spelled as common grammar would want us to say them when speaking, and as if we were not going to make a pause in the middle. This causes no end of problems to many people that try to chant while reading aloud from a piece of paper, because they don't knwow how to do the split in the middle.
Example. You will find this in writing --
Reading this aloud as it written, with a visarga at the end, is perfectly grammatical if you don't pause at the middle. You will say it like this --
But if we are chanting in the sixteen-vowel style, then it should be chanted like this, with
And with a pause at the middle, it should be this --
because the last word before the pause is
But, of course, in these days of
^ 
A "do not break" zloka verse is a verse that should not be chanted with a pause in the middle.
Nowadays zlokas are mostly always chanted in the eight-vowel style . Yet, in the past the sixteen-vowel style was the most common, and all zlokas are written as if they were chanted in the sixteen-vowel style.
Old poets assumed you would chant in sixteens, so they assuimed that therewould be caesura between vowels eight and nine, not a pause. That's why, once in while, we find a zloka line that cannot be chanted witha pause in the middle. If we try to do so, we get a half-line with nine vowels, or a pause in the middle of a word. Both of which are ugly.
Example. This line can be chanted easily in the sixteen-vowel style --
but if we pause between words, the first half has nine vowels --
and if we pause where the melody wants us to pause, the word
Second example --
Pausing makes us break the rythm or the grammar.
My personal advice is --
When you are chanting anything seriously in an eight-vowel style,
chant these do not break lines in the the sixteen-vowel style. No pause at all.
But if you are teaching your students to chant by the usual method (chant eight vowels, wait for students to repeat, chant next eight),
then split after the eight vowel and nvm about the grammar.
After the students have memorized all the half verses, then you can teach them that in some places they must not pause.
^ 
A zloka, also called
Each verse, or " zloka line", has a caesura between the eight vowel and the ninth. In other words, each verse of 16 vowels is made of two parts with eight vowels each.
Each of these parts is called a pAda "quarter, fourth part".
Example: this is a zloka --
This is a verse --
And these two are pAdas --
Because of an old custom, we must write a stick after the second pAda and two sticks after the fourth.
Please do not use the word "shloka" in English to mean "any sort of Sanskrit stanza". That it not what the word means. I only use the word to mean a specific sort of stanza.
zlokas can be chanted in two styles --
This gadget will allow you to test if anything with sixteen vowels in it is a zloka line or not --
In the epics, two light syllables can replace the first syllable of a zloka verse, as in --
where the first half-verse has nine vowels. Be careful to chant the
(abouttheletterxinrules) (let)
^
If you see any letter
I add
^
Earlier, we said that the same verse can be chanted either in sixteen-vowel style as --
or in eight-vowel style as --
Here you have a recording of that verse in eight-vowel style . The last word of the first pAda is pronounced
And this is a recording of the same verse in sixteen-vowel style , with no pause in the middle. Therefore the last word is pronounced
And here is a recording of another style that you will find often in the internet: random style. In this verse, there is a pause between the two halves, but, unlike in the eight-vowel style above, there is no
Doing this is extremely common in internet. Do not do this. If you don't know how to split, don't do your splitting yourself; instead, trust someone that knows.
^
The
However, many people, like me, make no distinction at all between the two sounds, and always pronounce
The following spectrogram shows the word
In that image, you can see that the puff of the
This lack of difference explains why in the manuscripts some people spelled
Summarizing: I think you should always pronounce both
^
According to the views of Westermn grammarians, Sanskrit evolved from an older language called pie, about which you can read about in [WIKIProto-Indo-European_language].
Be that true or not, when I say that some Sanskrit word, like
All I know about pie I got from etymonline dot com, fantastic website.
^ 
Rule svAGgAcco mentions
A " limb ", technically, is a nonfluid material thing that is, or used to be, naturally part of the body of a moving being. For instance, a head or a leg, but not the blood.
By analogy, a limb can also be a part of anything nonmoving that bears with it that same sort of relationship. Like the branch of a tree or the peak of a mountain.
(moonfacedmeansbeautifu) (moo)
^
In English, when we say someone is moonfaced, we mean that their face is round like the full moon, therefore ugly.
In Sanskrit, when we say that someone's face is like the moon (
(somevedicchantingvideo) (someve)
^
^
Nic is an extremely common affix.
There are two sorts of
Rule muNDa;mizra adds it to some nouns.
NiG is very uncommon, made by rules puccha;bhANDa and kamerNiG.
^ 
can be added to roots of verb classes one to nine,
must be added to nichclass roots,
and cannot be added to sanAdyanta roots.
There are two common sorts of Nic --
(1) causative Nic. It is added to roots of the verb classes one to nine, and means "getting others to do the action of the root"
(2) Nichclass Nic. It is always added to nichclass roots, and adds no meaning.
Then there are two uncommon sorts of Nic --
(3) The causative Nic after a nichclass verb. The grammar allows adding the causative Nic to nichclass roots, but then one of the two Nic disappears. Which means that according to the theory,
(4) The "useless Nic" or "epic Nic". Grammar does not allow to add Nic, to roots of classes one to nine unless the sense changes to make others do. Yet, in the epics it is sometimes added without change of sense. Often metri causa, I guess.
For instance, in good grammar,
^
If you look at the first four tenses of the root han in inria conjugation, it appears to be quite messy.
The logic is this. The root han --
becomes
turns into
and turns into
and therefore only stays as
In
In the laG, s''' and t''' were lost by halGyA (not by saMyogAnta).
^
The sanAdyanta roots (such as
and kRt affixes --
However, these sanAdyanta roots cannot get a second sanAdi affix.
The exception to that are the Nijanta roots, which can get san. Example --
and that
as in --
chunk 102: sandhi tutorial