Question

Who wrote Ashtadhyayi?

Answer 1

Hint:
-He was a descendant of Paṇina.
-He was also called Śalāturiya.
-He is believed to be born in Shalatura, i.e. presently in Pakistan.

Complete answer:
Ashtadhyati was written by Pāṇini.
He was a Sanskrit philologist, grammarian and a scholar of Ancient India. It is believed that Pāṇini was born and brought up in Shalatura, which is in present day Pakistan. His full name was Daksiputra Pāṇini. Daksi was his mother’s name and ‘Pāṇini’ indicates that he was a descendant of Paṇina.

There is no strong evidence available to suggest the time period in which he was born or lived. The rough estimation for the year of his existence is between 4th century BC and 7th Century BC.

Ashtadhyayi is his most notable and the most work of grammar. It is also one the oldest texts of Sanskrit grammar to be surviving in its entirety. It is also a very compact text and does not sacrifice its completeness. It takes inspiration from older lexical texts called Dhatupatha and Ganapatha and describes algorithms to be used to generate well-formed words. These texts have a reputation for perfection, i.e. it describes the Sanskrit language unambiguously and completely.

Note:
-Pāṇini and his work became well known in Europe during the 19th Century.
-The grammarians during this time proposed that the idea of having formal rules is grammar has been due to their exposure to the grammarian rules by Pāṇini.
-Thus, this Indian idea has had a huge impact on the languages in Europe.