Pāṇini

For other uses, see Panini (disambiguation).

Panini (IAST: Pāṇini, Devanāgarī: पाणिनि; a patronymic meaning "descendant of Pani") was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (traditionally 520–460 BC, but estimates range from the 7th to 4th centuries BC).

He is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi (meaning "eight chapters"), the foundational text of the grammatical branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of Vedic religion.

The Ashtadhyayi is the earliest known grammar of Sanskrit (though scholars agree it likely built on earlier works), and the earliest known work on descriptive linguistics, generative linguistics, and together with the work of his immediate predecessors (Nirukta, Nighantu, Pratishakyas) stands at the beginning of the history of linguistics itself.

Panini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the end of the period of Vedic Sanskrit, by definition introducing Classical Sanskrit.

Date and context

Nothing definite is known about Panini's life, not even the century he lived in (he lived almost certainly after the 7th and before the 4th century BC). According to tradition, he was a Phatan born in Kabul [ref: The Arugumentative Indian By Amartya Sen, The Noble Award Winner ]

He lived circa 520–460 BC. His grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so that Panini per definition lived at the end of the Vedic period: he notes a few special rules, marked chandasi ("in the hymns") to account for forms in the Vedic scriptures that had fallen out of use in the spoken language of his time, indicating that Vedic Sanskrit was already archaic, but still a comprehensible dialect.

It is also important to note that the so called Aryans were not Indian at all but came to India so they can be more formely discribed as Indo-Europen and the word could have originated from Greek or other european language prevalent.

An important hint for the dating of Panini is the occurrence of the word yavanānī (in 4.1.49, either "Greek woman", or "Greek script"). There would have been no first-hand knowledge of Greeks in Gandhara before the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s BC, but it is likely that the name was known via Old Persian yauna, so that Pāṇini may well have lived as early as the time of Darius the Great (ruled 521 BC–485/6 BC).

It is not certain whether Panini used writing for the composition of his work, though it is generally agreed that he did use a form of writing, based on references to words such as "script" and "scribe" in his Ashtadhyayi. It is believed that a work of such complexity would have been very difficult to compile without written notes, though some have argued that he might have composed it with the help of a group of students whose memories served him as 'notepads'. Writing first reappears in India (since the Indus script) in the form of the Brāhmī script from ca. the 6th century BC, though these early instances of the Brāhmī script are from Tamil Nadu in southern India, quite distant from Gandhara in northwestern India. Since Gandhara was under Persian rule in the 6th century BC, it would also be possible that he used the Aramaic alphabet (from a variant of which the Brāhmī script is likely a descendant).

While Panini's work is purely grammatical and lexicographic, cultural and geographical inferences can be drawn from the vocabulary he uses in examples, and from his references to fellow grammarians.

Deities referred to in his work include Vasudeva (4.3.98). The concept of dharma is attested in his example sentence (4.4.41) dharmam carati "he observes the law".

The Ashtadhyayi

The Ashtadhyayi is the central part of Panini's grammar, and by far the most complex. It takes material from the lexical lists (Dhatupatha, Ganapatha) as input and describes algorithms to be applied to them for the generation of well-formed words. It is highly systematised and technical. Inherent in its generative approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme and the root, only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later. His rules have a reputation for perfection — that is, they are claimed to describe Sanskrit morphology fully, without any redundancy. A consequence of his grammar's focus on brevity is its highly unintuitive structure, reminiscent of contemporary "machine language" (as opposed to "human readable" programming languages). His sophisticated logical rules and technique have been widely influential in ancient and modern linguistics.

The Ashtadhyayi consists of 3,959 sutras (sutrani) or rules, distributed among eight chapters, which are each subdivided into four sections or padas (padani).

From example words in the text, and from a few rules depending on the context of the discourse, additional information as to the geographical, cultural and historical context of Panini can be discerned.

The rules

The first two sutras are as follows:

1.1.1 vṛ́ddhir āT-aiC

1.1.2 aT-eṆ guṇáḥ

In these sutras, the capital letters are special meta-linguistic symbols; they are called IT markers (see below). The C and Ṇ refer to Shiva Sutras 4 and 3, respectively, where the same markers occur, forming what is known as the pratyaharas aiC, eṆ. They denote the list of phonemes {ai, au} and {e, o} respectively. The T appearing in both sutras is also an IT marker: It is defined in sutra 1.1.70 as indicating that the preceding phoneme is not representing a list, but a single phoneme, encompassing all supra-segmental features such as accent and nasality. For further example, āT and aT represent {ā} and {a} respectively.

Therefore, the two sutras consist of a term, followed by a list of phonemes; the final interpretation of the two sutras above is thus:

1.1.1: the technical term vṛ́ddhi denotes the phonemes {ā, ai, au}.

1.1.2: the technical term guṇa denotes the phonemes {a, e, o}.

At this point, one can see they are definitions of terminology: guṇa and vṛ́ddhi are the terms for the full and the lengthened ablaut grades, respectively.

