Panini
P?NINI
P?NINI, fifth-century-b.c. grammarian. D?ksh?putra P?nini, author of India's greatest grammar, Asht?dhy?y? (Eight chapters), was born in Shal?tura in northwest India. According to tradition, he became a friend of Raja Mah?nanda of Magadha (fifth century b.c.). P?nini's grammar described, in four thousand s?tras, the rules to generate all Sanskrit sentences.
The Dakshas were a northern clan organized into a republican sangha. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hsieun Tsang visited Shalatura in the seventh century and found that the grammatical tradition was continued there, and that P?nini had been honored with a statue. The Kath?-sarit-s?gara (Ocean of verse) of Somadeva (eleventh century) mentions that P?nini's teacher was Varsha and his rival was K?ty?yana.
P?nini's Asht?dhy?y? is the greatest ancient masterpiece of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. It took the earlier Pratish?khya rules on converting the word-for-word recitation of the Veda into a continuous recitation and created an abstract grammar of unsurpassed power. P?nini's grammar, along with its word lists, presents invaluable incidental information about life and society in fifth-century-b.c. India. It preserves the names of cities, towns, villages, and cultural and political entities called Janapadas (states), as well as details regarding social life, economic conditions, education and learning, religion, and political conditions. The Janapada states had different types of government; some were republics, others were monarchies. We learn that the king did not have absolute power and that he shared authority with his minister.
P?nini's references shed important light on the way religion was practiced. We find that images were used to represent deities in temples and open shrines. There were images in the possession of the custodian of shrines.
P?nini is aware of the Vedic literature and the Upanishads. He also knows the Mah?bh?rata. P?nini's work is thus invaluable in the dating of the texts of the Vedic period. P?nini describes coins that came prior to the period of Kautilya's Artha Sh?stra (Textbook on material gain; 4th century b.c.).
P?nini appears to have traveled to P?taliputra to participate in a great annual meeting of scholars.
Subhash Kak
See alsoAsht?dhy?y? ; Vedic Aryan India
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agrawala, V. S. India as Known to P?nini. Lucknow: University of Lucknow, 1953.
Cardona, G. Panini: His Work and Its Traditions: Background and Introduction. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997.
Sharma, R. N. Ast?dhy?y? of P?nini. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2001.