India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.54

c6.54

(6) *PĀṆINI'S METHOD*—'Pāṇini was from his birth extensively informed about men and things. He wandered about asking for knowledge. He collected a multitude of words.' This information is valuable as it acquaints us with the fact that Pāṇini for the most part discovered and created his own material, making minute observations of facts in the course of his travels on a linguistic mission. We find in Pāṇini organism and life, an elastic and warm-hearted approach to the speech of the common people bringing in a vast and varied material about their life. A closer study of the *Ashṭādhyāyī* as attempted in the following pages reveals how Pāṇini had explored and exploited all possible sources of linguistic material in the country including dialects, folk-lore and local customs, e.g. names of Yakshas like Viśāla used as personal names (V.3.84); *pīlu-kuṇa*, a name for ripe berries of the Pīlu tree (V.2.24); eastern sports, and names of coins, weights and measures, etc. His recording of the differences in the accentuation of names of wells situated on the right and left banks of the river Beas is a true pointer to his painstaking method, on which the author of the *Kāśikā* observes: 'the *Sūtrakāra* was endowed with deep and subtle insight.'