India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.51

c6.51

(5) *COMPARATIVE DECAY OF GRAMMATICAL STUDIES*—‘Men in their successive generations put into use what had been delivered to them. And now mens' lives were reduced to the length of a hundred years . . . . The times being dull and careless.’ Patañjali also refers to *purā-kalpa* (by-gone ages) when keen Brahmanical pupils devoted themselves first to master *Vyākaraṇa*, and then took up the study of the Veda. But in a subsequent epoch students devoted less attention to grammar; they even considered it useless (*anarthakaṁ vyākaraṇam*). It was to reform such dull and careless students that Pāṇini wrote (*vipratipanna-buddhibhyo' dhyetṛibhya āchārya idaṁ śāstram anvāchashte*, Pat. I.5.). As to the lessening of mens' lives to a hundred years, Yuan Chwang is almost literally rendering Patañjali's remarks: