Editing Sanskrit (section)

=== Classical Sanskrit ===
[[File:Birch bark MS from Kashmir of the Rupavatra Wellcome L0032691.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|A 17th-century birch bark manuscript of Pāṇini's grammar treatise from Kashmir]]
The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in the ''Rigveda'' had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the [[Buddha]]'s time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages.<ref name="Gombrich2006p24">{{cite book|first=Richard|last=Gombrich|title=Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jZyJAgAAQBAJ|year=2006|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-90352-8|pages=24–25|access-date=19 July 2018|archive-date=3 July 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230703145618/https://books.google.com/books?id=jZyJAgAAQBAJ|url-status=live}}</ref>

The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to {{IAST|[[Pāṇini]]}}, along with Patañjali's {{Transliteration|sa|Mahābhāṣya}} and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Gérard |last1=Huet |first2=Amba |last2=Kulkarni |first3=Peter |last3=Scharf |title=Sanskrit Computational Linguistics: First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29–31, 2007 Providence, RI, USA, May 15–17, 2008, Revised Selected Papers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t2f1hneiV08C |year=2009 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-642-00154-3 |pages=v–vi |access-date=19 July 2018 |archive-date=29 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134221/https://books.google.com/books?id=t2f1hneiV08C |url-status=live }}</ref> Panini composed ''{{IAST|Aṣṭādhyāyī}}'' ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a [[Vedanga|Vedānga]].{{sfn|Harold G. Coward|1990|pp=13–14, 111}} The {{IAST|Aṣṭādhyāyī}} was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world".<ref name="Fortson, §10.26">Fortson, §10.26.</ref> Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as the variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India.{{sfn|Harold G. Coward|1990|pp=13–14, 111}} The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, [[Kashyapa|Kaśyapa]], Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, [[Bharadvaja|Bhāradvāja]], Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Pāṇini|first2=Sumitra Mangesh|last2=Katre|title=Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iSDakY97XckC&pg=PR19|year=1989|publisher=Motilal Banarsidass|isbn=978-81-208-0521-7|pages=xix–xxi|access-date=18 July 2018|archive-date=29 March 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134719/https://books.google.com/books?id=iSDakY97XckC&pg=PR19#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Cardona|1997|p=2}}

In the {{IAST|Aṣṭādhyāyī}}, language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines the linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language.<ref>Renou, Louis, and Filliozat, Jean. ''L'Inde Classique, manuel des etudes indiennes''. Vol. II. pp. 86–90. [[École française d'Extrême-Orient]], 2000 [1953]. {{ISBN|2-85539-903-3}}.</ref> Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced.<ref>Angot, Michel (2001). ''L'Inde Classique''. pp. 213–215. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. {{ISBN|2-251-41015-5}}</ref> Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and the most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century.<ref name="Fortson, §10.26"/>

Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.<ref>{{cite book|first1=Yuji|last1=Kawaguchi|first2=Makoto|last2=Minegishi|first3=Wolfgang|last3=Viereck|title=Corpus-based Analysis and Diachronic Linguistics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iaZxAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA223|year=2011|publisher=John Benjamins|isbn=978-90-272-7215-7|pages=223–224|access-date=18 July 2018|archive-date=29 March 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134751/https://books.google.com/books?id=iaZxAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA223#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.<ref name=bowman328>{{cite book|first=John |last=Bowman|title=Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cYoHOqC7Yx4C |year=2005|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-50004-3|page=728}}</ref> It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created the detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as ''[[Lipi (script)|lipi]]'' ('script') and {{Transliteration|sa|lipikara}} ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the {{Transliteration|sa|Aṣṭādhyāyī}}.{{sfn|Salomon|1998|p=11}}<ref name="Juhyung Rhi 2009 5, 1–13">{{cite journal| first=Juhyung |last=Rhi|year= 2009|journal= Journal of Central Eurasian Studies| volume= 1|title=On the Peripheries of Civilizations: The Evolution of a Visual Tradition in Gandhāra|pages=5, 1–13}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first1=Rita |last1=Sherma|first2=Arvind |last2=Sharma|title=Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x4eXRvwyvtMC&pg=PA235|year=2008|publisher=Springer |isbn=978-1-4020-8192-7|page=235}}</ref>{{efn|Pāṇini's use of the term ''lipi'' has been a source of scholarly disagreements. Harry Falk in his 1993 overview states that ancient Indians neither knew nor used writing script, and Pāṇini's mention is likely a reference to Semitic and Greek scripts.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Falk|first1=Harry|title=Schrift im alten Indien: ein Forschungsbericht mit Anmerkungen|date=1993|publisher=Gunter Narr |language=de|pages=109–167}}</ref> In his 1995 review, Salomon questions Falk's arguments and writes it is "speculative at best and hardly constitutes firm grounds for a late date for Kharoṣṭhī. The stronger argument for this position is that we have no specimen of the script before the time of Ashoka, nor any direct evidence of intermediate stages in its development; but of course this does not mean that such earlier forms did not exist, only that, if they did exist, they have not survived, presumably because they were not employed for monumental purposes before Ashoka".{{sfn|Salomon|1995|pages=271–279}} According to Hartmut Scharfe, ''lipi'' of Pāṇini may be borrowed from the Old Persian ''dipi'', in turn derived from Sumerian ''dup''. Scharfe adds that the best evidence, at the time of his review, is that no script was used in India, aside from the Northwest Indian subcontinent, before {{circa|300&nbsp;BCE}} because Indian tradition "at every occasion stresses the orality of the cultural and literary heritage".<ref name="Scharfe 2002">{{cite book |last= Scharfe |first=Hartmut |year=2002 |title=Education in Ancient India |pages=10–12 |series=Handbook of Oriental Studies |publisher=Brill |location=Leiden, Netherlands}}</ref> Kenneth Norman states writing scripts in ancient India evolved over the long period of time like other cultures, that it is unlikely that ancient Indians developed a single complete writing system at one and the same time in the Maurya era. It is even less likely, states Norman, that a writing script was invented during Ashoka's rule, starting from nothing, for the specific purpose of writing his inscriptions and then it was understood all over South Asia where the Ashoka pillars are found.<ref name="Hinüber1989">{{cite book |first=Oskar |last=von Hinüber |year=1989 |title=Der Beginn der Schrift und frühe Schriftlichkeit in Indien |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xiYTAQAAMAAJ |publisher=Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur |oclc=22195130 |pages=241–245 |isbn=9783515056274 |language=de |access-date=18 July 2018 |archive-date=15 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231215194736/https://books.google.com/books?id=xiYTAQAAMAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref> Goody (1987) states that ancient India likely had a "very old culture of writing" along with its oral tradition of composing and transmitting knowledge, because the Vedic literature is too vast, consistent and complex to have been entirely created, memorized, accurately preserved and spread without a written system.{{sfn|Goody|1987|pp=110–124}} Falk disagrees with Goody, and suggests that it is a Western presumption and inability to imagine that remarkably early scientific achievements such as Pāṇini's grammar (5th to 4th&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE), and the creation, preservation and wide distribution of the large corpus of the Brahmanic Vedic literature and the Buddhist canonical literature, without any writing scripts. Bronkhorst (2002) disagrees with Falk, and states, "Falk goes too far. It is fair to expect that we believe that Vedic memorisation—though without parallel in any other human society—has been able to preserve very long texts for many centuries without losing a syllable. ... However, the oral composition of a work as complex as Pāṇini's grammar is not only without parallel in other human cultures, it is without parallel in India itself. ... It just will not do to state that our difficulty in conceiving any such thing is our problem".<ref name=bronkhorst2002lar>{{cite journal |first=Johannes |last=Bronkhorst |year=2002 |title=Literacy and rationality in ancient India |journal=Asiatische Studien |volume=56 |issue=4 |pages=803–804, 797–831}}</ref>}}

The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and a restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded".{{sfn|Louis Renou|Jagbans Kishore Balbir|2004|p=53}} The Classical form of the language simplified the ''sandhi'' rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond the Vedic Sanskrit's {{Transliteration|sa|bahulam}} framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language.{{sfn|Louis Renou|Jagbans Kishore Balbir|2004|pp=53–54}}

The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature,{{sfn|Deshpande|1993|pp=130–196}} are negligible when compared to the intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit.{{sfn|Burrow|1973|pp=33–34}} The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax.{{sfn|A. M. Ruppel|2017|pp=378–383}} There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as the ''sandhi'' rules, both internal and external.{{sfn|A. M. Ruppel|2017|pp=378–383}} Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature.{{sfn|A. M. Ruppel|2017|pp=378–383}}

[[Arthur Macdonell]] was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of the differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit.{{sfn|A. M. Ruppel|2017|pp=378–383}}<ref>{{cite book |first=Arthur Anthony |last=Macdonell |year=1997 |title=A Sanskrit Grammar for Students |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HbFJJ2NF8W4C |publisher=Motilal Banarsidass |isbn=978-81-208-0505-7 |pages=236–244 |access-date=19 July 2018 |archive-date=29 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134721/https://books.google.com/books?id=HbFJJ2NF8W4C |url-status=live }}</ref> Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir.{{sfn|Louis Renou|Jagbans Kishore Balbir|2004|pp=1–59}}