Pāṇini Explained

Pāṇini
Birth Place:Northwest Indian subcontinent
Native Name:पाणिनि
Era:


  • 7th–5th century BCE
  • Main Interests:Grammar, linguistics
    Notable Works: (Classical Sanskrit)
    Notable Ideas:Descriptive linguistics

    (Sanskrit: पाणिनि, in Sanskrit pronounced as /paːɳin̪i/) was a logician, Sanskrit philologist, grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India, variously dated between the 7th and 4th century BCE.

    Since the discovery and publication of his work Aṣṭādhyāyī by European scholars in the nineteenth century, Pāṇini has been considered the "first descriptive linguist",[1] and even labelled as "the father of linguistics".[2] His approach to grammar influenced such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield.[3]

    Biography

    Pāṇini likely lived in Śalatura in ancient Gandhāra in the northwest Indian subcontinent during the Mahājanapada era.[4]

    The name Pāṇini is a patronymic meaning descendant of Paṇina.[5] His full name was Dakṣiputra Pāṇini according to verses 1.75.13 and 3.251.12 of Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya, with the first part suggesting his mother's name was Dakṣi.

    Dating

    Nothing definite is known about when Pāṇini lived, not even in which century he lived. Pāṇini has been dated between the seventh and fourth century BCE.

    George Cardona (1997) in his authoritative survey and review of Pāṇini-related studies, states that the available evidence strongly supports a dating before 400 BCE, while earlier dating depends on interpretations and is not probative.

    Based on numismatic findings, von Hinüber (1989) and Falk (1993) place Pāṇini in the mid-4th century BCE. Pāṇini's rupya (A 5.2.119, A 5.2.120, A. 5.4.43, A 4.3.153,) mentions a specific gold coin, the niṣka, in several sutras, which was introduced in India in the 4th-century BCE. According to Houben, "the date of " for Pāṇini is thus based on concrete evidence which till now has not been refuted." According to Bronkhorst, there is no reason to doubt the validity of Von Hinüber's and Falk's argument, setting the terminus post quem for the date of Pāṇini at 350 BCE or the decades thereafter. According to Bronkhorst,

    It is not certain whether Pāṇini used writing for the composition of his work, though it is generally agreed that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as lipi ("script") and lipikara ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.[6] [7] The dating of the introduction of writing to present day North West Pakistan may therefore give further information on the historical dating of Pāṇini.

    Pāṇini cites at least ten grammarians and linguists before him: Āpiśali, Kāśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cākravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka, Sphoṭāyana and Yaska. According to Kamal K. Misra, Pāṇini references Yaska's Nirukta, "whose writings date back to the middle of the 4th century B.C".

    The Sanskrit epic Brihatkatha and the Buddhist scripture Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa both mention Pāṇini to have been a contemporary with the king Dhana Nanda (reigned ca. 4th c. BCE), the last monacrh of the Nanda Empire before Chandragupta Maurya came to power.[8]

    Cardona offers an earlier date for Pāṇini, by arguing the compound word , discussed in sutra 4.1.49, instead of referring to a writing (lipi) c.q. cuneiform of the Achaemenid Empire, or the Greek of Alexander the Great, refers to Greek women; and that Indus valley residents possibly had contacts with Greek women before Darius's 535 BCE, or Alexander's 326 BCE conquests. K. B. Pathak (1930) argues that the kumāraśramaṇa, of sutra 2.1.70, derived from śramaṇa, which refers to female renunciates, c.q. "Buddhist nuns", could also refer to Jain Aryika, of unknown origin, possibly permitting Pāṇini to be placed before the, 5th century BCE, Gautama Buddha. Others, based on Panini's linguistic style, date his works to the sixth or fifth century BCE, as:

    Location

    Nothing certain is known about Pāṇini's personal life. In an inscription of Siladitya VII of Valabhi, he is called Śalāturiya, which means "a man from Salatura". This means Panini lived in Salatura in ancient Gandhara (present day north-west Pakistan), which likely was near Lahor, a town at the junction of the Indus and Kabul rivers.[10] [11] According to the memoirs of the 7th-century Chinese scholar Xuanzang, there was a town called Suoluoduluo on the Indus where Pāṇini was born, and where he composed the Qingming-lun (Sanskrit: Vyākaraṇa).[12]

