Vyakarana

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The Sanskrit grammatical tradition of vyākaraṇa, is one of the six Vedanga disciplines. It has its roots in late Vedic India, and includes the famous work, Aṣṭādhyāyī, of Pāṇini (ca. 5th century BC).

The impetus for linguistic analysis and grammar in India originates in the need to be able to obtain a strict interpretation for the Vedic texts. The work of the very early Indian grammarians have been lost; for example, the work of Sakatayana (ca. 8th c. BC) is known only from cryptic references in Yaska (ca. 7th c. BC and Panini, one of the views of Sakatayana that was to prove controversial in coming centuries was that most nouns are etymologically derivable from verbs.

In his monumental work on etymology, Nirukta, Yaska supported this claim based on the large number of nouns that were derived from verbs through a derivation process that became known as krit-pratyaya. Yaska also provided the seeds for another debate, whether textual meaning inheres in the word (Yaska's view) or in the sentence (view f Panini, and later grammarians such as Bhartrihari). This debate also continued almost into the middle of the last millenia. This is related to differences with Panini re: the nature of the root morphemes.

Contents

[edit] Panini's school

A few centuries after Yaska, Panini's extensive analysis of the processes of phonology, morphology and syntax, the Ashtadhyayi, laid down the basis for centuries of commentaries and expositions by following Sanskrit grammarians. Panini's approach was amazingly formal; his production rules for deriving complex structures and sentences represent modern finite state machines. Indeed many of the developments in Indian Mathematics, especially the place value notational system may have originated from Paninian analysis.

Panini's grammar consists of four parts:

Commentators on Panini and some of their views:

  • Kātyāyana (linguist and mathematician): that the word-meaning relation is siddha, i.e. given and non-decomposable, an idea that the Sanskriticist Ferdinand de Saussure called arbitrary. Word meanings refer to universals that are inherent in the word itself (close to a nominalist position).
  • Patanjali (c. 200 AD) - author of Mahabhashya. The notion of shabdapramânah - that the evidentiary value of words is inherent in them, and not derived externally. Not to be confused with the founder of the Yoga system.
  • The Nyaya school, close to the realist position (as in Plato). Considers the word-meaning relation as created through human convention. Sentence meaning is principally determined by the main noun. uddyotkara, Vachaspati (sound-universals or phonemes)
  • The Mimamsa school. E.g. sentence meaning relies mostly on the verb (corresponds to the modern notion of linguistic head). Kumarila Bhatta, prabhakara.
  • Bhartrihari (c. 4th c. AD) that meaning is determined by larger contextual units than the word alone (holism).
  • The Buddhist school, including Dignaga (semantics and logic), Dharmakirti.

Predecessors referred to in Ashtadhyayi include Sakatayana, and Gargya.

Other Indian linguists :

  • Varadaraja, Laghukaumudi,

[edit] Early Accounts

The earliest external historical accounts of Indian grammatical tradition is from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India from the 7th century.

The Indica of Al-Biruni (973-1048), dating to ca. 1030 contains detailed descriptions of all branches of Hindu science.

Similar to the Chinese Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhism aroused interest in India among its followers. Taranatha (born 1573) in his treatise of the history of Buddhism in India (completed around 1608) speaks about Panini and provides some information about grammars, but not in the manner of a person familiar with their content.

[edit] Modern Sanskrit grammarians

[edit] Beginning of Western scholarship

[edit] 19th century

[edit] Modern period

[edit] Contemporary

[edit] References

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