Page 45 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 3: Brief History of the Growth of Modern Linguistics: Bloomfield to Chomsky

3.10 Yaska’s Nirukta Notes

The oldest linguistic treatise preserved in India is the Nirukta (Explanation) of Yaska (fifth century
B.C.). It offers brief explanations of the Rigvedic words which had already become obscure. Though
the writers of the Brahamans had already established themselves as etymologists, yet Yaska was
the first methodical and scientifically minded etymologist. He hinted at the idea to be developed
by later grammarians that words were ultimately to be traced to a limited number of roots. He
considered the words listed in the Nighantu.

3.11 Panini
Panini in his work has mentioned the names of some grammarians. They were Aipishali, Kashyap,
Gargya, Chakravarman, Galav, Shaktayan, Senak, Sphotyan and Bhardwaj. They were his
predecessors and contemporaries. But it was Panini who struck out a new and original path. The
whole of his work depends on the Sivasutras where the Praytacharas (the terminology he is going
to adopt) are set forth. By his masterly analysis he arrived at the fundamental conception of
roots—which are a set of monosyllabic constants, each a concept, and each expressing an action
(kriya). He divided the parts of speech into three (suvanta, tingat and avyaya), and recognized the
sentences as the basic unit of language. His Asthadhayi is the first formal grammar in the history
of letters. It is not speculative or philosophical like the grammars of the Greeks and the Romans.
It is descriptive and analytic, and treats phonology and morphology in great detail. It makes very
brief statements about linguistic phenomena; most of them are designated by arbitrary sounds or
complexes of sounds used as code-words. The underlying philosophy of the Paniniya system are
the assumptions such as dhatu (‘base’, literally ‘constituent’), krit (primary, ‘demonstrative’ literally
‘making’), and taddhita (‘secondary determinitive’ literally ‘put to that’), etc.
Panini is the best known of the Indian linguists. His date is not certain, but around 500 B.C. or later
has been suggested in the light of the evidence available. His grammar has been called by Bloomfield
‘One of the greatest monuments of human intelligence.’ Its main characteristic is its startling
economy and brevity. It avoids repetition. It describes, with the minutest detail, every inflection,
derivation, and composition, and every syntactic usage of Sanskrit. ‘Panini is also to be credited
with the device of zero in linguistic description, by which part of an apparently irregular set of
morphological forms can, by posting an analytic entity without actual exponents as an element of
their structure, be brought into line with the regular forms.
The influence of Panini’s grammar upon Sanskrit was immense and long-lived. First of all Astadhayi
was a great and historical achievement of a great analysing mind, unparalleled and unique in the
history of mankind, and, as such, it deserved great recognition. Secondly, whatever was analysed
by him had already in his own days acquired a peculiarly sacred character in the minds of the
people. Thus a religious authority was added to Panini to determine what was ‘right’ and what
was ‘wrong’. So besides being an analytic and descriptive account of the Sanskrit language, Panini’s
grammar became prescriptive too.

3.12 Katyayana

In the post-Panini era the first name that strikes the historian of linguistics, is that of Katyayana.
There is a controversy about his time. Some scholars regard him as the senior of Panini. He was
the leader of the Aindra school of Sanskrit grammar. The name ‘Aindra grammarians’ seems to
imply that school was of a later date than Panini. But the terminology and the methods of this
school are decidedly of a more primitive and less developed type than those of Panini. But at the
same time it should not be forgotten that we find many of the technical terms of Panini even as
early as in the works of Yaska. Perhaps ‘the Aindra school is post-Paninian in date though pre-
Paninian in substance.’
As the language had changed by the time of Katyayana, he felt the necessity of changing the
grammar too. He set about amending Panini and took only those sutras which he thought required

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