    According to Hartmut Scharfe, Pāṇini lived in Gandhara, close to the borders of the Achaemenid Empire, and Gandhara was then an Achaemenian satrapy following the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley. He must, therefore, have been technically a Persian subject but his work shows no awareness of the Persian language.[13] According to Patrick Olivelle, Pāṇini's text and references to him elsewhere suggest that "he was clearly a northerner, probably from the northwestern region".[14]

    Legends and later reception

    Pāṇini is mentioned in Indian fables and ancient texts. The Panchatantra, for example, mentions that Pāṇini was killed by a lion.[15] [16]

    Pāṇini was depicted on a five-rupee Indian postage stamp in August 2004.[17] [18] [19] [20]

    Aṣṭādhyāyī

    See main article: Aṣṭādhyāyī.

    The most important of Pāṇini's works, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, is a grammar that essentially defines the Sanskrit language. Modeled on the dialect and register of elite speakers in his time, the text also accounts for some features of the older Vedic language.

    The Aṣtādhyāyī is a descriptive[21] and generative grammar with algebraic rules governing every aspect of the language. It is supplemented by three ancillary texts: the akṣarasamāmnāya, dhātupāṭha and gaṇapāṭha.

    Growing out of a centuries-long effort to preserve the language of the Vedic hymns from "corruption", the Aṣtādhyāyī is the high point of a vigorous, sophisticated grammatical tradition devised to arrest language change. The Aṣtādhyāyī's preeminence is underlined by the fact that it eclipsed all similar works that came before: while not the first, it is the oldest such text surviving in its entirety.[22] [23] [24] [25]

    The Aṣṭādhyāyī consists of 3,959 sūtras in eight chapters, which are each subdivided into four sections or pādas. The text takes material from lexical lists (dhātupāṭha, gaṇapātha) as input and describes the algorithms to be applied to them for the generation of well-formed words. Such is its intricacy that the correct application of its rules and metarules is still being worked out centuries later.[26] [27]

    The Aṣṭādhyāyī, composed in an era when oral composition and transmission was the norm, is staunchly embedded in that oral tradition. In order to ensure wide dissemination, Pāṇini is said to have preferred brevity over clarity[28] - it can be recited end-to-end in two hours. This has led to the emergence of a great number of commentaries of his work over the centuries, which for the most part adhere to the foundations laid by Pāṇini's work.[29] [30]

    Bhaṭṭikāvya

    See main article: Bhaṭṭikāvya. Indian curriculums in the late classical era had at their core a system of grammatical study and linguistic analysis.[31] The core text for this study was the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, the sine qua non of learning.[32] This grammar of Pāṇini had been the object of intense study for the ten centuries prior to the composition of the Bhaṭṭikāvya. It was Bhaṭṭi's purpose to provide a study aid to Pāṇini's text by using the examples already provided in the existing grammatical commentaries in the context of the Rāmāyaṇa. The intention of the author was to teach this advanced science through a relatively easy and pleasant medium. In his own words:

    This composition is like a lamp to those who perceive the meaning of words and like a hand mirror for a blind man to those without grammar.

    This poem, which is to be understood by means of a commentary, is a joy to those sufficiently learned: through my fondness for the scholar I have here slighted the dullard.

    Bhaṭṭikāvya 22.33–34.

    Legacy

    Pāṇini is known for his text Aṣṭādhyāyī, a sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar, which consists of 3,996[33] verses or rules on linguistics, syntax and semantics in "eight chapters" which is the foundational text of the Vyākaraṇa branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of the Vedic period.[34] [35] His aphoristic text attracted numerous bhashya (commentaries), of which the Mahābhāṣya by Patanjali is the most famous. His ideas influenced and attracted commentaries from scholars of other Indian religions such as Buddhism.[36]

    Pāṇini's analysis of noun compounds still forms the basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding in Indian languages. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[37] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.

