English
Among the earliest attempts of this kind was the formulation, by unknown authors, of-rules of interpretation (jzuribhdsa ), which Panini was supposed to have followed in his grammar, and which ure mentioned by his sue- INTRODUCTION xv cessor Katyayana. A collection of such rules was made in the eighteenth century by Nagoji-bhatta in h\a PaHbhdsendvriekhara, or ‘Moon-crest of Interpretative Rules Next we have the Varttikas, or ‘notes’ (from vrtti, * explana¬ tion’), of Katyayana, on 1,245, or nearly one-third, of Pan ini’s aphorisms. That grammarian belonged to the Deccan, and pro¬ bably lived in the third century b.c. When Katyayana’s criticism shows him to differ from Panini, an oversight on the part of the latter is usually to be assumed ; but in estimating the extent of such oversights, one should not leave out of accouut the fact' that Katyayana lived both later and in a part of India far removed from that of Paniui. Other grammarians made similar notes on Panini both before and after Katyayana ; subsequent to the latter’s time are the numerous grammatical Karikas or comments in metrical form. All this critical work was collected by Patanjali in his extensive Mahabhasya, or ‘ Great Commentary ’, with many supplementary notes of his own. His discussions take the form of a kind of dialogue, and deal with 1,713 rules of Panini. e Patafijali’s work probably dates, as has been said, from the latter half of the second centurv n.r.. ThA Afnl, ✓7 n o )//i in i ___ u ix me yv oras in a sentence , which 13 concerned with the philosophy of grammar, and by Kaiyata probably in the thirteenth century. 1 Abjmt tfs 0 was composed another commentary on Panini, the Kasikd VfUi, or ‘ Benares Commentary’, the first five books being the work of Jayaditya, the last three of Vamana. Based on a deteriorated text of Pfinini, it contains some errors, but has the merit of conciseness and lucidity. Though much shorter than the Mahabhasya , it is particularly valuable as theoldest com¬ mentary on Panini that explains every Sutra. The examples that it gives in illustration are, as a rule, derived from older inter¬ preters. Such borrowing was a usual practice; even Patafi- jali speaks of stock examples as murdhabhi^ikta, or ‘ consecrated ’ (lit. ‘ sprinkled on the head ’). In the fifteenth century Ramacandra endeavoured in his Pra - knya-kaumvdl, or ‘ Moonlight of Method ’, to make Panini’s grammar more intelligible by rearranging its matter iu a more XVI INTRODUCTION practical way. The Siddhanta-kaumudi, or ‘ Moonlight of Settled Conclusions’, in which Bhattoji in the seventeenth century disposed Panini’s Sutras in a more natural order, had a similar aim. An abridgement of this work, entitled Laghu-(siddhanta-) kaumudi , or ‘ Short Moonlight (of Settled Conclusions)’, by Vara- daraja, is commonly employed as a useful introduction to the native system of grammar. A belief in the infallibility of Panini, which still prevails among the Pandits, has often led the above- nameti interpreters, from Patanjali onwards, to give forced explanations of Panini’s rules. Other later grammarians, not belonging to the school of Panini, are on the whole of little importance. While adducing hardly any new material, they arc much le 98 complete than Panini, since they omit whole sections, such as rules about Vedic forms and the accent. Introducing no new points of view, they aim solely at inventing technical devices, or at presenting their subject in a more lucid and popular form. Among these non-Paijinian grammarians may be mentioned the names of Candra 1 , who flour¬ ished about,650 a. d. 8 ; the pseudo-Sakntayana, who was posterior to the Ka&ika Vrtti ; and the most important of them.Hemacandra (twelfth century). The Kdtantra by Sarva-varman (of uncer¬ tain date), whose terminology has striking affinities with older works, especially the PratiSakhyas, seems to have been the most influential of these later grammars. It served as a model for the standard Pali grammar of Kaccayana, and the native grammars of the Dravidians and Tibetans. Vopadeva’s Mugdha-bodha, or ‘ Enlightenment of the Ignorant ’, a very technical work dating from the thirteenth century, has been, down to the present day, the Sanskrit grammar chiefly used in Bengal. Lastly, we have tho Sarasvatl Sutra , or ‘ Aphorisms of the Sarasvati Grammar , by an unknown author, a work distinguished by lucidity as well as conciseness. There are, besides, a few works dealing with special depart¬ ments of the subject, which form contributions of some importance to our knowledge of Sanskrit grammar. The Phit Sutra of 1 Hi; Grammar, the C&ndrn-rj/akarnna, has been edrte.l by Prof. Bruno Jon ,3.308-5; imlixchen Litterutur, ii, |>. 