Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c12.s13.t3.1

c12.s13.t3.1

The legends in the Sanskrit versions of the Bṛhatkathā introduce Pāṇini and Vararuchi as contemporaries of the Nandas; the Āryamañjuśrīmūlakalpa also refers to Pāṇini as a friend of the Nanda. On the basis of the Bṛhatkathā legends it was held by Max Müller, Weber and others that Pāṇini flourished about 315 B.C.; but as has been proved by several writers from Goldstücker onwards, Pāṇini and Kātyāyana could not have been contemporaries in view of the changes that the language had undergone in the days of the latter, and Pāṇini could at the latest be assigned only to 500 B.C., and in this respect, Tāranāth whose account puts Pāṇini a generation earlier than Kātyāyana is less faulty. In the period of the Nandas and Mauryas, there was indeed a great deal of grammatical activity. The Prātiśākhyas are to be referred to the post-Pāṇinian age, and between Pāṇini and Patañjali, there appeared a number of Vārttikakāras who appended their vārttikas or addenda et corrigenda (uktā-’nukta-durukta-chintana) to Pāṇini’s aphorisms.