PANINI, the greatest known grammarian of ancient India, whose work on the San skrit language has up to the'present day remained the standard of Sanskrit grammar. Its merits are so great that Panini was ranked among the Rishis (q.v.). or inspired seers, and at a later period of Sanskrit literature, was supposed to have received the fundamen tal rules of his work from the god Siva himself. Of the Personal history of Panini noth ing positive is known, except that lie was a native of the village Salatura, situated of Attock, on the Indus—whence he is also surnamed Salaturiya—and that his mother was called D•kshi, wherefore, on his mother's side, he must have been a descendant of the celebrated family of Daksha. A tale-book, the Kathasaritsagara (i. e., the ocean for time rivers of tales), gives, indeed, some circumstantial account of the life and death of Panini; but its narrative is so ahsurd, and the work itself of so modern a date—it was written in Cashmere, at the beginning of the 12th c.—that no credit whatever can he attached to the facts related by it, or to the inferences which modern scholars have drawn from them. According to the views expressed by Goldstucker (Plinini, his Place in San skrit Literature• London, 18G1), it is probable that Panini lived before Sakyamuni, the founder of the Buddhist religion, whose death took place about 543 B.C., but that a more definite date of the groat grammarian has but little chance of ascertainment in the actual condition of Sanskrit philology. The grammar of Panini consists of eight Adhyilvits, or books, each book comprising four padas, or chapters, and each chapter a number of (q.v.), or aphoristical rules. The latter amount in the whole to 3,996; but three, perhaps four, of them did not originally belong to the work of Panini. The arrangement of these differs completely from what a European would expect in a grammatical work, for it is based ou the principle of tracing linguistic phenomena, and not concerned in the classification of the linguistic material, according to the so-called parts of speech. A chapter,. for instance, treating of a prolongation of vowels, will deal with such a fact wherever it occurs, be it in the formation of bases, or in conjugation, declension, com position, etc. The rules of conjugation, declension, etc., are, for the same reason, not to be met with in the same chapter or iu the same order in which European grammars would teach them; nor would any single book or chapter, however apparently more sys tematically arranged—from a European point of view—such as the chapters on affixes or composition, suffice by itself to convey the full linguistic material concerned in it, apart from the rest of the work. In a general manner, Tallinn; work may therefore be called a natural history of the Sanskrit language, in the sense that it has the strict tendency of giving an accurate description of facts, instead of making such a description subservien* to the to which the linguistic material is usually distributed by El•a pean grammarians. Whatever objections may be raised against such an arrangement, the very fact of its differing from that in our grammars makes it peculiarly instractive to the European student, as it accustoms his mind to survey language from another point of view than that usually presented to him, and as it must induce him, too, to question the soundness of many linguistic theories now looked upon as axiematie truths. As the
method of Panini requires in a student the power of combining many rules scattered all over the work, and of combining, also, many inferences to he drawn from these rules, it exercises, moreover, on the mind of the student an effect analogous to that which is vp posed to be the peculiar advantage of the study of mathematics. The rules of Panini were criticised and completed by Mityfiyana (q.v ), –;ho, according to all probability, was the teacher, and therefore the contemporary, of PAtanjali; and he, in his turn, was criti cised by Patanjali (q.v.), who sides frequently with Pauini. These three authors are the canonical triad of the grammarians of India; and their works are, in truth, so remarkable in their own department, that the7 exceed in literary merits nearly all, if not all, grammatical productions of other natim,s, so far as the two classes are comparable. The rules of Panini were commented on b7 many authors. The best existing commen tary on them is that called the Ka sikchritti, sy l'amana Jayaditya, which follows these rules in their original order. At a later t)e-Aod, attempts were made to arrange the rules of Panini in a manner which approaches more to the European method; the chief work of this category is the Siddlainta-.Taroreudi, by Bhattoji-dikshita. Panini mentions, in his S0tras, several grammarians who preceded him, among others Siikatilyana. _Manu scripts of a grammar ascribed to a grammarian of this name exist in the library of the India office in London, and in the library of the board of examiners at Madras. On the ground of a few pages only of 'the latter an attempt has been very recently made to prove that this grammar is the one referred to by Pamiui, and „therefore older than the work of the latter. But the facts adduced in proof of this hypothesis are so ludicrously weak, and the reasoning upon them so feeble and inconclusive, whereas the evidence in favor of the comparatively recent date of this work is so strong, that no value whateller can be attached to this hasty hypothesis. For the present, therefore, Panini's work still remains the oldest existing grammatical work of India, and probably of the human race. The Sfitras of Panini, with a modern commentary by two native pandits, and with extracts from the Fri/attar/8 of Klityayana and the of Patanjali, were edited at Cal cutta in 1809. This edit-ion, together with the modern commentary, but with garbled extracts from the extracts mentioned, was reprinted at Bonn in 1839-1840 by Dr. 0. who added to it remarks of his own and some idices. For the literature connected with Panini, see Colebrooke's preface to his Grammar of the Sanskrit Language (Cale. 1805), and Goldstiieker's Panini, etc., as mentioned above.