Computational Structure of the Aṣṭ ādhyā yī and Conflict Resolution Techniques

Abstract

Pāṇ ini’s Aṣṭ ādhyā yī consists of sūtras that capture fundamentals of Sanskrit language and define its structure in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax. The Aṣṭ ādhyā yī can be thought of as an automaton to generate words and sentences. In object oriented programming terms, prescribing sūtras are objects having its transformation rule as its method. The meta rules or paribhāṣā sūtras and paribhāṣā vārtikās define the flow of the program. During application of sūtras, conflicts may arise among two or more competing sūtras. In this paper, computational structure of the Aṣṭ ādhyā yī, sūtra objects observing the environment, tree representation of sūtras and mathematical representation of conflict resolution techniques are presented.