PANINI, (fourth century mu.). The greatest of all the grammarians of India. Of his life very little is known. Combined evi dence fixes his birthplace at Salatura, near the modern town of Attock, in the extreme north of the Punjab. According to a verse in the Pan catantra (q.v.) he was killed by a lion. A late and trivial legend, told by Somadeva in the Aathicsarilsugara, describes the future gram marian in his youth as a very stupid pupil of a Brahman named Varsha. Being sent away, Panini practiced such austerities in the Hima layas that Siva, pleased with the penance, re vealed to him the grammar which he then set forth to the world. The work of Panini is the oldest Sanskrit grammar which has been pre served. Although he names no less than sixty four predecessors in two schools, a northern and a southern, their books have been so entirely superseded by his that they have disappeared. He marks the line between Vedic and classical Sanskrit. (See SANSKRIT LANGUAGE.) His in fluence is shown by the fact that the language as he fixed it never changed its character so far as the literary usage was concerned. The grammar of Panini consists of eight books, each of which contains four chapters. The chapters are com posed of varying numbers of extremely short rules, or sutras. of which the entire work con tains 3996. Of these three, or perhaps four, were not written by Panini himself. The rules are in algebraic style. and are so compact and obscure that they are unintelligible without close study.
Ile invented a large number of arbitrary symbols to express various grammatical terms, which in crease the obscurity of his work, even while they contribute iu a large measure to its brevity. There is, however, a certain amount of method beneath these apparently arbitrary symbols. His system of grammar is based on the theory of the verbal origin of nouns. The ar rangement is widely different from that found in Occidental works. Thus instead of treating phonology, inflection, conjugation, and the like separately, Panini traces a given phonetic change, as the change of n to a, throughout the language, without reference to the class of word in which it may occur. Syntax is nut considered by him,
and the inIketion, strictly speaking, must be built up from the rules scattered throughout the work. The authority gained by Panini was well deserved, for his grammar is one of the most ex haustive ever written. This preeminence, to gether with his extreme obscurity, has called forth a number of commentaries. Of these the most imyortaumr were the mu/IabMisya, or Great Commentary, of Pataijali (q.v.), probably in the second century B.C. (edited by Kielhorn, 3 vols., Bombay, 1878-85), in which previous com mentaries were summarized, and the first com plete one, the Iiir.+ikr vrtti, or Bewares Com mentary, of Jayaditya and Vamana, about A.D. 050 (edited by Bala Sastri, Benares, 1898). To the grammar there are added as appendixes a Dloituputha, or Index of Roots, and the Gaya putha, or Index of Classes, both ascribed to Panini. The first contains 1961 roots, of which only about eight hundred have thus tar been found in Sanskrit, although comparative linguis tics establishes the existence of a number be sides. About fifty roots known to occur in the Vedas are omitted. The second appendix is a col lection of lists of words following the same rule as the first one of their series which is given in the main grammar. The chief edition is that by Mhtlingk, I'aninis Gran1matik (Leipzig. 1887).
p5-neInt-, GIOVANNI PAoLo (c.1693 1704). An Italian painter, horn at Piacenza. He was the pupil of Benedetto Luti and Andrea Lu catelli, in Rome. Idc confined his attention to in teriors and exteriors of buildings in or about Rome, and introduced figures and accessories, which,while not areMeologically accurate, are very picturesque in arrangement. His works include: "Interior of Saint Peter's," and "Antique Ruins," in the Louvre; "Ancient Ruins with Figures," in the National Gallery, London; and "Cardinal l'olignae Visiting the Interior of Saint Peter's," in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.