A History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, so far as it illustrates the Primitive Religion of the Brahmans c8.s2.123

c8.s2.123

The question now arises, can this conjectural date, assigned to Kâtyâyana, be strengthened by additional evidence? Professor Böhtlingk thought that this was possible; and he endeavoured to show that the great Commentary of Patanjali, which embraces both the Vârttikâs of Kâtyâyana and the Sûtras of Pânini, was known in the middle of the second century B.C. It is said in the history of Kashmir, that Abhimanyu, the king of Kashmir, sent for Brahmans to teach the Mahâbhâshya in his kingdom. Abhimanyu, it is true, did not reign, as Professor Böhtlingk supposed, in the second century B.C., but, as has been proved from coins by Professor Lassen, in the first century A.D. But even thus this argument is important. In the history of Indian literature dates are mostly so precarious that a confirmation even within a century or two is not to be despised. The fact that Patanjali’s immense commentary on Pânini and Kâtyâyana had become so famous as to be imported by royal authority into Kashmir in the first half of the first century A.D., shows at least that we cannot be very far wrong in placing the composition of the original grammar and of the supplementary rules of Kâtyâyana on the threshold of the third century B.C. At what time the Mahâbhâshya was first composed it is impossible to say. Patanjali, the author of the Great Commentary, is sometimes identified with Pingala; and on this view, as Pingala is called the younger brother, or at least the descendant of Pânini¹, it might be supposed that the original composition of the Mahâbhâshya belonged to the third century. But the identity of Pingala and Patanjali is far from probable, and it would be rash to use it as a foundation for other calculations.