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Encyclopedia > Vyakarana
Part of a series on
Hindu scriptures
aum symbol
Vedas
Rigveda · Yajurveda
Samaveda · Atharvaveda
Vedic divisions
Samhita · Brahmana
Aranyaka  · Upanishad
Upanishads
Aitareya  · Bṛhadāraṇyaka
Īṣa  · Taittirīya · Chāndogya
Kena  · Muṇḍaka
Māṇḍūkya  ·Praśna
Vedanga
Shiksha · Chandas
Vyakarana · Nirukta
Jyotisha · Kalpa
Itihasa
Mahabharata · Ramayana
Other scriptures
Smriti · Purana
Bhagavad Gita · Sutra
Pancharatra · Tantra
Kumara Vyasa Bharata · Stotra
Hanuman Chalisa · Ramacharitamanas
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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). Hindu scripture is overwhelmingly written in Sanskrit. ... Image File history File links Aum. ... The Vedas (Sanskrit: वेद) are the main scriptural texts of Hinduism, also known as the Sanatana Dharma, and are a large corpus of texts originating in Ancient India. ... The Rigveda (Sanskrit: , a tatpurusha compound of praise, verse and knowledge) is a collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the gods. ... The Yajurveda (Sanskrit , a tatpurusha compound of sacrifice + veda knowledge) is one of the four Hindu Vedas. ... The Samaveda (Sanskrit: सामवेद, sāmaveda, a tatpurusha compound of ritual chant + knowledge ), is third in the usual order of enumeration of the four Vedas, the ancient core Hindu scriptures. ... The Atharvaveda (Sanskrit: अथर्ववेद, , a tatpurusha compound of , a type of priest, and meaning knowledge) is a sacred text of Hinduism, and one of the four Vedas, often called the fourth Veda. According to tradition, the Atharvaveda was mainly composed by two groups of rishis known as the Bhrigus and the... The Samhita (Sanskrit: joined or collected) is the basic text of each of the Vedas, comprising collections of hymns and ritual texts. ... The Brahmana (Sanskrit ब्राह्मण) are part of the Hindu Shruti; They are composed in Vedic Sanskrit, and the period of their composition is sometimes referred to as the Brahmanic period or age (approximately between 900 BC and 500 BC). ... The Aranyakas (Sanskrit आरण्यक, Forest Books, Forest Treatises) are part of the Hindu Shruti; these religious scriptures are sometimes argued to be part of either the Brahmanas or Upanishads. ... The Upanishads (Devanagari: उपनिषद्, ; also known as and ) are part of the Vedas and form the Hindu scriptures which primarily discuss philosophy, meditation and nature of God; they form the core spiritual thought of Vedantic Hinduism. ... The Aitareya Upanishad is one of the older, primary Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. ... The Upanishad is one of the older, primary (mukhya) Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. ... The Isha Upanishad (IAST or ), also known as the Ishavasya () Upanishad, is one of the smaller Upanishads but is probably the most often quoted. ... The Taittiriya Upanishad is one of the Upanishads associated to the taittiriya samhita of the Black Yajurveda. ... The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the main ten Upanishads of Hinduism. ... The Kena Upanishad (), is one of the older, primary Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. ... Mundaka Upanishad is an Upanishad of the Atharva Veda. ... MāndÅ«kya Upanishad is one of the shortest Upanishads, that form the speculative metaphysical parts of the Hindu texts, the Vedas. ... Prashna Upanishad (IAST ) is one of the older, primary Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. ... The Vedanga (IAST , member of the Veda) are six auxiliary disciplines for the understanding and tradition of the Vedas. ... Shiksha is an NGO devoted to improving the standards of education in New Delhi and its neighbouring regions. ... The verses of the Vedas have a variety of different meters. ... Nirukta is Vedic glossary of difficult words. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Kalpa is one of the six disciplines of Vedanga, treating ritual. ... Itihasa (Sanskrit: इतिहास - itihāsa in IAST notation, literally meaning that which happened) is the word for History. ... Manuscript illustration of the Battle of Kurukshetra The (Devanagari: ), is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the . ... The (DevanāgarÄ«: ) is an ancient Sanskrit epic attributed to the poet Valmiki and is an important part of the Hindu canon (smá¹›ti). ... Smriti (Sanskrit स्मॄति, that which is remembered) refers to a specific canon of Hindu religious scripture. ... Purana (Sanskrit पुराण, purāṇa, meaning ancient or old) is the name of a genre (or a group of related genres) of Indian written literature (as distinct from oral literature). ... Bhagavad Gīta भगवद्गीता, composed ca the fifth - second centuries BC, is part of the epic poem Mahabharata, located in the Bhisma-Parva chapters 23–40. ... SÅ«tra (sex) (Sanskrit) or Sutta (Pāli) literally means a rope or thread that holds things together, and more metaphorically refers to an aphorism (or line, rule, formula), or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. ... Pañcaratra is an pre-Puranic form of Hinduism, which equated Narayana with Vishnu. ... The Tantra (Looms or Weavings), refer to numerous and varied scriptures pertaining to any of several esoteric traditions rooted in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. ... Kumara Vyasa is one of the most famous poets in the Kannada language, spoken in the state of Karnataka, India. ... Stotras are Hindu prayers that praise aspects of God, such as Devi, Siva, or Vishnu. ... Hanuman Chalisa (Forty chaupais on Hanuman) is Tulsidas most famous and read piece of literature apart from the Ramacharitamanasa, a poem primarily praising Hanuman. ... ÅšrÄ« Rāmcaritmānas (Hindi: रामचरितमानस) is an epic poem composed by the great 16th-century Indian poet, Goswami Tulsidas (c. ... The Sanskrit language ( , ) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. ... 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 (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. ... Indian postage stamp depicting (2004), with the implication that he used (पाणिनि; IPA ) was an ancient Indian grammarian from Gandhara (traditionally 520–460 BC, but estimates range from the 7th to 4th centuries BC). ... (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. // The Parthenon of Athens seen from the hill of the Pnyx to the west. ...


