Guest guest Posted October 26, 2002 Report Share Posted October 26, 2002 Prof.Deshpande's remarks below are very interesting. Is there anybody who has been trying to check how many rules Panini composes to 'describe' & 'prescribe' the language? Best wishes, Anujit ---------- I agree with Tim that Panini and the Pali grammarians might have discounted historical information, even if they had access to it, in favor of a "synchronic view" of grammar. However, keep in mind that Panini's approach is not really synchronic either. It perhaps panchronic, including all known states and varieties of Sanskrit differing in time as well as geography, in a single description. Though not overtly acknowledging the time dimension, it effectively incorporates it, describing Vedic usages as descriptive deviations from the norm of the colloquial bhaa.saa. This applies to his treatment of Sandhis as well. As for the Pali grammarians, though it is clear that they do know the Sanskrit grammatical tradition very well, they do not wish to acknowledge any derivational relation of Pali to Sanskrit, treating Pali, in stead, as the original language of all beings (sabba-sattaanam muulabhaasaa). Here the Pali grammars differ in their descriptive technique from the Prakrit grammars, which acknowledge not only the existence of Sanskrit, but derive Prakrit as a descriptive transformation of Sanskrit. &n\ bsp; Madhav Deshpande<BR> Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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