Vyākaraṇa

There were many schools of Sanskrit grammar in ancient India, all established before the mid 1st-millennium BCE.[24] Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī , which eclipsed all other ancient schools of grammar, mentions the names of ten grammarians.[8][25][26][27]). Some of these pre-Pāṇinian scholars mentioned by Pāṇini include Apisali, Kasyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphoṭayāna.[24][25]

The works of most these authors are lost but we find reference of their ideas in the commentaries and rebuttals by later authors. Yāska's Nirukta is one of the earlier surviving texts, and he mentions Śākaṭāyana, Krauṣṭuki, Gārgya among others.

Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī is the most ancient extant manuscript on Vyākaraṇa. It is a complete and descriptive treatise on Sanskrit grammar in aphoristic sutras format.[17][28] This text attracted a famous and one of the most ancient commentary (bhāṣya) called the Mahābhāṣya.[29] The author of the Mahābhāṣya is named Patañjali, who may or may not be the same person as the one who authored Yogasutras.[30][31] The Mahābhāṣya, or "Great Commentary", is more than a commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī, it is the earliest known philosophical text of the Hindu grammarians.[32][note 2] Non-Hindu texts and traditions on grammar emerged after Patañjali, some of which include the Sanskrit grammar by the Jain author Jainendra and the Cāndra grammar by the Buddhist Candragomin.[34]

Patanjali's Great Grammatical Discourse [Vyakrana-Mahābhāṣya] is regarded as the classical model for academic texts. It is written with a great deal of didactic skill as a dialog in clear, simple Sanskrit, and contains many enlightening examples. One notices that the text follows in the tradition of instruction, similar to the dialog stye of the Western classics of antiquity.

— Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus[35]

Later Indian scholars simplified Pāṇini rules, and trimmed his compilation of sutras to essential 1,400 from comprehensive 4,000, eliminating those they felt were too difficult and complicated or those narrowly concerned with Vedic language.[36] Non-Hindu traditions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, developed their own Vyākaraṇa literature, but all of them are dated to the 1st-millennium CE, all of them condensed Pāṇini, accepted and flowered largely from his theories of Vyākaraṇa.[37]

The 5th-century Hindu scholar Bhartṛhari has been the next most influential Vyākaraṇa thinker, wherein he presented his philosophy of grammar and how language affects thoughts.[note 3] His theories on "philosophical problem of meaning", contained in the Vākyapadīya, has been unique, states Howard Coward.[39] Bhartṛhari is considered to be a major architect of the "sphoṭa theory" of meaning, in the Hindu traditions.[39]

Bhartṛhari ideas were widely studied, but challenged as well in the last half of the first millennium, particularly by the ritual-driven, Mīmāṃsā school of Hindu philosophy and by Dharmakirti of Buddhism.[39] The Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism defended the ideas of Bhartṛhari.[39]

About the seventh century, the Kāśikāvṛttī co-authored by Jayaditya and Vamana, and the tenth century studies of Helaraja on Vyākaraṇa were the next major milestone.[39] These Hindu texts were not only commented in Hindu tradition, but were the foundation of works of the Buddhist Jinendrabuddhi who is known for his grammar insights in Buddhist literature.[39]

The most studied Vyākaraṇa scholars of early and mid-second millennium are Ksirasvamin, Haradatta, Maitreya Rakshita, and Kaiyata.[43] The modern era Vyākaraṇa scholars have included Bhattoji Dikshita, Konda Bhatta and Nagesha Bhatta.[44]

Between 1250 and 1450 Anubhūti Svarūpācārya created a simplified grammatical system called Sārasvatavyākaraṇa.

In the 14th century grammarian Padmanabhadatta, founder of the Supadma School, composed the Supadmavyākaraṇa.[45] The text is based on Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi, but remodeled and rearranged with explanatory notes. It is written in Bengali alphabet, making it accessible to the Bengal provinces by removing the complexity of Sanskrit grammar.[46] The main objective of Padmanabhadatta was to make knowledge of Sanskrit grammar clear and simple and to Sanskritize the new words that developed in the language.

In terms of the place of Vyākaraṇa scholarship over South Asian history, from ancient to 16th-century, Kashmir, Kerala, Nepal, Andhra Pradesh, Varanasi and Bengal have been influential, but the location of many Vyākaraṇa scholars is unknown.[47]

Pāṇini writes that the Anjna (popular usage of a word) is the superseding authority, and the theoretically derived meaning of a word must be discarded and instead superseded by that which is the popular usage.[8] The artha (meaning) of a shabda (word) is established by popular usage at the time the text was composed, not by etymological theory nor historical usage nor later usage.[53]

A sentence is a collection of words, a word is a collection of phonemes, states Pāṇini.[54] The meaning of Vedic passages has to be understood through context, the purpose stated, keeping in mind the subject matter being discussed, what is stated, how, where and when.[54]

The Aṣṭādhyāyī tradition of Sanskrit language, with some reservations, accepts the premise that all words have verbal roots, and that words are created by affixing fragments to these roots.[55] However, Pāṇini asserts that it is impossible to derive all nouns from verbal roots.[55]

