Systems of Sanskrit Grammar
Systems of Sanskrit Grammar § 14 - ] it is more for convenience of treatment than for anything else. He begins, as was quite appropriate, with a few definitions and canons of interpretation (i. 1 and 2), and he always takes care to introduce such definitions where- ever they are required. Some minor topics usually found included in systematic treatises on grammar, such as the Svara-prakarana (vi. 2) or the Stri-pratyayas, Panini has attempted to put into the places where they would most fit in, the only prominent exception to the above rule being the Sandhi-prakarana, which may conceivably have as well been placed elsewhere than where it occurs (vi, 1 and viii. 2-4), and which in any case need not have been cut into two halves separated from one another by the whole matter of nearly two chapters. His system of pratyahāras and his anxiety to secure a maximum of brevity are perhaps responsible for this lapse in regular logical sequence. But barring these paltry exceptions there is no doubt that Panini has succeeded remarkably well in welding the whole incongruous mass of gram- matical matter into a regular and a consistent whole.¹ 22 15. Technical devices used by Pāṇini.-The difficulty in un- derstanding Panini comes from the very circumstance which Panini himself perhaps considered as his real ad- vance over all his predecessors, namely his attempt to economise expression where conceivably he could do so 1 I do not wish to conceal the fact that the above topical schemo for the whole of the Ashta- dhyayi will be found wanting, if tried in details. It would seen us if Panini was work- ing alternately upon the two main aspects of his problem: the nouns and the verbs; and the present arrangement of the sütras in the Ashtadhyayi is the result of attempting to dove tail the two into a coherent whole, involving in the process many an addition and omission and transposition. It may even be that some sections of the sūtras are post-Pūriniya interpolutions, just , cun- trariwise, other sections of the antras Panini may have bodily taken over from some earlier
