Shiksha

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For other uses, see Shiksha (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Shiksa.
A page from the Yajnavalkya Shiksha manuscript (Sanskrit, Devanagari). This text is
also called Vajasaneyi Siksa and Traisvarya Laksana.
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Shiksha (Sanskrit: ?????? IAST: sik?a) is a Sanskrit word, which means

"instruction, lesson, learning, study of skill".[1][2][3] It also refers to one of
the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies, on phonetics and phonology in
Sanskrit.[3][4]

Shiksha is the field of Vedic study of sound, focussing on the letters of the
Sanskrit alphabet, accent, quantity, stress, melody and rules of euphonic
combination of words during a Vedic recitation.[3][5] Each ancient Vedic school
developed this field of Vedanga, and the oldest surviving phonetic textbooks are
the Pratishakyas.[2] The Paniniya-Siksa and Naradiya-Siksa are examples of extant
ancient manuscripts of this field of Vedic studies.[3][5]

Shiksha is the oldest and the first auxiliary discipline to the Vedas, maintained
since the Vedic era.[2] It aims at construction of sound and language for synthesis
of ideas, in contrast to grammarians who developed rules for language
deconstruction and understanding of ideas.[2] This field helped preserve the Vedas
and the Upanishads as the canons of Hinduism since the ancient times, and shared by
various Hindu traditions.[6][7]
Contents

1 Etymology
2 History
3 Discussion
3.1 Pratishakhyas
3.2 Other Shiksha texts
 4 Sound and alphabet
4.1 Vowels
4.2 Articulation
4.3 Articulation of consonants
5 See also
6 References
6.1 Bibliography
7 External links

Etymology

Shiksha literally means "instruction, lesson, study, knowledge, learning, study of

skill, training in an art".[1] It also refers to one of the six Vedangas, which
studies sound, Sanskrit phonetics, laws of euphonic combination (sandhi), and the
science of making language pleasant and understood without mistakes.[4] Shiksha as
a supplemental branch of the Vedas, included teaching proper articulation and
pronunciation of Vedic texts.[4] It was one of six fields of supplemental studies,
others being grammar (Vyakarana), prosody (Chandas), ritual (Kalpa), etymology
(Nirukta) and astrology (Jyotisha, calculating favorable time for rituals).[4]

The roots of Shiksha can be traced to the Rigveda which dedicates two hymns 10.125
and 10.71 to revere sound as a goddess, and links the development of thought to the
development of speech.[8] The mid 1st-millennium BCE text Taittiriya Upanishad
contains one of the earliest description of Shiksha as follows,

? ??????? ?????????????? ?
????? ????? ? ?????? ???? ?
??? ??????? ? ????????? ???????????? ? ? ?

Om! We will explain the Shiksha.

Sounds and accentuation, Quantity (of vowels) and the expression (of
consonants),
Balancing (Saman) and connection (of sounds), So much about the study of
Shiksha. || 1 ||
�?Taittiriya Upanishad 1.2, Shikshavalli, Translated by Paul Deussen[9][3]

Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus date the Shiksha text of the Taittiriya Vedic
school to be from 600 BCE at the latest.[10] Texts such as this established, among
other things, a rational order of the Sanskrit alphabet, state Wilke and Moebus.
Other texts, such as Vyasa-Siksa of the Krishna Yajurveda, were composed later.[10]

The ancient Vedic schools developed major treatises analyzing sound, vowels and
consonants, rules of combination and pronunciation to assist clear understanding,
to avoid mistakes and for resonance (pleasing to the listener).[11] These texts
include Samhita-pathas and Pada-pathas, and partially or fully surviving
manuscripts include Paniniya Shiksha, Naradiya Shiksha, Bharadvaja Shiksha,
Yajnavalkya Shiksha, Vasishthi Shiksha, Parashari Shiksha, Katyayani Shiksha and
Manduki Shiksha.[3][12]
History
Speech and soul?

Having intellectually determined the object to be communicated to others, the soul

urges the mind in order to give expression, i.e., to vocalize the thought rising
within. The mind so stimulated acts upon the physical fire which in its turn brings
about a movement in the region of internal air. The internal air thus moved gets
upward till it reaches the vocal apparatus.

�Paniniya-Siksa[13]
Shiksha, states Hartmut Scharfe, was the first branch of linguistics to develop as
an independent Vedic field of study among the Vedangas.[6] This is likely because
Vedas were transmitted from one generation to the next by oral tradition, and the
preservation and the techniques of preservation depended on phonetics, states
Scharfe.[6]

The earliest Brahmanas � a layer of text within the Vedas, include some terms of
art in the Vedic phonetics, such as Varna and Avasana. The Shiksha field was likely
well developed by the time Aranyakas and Upanishads layer of the Vedas were being
composed.[6] The alphabet had been categorized by this time, into vowels (svara),
stops (sparsa), semivowels (antastha) and spirants (usman).[6] The field was
fundamental to the ancient study of linguistics, and it developed as an interest
and inquiry into sounds rather than letters.[6] Shiksha, as described in these
ancient texts, had six chapters - varna (sound), svara (accent), matra (quantity),
bala (strength, articulation), saman(recital) and samtana (connection between
preceding and following sounds).[6]

The insights from this field, states Scharfe, "without doubt was applied by Vedic
scholars to the art of writing". It also impacted the development of Indic scripts
and evolution of language in countries that sought Indian texts or were influenced
by Indian religions.[6] According to Scharfe, and other scholars, the insights
developed in this field, over time, likely also influenced phonetic scripts in
parts of East Asia, as well as Arabic grammarian Halil in 8th-century CE.[14][15]