Panini (Sanskrit: पाणिनि; IAST: Pāṇini) was an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian and linguist whose masterwork, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, is the foundational text of Vyākaraṇa (linguistics)—one of the six Vedāṅgas (auxillary scholarly disciplines) of ancient Indian scholarship. He lived during the mid-1st millennium BCE, dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th and 4th centuries BCE. The historical facts of his life are unknown, except only what can be inferred from his works, and legends recorded long after. His most notable work, the Ashtadhyayi (Aṣṭādhyāyī) (Devanagari: अष्टाध्यायी), is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His work formally codified Classical Sanskrit as a refined and standardized language, making use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology, and lexicon, organised according to a series of meta-rules. Since the exposure of European scholars to his Ashtadhyayi in the nineteenth century, Pāṇini has been considered the "first descriptive linguist", and even labelled as "the father of linguistics". His approach to grammar influenced such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield.
Biography
The name Pāṇini is a patronymic meaning descendant of Paṇina. His full name was Dakṣiputra Pāṇini according to verses 1.75.13 and 3.251.12 of Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya, with the first part suggesting his mother's name was Dakṣi. Some writers refer to Pāṇini as a Brahmin, but this remains uncertain as very little is known about him with any certainty: it is even unclear where and when he lived.
Dating Pāṇini has been dated between the 7th or 6th and 4th century BCE. In his survey of Pāṇini scholarship, George Cardona (1997) notes that available evidence strongly supports a date no earlier than 400 BCE, whereas earlier dates rely on interpretations that are not probative. Based on numismatic findings, Oskar von Hinüber (1989) and Harry Falk (1993) place Pāṇini in the mid-4th century BCE. In several sūtras (Aṣṭādhyāyī 5.2.119, 5.2.120, 5.4.43, 4.3.153), Pāṇini references coins such as rūpya and niṣka (a specific gold coin), which numismatists date in India to the 4th century BCE. Jan Houben (2009) states that the date of "c. 350 BCE for Pāṇini is thus based on unrefuted concrete evidence." Similarly, Johannes Bronkhorst (2016) accepts Von Hinüber's and Falk's argument, establishing a terminus post quem for Pāṇini around 350 BCE or the decades thereafter. According to Bronkhorst,
...thanks to the work carried out by Hinüber (1990:34-35) and Falk (1993: 303-304), we now know that Pāṇini lived, in all probability, far closer in time to the period of Aśoka than had hitherto been thought. According to Falk's reasoning, Panini must have lived during the decade following 350 BCE, that is, just before (or contemporaneously with?) the invasion by Alexander of Macedonia. Although scholars debate whether Pāṇini composed his work in writing, it is generally agreed that he knew of script based on references to words such as lipi ("script") and lipikara ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. Consequently, the introduction of writing in ancient India provides a key marker for this chronology. Vincenzo Vergiani argues that the nature, structure, and complexity of the grammar, including its binary classification of syllable lengths, offer evidence for its composition and transmission through written means. Pāṇini cites at least ten earlier grammarians and linguists: Āpiśali, Kāśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cākravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka, Sphoṭāyana, and Yaska. Kamal K. Misra notes that Pāṇini references Yaska's Nirukta, "whose writings date back to the mid-4th century BCE". The Sanskrit epic Brihatkatha and the Buddhist scripture Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa both describe Pāṇini as a contemporary of king Dhana Nanda (r. 329–321 BCE), the last monarch of the Nanda Empire before Chandragupta Maurya came to power. Cardona offers an earlier date for Pāṇini, noting that the compound word yavanānī, discussed in sutra 4.1.49 has been interpreted as referring to either to Old Persian cuneiform, Greek script, or Ionian women, with whom contact may have predated the conquests of Darius I (c. 518 BCE) or Alexander (326 BCE). K. B. Pathak (1930) argues that the kumāraśramaṇa (sūtra 2.1.70)—referring to female renunciates (śramaṇa)—could also refer to Jain Āryikā, potentially placing Pāṇini prior to Gautama Buddha in the 5th century BCE. Other scholars assign his work to the 6th or 5th century BCE on linguistic grounds:
Rens Bod notes that as Pāṇini's grammar codifies Classical Sanskrit, he is placed in the late Vedic period (c. 7th–5th century BCE). According to A. B. Keith, the Sanskrit text closest to Pāṇini's linguistic profile is the Aitareya Brāhmaṇa (c. 8th–6th century BCE). According to Harmut Scharfe, "Pāṇini's proximity to the language of the Upanishads and Vedic sūtras suggests a 5th or 6th century BCE date."
Location
Nothing certain is known about Pāṇini's personal life. In later epigraphical evidence, such as the 8th-century copper-plate inscriptions of Siladitya VII of the Maitraka dynasty of Vallabhi, he is called Śalāturiya (a man from Salatura), identifying his native place with ancient town of Salatura in Gandhara. This means Pāṇini lived in Salatura in ancient Gandhara, which likely was near Lahor (present day northwest Pakistan), a town at the junction of the Indus and Kabul rivers. According to the memoirs of the 7th-century Chinese scholar Xuanzang, there was a town called Suoluoduluo on the Indus where Pāṇini was born, and where he composed the Qingming-lun (Sanskrit: Vyākaraṇa). According to Hartmut Scharfe, Pāṇini lived in Gandāra during a period when it was nominally a satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire following the 6th century BCE conquest of Indus Valley. However Pāṇini’s work shows no influence from Old Persian. His geographical horizon in the Aṣṭādhyāyī remains centered on the Indian subcontinent (Āryāvarta and the Northwest).
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