Complexity of Panini’s 2500 year old Sanskrit rule solved
- Recently Indian student sage Atul Rajpopat has solved the complexity of Panini’s 2500 year old Sanskrit rule.
- In the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, Panini taught a ‘metarule’.
- Traditionally, scholars have interpreted the meaning of ‘metarule’ to mean that in case of conflict between two rules, the rule that comes later in the grammatical order is used. However, this interpretation often gave grammatically incorrect results.
- New research argues that in such conflicts, Panini wanted us to choose the rule on the right between the rules for the left and right sides of a word.
Importance of Research:
- This research can bring revolution in the field of Sanskrit studies. Along with this, Sanskrit grammar can also be taught through computer.
About Panini and Ashtadhyayi
- Panini was a scholar of Sanskrit grammar. He gave a comprehensive and scientific theory of Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology.
- He is also known as an informationist, because he used language to decode information.
- Panini’s grammar treatise is known as Ashtadhyayi (or Ashtaka). It was composed in the sixth or fifth century BC. This text contains 4000 sutras to explain the science behind the Sanskrit language.
- It relies on a system that works algorithmically to convert the bases (roots) and suffixes (suffixes) of a word into grammatically correct words and sentences.
- It has been compared to Alan M. Turing’s Turing Machine because of its complex word formation rules.
- The Ashtadhyayi was later augmented by several subsidiary texts. These subsidiary texts are – Shivsutra (special sequence of sounds); Dhatupatha (list of basic words); Ganapatha (separate groups of nouns) and Linganushasana (system of gender determination) etc.
Source – The Hindu
