SUTRA, s7F/tr5 (Slot., thread, string, clew). In Sanskrit literature, the technical name of more or less brief, aphoristic rules, and works consisting of such rules. The sutra style of writ ing is preflminently the scientific style of India. The object of the sutras is to supply a short sur vey of the facts of any given science in a form so brief that the whole theme may he memorized. In the later works of this class brevity and al lusiveness are carried to such an excess that, but for the aid of commentaries which regularly accompany them, they would be obscure and sometimes absolutely unintelligible. Probably this peculiar style of writing originated with the methods of teaching wIlich have prevailed in India from the earliest time. The school work is purely mnemonic; the teacher recites, and the pupil learns by heart piecemeal. It seems, there fore, likely that the sutras were intended as me morial sentences which the pupil had to learn by heart, in order to obtain a grasp of the outline of his subject, as well as the fuller explanation which his teacher appended to it orally.
The importance of the sutras will be under stood from the fact that they form in very early times the standard medium of most of the ritual, legal, grammatical, metrical, and philosophical literature. The ritual sutras, known as 1;rfiata Sutras and Grhya Sutras, are systematic com pendiums of the priestly sacrifices and the home lier religious practices of the householder respec tively. The Dharmafitras, the oldest sources of Indian law, are also rooted in the Veda (q.v.). There is another class of Vedic sutras, concerned with religious practice, the Sutras, of which class the last chapter of the great Vedic sutra collection of the school of Apastamba is an example. There are practical manuals giving the measurements of the altars, and so forth. They show quite an advanced knowledge of geometry, and constitute the oldest Indian mathematical works. In addition. the systematic study of the Vedas, which was prompted by the increasing difficulty of understanding and preserving the hymns, produced a series of ancillary Vedic sciences in sfitra style, the so-called six 171fingas or 'members of the Veda.' These are sik.cri, or
phonetics, changes, or metrics, ryfikarana, grammar, nirakta, or etymology, kalpa, or reli gious practice, and jyotisa, or astronomy. The most important class of these texts, belonging to the class phonetics, are the PrOigukkaa Sutras, which deal with accentuation. pronunci ation, and other matters, but are chiefly con cerned with the phonetic changes undergone by Vedic words when combined in a sentence. Their observations are so minute and acute as to ap proach the best results of the modern science of phonetics, and they are unrivaled in their way in the whole history of antiquity. A still more im portant branch of sutra literature is grammar, in which the Hindus again surpass all nations of antiquity. Little has been preserved of the pre liminary stages of grammar. The student of na tive Sanskrit grammar, therefore, enters at once upon the intricate structure which hears the name of Panini (q.v.). His systematic analysis of words into roots, suffixes, and inflexional ele ments has been adopted with unimportant changes by modern European scientific grammar.
Later systematic philosophy, which has grown up on the basis of the theosophic hymns of the Veda and the Upanishads (q.v.), also adopts the sfitra style of presentation in the six systems of philosophy. Even so remote a theme as erotica is in the or 'Love Sutra,' of Vatsya yana, naively treats this subject in the set form of sutra rules. In one quarter, however, the sfitra has abandoned its typical style and has become the reverse of brief, for the Buddhist itras, or Nuttas (see PITAKA ), the sermons as cribed to Buddha, excel in prolixity almost every other type of literature in existence.
sTRYtr17 (anciently SUTRIUM ) . A town in the Province of Rome, Italy, 29 miles northwest of Rome. It is interesting for its an cient walls and gates, its Etruscan tombs, and the ruins of an amphitheatre dating from the time of Augustus. Sutri is known as the scene of the synod which in 1046 deposed Popes Gre gory VI. and Sylvester 111. Population (com mune). in 1901, 2795.