Elements of South-Indian Palæography, from the Fourth to the Seventeenth Century A.D. c4.18

c4.18

Very few Sanskrit books are nowadays even supposed to belong to a period when writing did not exist in India, and the only early ones that appear to mention writing are the grammars attributed to Pāṇini and to others. But the age of these works is by no means clear and even if it be supposed that the Mahābhāshya (or great commentary on Pāṇini by Patañjali) has not been since worked over again and again and tampered with (a supposition it is for intrinsic reasons, very difficult to avoid), this commentary would only prove the existence of Pāṇini's Sūtras in the second century before our era, a time when writing was certainly in common use in India.