The History of Indian Literature c8.43

c8.43

now specially designated by those titles. It is in Yáska's work, the Nirukti, that we find the first general notions of grammar. Starting from the phonetic rules, the observance of which the Prátiśákhya-Sútras had already established with so much minuteness—but only for each of the Veda-Saṃhitás—advance was no doubt gradually made, in the first place, to a general view of the subject of phonetics, and thence to the remaining portions of the domain of language. Inflection, derivation, and composition were recognised and distinguished, and manifold reflections were made upon the modifications thereby occasioned in the meaning of the root. Yáska mentions a considerable number of grammatical teachers who preceded him, some by name individually, others generally under the name of Nairuktas, Vaiyákaraṇas, from which we may gather that a very brisk activity prevailed in this branch of study. To judge from a passage in the Kaushítaki-Bráhmaṇa, linguistic research must have been carried on with peculiar enthusiasm in the North of India; and accordingly, it is the northern, or rather the north-western district of India that gave birth to the grammarian who is to be looked upon as the father of Saṃskṛit grammar, Páṇini. Now, if Yáska himself must be considered as belonging only to the last stages of the Vedic period, Páṇini—from Yáska to whom is a great leap—must have lived at the very close of it, or even at the beginning of the next period. Advance from the simple designation of grammatical words by means of terms corresponding to them in sense, which we find in Yáska, to the algebraic symbols of Páṇini, implies a great amount of study in the interval. Besides, Páṇini himself presupposes some such symbols as already known; he cannot therefore be regarded as having invented, but only as having consistently carried out a method which is certainly in a most eminent degree suited to its purpose.