8. Case Worker: Panini's Grammar

It is interesting that old Indians were able to form a huge literature, including grammar "books", without having a writing system.

afaik, the earliest writing system attested in indian subcontinent is brahmi script, and the earliest examples of that script are dated to around 400bc and no earlier. As the creator of one of the most important literatures of the ancient world, india "discovered" writing surprisingly late. Actually, very late. And when it is introduced, indian literature were already well-developed.

By way of comparison, chinese characters are attested from 1200bc, and mesopotamia/egypt are much older.

First I would like to say that I love your podcasts. You are forming a veritable Bayt al-Hikma for the internet.

Secondly, rather apropos of nothing, what languages can you read? I'm partly interested since what languages a person knows often biases them toward certain cultures and texts that were written in a known language (esp. true because lots of non-European works are untranslated). I noticed, for example, that you focuses far more on Arabic and Persian writers rather than Jewish or Turkish ones (although your podcasts is still a far more comprehensive overview of medieval Jewish thought and Islamic thought than much else on the internet.  I'm also just curious because I study linguistics and thus find what languages people know very interesting.  

Keep up the good work!

at about 7:13 you assert, as part of your argument that P. puts verbal action at the centre of sentential meaning, the idea that the list of roots, Dhātupāṭha, is a list of verbal roots.  That is not so.  In the Dhātupāṭha, the dhātus, roots, are arranged according to verbal declensions, and according to their various other features (sārvadhātuka/ārdhadhātuka, seṭ/aniṭ, ātmanepada/ubhayapada/parasmaipada, etc.). But a verb, for Pāṇini is a tiṅanta.  The dhātus may evolve into tiṅanta forms, but they may also evolve into subanta, or nominal forms.  Dhātus precede the distinction of nominal and verbal words, suptiṅantam padam.  They are the roots of all linguistic forms, not just verbal forms. 

Maybe i'm misunderstanding, but shouldn't the ground be the target of the sentence?  The leaf falls from tree to the ground seems like donar to target, where as "I dance in the room" seems like room is locus.  Otherwise, what is the target?

Another excellent episode! I was surprised to find that Panini's syntactical system is more or less the same system I learned in my Intro to Linguistics course almost a decade ago; it's called thematic analysis, and it's covered in the semantics unit.

Hi Peter, I have recently discovered your podcasts and am greatly enjoying them - I have some haphazard knowledge of classical and Indian philosophy and the series does just what it says, fills in the gaps!

Re your reply to a comment on this topic, if you ever get the time, highly recommend learning Sanskrit: as you're a proficient (or much better) reader of Classical Greek it will probably come quite easily as the case system and word order conventions (or lack of) will make you feel right at home, and the differences between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit are reminiscent of the distance between Homeric and Attic Greek. It seems to me (a biased amateur of course) that reading the Upanishads or Sutra/Purana literature in Sanskrit is easier than, for example, Plato in Greek or Heidegger in German (or Heidegger in any language of course), although I do persist with all of the above :-)

Please keep up with the great work with the podcasts, extending our horizons with every episode!

For those actually looking for Sanskrit grammar, sentences and intricacies of Panini grammar, can see here yesvedanta.com/sanskrit/tenses