Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c4.145

c4.145

The study of grammar must have been taken up in India from very early times.³ *Pānini*, who is still the greatest recognized authority, was a native of Gandhāra in the north-west of India. He wrote his great grammatical work about the fourth century B.C., but refers to no less than sixty-four predecessors. His *Sūtras* containing the rules of grammar were in eight books, called the *Ashṭādhyāyī*, comprising about four thousand aphorisms. With regard to his work Max Müller says that in grammar there is no more comprehensive collection and classification of all the facts of a language than we find in Pāṇini’s *Sūtras*.¹ Pāṇini was followed in the third century B.C. by *Kātyāyana*, who wrote *Vārttikas*, or notes on some of Pāṇini’s rules. Somewhat later came the *Mahābhāshya*, or great commentary, of *Patañjali*, which dates from about the second century B.C. These writers are the standard authorities on Sanskrit grammar, from whom there is, to Hindus, no appeal. Other authorities may be admitted where these writers are silent; but a deviation, even by an ancient writer, from their rules is considered a poetical licence or a barbarism. There have been many grammatical works written in India since these early writers, but they are all based on their work, and to this day the *Sūtras* of Pāṇini are committed to memory by students of Sanskrit in India. Lexicography was also cultivated in India at an early date, and the Sanskrit dictionaries are versified. The *Amarakośa*, a metrical lexicon of Sanskrit words, was composed about 500 A.D., and is still committed to memory by Indian children. The Indian phonetics of the fifth century B.C. are such an accurate analysis of the elements of language that modern ages have had much to learn from them.