Pāṇini
Ancient Sanskrit grammarian
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Panini (Sanskrit: पाणिनि, pāṇini) was a Sanskrit grammarian, logician, philologist, and revered scholar of Ancient India[2][9][10] during the mid-1st millennium BCE,[note 2] dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th[3][4] and 4th centuries BCE.[1][5][6][7]
Pāṇini | |
|---|---|
| पाणिनि | |
| |
| Born | Ancient India[note 1] |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | fl. mid 1st-millennium BCE[note 2]; variously dated between 6th–5th century BCE[3][4] and 4th century BCE[5][6][7][1] |
| Region | Indian philosophy |
| Main interests | Grammar, linguistics |
| Notable works | Aṣṭādhyāyī (Classical Sanskrit) |
| Notable ideas | Descriptive linguistics |
The greatest linguist of antiquity
Pāṇini.. was the greatest linguist of antiquity, and deserves to be treated as such.
The historical facts of his life are unknown, except only what can be inferred from his works, and legends recorded long after. His most notable work, the Ashtadhyayi (Aṣṭādhyāyī) (Devanagari: अष्टाध्यायी), is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His work formally codified Classical Sanskrit as a refined and standardized language, making use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology, and lexicon, organised according to a series of meta-rules.[note 3]
Since the exposure of European scholars to his Ashtadhyayi in the nineteenth century, Panini has been considered the "first descriptive linguist",[12] and even labelled as "the father of linguistics".[13][14] His approach to grammar influenced such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield.[15]
Biography
Father of linguistics
The history of linguistics begins not with Plato or Aristotle, but with the Indian grammarian Panini.
The name Panini is a patronymic meaning descendant of Paṇina.[17] His full name was Dakṣiputra Panini according to verses 1.75.13 and 3.251.12 of Patanjali's Mahabhashya Mahābhāṣya, with the first part suggesting his mother's name was Dakṣi.[4]
Dating
Nothing definite is known about when Panini lived, not even in which century he lived. Panini has been dated between the seventh[18] or sixth[4] and fourth century BCE.[5][6][7][1][19][note 2]
George Cardona (1997) in his authoritative survey and review of Panini-related studies, states that the available evidence strongly supports a dating not before 400 BCE, while earlier dating depends on interpretations and is not probative.[20]
Based on numismatic findings, von Hinüber (1989) and Falk (1993) place Panini in the mid-4th century BCE.[5][6][7][19] Panini'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 originated in India in the 4th-century BCE.[7] According to Houben, "the date of "c. 350 BCE for Panini is thus based on concrete evidence which till now has not been refuted."[7] According to Bronkhorst (2016), 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 Panini 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.[6]
It is not certain whether Panini 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 Ashtadhyayi.[21][22] The dating of the introduction of writing to present day North West Pakistan may therefore give further information on the historical dating of Panini.[note 5]
Panini cites at least ten grammarians and linguists before him: Āpiśali, Kāśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cākravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka, Sphoṭāyana and Yaska.[29] According to Kamal K. Misra, Panini references Yaska's Nirukta,[30] "whose writings date back to the middle of the 4th century B.C".[31]
The Sanskrit epic Brihatkatha and the Buddhist scripture Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa both mention Panini to have been a contemporary with the king Dhana Nanda (reigned 329-321 BCE), the last monarch of the Nanda Empire before Chandragupta Maurya came to power.[32]
Cardona offers an earlier date for Panini,[33] by arguing the compound word yavanānī, 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.[34][note 7] 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 Panini to be placed before the, 5th century BCE, Gautama Buddha.[33] Others, based on Panini's linguistic style, date his works to the sixth or fifth century BCE, as:
- According to Bod, Panini's grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so Panini is chronologically placed in the later part of the Vedic period, corresponding to the seventh to fifth century BCE.[16]
- According to A. B. Keith, the Sanskrit text that most matches the language described by Panini 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."[4]
Location
Nothing certain is known about Panini'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 Panini was born, and where he composed the Qingming-lun (Sanskrit: Vyākaraṇa).[38][40][41]
According to Hartmut Scharfe, Panini lived in Gandāra, while a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, post the, c. 535 BCE, Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley, but before the, 327 BCE, conquest of Alexander the Great. He must, therefore, have been technically a Persian subject but his work shows no awareness of the Persian language.[4][42] According to Patrick Olivelle, Panini's text and references to him elsewhere suggest that "he was clearly a northerner, probably from the northwestern region".[43]
Legends and later reception
