asiddha and asiddhavat

When a rule applies to some input to yield some output, the input is discarded and all future applications act on the output. But sometimes the original input preserves some information that we want to keep.

asiddha

TODO

asiddhavat

Consider the following input:

śās + hi

By 6.4.35, śās becomes śā when followed by hi. By 6.4.101, hi becomes dhi when preceded by a consonant. If one applies, the other is blocked. But to get the correct form śādhi, we have to apply both rules together.

The Ashtadhyayi solves this problem by placing both rules in a section called asiddhavat. For any two rules A and B within this section, the results of A are invisible to B (or “as if not completed”, i.e. a-siddha-vat). This allows each rule to act without being blocked by the other.

In practical terms, this means that each term has at least two values simultaneously: one accessible only to the non-asiddhavat world (e.g. śā) and one accessible only to the asiddhavat world (śās).

To see how the program handles these problems, see the data spaces stuff in Inputs and Outputs.

Note

Issues of asiddha and asiddhavat are subtle and outside the scope of this documentation. Those interested might see rule 6.4.22 of the Ashtadhyayi or section 3.5 of Goyal et al.