All the languages which we speak in India have a base of Sanskrit language in it and Panini the creator of Sanskrit language made it possible and he also spread it out in all the subcontinents of India. Panini was an Indian Hindu Grammarian most known for inventing 4,000 plus rules in the morphology of Sanskrit.
It has been also said that Panini’s rules for Sanskrit were known to be perfect. It described the morphology of Sanskrit in a flawless way that even the computer scientists used it to teach computers so that Sanskrit could be understood. These are all the great ways of how Panini the creator contributed to languages and how it has helped people.
Today we are going to see more works of Panini and his life and how he contributed to linguistics. So, let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Panini Early life
Panini the creator was born in or around the 5th or 6th century BC but there are not many records or information about Panini but it is estimated that he was born at that time in a village called Shalatur which is near the river Kabul found in the Indus however it is now called Lahore in Pakistan.
Panini’s guru was his father as well; his name was Pani and his mother’s name was Daakshi and while growing up Panini learned deeply about grammar.
Panini was taught by many vocabulary teachers and when he read the texts and observed an equal difference in the same, that’s when Panini decided to develop “grammar science”. Panini the creator by many historians is considered to be the elder brother of Maharishi Pingal.
Panini Personal life
Panini has worked in a lot of fields of Sanskrit and after that Patanjali’s Mahabhasya is considered to be the next most important works in Sanskrit grammar. Panini’s grammar has been considered to be the world’s very first formal language and he has also discovered the system of Vyakaran and Shiksha.
This invention of Panini was done way before Gottlob Frege’s invention of language in the 19th century. At that time Patanjali gave Indian languages a much-needed development.
There isn’t much information about Panini the creator’s life but it is said that his mother is known as Daakshi and his uncle from his mother’s side is known as Vyadi. His father was known as Pani but there are a lot of historians who refuse this assumption and his elder brother was known to be Pingla.
Major Works of Panini
Panini was famous as the most innovative person and originally he helped in the development of gaining the knowledge in the grammar of Sanskrit. This ancient Indian grammarian gave scientific knowledge about Sanskrit morphology and phonetics. Panini the creator is considered to be the founder of language and literature and then Sanskrit was considered to be the perfect language.
Panini’s major work is on a treatise called “Astadhyayi” or Astaka it is his most famous work and it is a thesis consisting of eight chapters also each chapter has been divided into a quarter chapter. In this major work of Panini, he has described the difference between the holy texts and the language used for communication in normal life.
Panini has used the words expanded before the Aranyakas, Brahmin, Upanishads, Vedic codes, etc and it has also been used in the Astadhyayi.
Astadhyayi
To describe Sanskrit grammar a basic set of rules were given and Panini step by step in the first chapter he included nouns, their definition, related formulas of nouns, nouns related to the nouns, regulating episodes of the verb. For example, inflection means the ending of nouns, self-meditation-verse chapters, compounds, etc.
In the third chapter, there is the law of suffixes. There is an action of explaining the meaning of a participant’s words of prefixing all about the metals.
In the fourth and the fifth chapters as well there are the laws for suffixes and in-depth information about descriptions of new noun words which are formed by adding suffixes in nouns.
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Impact of Panini Work
Panini the creator of Sanskrit in ancient India had made a good impact on a lot of modern languages and in the 19th century in Europe Panini’s work got a lot of recognition. It was Franz Bopp who started to build interest in Panini’s work. And later more linguists like Roman Jakobson, Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, etc started to get impressionable by Panini’s work.
Once, Frits Saal, a European grammarian studied Panini’s work and then discussed the work on how Indian languages made an impact on European languages. And after his studies and understanding, the idea behind it was clear that Indian grammar and language have influenced and structured European language as well.
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Ferdinand de Saussure who is known as the father of modern linguistics too had studied Panini the creator of Sanskrit had worked for more than three decades and was highly influenced by his work in grammar and Sanskrit.
In many conferences, he had himself said that Indian language and grammar had made a lot of impact on his thinking as well his work. In one of his books “On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit” which was published in 1881, he has covered Panini’s influence on his works.
Panini’s one method for demonstrating linguistics, behavior, and structure was to create analysis on a lot of Hindu ancient scriptures like the Shiva Sutras. By putting together a logic based on the morphology of Sanskrit he was able to show preceding scripture and show their inherent formations according to their principles.
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Conclusion
A lot of people said that Panini the creator of Sanskrit had used the memory of his disciples for his writings but Panini had contributed a lot to the Indian language which influenced all the other European linguistics as well. And this was all about Panini and his great works in creating Indian languages and Sanskrit in particular.
I hope this article was helpful and informative for all of you. If you have any related query drop them in the comments I’ll surely answer. Thank you!