    Pāṇini's theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before the 20th century.[38] His treatise is generative and descriptive, uses metalanguage and meta-rules, and has been compared to the Turing machine wherein the logical structure of any computing device has been reduced to its essentials using an idealized mathematical model.[39]

    Modern linguistics

    Pāṇini's work became known in 19th-century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson. Frits Staal (1930–2012) discussed the impact of Indian ideas on language in Europe. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal notes that the idea of formal rules in language – proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1894 and developed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 – has origins in the European exposure to the formal rules of Pāṇinian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of the signifier-signified in the sign somewhat resembles the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics may itself have been catalysed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians.[40]

    De Saussure

    Pāṇini, and the later Indian linguist Bhartrihari, had a significant influence on many of the foundational ideas proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure, professor of Sanskrit, who is widely considered the father of modern structural linguistics and with Charles S. Peirce on the other side, to semiotics, although the concept Saussure used was semiology. Saussure himself cited Indian grammar as an influence on some of his ideas. In his Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes (Memoir on the Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages) published in 1879, he mentions Indian grammar as an influence on his idea that "reduplicated aorists represent imperfects of a verbal class." In his De l'emploi du génitif absolu en sanscrit (On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit) published in 1881, he specifically mentions Pāṇini as an influence on the work.

    Prem Singh, in his foreword to the reprint edition of the German translation of Pāṇini's Grammar in 1998, concluded that the "effect Panini's work had on Indo-European linguistics shows itself in various studies" and that a "number of seminal works come to mind," including Saussure's works and the analysis that "gave rise to the laryngeal theory," further stating: "This type of structural analysis suggests influence from Panini's analytical teaching." George Cardona, however, warns against overestimating the influence of Pāṇini on modern linguistics: "Although Saussure also refers to predecessors who had taken this Paninian rule into account, it is reasonable to conclude that he had a direct acquaintance with Panini's work. As far as I am able to discern upon rereading Saussure's Mémoire, however, it shows no direct influence of Paninian grammar. Indeed, on occasion, Saussure follows a path that is contrary to Paninian procedure."[41]

    Leonard Bloomfield

    The founding father of American structuralism, Leonard Bloomfield, wrote a 1927 paper titled "On some rules of Pāṇini".[42]

    Rishi Rajpopat

    Rishi Rajpopat elaborated in 2021 in his PhD thesis[43] a deeper understanding of Panini's "language machine" by designing a simple system of resolving rule conflicts.[44] [45] His thesis has been critiqued as being built upon flawed premises and understanding of rules by prominent Indian Sanskrit scholars.[46]

    Comparison with modern formal systems

    Pāṇini's grammar is the world's first formal system, developed well before the 19th century innovations of Gottlob Frege and the subsequent development of mathematical logic. In designing his grammar, Pāṇini used the method of "auxiliary symbols", in which new affixes are designated to mark syntactic categories and the control of grammatical derivations. This technique, rediscovered by the logician Emil Post, became a standard method in the design of computer programming languages.[47] Sanskritists now accept that Pāṇini's linguistic apparatus is well-described as an "applied" Post system. Considerable evidence shows ancient mastery of context-sensitive grammars, and a general ability to solve many complex problems. Frits Staal has written that "Panini is the Indian Euclid."[48]

    Other works

    Two literary works are attributed to Pāṇini, though they are now lost.

    नमः पाणिनये तस्मै यस्मादाविर भूदिह।

    आदौ व्याकरणं काव्यमनु जाम्बवतीजयम्

    namaḥ pāṇinaye tasmai yasmādāvirabhūdiha।

    ādau vyākaraṇaṃ kāvyamanu jāmbavatījayam

    There are many proto-mathematical concepts found in Pāṇini's works. Pāṇini came up with a plethora of ideas to organize the known grammatical forms of his day in a systematic way.[51] [52] Like any mathematician who models a known phenomenon in mathematical language, Pāṇini created a metalanguage which is very close to the modern-day ideas of algebra.[53] [54] [55]

