Randall Craig Meister and Dr. Polyxeni Strolonga, Classics

The ancient grammarians of Greece and India followed an informatively comparable methodology in the light of modern-day ancient language pedagogy. This study examined the ancient texts of the Ashtadhyayi by Panini, Techne Grammike by Dionysius Thrax, and Peri Syntaxeos by Apollonius Dyscolus in terms of structure, potential application, and the reality of modern-day application within educational settings. Such an analysis yielded invaluable information concerning a number of common trends and principles among two of the central civilizations to influence the indo-european tradition of language teaching throughout the ages.

The main method of analysis was to: firstly, analyze the primary texts in their original language together with their synchronic grammarians sources. Secondly, during my intensive private Sanskrit training in Vishakhapatnam, India. During this training, in order to gain a clearer perspective on the various applications of the Ashtadhyayi as utilized among various institutions, traditional Vedic schools, and universities in India. Combining these two perspectives of contextual readings of the original texts together with the multifaceted application observed among Sanskrit pedagogues, enabled my research to permeate centuries of ambiguity concerning the origins of western linguistic thought and its original application among the peoples it served.

My original hypothesis pointed to the fact that the methodical analysis of the three ancient grammars together with an analysis of the present utilization of the Ashtadhyayi in today’s India would yield a clearer picture of how the complexities of their organizations could be utilized in antiquity. An analysis of the Ashtadhyayi and its 4,000 verses proved Panini’s firm to commitment to brevity within explanation through the use of aphoristic phrases and an internal metalanguage.

As I studied the possible uses of this brevity within the confines of various Vedic patashalas and among leading Indian scholars, who have committed the Ashtadhyayi to memory, I found that brevity was utilized to promote the memorization of the grammar principles for the purpose of easy access to be used to solve translation anomalies and to study the language in general. The organization of the Astadhyayi, thus, became an epitomizing symbol for the ancient grammarian’s purpose of systematically organizing linguistic information on a phonological, syntactic, morphological, and semantic level for the expressed purpose of language education, rather than solely for philosophical purposes. Thus, I was able to recognize the same points of brevity within the Techne Grammatike of Dionysius Thrax, and, by analogy, to analyze other texts and scholia of Oxyrinchus in order to observe how Dionysius Thrax’s texts were used for the systematic teaching of Greek in the Alexandrian era in Egypt, Italy, and throughout Greece. Thus, I was able to recognize the principle of brevity as prevalent in the foundational grammarians of both the east and the west.

Dionysius Thrax focused on a brevity, which began with the theory of what grammar is, and as such, set forth the main features of grammar. While he certainly uses Greek examples in his analysis, Dionysius seems to imply that his theory of grammar could apply to all languages as he speaks in general terms of the nature of prosody, tone, verbs, nouns, and phonology, etc., which providing a simultaneous analysis of the Greek, as it applies to the discussed concept. In contrast, Apollonius Dyscolus focuses of the theory of Greek language feature organization in terms of sentence syntax, semantics, language variation, and language change. His treatise style is thorough and explanatory rather than outlined and overviewed as found in Dionysius.

Intriguingly, the features of thoroughness, explanation, outline, and overview throughout the explanations of both phonology, morphology, semantics, language change, and language variation exist in the Ashtadhyayi of Panini. As I observed how the Ashtadhyayi was utilized in a variety of pedagogical contexts in India, I began to see how each linguistics principle (phonological, syntactic, etc.) was outlined in the Ashtadhyayi through the hierarchical structure (as in Dionysius) of brief rules (expressed in aphorisms), but, due to the nature of the metalanguage and broad application of aphorisms present in the work, contained great explanatory value – a style we see in Apollonius. Thus, in observing the Ashtadhyayi’s use in contexts of universities, traditional Vedic schools, spoken sanskrit seminars, and modern Sanskrit pedagogical tools, both from the west and east, I observed that the outline and brevity were used to assist in memorization, while the great amount of commentary served as a basis for further study by both advanced students and academics. My overview of the Ashtadhyayi as utilized in modern India’s education system will be published in the as a separate article in BYU’s linguistics’ journal Schwa, in December 2011. This overview will also be presented at the University of Central Oklahoma Student Linguistics Conference in November 2011.

With this perspective of the applications of the Ashtadhyayi in mind, I was able to further examine the elements of brevity in the Dionysius Thrax as pedagogical in nature for the memorization and categorization on the part of the student. The application of the explanatory treatise style of Apollonius Dyscolus also became a evident as somewhat of a lecture before advanced students in Alexandria, where Apollonius was known to have taught. This mirrors many of the style of explanations set forth in Patanjali’s Mahabhasya, which are explanatory notes bases upon the aphorisms of Panini.

The most problematic aspect of this project was gathering the necessary information to make the connections between the Greek and Sanskrit Grammarians. A prominent difficulty came as I was required to both view the modern Sanskrit pedagogy with and without my modern western perspective on pedagogical analysis. Despite these difficulties, I was able to both see the Ashtadhyayi for its true applications, as well as make the comparisons to its Greek counterparts. For further comparative analysis, I would trace the history of the use of Apollonius’ and Dionysus’ texts and investigate whether I discover similar pedagogical variations in the texts’ use as seen with the Ashtadyayi today.