it will then become a perfect square, and its root (1) will likewise surface—together with fourteen—at the very moment you carry out the squaring (2).

The root is at once its cause and its effect, since it is precisely the cause that brings it into being.

That root, in turn, is the effect of another root already in existence—an effect of its own making; grasp, then, the cycle of its return.

Because it is the effect of an effect (3) that belongs to it, it becomes its effect yet again when it reverts to it.

One may also say that from that Knowledge grammar branches off (4), if you wish to confine the term to its particular field.

In that case the joining vowel (ḍamma) would be the cause whereby this plural is the cause of itself and of its whole.

Subtracting its two-fifths, it goes back to its original value—Knowledge—of which the science of grammar is but one offshoot.

Should you examine its letters, you will find it to be a past-tense verb both in ordinary language and in technical usage (5);
its ruling extends to future matters and everything else, by virtue of its universality, its linkage, and its wide diffusion.

Among its special qualities is that it attaches to every verified reality while still preceding that reality’s occurrence.

How noble a subject whose benefit is immense! Its craftsmanship is praised because its Maker is praised.

Within it, the verb contains both a verbal noun and its temporal reference by convention, and it is inseparably bound to the Lord who fashioned it (6).

For this reason it is restricted and specified in comparison with the all-encompassing genus of knowledge in its various kinds.

It is a single species (7) that gathers within itself all its individual instances; yet once it is compounded it is particularised in the totality to which it belongs.