A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s2.118

c8.s2.118

We know that Kâtyâyana completed and corrected Pâṇini’s Grammar, such as we now possess it.¹ His Vârttikas are supplementary rules, which show a more extensive and accurate knowledge of Sanskrit than even the work of Pâṇini. The story of the contest between them was most likely intended as a mythical way of explaining this fact. Again we know that Kâtyâyana was himself the author of one of the Prâtiśâkhyas, and Vyaḷi is quoted by the authors of the Prâtiśâkhyas as an earlier authority on the same subject.² So far the story of Somadeva agrees with the account of Shaḍguruśishya and with the facts as we still find them in the works of Kâtyâyana. It would be wrong to expect in a work like that of Somadeva historical and chronological facts in the strict sense of the word; yet the mention of King Nanda, who is an historical personage, in connection with our grammarian, may, if properly interpreted, help to fix approximately the date of Kâtyâyana and his predecessors, Śaunaka and Âśvalâyana. If Somadeva followed the same chronological system as his contemporary and countryman, Kalhaṇa Paṇḍita, the author of the Râjataranginî or History of Kashmir, he would, in calling Pâṇini and Kâtyâyana, the contemporaries of Nanda and Chandragupta, have placed them long before the times which we are wont to call historical.¹ But the name of Chandragupta fortunately enables us to check the extravagant systems of Indian chronology. Chandragupta, of Pâṭaliputra, the successor of the Nandas, is Sandrocottus, of Palibothra, to whom Megasthenes was sent as ambassador from Seleucus Nicator; and, if our classical chronology is right, he must have been king at the turning point of the fourth and third centuries B.C. We shall have to examine hereafter the different accounts which the Buddhists and Brahmans give of Chandragupta and his relation to the preceding dynasty of the Nandas. Suffice it for the present that if Chandragupta was king in 315, Kâtyâyana may be placed, according to our interpretation of Somadeva’s story, in the second half of the fourth century B.C. We may disregard the story of Somadeva, which actually makes Kâtyâyana himself minister of Nanda, and thus would make him an old man at the time of Chandragupta’s accession to the throne. This is, according to its own showing, a mere episode in a ghost story¹, and had to be inserted in order to connect Kâtyâyana’s story with other fables of the Kathâ-sarit-sâgara. But there still remains this one fact, however slender it may appear, that as late as the twelfth century A.D., the popular tradition of the Brahmans connected the famous grammarians Kâtyâyana and Pânini with that period of their history which immediately preceded the rise of Chandragupta and his Śûdra dynasty; and this, from an European point of view, we must place in the second half of the fourth century B.C.