Background of the Aṣṭādhyāyī

Abstract

I have hesitated in accepting the invitation extended to me by Amba Kulkarni on September 9. The main reason was that I am not acquainted with what is called Sanskrit Computational Linguistics, or with theories of Machine Translation, or with information theory. In fact, I know nothing about these subjects. So what can I tell you? In view of my deeply regretted lack of knowledge regarding the subjects mentioned, I have decided to deliver a talk on a subject of which I have some experience, namely, Pāṇini’s linguistic analysis as shown in his method of analysis, in the development of theoretical concepts and in the composition of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. Clearly, Pāṇini, in applying his linguistic analysis of the spoken Sanskrit of his days, has developed a number of theoretical concepts which can be used for the analysis of other languages also. That is an elementary insight which proved to be fruitful already in the 19^th century when linguistics and especially comparative linguistics were developed as separate branches of science in Germany and France. Reading statements about information coding in which Pāṇini is hailed as an early language code information scientist, I am reminded of the situation in the early sixties, after Chomsky had published his book on Syntactic Structures in 1957. Here Chomsky introduced a type of grammar called transformational generative grammar. It earned him a great of applause, globally, I may say. Then it dawned on linguists that Pāṇini had also composed a generative grammar. So Pāṇini was hailed as the fore-runner of generative grammar. That earned him a lot of interest among linguists. Many linguists, foreign as well as Indian, joined the bandwagon, and posed as experts in Pāṇinian grammar on Chomskyan terms. Somewhat later, after Chomsky had drastically revised his ideas, and after the enthusiasm for Chomsky had subsided, it became clear that the idea of transformation is alien to Pāṇini, and that the Aṣṭādhyāyī is not a generative grammar in the Chomskyan sense. Now a new type of linguistics has come up, called Sanskrit Computational Linguistics with three capital letters. Although Chomsky is out, Pāṇini is still there, ready to be acclaimed as the fore-runner of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics. I am, of course, grateful for the interest shown in Pāṇini.