Dear McComas,

     The closest Pāṇini comes to the notion of a syllable is the term ekāc in his grammar. This is the unit that contains a single vowel (ac). So for example, in the verb form dadāti, the units da and dā are ekāc.  The other context where he comes close is in defining the terms laghu and guru. Strictly speaking, these terms only refer to vowels, rather than syllables as we understand in modern linguistics. For Pāṇini, a short vowel is laghu "light," but it becomes guru "heavy" if it is followed by a consonant cluster (saṃyoga); and all long vowels are guru "heavy" as well. 
     Discussions of syllables occur more extensively in works on metrics and in the Prātiśākhyas and Śikṣās. For the latter, you can consult Siddheshwar Varma's book: Critical Studies In The Phonetic Observations Of Indian Grammarians.

Madhav M. Deshpande
Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies
Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]


On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 4:30 PM McComas Taylor via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Colleagues,

A friend and colleague, Prof Nick Evans, is a leading authority on Indigenous Australian languages.  He has asked this question about syllables in Pāṇini. Can anyone advise him?

"I'm wondering if ... you know whether Pāṇini figured out a way of incorporating rule-sensitive to number of syllables in his rule statements. Do you know how he did it, if he did?
The reason I'm asking is that, as part of a special readings course for our doctoral students, we are spending a couple of weeks on aspects of that tradition, and for fun I've asked them to write some morphophonemic rules, in the style of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, for an Australian language, Lardil.  And to do that they will need to refer to the number of syllables (monosyllabic, disyllabic, or more than two). Being ignorant of Sanskrit I don't know whether syllable-sensitivity is ever relevant"

 Thanks in advance,

McComas
       
                  WSC Website

McComas Taylor, Associate Professor, Reader in Sanskrit
College of Asia and Pacific, Australian National University


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