The Sanskrit grammatical tradition of vyākaraṇa (Sanskrit: व्याकरण, IPA: [ʋjɑːkərəɳə]) is one of the six Vedanga disciplines. It has its roots in late Vedic India, and includes the famous work, Aṣṭādhyāyī, of Pāṇini (c. 4th century BCE).

The impetus for linguistic analysis and grammar in India originates in the need to be able to obtain a strict interpretation of the Vedic texts.[citation needed]

The work of the very early Indian grammarians has been lost; for example, the work of Sakatayana (roughly 8th c. BCE) is known only from cryptic references by Yaska (ca. 6th–5th c. BCE) and Pāṇini. One of the views of Sakatayana that was to prove controversial in coming centuries was that most nouns can be derived etymologically from verbs.

In his monumental work on etymology, Nirukta, Yaska supported this claim based on the large number of nouns that were derived from verbs through a derivation process that became known as krit-pratyaya; this relates to the nature of the root morphemes.

Yaska also provided the seeds for another debate, whether textual meaning is inherent in the word (Yaska's view) or in the sentence (see Pāṇini, and later grammarians such as Prabhakara or Bhartrihari). This debate continued into the 14th and 15th c. CE, and has echoes in the present day in current debates about semantic compositionality.

Pre-Pāṇinian schools

Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi, which is said to have eclipsed all other contemporary schools of grammar, mentions the names of nine grammarians[1][2]. A number of predecessors are referred to by Yāska, who is thought to have flourished a couple of centuries before Panini (c. 800 BCE[3]). Many of these individual names actually reflect the opinion of different schools of thought. Some of these pre-Paninian names of individuals / schools are:

Agrayana[1]

Aindra

Āpiśali (Pan. 6.1.92)

Aupamanyava[1]

Aurnabhava (Nir. 6.13, also[1]

Cakravarmaṇa (Pan. 6.1.130)

Gālava (Nir. 4.3

Gārgya

Kāśyapa (Pan. 8.4.67)

Kāṣakṛtsna

Katthakya[1]

Kautsa

krauSTuki (Nir. 8.2)

Kuṇaravāḍava (Pan. 3.2.14; 7.3.1)

Śākalya

Śākaṭāyana (c. 800BCE)

Senaka (Pan. 5.4.112)

Shakapuni

Sphoṭāyana (Pan. 6.1.123)

The works of most these authors are lost but we find reference of their ideas in the commentaries and rebuttals by later authors. Yāska's Nirukta is one of the earlier surviving texts, and he mentions Śākaṭāyana, krauSTuki, gArgya, etc. In Yāska's time, nirukta "etymology" was in fact a school which gave information of formation of words. The etymological derivation of words. According to the nairuktas or "etymologists", all nouns are derived from s verbal root. Yāska defends this view and attributes it to Śākaṭāyana. While others believed that there are some words which are "Rudhi Words". 'Rudhi" means custom. Meaning they are a part of language due to custom, and a correspondence between the word and the thing if it be a noun or correspondence between an act and the word if it be a verbroot. Such word can not be derived from verbal roots. Yāska also reports the view of Gārgya, who opposed Śākaṭāyana who held that certain nominal stems were 'atomic' and not to be derived from verbal roots[4]

Of the remaining schools, Śākalya is held to be the author of the padapatha of the Rigveda (a word-by-word pronunciation scheme, aiding memory, for ritual texts).

Pāṇini's school

Pāṇini's extensive analysis of the processes of phonology, morphology and syntax, the Aṣṭadhyāyī, laid down the basis for centuries of commentaries and expositions by following Sanskrit grammarians. Pāṇini's approach was amazingly formal; his production rules for deriving complex structures and sentences represent modern finite state machines. Indeed many of the developments in Indian Mathematics, especially the place value notational system may have originated from Pāṇinian analysis.

Pāṇini's grammar consists of four parts:

Śivasūtra: phonology (notations for phonemes specified in 14 lines)

Aṣṭadhyāyī: morphology (construction rules for complexes)

Dhātupāṭha: list of roots (classes of verbal roots)

Gaṇapāṭha: lists classes of primitive nominal stems

Commentators on Pāṇini and some of their views:

Kātyāyana (linguist and mathematician, 3rd c. BCE): that the word-meaning relation is siddha, i.e. given and non-decomposable, an idea that the Sanskriticist Ferdinand de Saussure called arbitrary. Word meanings refer to universals that are inherent in the word itself (close to a nominalist position).

Patanjali (linguist and yoga sutras, 2nd c. BCE) – author of Mahabhashya. The notion of shabdapramânah – that the evidentiary value of words is inherent in them, and not derived externally. Not to be confused with the founder of the Yoga system.

The Nyaya school, close to the realist position (as in Plato). Considers the word-meaning relation as created through human convention. Sentence meaning is principally determined by the main noun. uddyotkara, Vachaspati (sound-universals or phonemes)

The Mimamsa school. E.g. sentence meaning relies mostly on the verb (corresponds to the modern notion of linguistic head). Kumarila Bhatta (7th c.), prabhakara (7th c. CE).

Bhartṛhari (c. 6th c. CE) that meaning is determined by larger contextual units than the word alone (holism).

Kāśikāvṛttī (7th century)

Bhaṭṭi (c. 7th c. CE) exemplified Pāṇini's rules in his courtly epic the Bhaṭṭikāvya[5].

The Buddhist school, including Nagarjuna (logic/philosophy, c. 150 CE) Dignaga (semantics and logic, c. 5th c. CE), Dharmakirti.