Pāṇini

Pāṇini was an ancient Indian grammarian whose Aṣṭādhyāyī gives a compact, rule-based description of Sanskrit phonology, morphology, and syntax.

Aṣṭādhyāyī: A Sanskrit grammar of nearly four thousand concise rules traditionally attributed to Pāṇini. This is Pāṇini’s principal work and the system his grammatical method organizes.
Sandhi: Sound changes that occur at the boundaries between Sanskrit sounds or words. Pāṇini’s rules specify how sounds combine and change at boundaries.
Aṣṭādhyāyī dating: The scholarly problem of establishing when Pāṇini composed the Aṣṭādhyāyī. The work’s date situates Pāṇini within the development of ancient Sanskrit learning.
Pāṇinian grammar: The grammatical tradition based on Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī and its successive commentaries. It carries Pāṇini’s rules forward through generations of interpretation and teaching.
Sanskrit grammar: The study and description of Sanskrit’s sounds, word formation, and sentence structure. It is the broader discipline that Pāṇini’s rule system describes.
Morphology: The study of how words are formed from smaller meaningful units. The Aṣṭādhyāyī gives a systematic account of Sanskrit word formation.
Vedic Sanskrit: The early form of Sanskrit preserved in the Vedas, with features distinct from later Classical Sanskrit. Pāṇini’s grammar treats Vedic forms alongside the language of his own grammatical description.
Mahābhāṣya: Patañjali’s extensive commentary on Pāṇini’s grammar and Kātyāyana’s grammatical observations. It established a lasting interpretive framework for Pāṇini’s concise rules.
Śiva Sūtras: Fourteen sequences of Sanskrit sounds used by Pāṇini to form compact phonological abbreviations. Their sound groupings let the Aṣṭādhyāyī refer efficiently to classes of phonemes.
Dhātu: A verbal root in Sanskrit grammar, used as a base for forming verbs and related words. Pāṇini’s derivations build many verbal forms from roots.

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