India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c4.2

c4.2

The value of such a study to Indian History can hardly be overestimated. It is due at once to the antiquity of Pāṇini’s evidence, its definite and authoritative character as reliable as the history of India based upon epigraphic and numismatic records, and also to the singular fact in Sanskrit literature that the *Ashṭādhyāyī* is the work of an individual author (like its commentary the *Mahābhāshya*) and not the accumulated result of additions made to it from time to time by generations of teachers and pupils as happened in the case of the literature of Vedic *Charaṇas* or schools.