The Aṣṭādhyāyī is primarily focussed on the study of words, how words are formed, and their correct architecture.[55] However, it does not exclude syntax. Pāṇini includes the discussion of sentence structure.[55] The text, state Howard and Raja, describes compound word formation based on syntactic and semantic considerations, such as in sutra 2.1.1.[55]

Pāṇini asserts that a proper sentence has a single purpose, and is formed from a group of words such that, on analysis, the separate words are found to be mutually expecting each other.[55] A sentence, states Pāṇini, must have syntactic unity, which includes mutual expectancy (Akansha) of the words and phonetic contiguity (Sannidhi) of construction. Pāṇini adds semantic fitness (Yogayata), but not tacitly. He accepts that a sentence can be grammatically correct even if it is semantically inappropriate or a deviant.[55]

The Aṣṭādhyāyī describes numerous usage of words, and how the meaning of a word is driven by overall context of the sentences and composition it is found in.[56] The popular usage and meaning of a word at the time the text was composed supersedes the historical or etymologically derived meanings of that word.[8] A word has the conventional meaning at the time the text was composed, but it is not so when it is quoted (cited or referred to) from another prior art text.[56] In the latter case, the Sanskrit word is suffixed with iti (literally, thus), whereupon it means what the prior text meant it to be.[56]

Yāska asserted that both the meaning and the etymology of words is always context dependent.[57]

Vyākaraṇa in the Hindu traditions has been a study of both the syntax structure of sentences, as well as the architecture of a word. For instance, Pāṇini asserts that grammar is about the means of semantically connecting a word with other words to express and understand meaning, and words are to be analyzed in the context they are used.[58] Kātyāyana is quoted in Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya on Vyākaraṇa as asserting the nature of a sentence as follows:[59]

A sentence consists of a finite verb together with indeclinables, karakas and qualifiers. – Mahābhāṣya 1.367.10
A sentence has one finite verb. – Mahābhāṣya 1.367.16

— Kātyāyana[59]

Similarly, Sayana asserts the scope of Vyākaraṇa to be as follows:[38]

Grammar [Vyākaraṇa] is that process by which division is carried out everywhere, by recognizing:
In this speech, so much is one sentence;
In this sentence then, so much is one word;
In this word then, this is the base and this is the suffix.

— Sayana[38]

A word that is a verb is concerned with bhava (to become), while a noun is concerned with sattva (to be, reality as it is).[57] Sattva and bhava are two aspects of the same existence seen from the static and dynamic points of view. Verbs according to Vyākaraṇa indicate action in a temporal sequence while nouns are static elements, states K Kunjunni Raja.[60]

Patañjali's 2nd-century BCE Mahābhāṣya is another important ancient text in Vyākaraṇa scholarship. It is not a full commentary on everything Pāṇini wrote in Aṣṭādhyāyī, but it is more a commentary on Kātyāyana's text on grammar called Varttikas,[61] as well as the ideas of Vyadi.[62] While Kātyāyana's additions have survived, Vyadi have not.[62]

The Kātyāyana's text reflects an admiration for Pāṇini, an analysis of his rules, their simplification and refinement.[63] The differences between the grammar rules of Pāṇini and of Kātyāyana may be because of historical changes to Sanskrit language over the centuries, state Howard Coward and K Kunjunni Raja.[62]

The Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari is a treatise on the philosophy of language, building on the insights of prior Vyākaraṇa scholarship.[65][66]

According to Bhartṛhari, states Scharfstein, all thought and all knowledge are "words", every word has an outward expression and inward meaning.[66][67] A word may have a definition in isolation but it has meaning only in the context of a sentence.[66] Grammar is a basic science in the Hindu traditions, explains Scharfstein, where it is externally expressed as relations between words, but ultimately internally understood as reflecting relations between the different levels of reality.[66] Word is considered a form of energy in this Hindu text, one with the potential to transform a latent mind and realize the soul.[68][66] Language evolves to express the transient material world first, and thereon to express feelings, the human desire for meaning in life and the spiritual inner world.[66]

In Yāska's time, nirukta "etymology" was in fact a school which gave information of formation of words, the etymological derivation of words. According to the nairuktas or "etymologists", all nouns are derived from a verbal root. Yāska defends this view and attributes it to Śākaṭāyana. While others believed that there are some words which are "Rudhi Words". 'Rudhi" means custom. Meaning they are a part of language due to custom, and a correspondence between the word and the thing if it be a noun or correspondence between an act and the word if it be a verb root. Such word can not be derived from verbal roots. Yāska also reports the view of Gārgya, who opposed Śākaṭāyana who held that certain nominal stems were 'atomic' and not to be derived from verbal roots[69]

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• Harold G. Coward (1990). The Philosophy of the Grammarians, in Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Volume 5 (Editor: Karl Potter). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-81-208-0426-5.
• Tibor Kiss (2015). Syntax - Theory and Analysis. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-037740-8.
• Friedrich Max Müller; Arthur Anthony Macdonell (1886). A Sanskrit grammar for beginners (2 ed.). Longmans, Green. p. 178.
• Weber, Albrecht (1863). Indische Studien. Vol. 8. Leipzig.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Annette Wilke; Oliver Moebus (2011). Sound and Communication: An Aesthetic Cultural History of Sanskrit Hinduism. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-018159-3.
• Maurice Winternitz (1963). History of Indian Literature. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-0056-4.