Pāṇini

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the ancient Sanskrit scholar. For other uses, see Panini (disambiguation).

Pāṇini
पाणिनि
Born
Northwest
Descriptive linguistics

The greatest linguist of antiquity
Pāṇini.. was the greatest linguist of antiquity, and deserves to be treated as such.

— JF Staal, A reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians[8]

Pāṇini (

ancient India,[7][9][10] variously dated between the 7th[5][6][note 1] and 4th century BCE.[1][2][3][4]

Since the discovery and publication of his work

descriptive linguist",[11] and even labelled as "the father of linguistics".[12][13] His approach to grammar influenced such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield.[14]

Biography

Father of linguistics
The history of linguistics begins not with Plato or Aristotle, but with the Indian grammarian Panini.

— Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam[15]

Pāṇini likely lived in

Mahājanapada era.[4][16]

The name Pāṇini is a

Mahābhāṣya, with the first part suggesting his mother's name was Dakṣi.[6]

Dating

Nothing definite is known about when Pāṇini lived, not even in which century he lived. Pāṇini has been dated between the seventh[6][18] and fourth century BCE.[19][1][2][3][4][note 1]

George Cardona (1997) in his authoritative survey and review of Pāṇini-related studies, states that the available evidence strongly supports a dating no later than between 400 and 350 BCE, while earlier dating depends on interpretations and is not probative.[20]

Based on numismatic findings, von Hinüber (1989) and Falk (1993) place Pāṇini in the mid-4th century BCE.[1][2][3][19] 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.[3] According to Houben, "the date of "c. 350 BCE for Pāṇini is thus based on concrete evidence which till now has not been refuted."[3] According to Bronkhorst, there is no reason to doubt the validity of Von Hinüber's and Falk's argument, setting the terminus post quem[note 4] for the date of Pāṇini at 350 BCE or the decades thereafter.[19] According to Bronkhorst,

...thanks to the work carried out by Hinüber (1990:34-35) and Falk (1993: 303-304), we now know that Pāṇini lived, in all probability, far closer in time to the period of

Aśoka than had hitherto been thought. According to Falk's reasoning, Panini must have lived during the decade following 350 BCE, that is, just before (or contemporaneously with?) the invasion by Alexander of Macedonia.[2]

Cardona mentions two major pieces of internal evidence for the dating of Pāṇini.

Gautama Buddha. K. B. Pathak (1930) argued that kumāraśramaṇa could also refer to a Jain nun, meaning that Pāṇini is not necessarily to be placed after the Buddha.[21]

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.[25][26] The dating of the introduction of writing to present day North West Pakistan may therefore give further information on the historical dating of Pāṇini.[note 7]

Pāṇini cites at least ten grammarians and linguists before him: Āpiśali,

Yaska.[33] According to Kamal K. Misra, Pāṇini references Yaska's Nirukta,[34] "whose writings date back to the middle of the 4th century B.C".[35]

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.[36]

Others, based on Panini's linguistic style, date his works to the sixth or fifth century BCE, as:

  • According to Bod, Pāṇini's grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so Pāṇini is chronologically placed in the later part of the Vedic period, corresponding to the seventh to fifth century BCE.[15]
  • According to A. B. Keith, the Sanskrit text that most matches the language described by Pāṇini is the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (c. 8th – 6th BCE).[37]
  • According to Scharfe, "his proximity to the Vedic language as found in the Upanishads and Vedic sūtras suggests the 5th or maybe 6th c. B.C."[6]

Location

river
class=notpageimage|
Approximate geographical region of Gandhara centered on the Peshawar Basin, in present-day northwest Pakistan

Nothing certain is known about Pāṇini's personal life. In an inscription of Siladitya VII of Valabhi,[who?] he is called Śalāturiya, which means "a man from Salatura".[citation needed] 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.[note 8][38][39] 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).[38][40][41]

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.[6][42] According to Patrick Olivelle, Pāṇini's text and references to him elsewhere suggest that "he was clearly a northerner, probably from the northwestern region".[43]

