Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini (ca. 5th century BC). Sanskrit ( संस्कृतम् ; pronunciation: ) is an Indo-European classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. ... The Vedanga (IAST , member of the Veda) are six auxiliary disciplines for the understanding and tradition of the Vedas. ... The Vedic civilization is the Indo-Aryan culture associated with the Vedas, the earliest known records of Indian history. ... The Ashtadhyayi (AṣṭādhyāyÄ«, meaning eight chapters) is the earliest known grammar of Sanskrit, and one of the first works on descriptive linguistics, generative linguistics, or linguistics altogether. ... (IPA ) was an ancient Gandharan grammarian (approximately 5th century BC, but estimates range from the 7th to the 3rd centuries) who is most famous for formulating the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology known as the . ... (2nd millennium BC - 1st millennium BC - 1st millennium) The 5th century BC started on January 1, 500 BC and ended on December 31, 401 BC. // Overview The Parthenon of Athens seen from the hill of the Pnyx to the west. ...

Panini's school

Panini's work became widely influential, and he later Sanskrit grammarians added to the work by considering various issues such as the nature of the word-meaning mapping, processes of linguistic acquistition, etc. However, his is not the earliest thinking on grammar, as is known from references in the Ashtadhyayi itself. His work is still referred to in the teaching of Sanskrit today.

Panini's grammar consists of several parts, of which the Ashtadhyayi, containing the morphological rules, forms the core:

• Shiva Sutras: phonology (śikṣā)
• Ashtadhyayi: morphology
• Dhatupatha (lists classes verbal roots)
• Ganapatha (lists classes of primitive nominal stems)

Commentators on Panini and some of their views: The Shiva Sutras (also Maheshvara Sutras) are the 14 sutras that form the basis of the AṣṭādhyāyÄ«, the Sanskrit grammar by Panini. ... Shiksha is an NGO devoted to improving the standards of education in New Delhi and its neighbouring regions. ... The Ashtadhyayi (Ạṣtādhyāyī, meaning eight chapters) is the earliest known grammar of Sanskrit, and one of the first works on descriptive linguistics, generative linguistics, or linguistics altogether. ... The Dhatupatha (dhatupatha) is a lexicon of Sanskrit verbal roots subservient to the Ashtadhyayi grammar by Panini. ... The Ganapatha (gaṇapāṭha) is a list of groups of words used by the Ashtadhyayi grammar by Panini (scholar). ...

• Kātyāyana (linguist and mathematician): that the word-meaning relation is siddha, i.e. given and non-decomposable, an idea that 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 shabdapramAnah - that grammar reflects what people actually say, and not some ideal usage. Also 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. Katyayana was probably a priest who lived in India around 200 BC. Like Baudhayana, he composed Shulba Sutra, or sacred mathematical texts. ... Saussure Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist, considered by many to be the father of structuralism. ... Nominalism is the position in metaphysics that there exist no universals outside of the mind. ... Patañjali, is the compiler of the Yoga Sutra, a major work containing aphorisms on the practical and philosophical wisdom regarding practice of Raja yoga. ... The Mahābhāṣya (great commentary), attributed to Patañjali, is a commentary on the celebrated Ashtadhyayi of Panini is one of the three most famous works in Sanskrit grammar. ... Yoga is a family of ancient Hindu spiritual practices that originated in India, where it remains a vibrant living tradition and is seen as a means to enlightenment. ... Nyaya (pronounced as nyα:yÉ™) is the name given to one of the six orthodox or astika schools of Hindu philosophy - specifically the school of logic. ... Realism is commonly defined as a concern for fact or reality and rejection of the impractical and visionary. ... Plato (Greek: Πλάτων, Plátōn, wide, broad-shouldered) (c. ... The main objective of the Purva (earlier) Mimamsa school was to establish the authority of the Vedas. ... In linguistics, the head is the main part of a compound or phrase. ... Bhartrihari (c 450–510) was an Indian author. ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by... Dignāga (5th century AD), was an Indian scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian philosophical logic. ... Dharmakirti (circa 7th century), was an Indian scholar and one of the Buddhist founders of Indian philosophical logic. ... This article contains information that is not verifiable. ...

Other Indian linguists :

• Yaska: etymologist (approx. contemporary to Panini) - differed on some aspects, e.g. the nature of the root morphemes.
• Varadaraja, Laghukaumudi,

Yaska Acharya is a celebrated Sanskrit scholar and grammarian of ancient India. ... The root is the primary lexical unit of a word, which carries the most significant aspects of semantic content and cannot be reduced into smaller constituents. ... In Linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit in a given language. ...

Early Accounts

The earliest external historical accounts of Indian grammatical tradition is from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India from the 7th century. A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by... The 7th century is the period from 601 - 700 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ...

• Hsüan Tsang (602-664)
• I Tsing (634-713)
• Fa Tsang (643-712)

The Indica of Abu Raihan al-Biruni (973-1048), dating to ca. 1030 contains detailed descriptions of all branches of Hindu science. Events July 29 - Battle of Stiklestad in Norway. ...

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. Tibetan Buddhism is the body of religious Buddhist doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet, the Himalayan region (including northern Nepal, Bhutan, and Sikkim), Mongolia, Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia (Russia), and northeastern China (Manchuria: Heilongjiang, Jilin). ... The greatest scholar of Jonang was Taranatha. ... Events March 18 - Sissinios formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia May 14 - Protestant Union founded in Auhausen. ...

Beginning of Western scholarship

• Jean Francois Pons
• Henry Thomas Colebrooke
• August Wilhelm von Schlegel
• Wilhelm von Humboldt

Henry Thomas Colebrooke (June 15, 1765 - March 18, 1837) was an English orientalist. ... August Wilhelm von Schlegel (September 8, 1767 - May 12, 1845), German poet, translator and critic, was born at Hanover, where his father, Johann Adolf Schlegel (1721-1793), was a Lutheran pastor. ... Wilhelm von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt (June 22, 1767 - April 8, 1835), government functionary, foreign diplomat, philosopher, founder of Humboldt Universität in Berlin, friend of Goethe and especially of Schiller, is especially remembered as a German linguist who introduced a knowledge of the Basque...

19th century

• Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar
• Franz Kielhorn
• William Dwight Whitney
• Bruno Liebich
• Otto Boehtlingk
• Georg Bühler
• Franz Bopp

William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer who edited The Century Dictionary. ... Georg Bühler Professor Johann Georg Bühler (July 19, 1837—April 8, 1898) was an eminent scholar of ancient Indian languages and law. ... Franz Bopp (September 14, 1791 - October 23, 1867) was a German linguist known for extensive comparative work on Indo-European languages. ...

Modern period

• Bernhard Geiger
• Leonard Bloomfield
• Paul Thieme
• Louis Renou
• Herman Buiskool
• Bimal Krishna Matilal

Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 - April 18, 1949) was an American linguist, whose influence dominated the development of structural linguistics in America between the 1930s and the 1950s. ... Paul Thieme (1905-2001) was a scholar of Vedic Sanskrit. ... Bimal Krishna Matilal is regaded as one of the foremost Indian philosophers of modern times. ...

Contemporary

• Johannes Bronkhorst
• George Cardona
• Madhav Deshpande
• SD Joshi
• Paul Kiparsky
• Frits Staal

Paul Kiparsky is a professor of linguistics at Stanford University. ... Frits Staal (born 1930 in the Netherlands) is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and South & Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. ...

References

• Frits Staal, A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972), reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi (1985), ISBN 812080029X.