Pāṇini

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For other uses, see Panini (disambiguation).

Pāṇini (IAST: Pāṇini, Devanāgarī: पाणिनि; a patronymic meaning "descendant of Pani") was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (fl. 4th century BC[1][2]).

He is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules [2] 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 one of earliest known grammar of Sanskrit, and he referred to previous texts like Unadisutra, Dhatupatha, Ganapatha [2]. It is 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.

On Monday, August 30, 2004, the Department of Posts of the Government of India, released a Rs. 5 postage stamp to honor Panini.

Contents

[edit] Date and context

Nothing definite is known about Panini's life, not even the century he lived in. The scholarly mainstream favours a 4th century BC floruit, corresponding to Achaemenid Gandhara with Pushkalavati as its capital, contemporary to the Nanda Dynasty ruling the Indo-Gangetic plain, but a 5th or even late 6th century BC date cannot be ruled out with certainty.

Panini's 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.

An important hint for the dating of Panini is the occurrence of the word yavanānī (यवनाना) (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[3], but it is likely that the name was known via Old Persian yauna, so that the occurrence of yavanānī taken in isolation allows for a terminus post quem as early as 520 BC, i.e. the time of the conquest of Darius the Great.

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.[4] 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.

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".

[edit] The Ashtadhyayi

The Ashtadhyayi (Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी)) 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.

[edit] The rules

The first two sutras are as follows:

1.1.1 vṛddhir ādaiC
1.1.2 adeṆ guṇaḥ

In these sutras, the capital letters are special meta-linguistic symbols; they are called IT markers or, in later writers such as Katyayana and Patanjali, anubandhas (see below). The C and Ṇ refer to Shiva Sutras 4 ("ai, au, C") and 3 ("e, o, Ṇ"), 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.

[edit] List of IT markers

its or anubandhas are defined in P. 1.3.2 through P. 1.3.8. These definitions refer only to items taught in the grammar or its ancillary texts such at the dhātupāţha; this fact is made clear in P. 1.3.2 by the word upadeśe, which is then continued in the following six rules by anuvṛtti. As these anubandhas are metalinguistic markers and not pronounced in the final derived form,pada (word), they are elided by P. 1.3.9 tasya lopaḥ - 'There is elision of that (i.e. any of the preceding items which have been defined as an it).' Accordingly, the anubandhas as defined by Panini are as follows:

1) Nasalized vowels, e.g bhañjO. Cf. P. 1.3.2.

2) A final consonant (haL). Cf. P. 1.3.3.

2a) except a dental, m and s in verbal or nominal endings. Cf. P. 1.3.4.

3) Initial ñi ṭu ḍu. Cf. P 1.3.5

4) Initial ṣ of a suffix (pratyaya). Cf. P. 1.3.6.

5) Initial palatals and cerebrals of a suffix. Cf. P. 1.3.7

6) Initial l, ś, and k but not in a taddhita 'secondary' suffix. Cf. P. 1.3.8.


A few example of elements that contain its are as follows:

  • 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)

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

Use the Pratyahara Decoder at http://www.sktutilities.com/pratyaharaAction.do to understand them paradigmatically. It is also available for Free Download as a Java Utility from the same Web Site.

[edit] 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).

[edit] Ganapatha

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

[edit] 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.

[edit] Editions

[edit] 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. While this is maintained by Prem Singh in his foreword to the reprint edition of the German translation of Paninis Grammar in 1998, George Cardona (University of Pennsylvania) warns against an overestimation: "As far as I am able to discern upon rereading Saussure's Memoire, however, it shows no direct influence of Paninian grammar. Indeed, on occasion, Saussure follows a path that is contrary to Paninian procedure." (cf. Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 120, No. 3, (Jul. - Sep., 2000), p. 465)

Noam Chomsky has always acknowledged his debt to Panini for his modern notion of an explicit generative grammar.[5] 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.[6]

Panini's use of metarules, transformations, and recursion together make his grammar as rigorous as a modern Turing machine[weasel words]. The Backus-Naur form (Panini-Backus form) or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities to Panini grammar rules. Panini's grammar can be considered to be the world's first formal system, well before the 19th century innovations of Gottlob Frege and the subsequent development of mathematical logic. To design his grammar, Panini used the method of "auxiliary symbols," in which new affixes are designated to mark syntactic categories and the control of grammatical derivations. This technique was rediscovered by the logician Emil Post and is now a standard method in the design of computer programming languages.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Frits Staal, Euclid and Pāṇini, Philosophy East and West, 1965; R. A. Jairazbhoy, On Mundkur on Diffusion, Current Anthropology (1979).
  2. ^ a b c Sanskrit Literature The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2, p. 263.
  3. ^ "Aside from the more abstract considerations of long-distance artistic or philosophical influence, the concrete evidence we have for direct contact between Greeks and Indians is largely limited to the period between the third century BCE and first century CE.", 'Hellenistic India' by Rachel R. Mairs, University of Cambridge
  4. ^ Hartmut Scharfe (2002). Education in Ancient India.
  5. ^ ...happy to receive the honour in the land where his subject had its origin. "The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar", http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1825/18250150.htm
  6. ^ O'Connor, John J. & Robertson, Edmund F., “Pāṇini”, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive  2000.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links