writings as a ̄rs.a, “belonging to the seers,” just as the Pra ̄tis ́a ̄khya authors had
done with respect to Vedic mantras.
A later development of Sanskrit grammar benefited from the “new logic”
(navya nya ̄ya) that had originated in Bengal with Ganges ́opa ̄dhya ̄ya (thirteenth
century). This development continued, at least, through the eighteenth century
when Na ̄gojı ̄ Bhat.t.a wrote a treatise on Pa ̄n.ini’s metarules and philosophical
works in which he combines Bhartr.hari with the Indian philosophy of language
- a discipline not included in the present sketch.
Grammatical concepts and techniques from the Sanskrit tradition influenced
the early (second century bc?) grammar of Tamil Tolka ̄ppiyam which is, in other
respects, very different in outlook and structure. Sanskrit models were followed
more closely in later Dravidian grammars as well as grammars of Persian,
Marathi, and other languages. Tibetan grammars were inspired by the Sanskrit
tradition but it took almost 500 years (from the ninth to the fourteenth century
ad) before they fully captured the power and sophistication of the Indian
originals.
The Indian grammatical tradition influenced not only a few grammarians but
much of Asian civilization. We have seen that the first scientific classification of
the sounds of language, that of the vargasysem of the Pra ̄tis ́a ̄khyas, was due to
anoralanalysis. It is not surprising that this classification was taken into account
when the first Indian scripts evolved, but it went much further and served, for
millennia to come, as a sound foundation for most of the numerous scripts and
writing systems of south, southeast and east Asia – from Kharosthi, Khotanese,
Tibetan, Nepali, and all the modern scripts of India (except the Urdu/Persian) to
Sinhalese, Burmese, Khmer, Thai, Javanese, and Balinese. In south and south-
east Asia, the shapesof earlier Indian syllables inspired some of these inventions,
but it is the systemof classification that was of enduring significance wherever
it became known. In east Asia, the bastion of Chinese characters could not adapt
it; but in Japan it led to the creation of the hiraganaandkatakanasyllabaries
during the Heian period (794–1185), and in Korea it inspired the world’s most
perfect script, han’gul, developed in 1444 by a committee of scholars appointed
by the emperor Sejong. All these Asian scripts are a far cry from the haphazard
jumble of the “ABC” and the countless spelling problems that result from it in
English and other modern languages that use the alphabet.
The Indian Science of Language influenced modern linguistics primarily
through Franz Bopp (1791–1867) who was inspired by the Sanskrit grammar
of Charles Wilkins of 1807, based in turn upon Pa ̄n.ini. But Bopp did not use
rulesand the celebrated nineteenth-century sound laws were discovered by
others. That rules could be formal had been discovered by Aristotle but remained
confined to logic. The equations of algebra, another formal science from Asia,
were restricted to mathematics and the natural sciences. That linguistics
could be a formal science was perceived, or at least envisaged, by de Saussure,
who predicted in 1894, that the expressions of linguistics “will be algebraic or
will not be.” Leonard Bloomfield was familiar with Pa ̄n.ini and used ordered
rules once (Menomini Morphonemics of 1939). Formal rules were used
the science of language 357