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.[44][45][46]

Pāṇini was depicted on a five-rupee Indian postage stamp in August 2004.[47][48][49][50]

Aṣṭādhyāyī

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[51] and generative grammar with algebraic rules governing every aspect of the language. It is supplemented by three ancillary texts: the akṣarasamāmnāya, dhātupāṭha[A] and gaṇapāṭha.[B][52]

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.[53][54][55][56]

The Aṣṭādhyāyī consists of 3,959 sūtras[C] 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.[57][58]

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[59] - it can be recited end-to-end in two hours. This has led to the emergence of a great number of commentaries[D] of his work over the centuries, which for the most part adhere to the foundations laid by Pāṇini's work.[60][61]

Bhaṭṭikāvya

Main article: Bhaṭṭikāvya

Indian curriculums in the late classical era had at their core a system of grammatical study and linguistic analysis.[62] The core text for this study was the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, the sine qua non of learning.[63] 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

Mahābhāṣya by Patanjali is the most famous.[68] His ideas influenced and attracted commentaries from scholars of other Indian religions such as Buddhism.[69]

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.[70] 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.[71] 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.[72]

Part of a series on
Hinduism
Origins
Historical

Traditional

Traditions
Major traditions
Deities
Other major Devas / Devis
Vedic:
Post-Vedic:
Concepts
Worldview
Ontology
God
Mokṣa-related topics:
Mind
Ethics
Practices
Worship, sacrifice, and charity
Meditation
Philosophical schools
Six Astika schools
Other schools
Gurus, sants, philosophers
Ancient
Modern
Texts
Divisions
Rigveda:
Yajurveda:
Samaveda:
Atharvaveda:
Vedangas
Other scriptures
Society
Four varnas:
Varna-less:
Varna-related topics:
Other society-related topics:
Other topics
Hindu culture
Hinduism and other religions

Modern linguistics

Pāṇini's work became known in 19th-century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through

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.[73]

De Saussure

Pāṇini, and the later Indian linguist

Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit) published in 1881, he specifically mentions Pāṇini as an influence on the work.[74]

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."[74][75]

Leonard Bloomfield

The founding father of American structuralism[citation needed], Leonard Bloomfield, wrote a 1927 paper titled "On some rules of Pāṇini".[76]

Rishi Rajpopat

Rishi Rajpopat elaborated in 2021 in his PhD thesis

better source needed
]

Comparison with modern formal systems

Pāṇini's grammar is the world's first

computer programming languages.[81][82] 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."[83]

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॥
  • Ascribed to Pāṇini, the Pātāla Vijaya (Victory in/over the Underworld) is a lost work cited by Namisadhu in his commentary on the Kavyalankara (Poetic Aesthetics) of Rudrata. The Pātāla Vijaya is considered the same work as the Jāmbavati Vijaya by Moriz Winternitz.[85]

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.[86][87] 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.[88][89][90]

See also

Glossary

  1. ^ dhātu: root, pāṭha: reading, lesson
  2. ^ gaṇa: class
  3. ^ aphoristic threads
  4. ^ bhāṣyas

