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(; a patronymic meaning "descendant of "; fl. 4th century BCE〔Frits Staal, Euclid and Pāṇini, Philosophy East and West, 1965〕 〔''(Sanskrit Literature )'' The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 2 (1909), p. 263.〕), or Panini, was a Vyākaraṇin from the early mahajanapada era of ancient India. He was born in Pushkalavati, Gandhara (on the outskirts of modern-day Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan).〔〔 Pāṇini is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules〔 of Sanskrit morphology, syntax and semantics in the grammar known as ', meaning "eight chapters"), the foundational text of the grammatical branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of the historical Vedic religion. The Ashtadhyayi is one of the earliest known grammars of Sanskrit, although Pāṇini refers to previous texts like the ''Unadisutra'', ''Dhatupatha'', and ''Ganapatha''.〔 It is the earliest known work on linguistic description, and together with the work of his immediate predecessors (the ''Niruktas'', ''Nighantus'', and ''Pratishakyas'') stands at the beginning of the history of linguistics itself. His theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before the mid 20th century, and his analysis of noun compounds still forms the basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding, which have borrowed Sanskrit terms such as bahuvrihi and dvandva. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the end of the period of Vedic Sanskrit, introducing the period of Classical Sanskrit. ==Date and context== Nothing definite is known about when Pāṇini lived, nor even in which century he lived. It is known that he was from the city of Pushkalavati in Gandhara. Most scholarship suggests a 4th-century BCE ''floruit'' (corresponding to the Pushkalavati archaeological site), contemporary to the Nanda Empire ruling the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but a 5th or even late 6th century BCE date cannot be ruled out with certainty. Pāṇini's grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so Pāṇini by definition lived at the end of the Vedic period. He notes a few special rules, marked ''chandasi'' ("in the hymns") to account for forms in the Vedas that had fallen out of use in the spoken language of his time. These indicate that Vedic Sanskrit was already archaic, but still comprehensible. An important hint for the dating of Pāṇini is the occurrence of the word ' (in 4.1.49, either "Greek woman", or "Greek alphabet"). Some Greeks, such as the Persian admiral Scylax of Caryanda, were present in Gandhara as citizens of the Persian Empire well before the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s BC;〔"Aside from the more abstract considerations of long-distance artistic or philosophical influence, the concrete evidence we have for direct contact between Greeks and Indians is largely limited to the period between the third century BCE and first century CE.", ('Hellenistic India' by Rachel R. Mairs, University of Cambridge ), p.2〕 the name could also have been transmitted via Old Persian ''yauna'' and the administrative languages Elamite or Aramaic, so that the occurrence of ' taken in isolation allows for a ''terminus post quem'' as early as 519 BCE, i.e. the time of Darius I's Behistun Inscription that included the province of Gandara (Sanskrit ''Gandhāra''). It is not certain whether Pāṇini used writing for the composition of his work, though it is generally agreed that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as "script" and "scribe" in his ''Ashtadhyayi''.〔Hartmut Scharfe (2002). ''Education in Ancient India''.〕 These must have referred to Aramaic or early Kharosthi. It is believed by some that a work of such complexity would have been difficult to compile without written notes, though others have argued that he might have composed it with the help of a group of students whose memories served him as "notepads" (as is typical in Vedic learning). Writing first reappears in India in the form of the Brahmi script from c. the 3rd century BCE in the Ashokan inscriptions. While Pāṇini's work is purely grammatical and lexicographic, cultural and geographical inferences can be drawn from the vocabulary he uses in examples, and from his references to fellow grammarians, which show he was a northwestern person. New deities referred to in his work include Vasudeva (4.3.98). The concept of dharma is attested in his example sentence (4.4.41) ''dharmam carati'' "he observes the law" (cf. Taittiriya Upanishad 1.11). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Pāṇini」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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