A History of Sanskrit Literature c29.s2.6

c29.s2.6

Pāṇini’s date is unhappily uncertain.¹ He was later than Yāska and Çaunaka, probably he came after not only the Brāhmaṇas but also the older Upaniṣads and was alive during the Sūtra period of Vedic literature, but unhappily these facts give us nothing save a relative chronology. We know he was a native of Çalātura near the modern Atak, where Hiuen Tsang saw a statue to his memory; his mother was Dākṣī, and a legend ascribes his death to a lion. His connexion with the north-west is important, when we find in his work Yavanānī, meaning probably Greek (Ionian) writing. We may, of course, scent an interpolation, and, if so, the word is valueless. If not, it leaves us still in doubt, for the assumption that it is a proof that Pāṇini wrote after the invasion of Alexander the Great, though it has been supported² by the occurrence in the *Gaṇapāṭha* of the names Āmbhi and Bhagala, Omphis and Phẹgelas, is clearly unfounded, seeing that India was in contact with Greece as early as the expedition of Xerxes. On the whole, however, it seems needless to carry back Pāṇini beyond the fourth century; if he flourished *c.* 350, then Kātyāyana, who may be placed *c.* 250–200, might easily have found sufficient divergence of speech to justify his corrections. There are, indeed, proofs that language had changed, as we have seen; but to assign Pāṇini to the sixth or seventh century B. C. on that score appears to lack any plausibility.