India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.50

c6.50

(4) *DIFFERENT SCHOOLS BEFORE PĀṆINI*—‘Ṛishis belonging to different schools each drew up forms of letters.’ This refers to the intense literary activity about words and language preceding Pāṇini in which hundreds of great teachers including such names as Śākaṭāyana, Gārgya, Yāska, Śaunaka, Śākalya, Bhārdvāja, Āpiśali, Audavraji, participated. Burnell's list of teachers from the *Nirukta*, Pāṇini and the *Taittirīya-Prātiśākhya* (*Aindra School*, pp. 32-33) considered together with the list of numerous phonetic treatises and the terminological literature (cf. Dr. Sūryakānta Sāstri, Intro. to *Laghu-Ṛiktantra*) furnishes evidence of the strong intellectual activity which preceded and followed the genesis of the Pāṇinīya *śāstra*. (See also for a list of 64 Teachers quoted in the *Prātiśākhyas*, *Nirukta* and Pāṇini, Max Muller's *History of Sanskrit Literature*, pp. 142-43).