Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c12.s6.69

c12.s6.69

**Separate Schools of Kalpa, Vyākaraṇa, and Jyotisha, apart from Vedic Schools.** We have some evidence in the Sūtra literature by which we can trace the process of this change whereby the Vedic *Charaṇas* were depressed from their old position by special Schools which took over the scientific cultivation of some of the most important portions of the Aṅgas. Some of these special Schools grew up even before the age of Yāska's Nirukta which, for instance, mentions *Vaiyākaraṇas* or grammarians, *Nairuktas* or etymological exegetes, and *Yājñikas* or ritualists and even contrasts their conflicting opinions. The very fact of the disputes between these Schools regarding grammatical or exegetical questions demonstrates that these subjects were not taught as auxiliary branches of the Vedic lore to the students of a common school, but that each of these subjects was attaining independent development through treatment in a special School. This view is confirmed by the actual conditions in which the various Aṅgas have been preserved. It shows that two at least, Vyākaraṇa and Jyotisha, slipped away from the control of the Vedic Charaṇas in very early times. For we hardly know of any grammatical or astronomical work belonging to any of the Vedic Schools whose textbooks have survived. The works embodying the earliest speculations on grammar as an auxiliary of Vedic study in the Vedic Schools have no doubt been lost to us. But we have clear evidence to show that grammar won for itself an independent status in fairly early times. It declared its independence long before the days of Pāṇini. Pāṇini's *Ashtādhyāyī* itself is now the sole representative of the Vyākaraṇa branch of the Aṅgas acknowledged equally by the followers of all the Vedas. But it is to be noted that the subject, as treated by Pāṇini, is no longer completely subservient to the needs of mere Veda-study but has an independent life and destiny of its own, though it does not exclude the Veda from its purview. It is no longer a "mere handmaiden of the Vedavidyā". It is a distinct science laying down the laws applicable to the entire Sanskrit language, of which the typical form assumed is what we call classical Sanskrit regarded as the standard of Āryan speech, the Vedic forms being treated as anomalies. Thus the work of Pāṇini is to be regarded as the final outgrowth of a long scientific development achieved in the special Schools of Grammar, the earliest phases of which are represented by the various older Schools and teachers referred to not only in Pāṇini’s work but also in the Prātiśākhyas and in Yāska’s *Nirukta*.