On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, their Place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures c6.2

c6.2

There can be no question that Pāṇini’s Grammar made an epoch in Indian literature; his name occurs everywhere, his treatise soon superseded all others, and has exercised the ingenuity of a countless number of followers. Certainly, for near two thousand years, Pāṇini’s word has been law in India on all questions of grammar. It is evident that for it to have gained such a position of authority in so conservative a country as India, it must have been vastly superior in the eyes of the Brahmans to all the numerous treatises which must have been in existence before Pāṇini’s time: the Tibetan writers¹ (whatever may have been their authority for saying so) cannot be far wrong in making out that Pāṇini’s work was the first complete and systematic treatise on Grammar. It is also tolerably plain that the circumstances under which this book was composed differed greatly from the older stage of Indian history; without some contact with foreign peoples and bitter disputes among religious sects at home, such highly developed enquiry into language as Pāṇini’s treatise displays, is contrary to all experience. Until Greeks began to teach their language to the Romans, grammar made but little progress², and the origin of Arabic and Hebrew Grammar is due to the contact of the Semitic races of Arabia with Persians, Syrians and other foreigners. The latest and most probable conclusions as to the date of Pāṇini point to such a period in Indian events, when Buddhism had become a prominent, if not the most prominent, religion in Northern India, and an intercourse with the Persians and Greeks had begun which soon became of vast importance owing to the long continuance of the Bactrian kingdom. The influence of Buddhism on grammatical studies has been lately pointed out by Mr. Sayce; he says³: “it is very possible that the Sanskrit grammarians were excited to their work by the native dialects, which had been quickened into activity and raised to the level of respectability by the spread of Buddhism.” This remark is, I believe, new, but it is perfectly just. Observations of dialectic variations of pronunciation and of forms of words occur very early in the Sanskrit grammatical literature, and if they are not to be found in Pāṇini’s Grammar it is evident that the system of the work precludes insertion of such matter. There are several notices of provincialisms in the Mahābhāshya which have been collected by Profr. Weber¹), and the Mīmāmsā sūtras attributed to Jaimini also shew that foreign or local words were early noticed even in the Vedas²). Pāṇini’s sūtras mention several foreign kingdoms, though it is not, perhaps, altogether safe to assume that some are not interpolations. Thus circumstances would lead, at the period when Pāṇini lived, to a far more comprehensive and philosophical study of language than had as yet obtained, remarkable in every way though the results already arrived at were; and, as there is much reason to believe that Sanskrit was, at that time, rapidly becoming extinct, this must also have led to increased zeal in observing and classifying facts. The history of grammatical studies in many other countries points irresistably to this conclusion.