India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.10

c6.10

His work is also unique in one respect, *viz.*, that like Yāska's *Nirukta* it is one of the rare masterpieces of old Sanskrit literature which is the work of an individual author, and not of a school. As Colebrooke has put it, the *Ashṭādhyāyī* "certainly bears internal evidence of its having been accomplished by a single effort" (*Miscellaneous Essays*, 1873, Vol. II, p. 5). According to Burnell: "Pāṇini's grammar has, in all probability, been little tampered with; we have better warrant for its integrity than in the case of any other work" (*On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians*, p. 31). For purposes of cultural and historical material the references in the *Ashṭādhyāyī* have the same value as epigraphic or numismatic records. Its credit is also very much enhanced by its admitted antiquity.