On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, their Place in the Sanskrit and Subordinate Literatures c8.124

c8.124

That the Ṛigvedaprātiçākhya really does represent a treatise older than Pāṇini has been proved in a remarkable way. Pāṇini quotes Çākalya four times, and Profr. Max Müller shows that these rules are really the same as rules in the Ṛigvedaprātiçākhya. He has also pointed out in it other primitive matter common both to Yāska and Pāṇini. In such a case, and considering Pāṇini’s style, it is obviously impossible to expect more than identity of matter. Profr. Goldstücker took a different view, and held that this Prātiçākhya is posterior to Pāṇini. His chief reason is that the Prātiçākhyas are “more complete, and deal much more satisfactorily with their subject-matter than Pāṇini”²⁾, and that they must, therefore, be subsequent to the latter whose work they “complete and amend”. He, however, admitted that there is but little than can be compared³⁾ in the two, and this little consists of the matter referring to the changes of n into ṇ and s into sh (Ṛigvedapr. ch. v.) and the prolongation of the vowels a, i, u, (chapters vii., viii., and ix.), and a few analogous rules in Pāṇini’s Grammar. No doubt, here the Prātiçākhya is more complete, but it simply gives all the cases in a particular text of the Ṛigveda, most of which could hardly enter into Pāṇini’s scheme of a general grammar of current Sanskrit; for he appears to have simply included so much of the Vedic Grammar as was required for general purposes, and never to have intended a complete grammar of the Vedic dialects, or how is it that we meet with the sūtra ‘bahulam chandasi’ more than once¹) and in connection with different topics? Pāṇini must have known by heart the Vedic texts then current, and could have had little difficulty, if he had wished to do so, in writing as complete a Vedic Grammar as the one he has given of Sanskrit. The real cause of Profr. Goldstücker’s difficulty is that he assumed that Pāṇini’s Grammar is the Vedāṅga vyākaraṇa, whereas in fact the science of grammar in the abstract was intended by this term.