Glossary · grammar · phonology
sandhi
The euphonic combination of sounds at word and morpheme boundaries — the rule set that makes written Sanskrit a continuous stream rather than a list of words.
Term
सन्धि
sandhi · noun, masculine (also f. in later usage) · vyākaraṇa
Lexicon evidence
The glossary UI groups normalized forms across the artifact, while retaining the original entry ID, sense ID, source row ID, language, and definition. The largest canonical node is lexeme_id 656496 with 28 entry members; split nodes remain visible rather than being silently merged.
Short definition
Editorial synthesis. The regular joining or modification of sounds at word and morpheme boundaries. The Toroid lexicon preserves a broader semantic field—junction, alliance, treaty, joint, interval, breach, and dramatic division—of which the grammatical sense is one historically attested branch.
Dictionary witnesses
| Source | Artifact record | Grammatical sense |
|---|---|---|
| Apte | entry 43652 · sense 98011GRETIL row 803 · English | “Euphony, euphonic junction or coalition (in gram.).” |
| Cappeller | entry 467874 · sense 706173GRETIL row 812 · English | “Euphonic combination of words and sentences.” |
| Macdonell | entry 532124 · sense 876920GRETIL row 815 · English | “Euphonic combination of sounds in a word or sentence.” |
| Monier-Williams 1899 | entry 729107 · senses 1114591–92GRETIL row 816 · English | Euphonic junction in grammar, applied both between words and within derived word forms. |
| Stchoupak | entry 934900 · sense 1510993GRETIL row 821 · French | “Liaison ou combinaison de sons ou de mots, euphonie, règles d’euphonie.” |
Definitions are seeded from result.sqlite3. Light punctuation and obvious encoding cleanup are presentation-only; artifact IDs make the display reversible.
Etymology
sam- "together" + √dhā "to place, put" → sam + dhā + ki → sandhi, "a placing together, junction, union". The same formation yields saṃdhāna "joining" and, in a political sense, sandhi "treaty".
The nasal assimilates before the dental: sam + dhi → sandhi — the word is itself an instance of what it names.
Extended explanation
Sanskrit grammarians divide sandhi by the class of the final sound that triggers it. The tradition treats it as a phonological process applying to the saṃhitā-pāṭha; the pada-pāṭha preserves the underlying, unjoined forms, so the two recitations together encode the rule application and let it be undone.
Internal sandhi (within a word, at morpheme boundaries) and external sandhi (between words) share many rules but not all: retroflexion of s and n operates freely inside a word, and only narrowly across a boundary. For corpus work this matters — external sandhi must be reversed before tokenisation, and the reversal is often ambiguous.
The three standard types:
| Type | Trigger | Example | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| svara-sandhi | vowel + vowel | न + असतः | nāsataḥ (savarṇa-dīrgha) |
| vyañjana-sandhi | consonant + consonant/vowel | तत् + जयति | tajjayati (ścutva) |
| visarga-sandhi | final ḥ + following sound | रामः + गच्छति | rāmo gacchati |
Rule references follow the Aṣṭādhyāyī; e.g. savarṇa-dīrgha is A. 6.1.101 akaḥ savarṇe dīrghaḥ.
Examples in the corpus
- Bhagavad Gītā 2.16na + asataḥ → nāsato — savarṇa-dīrgha; also dṛṣṭaḥ + antaḥ → dṛṣṭo 'ntaḥ
- Bhagavad Gītā 1.1dharma-kṣetre kuru-kṣetre samavetāḥ — visarga before a voiced sound
- Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa 5.36.10rāmeṇa + aṅgulīyakam → rāmeṇa cāṅgulīyakam — guṇa across the boundary
- Ṛgveda 1.1.1agnim īḷe purohitam — pada-pāṭha and saṃhitā-pāṭha diverge here
- Īśā Upaniṣad 1īśā + āvāsyam → īśāvāsyam — long + long vowel coalescence
Related terms
See also
- Concept: dharmaConcept pages are long, source-backed treatments with tradition-by-tradition development. Glossary entries like this one are short definitions.
- Concept: vyākaraṇaThe grammatical tradition in which sandhi is formalised — Pāṇini, Kātyāyana, Patañjali.
- All glossary termsBrowse the full term index.