259. INTRODUCTION xvii Santanava, composed later than the Mahabhdsya, but at a time when there was still a living knowledge of the ancient accent, gives rules for the accentuation of nouns, not according to the analytical method of P§nini, but with reference to the finished word. As Panini does not determine the gender of individual words, though he treats of feminine suffixes and does not ignore differences of gender in general, some value attaches to works dealing with the subject as a whole, especially to Hemacandra’s Lihg&nvJdsana, or ‘Treatise on Gender*. ( The first Sanskrit grammar ever written by a European was composed by the German missionary Heinrich Roth, a native of Augsburg, who died at Agra in 1668, as Superior of the Jesuit College in that city. This work was never published, but the manuscript is still preserved at Rome. There is, however, in Kircher’s China Illustrata (Amsterdam, 1667), pp. 162—63, a contribution by Roth, which contains an account of the Sanskrit alphabet with five tables in Devanggan characters (undoubtedly the earliest specimens of that script to be found in any book printed in Europe) *. The first printed European Sanskrit grammar was that of Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo, written in Latin and published at Rome in 1790. This work was based partly on the MS. material left by a German Jesuit missionary named Hauxleden, who died in 1732. The first scientific grammar aiming at com¬ pleteness was that of Colebrooke, published in 1805. It was followed by that of Carey in 1806. The former work was based on Panini, the latter on Vopadeva. The earliest Sanskrit grammar written on European principles, and therefore of most influence on the study of Sanskrit at the beginning of the last century, was that of Wilkins (1808). The most notable among his successors have been Popp, Benfey, and Whitney. / Bopp’s grammar was important owing no less to its lucidity than to its philological method. Benfey was the first to combine with the traditional material of Pfinini a treatment of the peculiarities of the Vedic and the Epic dialects. He also largely used the aid Tn. C 0 I A^ ara ^ Ve P hilol °gy ^ or the explanation of Sanskrit forms. The American scholar Whitney was the first to attempt an 1 See Zachariae in the Vienna Oriental Journal, 15, 313-20. INTRODUCTION xviii historical grammar of Sanskrit by treating the Vedic language more fully, and explaining from it the development of classical Sanskrit. The first grammar treating Sanskrit entirely from the comparative point of view is the excellent work of Prof. J. Wackernagel, of which, however, only the first volume, dealing with phonology (1896), and the first part of the second volume (1905) treating of compounds, have yet appeared. >The best known of the Sanskrit grammars used in this country during the latter half of the nineteenth century are those of Monier-Williams and Max Muller. Both of these contain much matter derived from the native system that is of no practical utility, but rather an impediment, to the student of literary Sanskrit. All such matter has been eliminated in the present work, not from any prejudice against the Indian grammarians, but solely with the intention of facilitating the study of the subject by supplying only such grammatical data of the actual language as have been noted by scholars down to the present time. Vedic forms have also been excluded, but in order to furnish English and Indian students with the minimum material necessary for beginning to read works written in the older language, a brief outline of Vedic Grammar is given in Appendix III. My recently published Vedic Grammar being too elaborate for elementary students, I hope to bring out, as a parallel to the present work, a simplified Vedic Grammar, in¬ cluding syntax, which will afford beginners the same help in the study of Vedic literature as this grammar does in that of Sanskrit. Though the accent is never marked in classical Sanskrit, I have, owing to its philological importance, indicated it here in transliterated words as far as it can be ascertained from Vedic texts. A short account of the Vedic accent itself will be found in Appendix III. CONTENTS PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.v-vi PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.vii-ix INTRODUCTION: Brief History of Sanskrit Grammar . . x-xviii TABLE OF THE DEVANAGARl LETTERS. xx CHAPTER I: THE ALPHABET Relation of Sanskrit to Vedic and to the Indian Vernaculars— Origin of Indian Writing —Arrangement of the Letters —The Vowels—The Consonants—The Numerical Figures—Pronunciation . 1-9 CHAPTER II: EUPHONIC COMBINATION External Sandhi: Combination of Vowels and of Consonants— Internal Sandhi: Combination of Vowels and of Consonants . .