    See also

    Bibliography

    Further reading

    Works
    Pāṇini

    External links

    Notes and References

    1. [#FPencyclo|François & Ponsonnet (2013: 184)]
    2. Book: Pāṇini . Pāṇini's Grammatik . Pāṇini's Grammar. Böhtlingk . Otto von . Otto von Böhtlingk . 1998 . . 978-81-208-1025-9 . Reprint . de.
    3. Book: Robins, Robert Henry . R. H. Robins . A short history of linguistics . 1997 . . 0582249945 . 4th . London . 35178602.
    4. Book: Avari . Burjor . Burjor Avari . India: The Ancient Past: A History of the Indian Sub-Continent from c. 7000 BC to AD 1200 . 2007 . . 978-1-134-25161-2 . 156 . en.
    5. Book: Pāṇini . Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini . Sumitra Mangesh Katre . . 1989 . 978-81-208-0521-7 . xx.
    6. Book: Richard Salomon . Richard G. Salomon (professor of Asian studies) . Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the other Indo-Aryan Languages . . 1998 . 978-0-19-535666-3 . 11.
    7. Book: Rita Sherma . Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons . Arvind Sharma . Arvind Sharma . . 2008 . 978-1-4020-8192-7 . 235.
    8. Book: Singh, Upinder . Upinder Singh . A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century . 2008 . . 978-81-317-1120-0 . 258 . en.
    9. Book: Keith, Arthur Berriedale . Arthur Berriedale Keith . Rigveda Brahmanas: the Aitareya and Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇas of the Rigveda . 1998 . . 978-8120813595 . Delhi . en . 611413511.
    10. Book: Hartmut Scharfe . Grammatical Literature . . 1977 . 978-3-447-01706-0 . 88 with footnotes.
    11. Book: Saroja Bhate . Panini . . 2002 . 81-260-1198-X . 4.
    12. Book: Mishra, Giridhar . Rambhadracharya . अध्यात्मरामायणेऽपाणिनीयप्रयोगाणां विमर्शः . . 1981 . Varanasi, India . sa . Deliberation on non-Paninian usages in the Adhyatma Ramayana . प्रस्तावना . Introduction . 21 May 2013 . http://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/works/arapv/prastavana.php . https://web.archive.org/web/20140311211052/https://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/works/arapv/prastavana.php . 11 March 2014.
    13. Lal . Shyam Bihari . Shyam Bihari Lal . 2004 . Yavanas in Ancient Indian Inscriptions . . 65 . 1115–1120 . 2249-1937 . 44144820.
    14. Book: Patrick Olivelle . Patrick Olivelle . Dharmasutras . . 1999 . 978-0-19-283882-7 . xxvi–xxvii.
    15. Bhattacharyya . D. C. . 1928 . Date of the Subhasitavali . . 60 . 1 . 135–137 . 10.1017/S0035869X00059773 . 25221320 . 162641089.
    16. Book: Winternitz, Moriz. Moriz Winternitz. History of Indian Literature. 1963. Motilal Banarsidass. 978-81-208-0056-4. 462.
      Book: Nakamura, Hajime. Hajime Nakamura. A History of Early Vedānta Philosophy. 1983. Motilal Banarsidass. 978-81-208-0651-1. 400.
    17. Web site: Stamps 2004 . Indian Department of Posts, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology . 23 April 2015 . 3 June 2015 .
    18. Web site: Panini. www.istampgallery.com. 23 October 2015 . 2018-12-11.
    19. Web site: Hinduism Today Magazine. Academy. Himalayan. www.hinduismtoday.com. en. 2018-12-11.
    20. Web site: India Postage Stamp on Panini issued on 01 Aug 2004. www.getpincodes.com. 2018-12-11.
    21. Book: Kiparsky, Paul . 2008 . Huet . Gérard P. . Kulkarni . Amba P. . Scharf . Peter M. . On the Architecture of Panini's Grammar . On the Architecture of Pāṇini's Grammar . Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29-31, 2007 Providence, RI, USA, May 15-17, 2008 Revised Selected and Invited Papers . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . Springer . 5402 . 33–94 . 10.1007/978-3-642-00155-0_2. 978-3-642-00154-3 .
    22. Book: Burrow, Thomas . Thomas Burrow . The Sanskrit language . 2001 . . 978-81-208-1767-8 . 1st Indian . Delhi . 49.
    23. Book: Itkonen, Eas . Esa Itkonen . Universal History of Linguistics: India, China, Arabia, Europe . . 1991 . 9789027277671 . 69.
    24. Book: Burnell, Arthur Coke . Arthur Coke Burnell . On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, Their Place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures . 1875 . 87 . en.
    25. Book: Embleton . Sheila . Sheila Embleton . The Emergence of the Modern Language Sciences: Studies on the transition from historical-comparative to structural linguistics in honour of E.F.K. Koerner. Volume 2: Methodological perspectives and applications . Joseph . John E. . Niederehe . Hans-Josef . 1999-10-15 . . 978-90-272-9842-3 . 154 . en.
