India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.60

c6.60

(10) *EXTENT OF PĀṆINI'S WORK*—‘He made a book on letters which contained a thousand *ślokas*; each *śloka* was of thirty-two syllables.’ It indicates the extent of Pāṇini's *Ashṭādhāyī* consisting of 3,981 *sūtras* plus 14 *pratyāhāra sūtras*, computed by the *śloka* measure of 32 syllables each. Sköld has somewhat misunderstood this. He writes: ‘This curious statement can hardly be interpreted in another way than assuming, that the work of Pāṇini, just as so many other Indian works on grammar, was originally written in metrical form.’ (*Papers on Pāṇini*, p. 32). This is an untenable inference. As a matter of fact no Indian grammar, Sanskrit or Prakrit, is in metrical form. The *Ashṭādhyāyī* was originally written in *sūtra* style, and its bulk from the beginning was very nearly 1,000 *ślokas*, *as it is to-day*. The statement is akin to the computation of Vyāḍi’s *Saṅgraha*, also in *sūtras*, as *laksha-ślokātmaka*. The *Kāśikā* on IV.2.65 says that not only Pāṇini’s work but those of Kāśakṛitsna and Vyāghrapāda also were in *sūtra* style (*Daśakaṁ Vaiyāghrapadīyam; Trikaṁ Kāśakṛitsnam*). Even up to a late period grammatical works were being written in *sūtra* form.