Notes

  1. ^ a b c 4th century BCE date:
    • Johannes Bronkhorst (2019): "Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī has been the target of much guesswork as to its date. Only recently have more serious proposals been made. Oskar von Hinüber (1990: 34) arrives, on the basis of a comparison of Pāṇini's text with numismatic findings, at a date that can hardly be much earlier than 350 BCE; Harry Falk (1993: 304; 1994: 327 n. 45) refines these reflections and moves the date forward to the decennia following 350 BCE. If Hinüber and Falk are right, and there seems no reason to doubt this, we have here for Pāṇini a terminus post quem.[19]
    • Michael Witzel (2009): "c. 350 BCE"[91]
    • Cardona: "The evidence for dating Panini, Kātyāyana and Patanjali is not absolutely probative and depends on interpretation. However, I think there is one certainty, namely that the evidence available hardly allows one to date Panini later than the early to mid fourth century B. C."[4]
    • Frits Staal (1965): "fourth century B.C."[92]
    6th or 5th century BCE date: 7th to 5th century BCE date
  2. ^ According to George Cardona, Sanskrit literary tradition believes that Pāṇini came from Salatura in the northwest part of the Indian subcontinent.[4] This is likely to be ancient Gandhara.[7]
  3. ^ In what is now modern day Pakistan
  4. ^ The earliest time or historical period during which an event may have happened
  5. ^ Ionian
  6. ^ In 1862 Max Müller argued that yavana may have meant "Greek"[note 5] during Pāṇinis time, but may also refer to Semitic or dark-skinned Indian people.[23][24]
  7. Buddhist canonical literature were possible without any writing scripts. Johannes Bronkhorst disagrees with Falk, and states, "Falk goes too far. It is fair to expect that we believe that Vedic memorisation — though without parallel in any other human society — has been able to preserve very long texts for many centuries without losing a syllable. (...) However, the oral composition of a work as complex as Pāṇini's grammar is not only without parallel in other human cultures, it is without parallel in India itself. (...) It just will not do to state that our difficulty in conceiving any such thing is our problem".[32]
  8. ^ now a part of the Swabi District of modern Pakistan

