Panini

Panini is a very well-known Sanskrit grammarian that literally changed the way that language functioned until the 20th century and helped to pave the way for many aspects of modern language as we know it.

No one really knows when Panini was born or how he was raised, but most scholars place his birth around 400 – 600 BCE, some as far back as 1500 BCE. Panini marks the turn from the Vedic period to the Classical period because of his set of nearly 4,000 Sanskrit rules of morphology in his text called the Astadhyayi, one of the first texts on Sanskrit grammar and the first formal system of linguistics in the world.

Panini’s first formal system used many concepts that weren’t well understood until the computational linguistics of the 20th century starting to come around. He heavily influenced many modern scientists with his use of auxiliary symbols.

His work, the Astadhyayi was later analyzed by a Patanjali which is called the Mahabhasya and elaborates on Panini’s grammar. The man kept linguistic experts studying his rules for a thousand years and it took another thousand and a few hundred more years for his rules to be modernized and built on. His accomplishments are truly legendary.

The Astadhyayi marked the changed in period from Vedic to classical Sanskrit  and provided a linguistic foundation for the users of his language until it was used in modern technology. Panini is a man who you might never heard about, but he almost certainly influenced the way that you use language.

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