Systems of Sanskrit Grammar
14 Systems of Sanskrit Grammar § 11-1 we are no longer required to connect Patañjali with Subandhu. Weber and after him Max Müller put Pāṇini down to about 350 B. C., thereby making Panini almost the con- temporary of Katyayana the author of the värtikas to Panini's sutras; and this opinion obtained for a time, until it was assailed by Drs. Goldstücker and Bhandarkar who have succeeded in proving that Panini cannet have flourished later than B. C. 500. Goldstücker went much farther: he maintained that within the whole range of Sanskrit literature, so far as it is known to us, only the Samhitãs of the Rik, Sama, and Krishna-Yajus, and among individual authors only the exegete Yaska pre- ceded Pāṇini, and that the whole bulk of the remaining known literature is posterior to him. This position in an exaggerated form has been stated at length by Pandit Satyavrata Samaśrami, in the introduction to his Nirukta, making Yaska also a successor of Pänini. The date he assigns to Panini is cir. 2400 before Christ. Conclusions of this kind it was once the fashion to brush aside as carrying the starting point of Vedic chro- nology much farther than there was any warrant for it. Since, however, recent researches into the antiquity of 1 Histoy of Ancient Sanskrit Litera- ture, as quoted by Goldstücker in his note 91, p. 80 (Reprint, p. 60) of Panini, His place &c. 2 Goldstücker, loc. cit., p. 243 (Reprint, p. 187). This view of Goldstücker, however, is not strictly accurate. Panini must have known some form of the Gribya and the Dharma sutras. In his sutra iv. 4.71 Panini mentions prohibited places or times for study: ste. Patanjali in the Mahabhashya (vol. ii, p. 386) explains what prohibit. ed places () or times {STATATERT or gft) are meant. These prohibitions are. embodied in works of the Grihya or Dharma sutra type, and Papini must be thinking of some such works existing in his days. I owe this note to Professor Pathak,
