A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s3.6

v3.c35.s3.6

"Hail to Pāṇini, who by the grace of Rudra, first wrote the grammar and then the poem Jāmbavatīvijaya"². Whether this Rājaśekhara is the poet, to whom a large number of verses are ascribed in anthologies or the dramatist Rājaśekhara (end of the 9th and beginning of the 10th century) or a different Rājaśekhara—in any case, he belongs to too late a period and is too unreliable a testimony for establishing the identity of the grammarian, who wrote his grammar towards the close of the Vedic period, with a poet, whose language is hardly different from that of Kālidāsa. But it is of great significance to note that in one of the stanzas quoted by Namisādhu (in a commentary written in 1068 A.D. on Rudraṭa's Kāvyālaṅkāra) from Pāṇini's Pātālavijaya there are horrible solecisms, unlikely from the pen of the grammarian³. The verses ascribed to Pāṇini exhibit, however, no mean artistic merit :