Panini (grammarian)

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Panini ( Devanagari : पाणिनि, Panini , [ paːɳɪn̪ɪ ]) was an Indian Sanskrit - grammarian , who probably lived in the 5th or 4th century BC and in Taxila taught. He wrote the oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar and thus the oldest surviving grammar ever.

history

At that time, the sutras (textbooks) were spreading in India as a new form of exchange of ideas. Panini summarized the grammar of classical Sanskrit in almost four thousand rules, which became known under the title Aṣhṭādhyāyī (Sanskrit: अष्टाध्यायी, "eight chapters"). He separated the stems and suffixes of verbs and nouns and achieved a concise, clear representation by using metalinguistic symbols. The work became an authoritative authority in India and received many comments. It became known in European countries in the course of the British colonization of India in the 19th century and stimulated analog grammar studies in other languages. Ferdinand de Saussure , Leonard Bloomfield, and other structuralists were influenced by the work. Meyers Konversationslexikon commented in 1907 as follows:

"It is distinguished by an extremely astute exploration of the roots and the formation of words, as well as the sharpest precision of expression and the implementation of an over-artificial terminology that enables extreme brevity."

Modern linguistics is interested in this inimitable formalization , and because of the similarities with the Backus-Naur form , Panini's grammar is even interesting for modern computational linguistics .

Henry Thomas Colebrooke published an English translation of the Panini grammar in Calcutta in 1809. Otto Böhtlingk (1815–1904) published the Sanskrit text for the first time from 1839 to 1840 and followed in 1887 with the edition with translation (in the broadest sense) that is still in use today and which was reprinted again and again, most recently in 2001.

Publications

expenditure

  • Otto Böhtlingk (Ed.): Pāṇini ’s grammar. Bonn (1839-1840); Reprinted Delhi (2001), ISBN 81-208-1025-2 .
  • Ganakastadhyayi (free software for Panini's grammar at http://taralabalu.org/panini/, among others with English / German / French-language references to the Sanskrit original text).

Secondary literature (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Panini
ALTERNATIVE NAMES पाणिनि
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian Sanskrit grammarian
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century BC BC or 4th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 5th century BC BC or 4th century BC Chr.