    26. Web site: Cambridge PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit problem. BBC News. 15 December 2022 .
    27. Web site: Solving grammar's greatest puzzle. University of Cambridge. 15 December 2022 .
    28. Whitney, p. xiii
    29. Burrow, §2.1.
    30. Coulson, p xvi.
    31. Book: Filliozat, Pierre-Sylvain . The Sanskrit language: an overview: history and structure, linguistic and philosophical representations, uses and users . 2000 . Indica Books . 978-81-86569-17-7 . Varanasi.
    32. Fallon, Oliver. 2009. Bhatti's Poem: The Death of Rávana . New York: Clay Sanskrit Library.
    33. Book: Singh, Upinder . A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India . Pearson . 2021 . 978-81-317-1677-9 . 258.
    34. W. J. Johnson (2009), A Dictionary of Hinduism, Oxford University Press,, article on Vyakarana
    35. Book: Lisa Mitchell . Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India . . 2009 . 978-0-253-35301-6 . 108.
    36. Book: Hartmut Scharfe. Grammatical Literature. 1977. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. 978-3-447-01706-0. 152–154.
    37. Book: Yuji Kawaguchi . Corpus-based Analysis and Diachronic Linguistics . Makoto Minegishi . Wolfgang Viereck . . 2011 . 978-90-272-7215-7 . 223–224.
    38. Book: Staal . Frits . Universals: studies in Indian logic and linguistics . . 1988 . 9780226769998 . 47.
    39. Kak . Subhash C. . January 1987 . The Paninian approach to natural language processing . . 1 . 1 . 117–130 . 10.1016/0888-613X(87)90007-7 . free.
    40. Frits Staal, The science of language, Chapter 16, in Gavin D. Flood, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 599 pages, . p. 357-358
    41. D'Ottavi . Giuseppe . 2013 . Paṇini et le Mémoire . Panini and the Memoir . Arena Romanistica . 12 . 164–193. (reprinted in Book: "De l'essence double du langage" et le renouveau du saussurisme . 2016 . "On the double essence of language" and the revival of Saussurism.).
    42. Book: Leonard Bloomfield . Leonard Bloomfield . On some rules of Pāṇini . . 1927 . 9780226060712 . 47 . 61–70 . 10.2307/593241 . 593241.
    43. In Pāṇini We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Aṣṭādhyāyī . Rishi Rajpopat . 2022 . University of Cambridge. 10.17863/CAM.80099 . Thesis .
    44. Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years . Phys.
    45. Web site: Almeroth-Williams . Tom . 15 December 2022 . How an Indian student made Sanskrit's 'language machine' work for the first time in 2,500 years . 19 December 2022 . . Pāṇini had an extraordinary mind and he built a machine unrivalled in human history. He didn't expect us to add new ideas to his rules. The more we fiddle with Pāṇini's grammar, the more it eludes us..
    46. Web site: A Critique on the PhD Thesis - "In Panini We Trust". Neelesh Bodas. Bharatiya Vidvat Parishat list. 21 February 2024.
    47. Bhate, S. and Kak, S. (1993) Panini and Computer Science. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 72, pp. 79-94.
    48. Book: Frits, Staal . What Euclid is to Europe, Panini is to India - Or Are They? . 6 May 2005 . . 81-87663-57-X.
    49. Book: Mukherjee, Sujit . Sujit Mukherjee . A Dictionary of Indian Literature: Beginnings-1850 . 1998 . . 978-81-250-1453-9 . 144 . en.
    50. Book: Winternitz, Moriz . Moriz Winternitz . History of Indian Literature: pt. 1. Classical Sanskrit literature. 1st ed. 1963. pt. 2. Scientific literature. 1st ed. 1967 . 1963 . . 36 . en.
    51. Book: Joseph, George Gheverghese . George Gheverghese Joseph . Indian Mathematics: Engaging With The World From Ancient To Modern Times . 2016-07-28 . . 978-1-78634-063-4 . 135–136 .
    52. Book: Plofker, Kim . Kim Plofker . Mathematics in India . 2009-01-18 . . 978-0-691-12067-6 . 54 . en.
    53. Book: Bhaskar Kompella . Mathematical Structures in Panini's Ashtadhyayi . 2019-09-30.
    54. Book: Kornai, András . András Kornai . Mathematical linguistics . 2008 . . 978-1-84628-985-9 . Advanced information and knowledge processing . London . 75.
    55. Petersen . Wiebke . 7 June 2004 . A Mathematical Analysis of Pānini's Śivasūtras . . 13 . 4 . 471–489 . 10.1007/s10849-004-2117-7 . 0925-8531.