Panini (grammarian)

Pāṇini (Sanskrit: पाणिनि; IPA: [paːɳin̪i])
Born	6th to 4th century BCE
Notable work	Aṣṭādhyāyī (Classical Sanskrit)
Region	Northwest Indian subcontinent
Main interests	Grammar, Linguistics

Pāṇini (~6th–4th century BCE), or Panini, is the name of an ancient Sanskrit linguist, grammarian, and a revered scholar in Hinduism. Considered the father of Indian linguistics, Panini likely lived in northwest Indian subcontinent during the early Mahajanapada era.

Pāṇini is known for his text Ashtadhyayi, a sutra-style treatise on Sanskrit grammar, estimated to have been completed between 6th and 4th century BCE. His 3,959 verses on linguistics, syntax and semantics in "eight chapters" is the foundational text of the Vyākaraṇa branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of the Vedic period. His aphoristic text attracted numerous bhasya (commentaries), of which Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya is the most famous in Hindu traditions. His ideas influenced and attracted commentaries from scholars of other Indian religions such as Buddhism.

Panini's analysis of noun compounds still forms the basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding in Indian languages. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.

Panini's theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before the 20th century. His treatise is generative and descriptive, and has been compared to the Turing machine wherein the logical structure of any computing device has been reduced to its essentials using an idealized mathematical model.

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