Aindra School of Grammar

The Aindra (of Indra) school of Sanskrit grammar is one of the eleven schools of Sanskrit grammar mentioned in Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi. It is named after Indra in allusion to Lord Indra, the king of deities in Hindu mythology. Arthur Coke Burnell, a renowned orientologist, in his 1875 book, "On the Aindra school of Sanskrit grammars" details this school. Burnell believed that most non-Pāṇinian systems of Sanskrit grammar were traceable to this school of grammar, believed to be the oldest and reputed to be founded by Indra himself.

Aindra, Katantra schools and the Tolkappiyam

Burnell's search for the Aindra school took him to Southern India where he came across the Tamil grammatical work Tolkappiyam. A preface of this work, written during the twelfth century CE by Ilampuranar describes the work as aindiram nirainda Tolkappiyam [incorrect quote]('comprising Aindra'). This, Burnell posits is an allusion to the pre-Pāṇinian Aindra school of grammar.

While his demonstration of the influence of Sanskrit on the Tolkappiyam has met with some approval, his attribution and approximation of all non Pāṇinian schools of Sanskrit grammar with the Aindra school has met with resistance.[1][2] Some scholars have also taken a less committal line on the question of Sanskrit influence itself.[3]

See also

Notes
  1. George Cardona, Pāṇini: a survey of research (1998), Motilal Banarsidass Publ., pp 151
  2. Takanobu Takahashi, Tamil Love Poetry and Poetics (1995) Brill Academic Publishers ISBN 90-04-10042-3 pp 26
  3. "...it has been identified that Tolkappiyam and other Sanskrit grammar works share some charactersitics, but also show significant dissimilarities..." - Rajam, V. S. (1981), A comparative study of two ancient Indian grammatical traditions: The Tamil Tolkappiyam compared with the Sanskrit Rk-pratisakhya, Taittiriya-pratisakhya, Apisali siksa, and the Astadhyayi (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania: 1981)

References
  • Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 52–54.
  • Burnell, Arthur Coke. 1875. On the Aindra school of Sanscrit Grammarians: their place in the Sanscrit and subordinate literatures.
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