PANINI AND SANSKRIT GRAMMAR
JUD EVANS
OCT 2010
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PANINI AND SANSKRIT GRAMMAR
The most fascinating non-Western grammatical
tradition, and the most germinal and independent
- is that of India, which dates back at least
two and one-half millennia and which culminates
with the grammar of Panini whose date is
usually given as being circa the 5th century
BC. The Sanskrit grammar of Panini already
comprises a fully formulated system, its
author standing at the end of a long line
of precursors of which sixty-four are named
but whose works have entirely perished.
Panini himself uses the word 'Yavanani' which
Katyayana explains as 'writing of the Yavanas'
(i. e. Iaones or Greeks.) Although it is
unlikely that Indian scholars could have
come into first hand contact with Greek manuscripts
before the invasion of Alexander in 327 BC,
Panini could well have had contact with Greeks
familiar with studies of rhetoric, since
the Ionian Greeks had dealings with Persia
from c. 540 BC, and many who were exiled
settled in Persia well before 327 BC. They
must, however, have grown familiar with Greek
ideas before a grammarian would make a rule
as to how to form from Yavana, 'Greek, '
a derivative form meaning 'Greek writing.
' Panini's grammar consists of nearly 4,
000 rules divided into eight chapters. It
provides a collection of 2,000 roots.
Being composed with the maximum conceivable
brevity, this grammar describes the entire
Sanskrit language in all the details of its
structure, with a unity which has never been
equalled elsewhere. It is at once the shortest
and fullest grammar in the world. The grammar
of Panini is a 'sabdanusasana,' or 'Treatise
on Words', the cardinal principle of which
is, that all nouns are derived from verbs,
and because of this belief it was natural
that the Sanskrit copula should also be categorized
as a verb. It is tempting to speculate that
maybe it was Panini's inclusion of the copula
as a verb that influenced the Greek grammarians
to wrongfully classify the 'be' word as a
verb, but there is no evidence that the early
Greek grammarians ever read the Sanskrit
grammar of Panini, although there was communication
between the Greek classical world and that
of the Indian northwest, and some of the
ancient Vedic scholars may well have been
known to the Greeks and possibly vice versa.
For example, in 302 BC the Greek historian
Megasthenes was known to have been the ambassador
of Seleucus I Nicator, founder of the Seleucid
Empire, to the court of Candragupta Maurya,
Ashoka's grandfather in what is modern-day
Patna.
Ashoka.
Ashoka's reign of the third century BC is
comparatively well documented. He issued
a large number of edicts, which were inscribed
in many parts of the empire and were composed
in Prakrit, Greek, and Aramaic, depending
on the language current in a particular region.
Greek and Aramaic inscriptions are limited
to Afghanistan and the trans-Indus region.
In one edict Ashoka referred to five Greek
kings who were his neighbours and contemporaries
and to whom he sent envoys, but no amount
of cultural intercourse proves with certainty
that there was any cross-fertilisation of
linguistic theory and that the curious beliefs
of the Indians that all words were essentially
verbs influenced the Greeks when they were
dividing up their lexicon into various word-types
based on their perceived sentential function
in a linguistic string. Certainly the renowned
Greek grammarian Dionysius Thrax doesn't
appear to have known of Panini and he is
not mentioned anywhere in the Greek classical
writings of antiquity that still survive.
Panini's work very early acquired a canonical
value, and has continued, for at least 2,
000 years, to be the standard of usage and
the foundation of grammatical studies in
Sanskrit. Panini's principle of brevity is,
moreover, notably employed in the invention
of technical terms.
Those of Panini's terms which are real words,
whether they describe the phenomenon, as
sam-dsa, 'compound' or express a category
by an example, as dvi-gu ('two-cow'), 'numeral
compound, ' are probably all borrowed from
predecessors. But most of his technical terms
are arbitrary groups of letters resembling
algebraic symbols, and to an extent that
obscures any real evidence of his actual
classification of 'be' as a verb, but as
has been said it was his belief that all
nouns were derived from verbs and 'be' (bhu)
was patently not a noun or noun-like in any
way, it is logical to draw the conclusion
that he considered it to be a verb or he
created a distinct class of its own in which
to place it, but there is no evidence that
he did so. On account of the frequent obscurity
of a work which sacrifices every consideration
to brevity, attempts soon began to be made
to explain it, and with the advance of grammatical
knowledge, to correct and supplement its
rules. Among the earliest attempts of this
kind was the formulation, by unknown authors,
of rules of interpretation (Paribhasa),
which Panini was supposed to have followed
in his grammar.
Because the classificatory systems of parts
of speech within Panini's original work have
been updated many times by later scholars
both Indian and occidental who where educated
with western (Greek) notions of the copuletic
function of 'be, ' it must have been natural
for them to rearrange Panini's tables in
such a manner that the 'be' word ended up
in the verb section, particularly in view
of the fact that it inflected in a like manner
to the verbs forming the first conjugation
of Sanskrit. In other words what happened
was similar to the way in which the Latin-trained
grammarians of the Germanic languages tried
to coerce the 'be' complex into a Latinate
conjugational straightjacket. This is evidenced
by the modern disorderly and irregular state
of the English 'be' inflectionary system,
constituting as it does a bewildering mixture
of two different verbs, and the varying degrees
of paradigmatic abnormality of the copula
in all the other languages of Europe. Those
who followed and 'elucidated' Panini's great
work also regarded his ancient grammar as
more comprehensible particularly for western
readers, if viewed through the lens of a
Latin classificatory system.
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