According to Kathāsaritsāgara legends Panini studied under his guru Varsha in Pataliputra (modern Patna). Not the brightest of his disciples, on the advice of Varsha's wife, Panini went to the Himalayas to do penance and gain knowledge from Shiva. Sutras were granted by Shiva, who danced and played his damaru before Panini and produced the basic sounds of these sutras, Panini accepted them and they are now known as the Shiva Sutras. Armed with this new grammar Panini came back from the Himalayas to Pataliputra. But at the same time, Vararuchi, another disciple of Varsha had learned of a grammar from Indra. They engaged in a debate which lasted eight days and on the last day, with Vararuchi emerging dominant, Panini was able to defeat him with the help of Shiva who destroyed Vararuchi's grammar book. Panini then defeated the rest of Varsha's disciples and emerged as the greatest grammarian.[44]
Panini is believed to have spent the major portion of his life in Pataliputra and according to some pandits, he was born and brought up there, the ancestors of Panini having already moved there from Salatura.[44] Panini, has also been associated with the University of Taxila.[45]
Panini is also mentioned in Indian fables and other ancient texts. The Panchatantra, for example, mentions that Panini was killed by a lion.[46][47][48][49]
According to some historians Pingala was the brother of Panini.[50]
Panini was depicted on a five-rupee Indian postage stamp in August 2004.[51][52][53][54]
Ashtadhyayi
The most important of Panini's works, the Ashtadhyayi, is a grammatical treatise on the Sanskrit language. It is descriptive[55] and generative with algebraic-like rules governing every aspect of the language. It is supplemented by three ancillary texts: the akṣarasamāmnāya, dhātupāṭha[A] and gaṇapāṭha.[B][56] Modeled on the dialect and register of elite speakers in his time, the text also accounts for some features of the older Vedic language.[57]
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.[58][59][60][61]
The Ashtadhyayi 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.[62][63]
The Ashtadhyayi, 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, Panini is said to have preferred brevity over clarity[64]—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 Panini's work.[65][66]
Bhaṭṭikāvya
Indian curriculums in the late classical era had at their core a system of grammatical study and linguistic analysis.[67] The core text for this study was the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, the sine qua non of learning.[68] This grammar of Panini 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 Panini'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
Panini is known for his text Ashtadhyayi, a sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar,[2][10] which consists of 3,996[69] 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.[70][71][72] His aphoristic text attracted numerous bhashya (commentaries), of which the Mahabhashya by Patanjali is the most famous.[73] His ideas influenced and attracted commentaries from scholars of other Indian religions such as Buddhism.[74]
Panini's analysis of noun compounds still forms the basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding in Indian languages. Panini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[75] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.
Panini's theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before the 20th century.[76] 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.[77]
Modern linguistics
Panini's work became known in 19th-century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp. 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 Paninian grammar.[78] In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Panini 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.[78]
De Saussure
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 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 Panini as an influence on the work.[79]
Prem Singh, in his foreword to the reprint edition of the German translation of Panini'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 Panini 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."[79][80]
Comparison with modern formal systems
Panini's grammar has been described as "the first context-sensitive formal model of language", showing "many features of a formal, computationally implementable system" comparable to the modern Backus–Naur form.[81] It is a rigorous formal system developed well before the 19th century innovations of Gottlob Frege and the subsequent development of mathematical logic.[82]
In designing his grammar, Panini used the method of codifying rules through use of auxiliary markers, in which affixes are designated to mark syntactic categories and the control of grammatical derivations through replacement rules (e.g.: "what to do if a stem is marked as a past tense verb, what to do if a noun is marked as an instrumental object, how to indicate passive versus active, what sound adjustments to make for adjacent phonemes, and so forth").[82] This technique has been compared to the rewrite systems developed in the 1920s-1930s by the logician Emil Post, which became a standard method in the design of computer programming languages.[83][84] Sanskritists now accept that Panini'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"[85] and that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially Panini, had mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by Noam Chomsky.[86] (Chomsky himself has said that the first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar).[87]
Other works
Two literary works are attributed to Panini, though they are now lost.
