Sanskrit grammatical tradition (, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini (ca. 5th century BC).

Panini's school

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Panini's work became widely influential, and he later Sanskrit grammarians added to the work by considering various issues such as the nature of the word-meaning mapping, processes of linguistic acquistition, etc. However, his is not the earliest thinking on grammar, as is known from references in the Ashtadhyayi itself. His work is still referred to in the teaching of Sanskrit today.

Panini's grammar consists of several parts, of which the Ashtadhyayi, containing the morphological rules, forms the core:

• Shiva Sutras: phonology ()
• Ashtadhyayi: morphology
• Dhatupatha (lists classes verbal roots)
• Ganapatha (lists classes of primitive nominal stems)

Commentators on Panini and some of their views:

• Kātyāyana (linguist and mathematician): that the word-meaning relation is siddha, i.e. given and non-decomposable, an idea that Ferdinand de Saussure called arbitrary. Word meanings refer to universals that are inherent in the word itself (close to a nominalist position).
• Patanjali (c. 200 AD) - author of Mahabhashya. The notion of shabdapramAnah - that grammar reflects what people actually say, and not some ideal usage. Also the founder of the Yoga system.
• The Nyaya school, close to the realist position (as in Plato). Considers the word-meaning relation as created through human convention. Sentence meaning is principally determined by the main noun. uddyotkara, Vachaspati (sound-universals or phonemes)
• The Mimamsa school. E.g. sentence meaning relies mostly on the verb (corresponds to the modern notion of linguistic head). Kumarila Bhatta, prabhakara.
• Bhartrihari (c. 4th c. AD) that meaning is determined by larger contextual units than the word alone (holism).
• The Buddhist school, including Dignaga (semantics and logic), Dharmakirti.

Predecessors referred to in Ashtadhyayi include Sakatayana, and Gargya.

Other Indian linguists :

• Yaska: etymologist (approx. contemporary to Panini) - differed on some aspects, e.g. the nature of the root morphemes.
• Varadaraja, Laghukaumudi,

Early Accounts

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The earliest external historical accounts of Indian grammatical tradition is from Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India from the 7th century.

• Hsüan Tsang (602-664)
• I Tsing (634-713)
• Fa Tsang (643-712)

The Indica of Abu Raihan al-Biruni (973-1048), dating to ca. 1030 contains detailed descriptions of all branches of Hindu science.

Similar to the Chinese Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhism aroused interest in India among its followers. Taranatha (born 1573) in his treatise of the history of Buddhism in India (completed around 1608) speaks about Panini and provides some information about grammars, but not in the manner of a person familiar with their content.

Beginning of Western scholarship

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• Jean Francois Pons
• Henry Thomas Colebrooke
• August Wilhelm von Schlegel
• Wilhelm von Humboldt

19th century

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• Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar
• Franz Kielhorn
• William Dwight Whitney
• Bruno Liebich
• Otto Boehtlingk
• Georg Bühler
• Franz Bopp

Modern period

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• Bernhard Geiger
• Leonard Bloomfield
• Paul Thieme
• Louis Renou
• Herman Buiskool
• Bimal Krishna Matilal

Contemporary

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• Johannes Bronkhorst
• George Cardona
• Madhav Deshpande
• SD Joshi
• Paul Kiparsky
• Frits Staal

References

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• Frits Staal, A Reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1972), reprint by Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi (1985), ISBN 812080029X.

Sanskrit grammarians | Vedangas