List of IT markers

• suP   nominal desinence
• Ś-IT
  • Śi   strong case endings
  • Ślu   elision
  • ŚaP   active marker
• P-IT
  • luP   elision
  • āP   ā-stems
    • CāP
    • ṬāP
    • ḌāP
  • LyaP   (7.1.37)
• L-IT
• K-IT
  • Ktvā
  • luK   elision
• saN   Desiderative
• C-IT
• M-IT
• Ṅ-IT
  • Ṅí   Causative
  • Ṅii   ī-stems
    • ṄīP
    • ṄīN
    • Ṅī'Ṣ
  • tiṄ   verbal desinence
  • lUṄ   Aorist
  • lIṄ   Precative
• S-IT
• GHU   class of verbal stems (1.1.20)
• GHI   (1.4.7)

Auxiliary texts

Panini's Ashtadhyayi has three associated texts. The Shiva Sutras are a brief but highly organized list of phonemes. The Dhatupatha and Ganapatha are lexical lists, the former of verbal roots sorted by present class, the latter a list of nominal stems grouped by common properties.

Shiva Sutras

Main article: Shiva Sutras

The Shiva Sutras describe a phonemic notational system in the fourteen initial lines preceding the Ashtadhyayi. The notational system introduces different clusters of phonemes that serve special roles in the morphology of Sanskrit, and are referred to throughout the text. Each cluster, called a pratyāhara ends with a dummy sound called an anubandha (the so calledIT index), which acts as a symbolic referent for the list. Within the main text, these clusters, referred through the anubandhas, are related to various grammatical functions.

Dhatupatha

The Dhatupatha (dhatupatha) is a lexicon of Sanskrit verbal roots subservient to the Ashtadhyayi. It is organized by the ten present classes of Sanskrit, i.e. the roots are grouped by the form of their stem in the present tense.

The ten present classes of Sanskrit are:

1. bhūv-ādayaḥ (root-full grade thematic presents)

2. ad-ādayaḥ (root presents)

3. ju-ho-ti-ādayaḥ (reduplicated presents)

4. div-ādayaḥ (ya thematic presents)

5. su-ādayaḥ (nu presents)

6. tuda--ādayaḥ (root-zero grade thematic presents)

7. rudh-ādayaḥ (n-infix presents)

8. tan--ādayaḥ (no presents)

9. krī-ādayaḥ (ni presents)

10. cur-ādayaḥ (aya presents, causatives)

Most of these classes are directly inherited from Proto-Indo-European. The small number of class 8 verbs are a secondary group derived from class 5 roots, and class 10 is a special case, in that any verb can form class 10 presents, then assuming causative meaning. The roots specifically listed as belonging to class 10 are those for which any other form has fallen out of use (causative deponents, so to speak).

Ganapatha

The Ganapatha (gaṇapāṭha) is a list of groups of primitive nominal stems used by the Ashtadhyayi.

Commentary

After Panini, the Mahābhāṣya ("great commentary") of Patañjali on the Ashtadhyayi is one of the three most famous works in Sanskrit grammar. It was with Patañjali that Indian linguistic science reached its definite form. The system thus established is extremely detailed as to shiksha (phonology, including accent) and vyakarana (morphology). Syntax is scarcely touched, but nirukta (etymology) is discussed, and these etymologies naturally lead to semantic explanations. People interpret his work to be a defense of Panini, whose Sūtras are elaborated meaningfully. He also attacks Katyayana rather severely. But the main contributions of Patañjali lies in the treatment of the principles of grammar enunciated by him.

Editions

• Otto Böhtlingk, Panini's Grammatik 1887, reprint 1998 ISBN 3875481984
• Katre, Sumitra M., Astadhyayi of Panini, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987. Reprint Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1989. ISBN 0292703945

Panini and modern linguistics

Panini, 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. Noam Chomsky has always acknowledged his debt to Panini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar. In Optimality Theory, the hypothesis about the relation between specific and general constraints is known as "Panini's Theorem on Constraint Ranking". Paninian grammars have also been devised for non-Sanskrit languages. His work was the forerunner to modern formal language theory (mathematical linguistics) and formal grammar, and a precursor to computing.

Panini's use of metarules, transformations, and recursion together make his grammar as rigorous as a modern Turing machine. The Backus-Naur form (Panini-Backus form) or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities to Panini grammar rules.

References

• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Pāṇini", MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews 2000.
• Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky (2004): Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.
• T.R.N. Rao. Panini-backus form of languages. 1998.

See also

• Sanskrit grammarians
• Pingala
• Sanskrit
• seṭ and aniṭ roots
• Text in transliteration (on Wikisource)
• Text in Devanagari (on Wikisource)

External links

• The system of Panini
• Ganakastadhyayi, a software on Sanskrit grammar, based on Panini's Sutras
• Indian Logic and Ontology: A Survey of Contemporary Studies
• Forizs, L. Panini, Nagarjuna and Whitehead - The Relevance of Whitehead for Contemporary Buddhist Philosophy