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. Vedic may refer to: Ancient India the Vedic civilization the Vedas, the oldest preserved Indo-Aryan texts Vedic Sanskrit, their language (see also Vedic meter, Vedic accent, Vedic chant and Shrauta) the historical Vedic religion traditional Hindu culture: Vedic astrology the Ayurveda (Vedic medicine) Ancient Vedic weights and measures modern... This article contains information that is not verifiable. ... Yaska Acharya is a celebrated Sanskrit scholar and grammarian of ancient India. ... Panini can refer to: Pāṇini, the 5th century BC Sanskrit grammarian Panini (sandwich), a type of Italian sandwich Panini (stickers), a brand of collectible stickers Giovanni Paolo Panini, an Italian artist This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...


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. Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... Bhartrihari (c 450–510) was an Indian author of Wikipedia and early figure in Indic linguistic theory. ... 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. ...

Contents

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. Yaska Acharya is a celebrated Sanskrit scholar and grammarian of ancient India. ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... In computer science a formal grammar is an abstract structure that describes a formal language precisely, i. ... Fig. ... The chronology of Indian mathematics spans from the Indus Valley civilization (3300-1500 BCE) and Vedic civilization (1500-500 BCE) to modern India (21st century CE). ... The place value system is a method of writing numbers with a base 10 numerical system. ...


Panini's grammar consists of four parts:

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. ... The vowels of modern (Standard) Arabic and (Israeli) Hebrew from the phonological point of view. ... 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. ... Morphology is the following: In linguistics, morphology is the study of the structure of word forms. ... The Dhatupatha (dhatupatha) is a lexicon of Sanskrit verbal roots subservient to the Ashtadhyayi grammar by Panini. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... The Ganapatha (gaṇapāṭha) is a list of groups of words used by the Ashtadhyayi grammar by Panini (scholar). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

  • 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. 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. ... A woman practising hatha yoga Yoga is a family of ancient spiritual practices originating in India. ... 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. ... For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ... Vachaspati Misra was a philosopher of the Indian Nyaya school from the 8th-9th century AD, who worked on problems of perception, epistemology and language (as they relate to religion). ... The main objective of the Purva (earlier) Mimamsa school was to establish the authority of the Vedas. ... In linguistics, the head is the morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member. ... Kumarila Bhatta (Sanskrit: कुमारिल भट्ट) was an 8th century Hindu philosopher and mimamsa scholar from Prayag (Now Allahabad, UP, India). ... Bhartrihari (c 450–510) was an Indian author of Wikipedia and early figure in Indic linguistic theory. ... 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 :

  • Varadaraja, Laghukaumudi,

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. ...

The Indica of Al-Biruni (973-1048), dating to ca. 1030 contains detailed descriptions of all branches of Hindu science. See also: Xuanzang (fictional character) A portrait of Xuanzang Xuanzang (Chinese: 玄奘; Pinyin: Xuán Zàng; Wade-Giles: Hsüan-tsang; Cantonese IPA: jyn4tsɔŋ1; Cantonese Jyutping: jyun4zong1) (602-644/664) was a famous Chinese Buddhist monk. ... Alternative meaning: I Ching (monk) The I Ching (Traditional Chinese: 易經, pinyin y jīng; Cantonese IPA: jɪk6gɪŋ1; Cantonese Jyutping: jik6ging1; alternative romanizations include I Jing, Yi Ching, Yi King) is the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. ... Fazang (7th century CE) was the third patriarch of the Buddhist Huayan school. ... A statue of Biruni adorns the southwest entrance of Laleh Park in Tehran. ... 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. ...


List of Sanskrit grammarians

Beginning of Western scholarship

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 (also spelt Ramkrishna Gopal Bhandarkar, and known as R.G.Bhandarkar), was a scholar, orientalist and social reformer. ... William Dwight Whitney (1827-1894) was an American linguist, philologist, and lexicographer who edited The Century Dictionary. ... Otto von Böhtlingk (May 30, 1815 - April 1, 1904) was a German Indologist and Sanskrit scholar, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. ... 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

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. ... Louis Renou (1896-1966) was a pre-eminent French indologist of the 20th century. ... Bimal Krishna Matilal is regaded as one of the foremost Indian philosophers of modern times. ...

Contemporary

George Cardona is an American professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. ... Paul Valentin Kiparsky (born January 28, 1941, Helsinki, Finland) 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. ... Michael E. J. Witzel (born 1943) is Wales Professor of Sanskrit and Chair of the Committee on South Asian Studies at Harvard University. ...

References

  • Frits Staal, A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972), reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi (1985), ISBN 81-208-0029-X.


 

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