Studies on Panini's grammar - DWC

The methods and mannerisms of composition in Pär;tini' s A~tädhyäyi 59
of objections were interpolated by school masters, who did not understand
the worth of Pär;tini's researches.
§ 80. Th e not ion pramänatva i n I i n 9 u i s tic sc i en c e.
P ä r;t i n i a n d h iso P pon ent sin s U. 53~57.
The relation between Pär;tini and his opponents with reference to grammatical
pramänatva can be iIIustrated by the history of Iinguistic science
in Europe.Before the foundation of comparative Iinguistics the aim of the
grammarians as pupiIs of the old Greek sophists and philosophers was to
teach how to use one's language weil' and effectively, the grammar of the
eighteenth century still being a normative science. But by the discovery of
the coherence of the Indo-"European languages the interests of the
scientific Iinguists became directed towards the historical development of
language and with the help of phonetics as a branch of physics and the
mechanistic psychology of Herbart they tried to find the factors of th is
development. It was, as a comparison by De Saussure precisely expresses
the state of things, as if botanists were studying the morphology of a
plant by taking only lengthwise diagrams of its branches and forgetting to
look at any transverse diagram. It is true, the writers of schoolgrammars
c1ung to the old methods, and some scholar or other Iike Delbrück tried to
unify old and new methods by writing a comparative compendium of
syntax, which, however, neither by its psychological premisses could
explain much, nor satisfy the demands of full description feit by specialists.
So the posthumous work of De Saussure came to light, in which the
au thor tried to unify and correct the old unsatisfactory methods. Next to
the historical treatment followed by the nineteenth century schol ars we are
in need of a descriptive method, which no more strives at laying down
rules born in the theoretical brain of a legislative grammarian, but searches
the rules that are unconsciously and instinctively active in the minds of the
people as a Iinguistic unity.
And it is this theoretical interest which we of ten can detect in Pänini's
researches, but miss in the schoolmaster's spirit and easiness of his
opponents, who interpolated su. 1, 2, 53-57.
§ 81. A n a I y sis 0 f ad h y. 1 p ä. 3.
The 3d päda of the Ist adhy. has only one subject: the discussion of the
kärakas (e.g. kartar, sü.. 14; karman, su. 13; abhipräya, cf. the terms
'ätmane' - and 'parasmai' -padam ) and bhäva (sU. 13). as expressed by the
conjugational terminations. The anubandhas used in this connexion by the
Dhätu-Pätha are an additional anudätta-vowel "after a consonantic root
and of n af ter a vocalic root for the indication of the 'media tantum' (1. 3.
12) and an additional svarita-vowel or Ti for the indication of the 'genere
mobilia' (1, 3, 72) whilst the absence of these anubandhas 1) indicates the
1) This means that roots en ding in a consonant receive as activa tantum the addition
of an udáffa-vowel; See Liebich. DhP. § 25.