पृष्ठम्:ADictionaryOfSanskritGrammarByMahamahopadhyayaKashinathVasudevAbhyankar.djvu/२४५

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पाठक
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चूर्णादीनि अप्राण्युपग्रहादिति सूत्रस्य पाठान्तरम् Kaas. on P.V.2.134.

पाठक or उदयंकरपाठक name of a scholar of Sanskrit Grammar who wrote an independent work on Pari- bhaasaas and commentaries on the ParibhaaSendusekhara and Laghu- 5abdendusekhara. See उदयंकर and परिभाषाप्रदीपार्चिस्.

पाठकी name popularly given to the commentaries written byउदयंकरपाठक. See पाठक.

पाणिनि the illustrious ancient gra- mmarian of India who is well- known by his magnum opus, the Astaka or Astaadhyaayi which has maintained its position as a unique work on Sanskrit grammar un- paralleled upto the present day by any other work on grammar, not only of the Sanskrit language, but ofany other language, classical as well as spoken. His mighty inte- lligence grasped, studied and digested not only the niceties of accentuation and formation of Vedic words, scattered in the vast Vedic Literature of his time, but those of classical words in the classical literature and the spoken Sanskrit language of his time in all its different aspects and shades, noticeable in the various provin- ces and districts of the vast coun- try. The result of his careful study of the Vedic Literature and close observation of.the classical Sanskrit, which was a spoken language in his days, was the production of the wonderful and monumental work, the Astaadhyaayi,which gives an auth- oritative description of the Sanskrit language, to have a complete ex- position of which,several life times have to be spent,in spite of several commentaries upon it, written

from time to time by several dis- tinguished scholars. The work is a linguist's and not a language teacher's. Some Western scholars have described it as a wonderful specimen of human intelligence,or as a notable manifestation of human intelligence. Very little is known unfortunately about his native place,parentage or personal history. The account given about these in the Kathaasaritsaagara and other books is only legendary and hence, it has very little historical value. The internal evidence, supplied by his work shows that he lived in the sixth or the seventh century B. C., if not earlier, in the north western province of India of those days. Jinendra- buddhi, the author of the Kaasikavivaranapanjikaa or Nyasa, has stated that the word शलातुर् mentioned by him in his sUtra ( IV. 3.94 ) refers to his native place and the word शालातुरीय deriv- ed by him from the word शलातुर by that sUtra was, in fact his own name, based upon the name of the town which formed his native place. Paanini has shown in his work his close knowledge of, and familiarity with, the names of towns, villages, districts, rivers and mountains in and near Vaahika, the north-western Punjab of the present day, and it is very likely that he was educated at the ancient University of Taksasilaa. Apart from the authors of the Pratisaakhya works, which in a way could be styled as grammar works, there were scholars of grammar as such, who preceded him and out of whom he has mentioned ten viz., Apisali, Saakataayana, Gaargya, Saakalya, Kaasyapa, Bha- .