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Early grammatical thought in the Indian subcontinent, as represented by the works called Prātiśākhyas, was intended to assist the recitation of Vedas by explaining the pronunciation of accents and dissolution of sandhis. Their objective was merely descriptive, that is, to make grammatical observations and offer clarifications where necessary. But a number of independent and full-fledged grammars emerged subsequently which sought to ‘derive’ language rather than simply ‘describe’ it: they built mechanistic systems which perform various operations on bases and affixes in order to produce correct word forms and, using these fully derived words, to construct meaningful sentences.
While Pāṇini himself mentions many of his predecessors in his sūtras, his work, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, remains the oldest surviving derivational grammar of Sanskrit. Composing such a grammar required Pāṇini to meticulously design every aspect of the derivational procedure, which explains why Pāṇini made significant efforts in formulating his paribhāṣā sūtras ‘metarules’. These metarules play a pivotal role in the correct interpretation and application of vidhi sūtras ‘operation rules’ at every step of the derivation, thereby ensuring that the derivational machine produces the grammatically correct output.
Given the Aṣṭādhyāyī’s remarkable exhaustiveness and accuracy, it is not surprising that Kātyāyana, around 250 BC1, undertook a systematic analysis of what must have been for him an unprecedented and extraordinary treatise. Kātyāyana recorded his thoughts and findings in the form of vārttikas, which are short statements seeking to explain, examine, criticize and sometimes integrate Pāṇini’s rules with additions. Without overlooking the more specific and individual aspects of the grammar, Kātyāyana sought to develop a broad perspective about the functioning of the Aṣṭādhyāyī as an integrated machine. This involved interpreting the metarules of Pāṇini’s grammar, providing examples and counterexamples to determine their verity, and composing new metarules to help the Pāṇinian system run even more smoothly.
Around 150 BC, Patañjali wrote the Mahābhāṣya, which is a commentary on Kātyāyana’s vārttikas.2 It records the arguments and counter-arguments that must have transpired between Patañjali and his pupils about the contents of the vārttikas. Patañjali too approached the Aṣṭādhyāyī with his independent perspective about its derivational system, and skilfully wove Kātyāyana’s vārttikas into his own presentation of the Pāṇinian machine. In doing so, he both established his independent interpretation of Pāṇini’s and Kātyāyana’s metarules, and wrote new metarules to afford us greater clarity to the Aṣṭādhyāyī’s derivational procedure.
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In the course of time, some Pāṇinīyas took it upon themselves to compile and comment on all such metarules from Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya. They also came up with new metarules to fill the knowledge gaps that they thought existed in the tradition. They came to be known as paribhāṣākāras ‘authors of paribhāṣās’, and the literature composed by them, as paribhāṣā literature.+++(5)+++ Paribhāṣā texts have been written over many centuries – from around3 (or soon after) Patañjali’s time, if not before him, to the 18th century. Among the paribhāṣā texts of the Pāṇinian tradition, the most popularly studied, quoted and commented upon in modern times is the relatively recent Paribhāṣenduśekhara of Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa, which was written in the eighteenth century.
A rich tradition of paribhāṣā literature has long existed in other schools of Sanskrit grammar too (e.g., Kātantra, Haima, Cāndra).4 Both Pāṇinian and non-Pāṇinian paribhāṣākāras were especially interested in certain topics, for example, rule conflict. In Nāgeśa’s work, the section containing paribhāṣās 38 to 70 deals exclusively with rule conflict and is thus called bādhabīja.5 Similarly, in the Kātantra system, paribhāṣā sūtras are actually divided into balābala sūtras ‘metarules dealing with comparison of rule strength’ and others which do not deal with this topic.6 A significant exchange of ideas took place between Pāṇinian and non Pāṇinian traditions due to mutual borrowing of paribhāṣās.
Circa 7th century AD, Jayāditya and Vāmana wrote the Kāśikā, which consists of vr̥ttis on each rule.7 A vr̥tti paraphrases the rule, teaches metarules that help us correctly apply that rule, gives examples of its application, and justifies the existence of each word of that rule.+++(4)+++ Vr̥ttis borrow a significant proportion of their contents from Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya. They are unique in that they do not comprise new metarules, yet by quoting some metarules from Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya and ignoring others, they present an evolved perspective about the mechanistic aspects of Pāṇinian derivations – often quite different from Patañjali’s.
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Lastly, let us talk about kaumudī texts, which explicitly envision the Aṣṭādhyāyī as a grammatical machine. The kaumudī tradition which began in the fifteenth century with Rāmacandra’s Prakriyākaumudī8, reorders the sūtras of the Aṣṭādhyāyī to reflect their derivational roles: in any Kaumudī text, a rule is introduced when the first derivation involving it is taught. The Kaumudī texts first introduce saṁjñā and paribhāṣā rules, then teach sandhi rules, then introduce nominal and verbal inflections in the order in which forms appear in paradigms, and then teach derivatives and compounds. The most celebrated text in this genre is Bhaṭṭojī Dīkṣita’s Siddhāntakaumudī written in the seventeenth century.9 By reordering the Aṣṭādhyāyī’s rules, the Kaumudī not only gives us a glimpse of how Pāṇini’s derivational mechanism actually works, but also tells us which metarules apply where, and how these metarules enable the us to perform derivations uniformly.
Even though the traditional texts discussed above broadly agree on most derivational technicalities, they present different perspectives on the nature and characteristics of the machine.
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Cardona 1976: 267-268. ↩︎
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The two major commentaries on the Mahābhāṣya are the Pradīpa of Kaiyaṭa and the Uddyota of Nāgeśa. ↩︎
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Abhyankar 1967: 12. ↩︎
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K.V. Abhyankar has edited and compiled many Pāṇinian and non-Pāṇinian paribhāṣā treatises in his Paribhāṣāsaṁgraha (1967). ↩︎
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Abhyankar 1967: 12. ↩︎
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Ibid., 3. ↩︎
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The two major commentaries on the Kāśikā are the Nyāsa of Jinendrabuddhi and the Padamañjarī of Haradatta. ↩︎
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The earliest recordered commentary was the Rūpāvatāra of Dharmakīrti (10th century), but its influence on the later kaumudī literature is uncertain. ↩︎
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It is accompanied by Bhaṭṭojī’s auto-commentary on the Siddhāntakaumudī called Prauḍhamanoramā. Two commentaries on the Siddhāntakaumudī are widely used to study it, namely Vāsudeva Dīkṣita’s elaborate and beginner (lit. bāla ‘child’) -friendly Bālamanoramā, and Jñānendra Sarasvatī’s concise and advanced Tattvabodhinī (Cardona 1976: 285-286). ↩︎