References

  1. ^ a b c d Vergiani 2017, p. 243, n.4.
  2. ^ a b c d e Bronkhorst 2016, p. 171.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Houben 2009, p. 6.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Cardona 1997, p. 268.
  5. ^ a b c Staal 1996, p. 39.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Scharfe 1977, p. 88.
  7. ^ a b c Staal 1965.
  8. ^ Staal 1972, p. xi.
  9. ^ Lidova 1994, p. 108-112.
  10. ^ a b Lochtefeld 2002, p. 64–65, 140, 402.
  11. ^ François & Ponsonnet (2013: 184).
  12. ^ Bod 2013, p. 14-19.
  13. ISBN 978-81-208-1025-9
    .
  14. OCLC 35178602
    .
  15. ^ a b Bod 2013, p. 14-18.
  16. ISBN 978-1-134-25161-2
    .
  17. ISBN 978-81-208-0521-7
    .
  18. ^ a b Bod 2013, p. 14.
  19. ^ a b c d Bronkhorst 2019.
  20. ^ Cardona 1997, pp. 261–268.
  21. ^ a b Cardona 1997, p. 261-262.
  22. ^ Cardona 1997, p. 261.
  23. Bibcode:1862ahac.book.....M
    .
  24. ISBN 978-0-19-283882-7
    .
  25. ISBN 978-0-19-535666-3
    .
  26. ISBN 978-1-4020-8192-7
    .
  27. ISBN 9783823342717
    .
  28. JSTOR 604670
    .
  29. ISBN 9789047401476
  30. OCLC 22195130
    .
  31. ISBN 978-0-521-33794-6
    .
  32. ^ Bronkhorst, Johannes (2002). "Literacy and Rationality in Ancient India" (PDF). Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques (Asian Studies). 56 (4): 797–831.
  33. ^ Cardona 1997, p. §1.3.
  34. ISBN 978-94-024-1036-5
    , retrieved 4 October 2023
  35. ^ Misra 2000, p. 49.
  36. ISBN 978-81-317-1120-0
    .
  37. OCLC 611413511
    .
  38. ^
    ISBN 978-3-447-01706-0
    .
  39. ISBN 81-260-1198-X
    .
  40. ISBN 978-81-7488-168-7
  41. Sampurnanand Sanskrit University. Archived from the original
    on 11 March 2014. Retrieved 21 May 2013.
  42. JSTOR 44144820
    .
  43. ISBN 978-0-19-283882-7
    .
  44. ^ Cardona 1997. The verse reads siṃho vyākaraṇasya kartur aharat prāṇān priyān pāṇineḥ "a lion took the dear life of Panini, author of the grammatical treatise". (Panchatantra II.28)
  45. S2CID 162641089
    .
  46. ISBN 978-81-208-0651-1
    .
  47. ^ "Stamps 2004". Indian Department of Posts, Ministry of Communications & Information Technology. 23 April 2015. Retrieved 3 June 2015.
  48. ^ "Panini". www.istampgallery.com. 23 October 2015. Retrieved 11 December 2018.
  49. ^ Academy, Himalayan. "Hinduism Today Magazine". www.hinduismtoday.com. Retrieved 11 December 2018.
  50. ^ "India Postage Stamp on Panini issued on 01 Aug 2004". www.getpincodes.com. Retrieved 11 December 2018.
  51. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-00155-0_2
    .
  52. ^ Cardona, p. §1-3.
  53. ISBN 978-81-208-1767-8
    .
  54. ISBN 9789027277671
    .
  55. ^ Burnell, Arthur Coke (1875). On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, Their Place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures. p. 87.
  56. ISBN 978-90-272-9842-3
    .
  57. ^ "Cambridge PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit problem". BBC News. 15 December 2022.
  58. ^ "Solving grammar's greatest puzzle". University of Cambridge. 15 December 2022.
  59. ^ Whitney, p. xiii
  60. ^ Burrow, §2.1.
  61. ^ Coulson, p xvi.
  62. ISBN 978-81-86569-17-7
    .
  63. ISBN 978-0-8147-2778-2
  64. ISBN 978-81-317-1677-9
    .
  65. ISBN 978-0198610250
    , article on Vyakarana
  66. ^ Harold G. Coward 1990, p. 105.
  67. ISBN 978-0-253-35301-6
    .
  68. ^ Lochtefeld 2002, p. 497.
  69. ISBN 978-3-447-01706-0
    .
  70. ISBN 978-90-272-7215-7
    .
  71. ISBN 9780226769998
    .
  72. doi:10.1016/0888-613X(87)90007-7
    .
  73. ^
    ISBN 978-0-631-21535-6
    . p. 357-358
  74. ^
    JSTOR 606023
  75. ^ D'Ottavi, Giuseppe (2013). "Paṇini et le Mémoire" [Panini and the Memoir]. Arena Romanistica. 12: 164–193. (reprinted in "De l'essence double du langage" et le renouveau du saussurisme ["On the double essence of language" and the revival of Saussurism]. 2016.).
  76. ^
    JSTOR 593241. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help
    )
  77. doi:10.17863/CAM.80099
    .
  78. ^ "Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years". Phys.
  79. ^ Almeroth-Williams, Tom (15 December 2022). "How an Indian student made Sanskrit's 'language machine' work for the first time in 2,500 years". Scroll.in. Retrieved 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.
  80. ^ Neelesh Bodas. "A Critique on the PhD Thesis - "In Panini We Trust"". Bharatiya Vidvat Parishat list. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  81. ^ Bhate, S. and Kak, S. (1993) Panini and Computer Science. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 72, pp. 79-94.
  82. S2CID 52885600
    .
  83. ISBN 81-87663-57-X
    .
  84. ISBN 978-81-250-1453-9
    .
  85. ^ Winternitz, Moriz (1963). History of Indian Literature: pt. 1. Classical Sanskrit literature. 1st ed. 1963. pt. 2. Scientific literature. 1st ed. 1967. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 36.
  86. ISBN 978-1-78634-063-4
    .
  87. ISBN 978-0-691-12067-6
    .
  88. ^ Bhaskar Kompella (30 September 2019). Mathematical Structures in Panini's Ashtadhyayi.
  89. ISBN 978-1-84628-985-9
    .
  90. ISSN 0925-8531
    .
  91. ^ Witzel 2009.
  92. ^ Staal 1965, p. 99.
  93. ^ Bod 2013, p. 14, note 2.

Bibliography

Further reading

Works
Pāṇini

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Pāṇini.
Sanskrit Wikisource has original text related to this article: