India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c6.71

c6.71

*PĀṆINI AS A POET*—There is a tradition that Pāṇini was also a poet. It is suggested by certain verses cited from a poem named *Jāmbavatījaya* attributed to Pāṇini in certain anthologies. A verse in the *Sadukti-karṇāmṛita* refers to Dākshīputra as a poet. The available information with regard to Pāṇini as a poet is put together by Pischel (*Z.D.M.G.*, XXXIX pp. 95 and ff.) who is inclined to accept the theory that Pāṇini was also a poet. Bhandarkar, on the other hand, holds that the style in which the verses ascribed to Pāṇini are written is sufficient to prove that they cannot be by that grammarian (*J.B.B.R.A.S.*, XVI, p. 344). Prof. Kshitis Chandra Chatterji holds the same view and after discussing at length all the known verses assigned to Pāṇini dismisses the theory of his authorship in these words: "The fact that Pāṇini as a poet is nowhere mentioned in the *Mahābhāshya* or in any of the later first-rate works of the Pāṇini school and that annotators and commentators have racked their brains to explain away ungrammatical forms instead of regarding the uses in the *Jāmbavatīvijaya* as *jñāpakas*, that some of the verses attributed to Pāṇini in one anthology are attributed to other poets in others, that some of these verses show distinct traces of borrowings of a much later period, that none of the verses belonging to the *Jāmbavatīvijaya* bear the stamp of the grammarian on them, that some of them contain forms which would make Pāṇini shudder, and that some of them seem to be composed as examples for a work on rhetoric of a much later period, clearly indicate that the verses cannot have been the work of poet Pāṇini. The *Jāmbavatīvijaya-kāvya* or the *Pātālavijaya-kāvya* must have been composed by a poetaster of about the ninth century A.D. who made use of many peculiar grammatical forms in it and fathered it on Pāṇini, the great grammarian." (*Cal. Oriental Journal*, Vol. I, pp. 22-23; also p. 135).