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PANINI'S SCHOOL

Panini's work became widely influential, and he later Sanskrit grammarians added to the work by considering various issues such as the nature of the word-meaning mapping, processes of linguistic acquistition, etc. However, his is not the earliest thinking on grammar, as is known from references in the Ashtadhyayi itself. His work is still referred to in the teaching of Sanskrit today.

Panini's grammar consists of several parts, of which the Ashtadhyayi, containing the morphological rules, forms the core:

Commentators on Panini and some of their views:
  • called ''arbitrary''. Word meanings refer to universals that are inherent in the word itself (close to a Nominalist position).

  • Patanjali (c. 200 AD) - author of Mahabhashya . The notion of ''shabdapramAnah'' - that grammar reflects what people actually say, and not some ideal usage. Also the founder of the Yoga system.

  • The Nyaya school, close to the Realist position (as in Plato ). Considers the word-meaning relation as created through human convention. Sentence meaning is principally determined by the main noun. Uddyotkara , Vachaspati (sound-universals or phonemes)

  • The Mimamsa school. E.g. sentence meaning relies mostly on the verb (corresponds to the modern notion of linguistic Head ). Kumarila Bhatta , Prabhakara .

  • Bhartrihari (c. 4th c. AD) that meaning is determined by larger contextual units than the word alone (holism).

  • The Buddhist school, including Dignaga (semantics and logic), Dharmakirti .


Predecessors referred to in Ashtadhyayi include Sakatayana , and Gargya .

Other Indian linguists :


EARLY ACCOUNTS

The earliest external historical accounts of Indian grammatical tradition is from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India from the 7th Century .


The ''Indica'' of Abu Raihan Al-Biruni (973-1048), dating to ca. 1030 contains detailed descriptions of all branches of Hindu science.

Similar to the Chinese Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhism aroused interest in India among its followers. Taranatha (born 1573) in his treatise of the history of Buddhism in India (completed around 1608 ) speaks about Panini and provides some information about grammars, but not in the manner of a person familiar with their content.


BEGINNING OF WESTERN SCHOLARSHIP



19TH CENTURY



MODERN PERIOD



REFERENCES

  • Frits Staal , ''A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians'', Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972), reprint by Motilal Barabasidass, Delhi (1985), ISBN 812080029X.