Page 9 - Jul - Sep 2021

VOL. 18 No. 3
GRAMMAR GRANTHAS DID YOU KNOW?

The grammar in Ashtadhyayi has
ASHTADHYAYI-SANSKRIT SUTRAS been likened to the Turing machine.
What is a Turing machine and how
Ashtadhyayi, literally meaning ‘Eight Chapters’ is a Sanskrit treatise on is Ashtadyhyayi like one? Put your
grammar written in the 6th to 5th century BCE by the Indian scholar of research caps on and fi nd out!
Grammar and Linguistics, Panini.

CONTENT
FATHER OF LINGUISTICS
Panini's grammar
Did you know that the history of linguistics began
begins with
not with Plato or Aristotle, but with the Indian ‘metarules’, or rules
grammarian Panini! Pānini’s Ashtadhyayi shows
about rules, using
remarkable brevity and can be recited end-to-end in a special technical
two hours.
language, or ‘meta-
language’. Ashtadhyayi
BOOKS distinguishes between
usage in the spoken
Panini formulated the grammar of Sanskrit and
language and usage that is proper to
divided his work into eight chapters, each with quarter
of chapters. the language of the sacred texts. By
contributing to the development of
Four important texts are:
linguistics in India, it
SIVASUTRAS DHATUPATHA can be rightly termed
(list of phonemes) (list of verbal roots) as, ‘The Sacred Gita’,
GANAPATHA LINGANUSAASANA of languages.
(various sets of nouns) (system for deciding the Sanya Pillai, Class 12 F,
gender) Centre Point
School, Katol
Ruval Sajwan, Class 10, Raksha Anusandhan Vidyalaya, Dehradun Road, Nagpur

TOLKAPPIYAM: TAMIL TEXTS ACTIVITY: SCRIPT TREE

It is believed that the roundness of the South Indian script
Known to be the ancient and longest surviving Tamil was an adaptation made by scribes to make writing on
literary work Tolkappiyam is supposed to have been
the palm leaf easier.
written by Tolkappiar, one of the 12 disciples of the saint
Agastya. The book stands testimony to the development Chitwan Sharma, Class 10, Raksha Anusandhan Vidyalaya, Dehradun
of Tamil as a language. Given here is a script tree with a few scripts missing. Fill in
CONTENT the blanks.
A_ _ _ _ _ _ _ MAITHILI
The surviving manuscripts D_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ NEPALI ODIA
of the Tolkappiyam deal with K_ _ _ _ _ _
NAGARI GAUD B_ _ _ _ _ _
ilakkanam (grammar) in three GUJARATI VATTARATTU
books (atikaram): orthography, MODI TELUGU
etymology, and subject matter. KUTBI
BOOKS PALLAVA SINHALESE
MALAYALAM
ELUTTATIKARAM SHARADA T_ _ _ _
(‘Eluttu’ meaning ‘letter, phoneme’) G_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SOLLATIKARAM
(‘Sol’ meaning ‘Sound, word’)
PORULATIKARAM
(‘Porul’ meaning ‘subject matter’, like poetics)
BRAHMI

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