नाट्यशास्त्रम् (प्रथम भाग - अभिनवभारती एवं हिन्दी टीका सहित)

.XV. 9 ] RULES OF PROSODY 249

Different aspects of Recitation

6-7. [They consist of] vowels, consonants, euphonic combination, case-endings, nouns, verbs, prepositions, particles and nominal suffixes. The Sanskritic Recitation is characterised by [a due regard to] these aspects and compound words, and includes various verbal roots¹. Now listen about its application.

The speech-sounds

8 The fourteen sounds beginning with a and ending in au, are known as vowels, and the group of sounds beginning with ka and ending in ha are known as consonants.

Vowles are fourteen in number¹. A, ā, i, ī, u, ū, ṛ, ṝ, ḷ, ḹ, e, ai, o and au are to be known as the vowels.

The group of letters beginning with ka, are consonants. Ka, kha, ga, gha, ṅa, ca, cha, ja, jha, ña, ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, ṇa, ta tha da, dha, na, pa, pha, ba, bha, ma, ya, ra, la, va, śa, ṣa sa and ha² [constitute] the group of consonants³.

Consonants : their articulation

9. The first two sounds of each group [of the stop consonants] are known as unvoiced (aghoṣa) and the rest [of the group] are called voiced (ghoṣa).

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6-7 (C.6-7; B.XIV.6-7). ¹ Read nānādhātu-samāśrayam, C.

8 (C.8; B.XIV.8). ¹ Different Śikṣās and Prātiśākhyas enumerate vowels differently. According to the PŚ. they are 22 in number, while the Atharva, Taittirīya, and Vājasaneyī, Prātiśākhyas and the Ṛktantra Vyākaraṇa (Sāmaveda Pr.) give their number respectively as 13, 13, 16, 23 and 23. See PŚ. (ed. Manomohan Ghosh) p.51.

² PŚ. counts anusvāra, visarga, jihvāmūlīya and upadhmānīya among consonants. See ed. Ghosh, p. 50.

³ B. reads after this a couplet (B.10) from PŚ. see ibid, p. 59. Not occurring in most of the mss. this may be taken as spurious. This is followed in B. by a prose passage which also seems to be spurious. The same is our view about the couplet B.11 which follow this prose passage. The substance of this couplet (B.11) occurs in 9 below.

9 (C.9 ; B.XIV.12). ¹ In C. this couplet occurs after 8 and before the prose passage that follows it.

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