HINDU ENCYCLOPEDIA

सनातन धर्म भूमिका

Meaning of "Panini"

Word

Panini

Sanskrit

पाणिनि

IAST

pāṇini

In General

Panini is remembered as one of the main contributor to Siksha sastra, a Vedanga. His work is called Astadyayi, is the basic text in Sanskrit for the study of the phonetics, etymology and pitches in language. It is believed, once fourteen very distinct sounds came out of Sivas Damru which became the basic aphorisms of the Sanskrit grammar of Panini. Astadyayi is a very concise book, so various studies on this text came in the later periods. Patanjali wrote a bhasya (commentary) and Vararuci wrote a vartika (gloss) on the orginal sutra of panini.

Panini is the most prominent grammarian but not the first. Gargya and Sakatayana are Sanskrit grammarians before Panini. Saktayana is of view that words have fixed root and specific meaning. Panini supported Gargya view that prepositions when not attached (to nouns or verbs) do not express meanings and says that they illustrate (or modify) the action which is expressed by a noun or verb, and that their senses are various (even when detached).

See also: Patanjali

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