- The Jāmbavati Vijaya is a lost epic poem cited by Rajashekhara in Jalhana's Sukti Muktāvalī. A fragment of this work can be found in Ramayukta's commentary on the Namalinganushasana. The title suggests that the work dealt with Krishna's winning of Jambavati from the underworld as his bride.[88] Rajashekhara is quoted thus in Jalhana's Sukti Muktāvalī:
- नमः पाणिनये तस्मै यस्मादाविर भूदिह।
- आदौ व्याकरणं काव्यमनु जाम्बवतीजयम्॥
- namaḥ pāṇinaye tasmai yasmādāvirabhūdiha।
- ādau vyākaraṇaṃ kāvyamanu jāmbavatījayam॥
- Ascribed to Panini, 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.[89]
There are many proto-mathematical concepts found in Panini's works. Panini came up with a plethora of ideas to organize the known grammatical forms of his day in a systematic way.[90][91] Like any mathematician who models a known phenomenon in mathematical language, Panini created a metalanguage which is very close to the modern-day ideas of algebra.[92][93][94]
See also
Glossary
Notes
- 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"[95]
- 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."[1]
- Frits Staal (1965): "fourth century B.C."[96]
- Houben (2009), p.6[7]
- Vergiani 2017, p. 243, n.4[5]
- Frits Staal (1996): "the Sanskrit grammar of Panini (6th or 5th century b.c.e.)"[3]
- Hartmut Scharfe (1977): "Panini's date can be fixed only approximately; he must be older than Kātyāyana (c. 250 B.C.) who in his comments on Panini's work refers to other earlier scholars dealing with Panini's grammar; his proximity to the Vedic language as found in the Upanishads and Vedic sutras suggests the 5th or maybe 6th c. B.C."[4] Scharfe refers to: Paul Thieme, Panini and the Veda (Allahabad, 1935), p. 75-81, OCLC 15644563."[4]
- Encyclopedia Britannica: "Ashtadhyayi, Sanskrit Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight Chapters"), Sanskrit treatise on grammar written in the 6th to 5th century BCE by the Indian grammarian Panini."
- Rens Bod (2013): "All we know is that he was born in Gandhara, in former India (currently Afghanistan), and that it must have been between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE."[18] Bod refers to "S. Shukla, 'Panini', Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 2nd edition, Elsevier, 2006. See also Paul Kiparsky, 'Paninian Linguistics', Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 1st edition, Elsevier, 1993."[97]
- "The elegance and comprehensiveness of [the Aṣṭādhyāyī's] architecture have yet to be surpassed [...], and its ingenious methods of stratifying out use and mention, language and metalanguage, and theorem and metatheorem predate key discoveries in western philosophy by millennia."[11]
- The earliest time or historical period during which an event may have happened
- Pāṇini's use of the term lipi has been a source of scholarly disagreements. Harry Falk in his 1993 overview states that ancient Indians neither knew nor used writing scripts, and Pāṇini's mention is likely a reference to Semitic and Greek scripts.[23] In his 1995 review, Salomon questions Falk's arguments and writes it is "speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm grounds for a late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Aśoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not employed for monumental purposes before Aśoka".[24] According to Hartmut Scharfe, the Lipi of Pāṇini may have been borrowed from the Old Persian Dipi, in turn derived from the Sumerian Dup. Scharfe adds that the best evidence, at the time of his review, is that no script was used in India, aside from the Northwest Indian subcontinent, before around 300 BCE because Indian tradition "at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage."[25] Kenneth Norman states that writing scripts in ancient India evolved over long periods of time like other cultures, that it is unlikely that ancient Indians developed a single complete writing system at one and the same time in the Mauryan era. It is even less likely, states Norman, that a writing script was invented during Ashoka's rule, starting from nothing, for the specific purpose of writing his inscriptions and then it was understood all over South Asia where the Aśoka pillars are found.[26] Jack Goody states that ancient India likely had a "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the corpus of Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system.[27] Falk disagrees with Goody, and suggests that it is a Western presumption and inability to imagine that remarkably early scientific achievements such as Pāṇini's grammar (5th to 4th century BCE), and the creation, preservation and wide distribution of the large corpus of the Brahmanic Vedic literature and the 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".[28]
- Ionian
- In 1862 Max Müller argued that yavana may have meant "Greek"[note 6] during Pāṇinis time, but may also refer to Semitic or dark-skinned Indian people.[35][36]
- now a part of the Swabi District of modern Pakistan
