Maheswara Sutras

nR^ttAvasAne naTarAjarAjaH nanAda DakkAm navapanchavAram
uddhartu kAmassanakAdi siddhAn etadvimarSe SivasUtrajAlam

nR^tta = dance
avasAna = end
naTarAja rAjaH = Lord of dance
nanAda = sounded
DakkAm = damaru
nava pancha = nine and five = fourteen
vAram = times
kAma = for the sake of / with the desire to
uddhartu = upliftment
sanakAdi = sanaka etc
siddhAn = sages
etat = this
jAlam = web (of)
shiva sUtra = sUtras of Lord Shiva
vimarshe = (I) examine

At the end of the cosmic dance Lord Shiva the Lord of dance, sounded his damaru fourteen times. For the sake of the upliftment of sages like sanaka. I wish to examine this web of Siva sUtras.

The name Shiva or Maheshvara sutras coms from the tradition that Panini heard them from the sounds of Shiva Bhagavans' damaru (drum.) The 14 sutras are (in ITRANS format):

1. aiuN
2. R^iL^ik
3. eo~N
4. aiauch
5. hayavaraT
6. laN
7. ~nama~NaNanam
8. jhabha~n
9. ghaDhadhaSh
10. jabagaDadash
11. khaphaChaThathachaTatav
12. kapay
13. shaShasar
14. hal

Sounds like gibberish right? Actually they are a clever rearrangement of the alphabet. The letter at the end of each sutra is called an it. A letter followed by an it specifies all the letters in between. For instance, aN represents a, i, and u. ak represents a, i, u, R^i, and L^i. This enables grammatical rules to be specified in a concise, algebraic form.

Heres an example. In Sanskrit words can merge together in a process called sandhi. E.g. devi + uvAcha = devyuvAcha ("Devi said.") In the western method of learning Sanskrit, you just have to memorize a table of the different letter combinations. Panini simply says:

iko yaN achi

"ik is replaced by yaN when ach follows"

In other words, ik (i, u, R^i, L^i) is replaced by yaN (ya, va, ra, la) if a vowel (ach or a, i, u, L^i, R^i, e, o, ai, au) follows