India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.21

c6.21

Pantañjali also mentions the technical ability of Pāṇini by calling him a specialist in the forms of words and their meanings (*Vṛittajña Āchārya*, I.3.9; I.226). Pāṇini was possessed of a phenomenal insight (*mahatī sūkshmekshikā*, *Kāśikā*, IV.2.74) into the true meaning (*vṛitti*) of words in all their aspects and bearings as they were obtaining in the usage of the different localities, Vedic schools (*śākhās* and *charaṇas*), families (*gotras*), trades, professions and social classes of his times. We learn from Yuan Chwang that 'Ṛishi Pāṇini was from his birth extensively informed about men and things.' (*Siyuki*, I. 115). Pāṇini for the most part discovered and created his own material. He has applied his scientific method to the arrangement of this material by bringing the numerous *vṛittis* or derivative meanings of words under well-classified *gaṇas* or word-groups. It was a method, which, as pointed out by Whitney and Burnell, was unknown before him (Whitney, *Atharva Prāt.* p. 48; Burnell, *On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians*, p. 28). In fact, Pāṇini's name has gone down to posterity as the inventor of the device of the *Gaṇa-pāṭha*, which has done so much in the conservation of Sanskrit language and of its archaic and obsolete forms.