B (4:06)

So, yes, I mean, what we know about Kony is this monumental work of his. It's a staggering piece of work. And I think it's worth underscoring what he accomplishes in this work. And also if you can say a quick note about whether his work is descriptive or prescriptive or in some sense, both of the language at the time.

C (4:30)

Well, I think that it is an entirely descriptive work that might have been put to prescriptive use later. But I think his goal was not to describe the language either. His goal was to do something more. He was trying to construct a system as an informatician, he was trying to tie something as wild and untamed as language into a neat system. And I think he's done a remarkable job of that. If you are willing to admit that there are certain words, especially from the Vedic lexicon, which cannot be derived using Panini system. But if you are to put those apart, the vast majority of words you will encounter outside of the Vedic canon, you will certainly be able to derive using Paarni system. So he has. He has succeeded.

B (5:23)

Now, this taming that you described, would you say that it is in large part due to sort of a sophisticated structure already innate to the language?

C (5:37)

I'm going to disappoint a lot of people, but I personally don't think that any one language has. Has a sophisticated structure more than any other. So. So I approach this question as a. As a linguist. Now, if you approach it as someone who studies Indian culture, you might have a different Answer with a very good justification for it. So I'm not someone who is too. Who is too sold on any one answer to this question because I have come across very many, as you can imagine, growing up in Bombay. But I personally like to look at the Sanskrit language as a very effective tool to communicate because of certain features, because it is inflectional. Now, that can be a good or bad thing, depending on who you ask, because of the utter versatility of compounds in a lot of these Old Indo European languages and so on. But if you are to put those highly structural technical features to the side, then it is as good as any other language, I would say. And one could very well make the argument that analytical languages, which is a lot of modern Indo European languages, for example, have other advantages which they are Old Indo European counterparts did not. So I suppose it's a matter of who you ask and speakers of which sorts of languages. But I personally think, I personally give credit to Panini because I think he's the one who brings the magic alive to, To. To. To doing Sanskrit grammar. He brings it to life rather, and, and I think a lot of this. So when you look at his grammar also, you realize that the structure of Sanskrit has a very important role to play in the way the grammar ends up looking. Because had it not been a highly inflectional system, then there wouldn't have been so much morphology and so little syntax and semantics. But that is the case. Now, when I say so little syntax and semantics, that's because by coming up with a very limited set of rules, you can do a lot of. Panini allows you to play with syntax. He sets the very core functions, he spells out the very core functions, and then everything else he allows you to decide. So, yeah, I mean, the structure of Sanskrit or the way Sanskrit is, has had an impact on the grammar. But is Sanskrit any more or less special than other languages? I would argue it isn't. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I don't say that negatively.

B (8:14)

Yeah, I don't think the question that was asked. There's questions that I sort of perhaps channel on behalf of audience members or suspect that might be in the room had nothing to do about the preciousness or even necessarily the priority of Sanskrit. What I was driving at was much more logical. Insofar as if it is the case that what he's doing is more descriptive than priests would do, then is it not the case that he's describing structures that are extant in the language and operational already?

C (8:47)

Oh, yes, he is describing them.

B (8:50)

Yes. So that sophistication, that the, the language itself is operating at a level that.

C (8:59)

Permits him to produce something like this. Okay, now I see your point. Yes, that's exactly what I must and I have to. Yes, to that extent, of course. So can you do something? Okay, now I understand your question and let me answer it differently then. Can you do something as creative and beautiful with Marathi for example, or can you do something as beautiful even for the Prakrits and Pali? And attempts have been made, we know that no one has succeeded, by the way, in doing that even for Sanskrit, apart from Panani, I would argue, because no one's been able to put together such a tightly knit system. They've all, I mean, whatever remains of traditional grammars all look like copies of Panini, even though they've, of course, they've introduced innovative ideas into their systems. A lot of it is copied from Panini. So no, it might not be possible to do it for Marathi precisely because of certain features of Sanskrit. And yes, that has to do with the fact that it is an old Indo European language and so on and so forth. But certainly, certainly there are certain conditions that you need the language to be in or certain sort of prerequisites that it needs to meet for a scholar like Panini to come up with something so. Or to make something so beautiful of it.

B (10:24)

So what is Panini's perfect rule?

C (10:26)

Well, I would not argue that the rule that I'm talking about is any more or less perfect than the other rules that Parani has composed. Actually, I'm having to call the rule in question, which is 1, 4, 2, and I'll go to that in just a bit. I'm having to call it Parni's perfect rule precisely because it has been treated as though it is the most imperfect rule Parnini wrote. In fact, right from the first scholar to comment on Panini's grammar onwards all the way up to, you know, 18th century authors of Paribhasha texts, sorry, everyone, treated 142 as a big burden on their shoulders. But before I tell you anything more about it, I think we will have to, with your permission, delve into what142 is and then we can take this forward.

B (11:21)

I think we certainly should do so because it sets the stage for the argument you're making. I also would like to do a little bit more unpacking for those who are probably very interested in what we're saying and just to give them the lay of the land. So tell Us again, approximately how many rules there are that describe, as you say, the Sanskrit language and also tell us approximately how many are problematic. So folks can get the lay of the land.

C (11:49)

So there are about 4,000 of them. So it's 3, 9, 8, 5 or something like that. The ashtath has come down to us in a very, very good state here and there. There are some rules that look different in certain recent, certain versions, but apart from that, and sometimes two rules appear together as one rule and so on. So there's a little bit of that. You have to also look into Patanjali's Mahabharashya, where all of this has already begun. That's an early commentator, Patanjali. But if you park all of that Aside, it's basically 4,000 rules. How many are problematic? That's a great question. I've never thought about it. I personally do not think any of them are problematic. I think the problems arise when you don't understand his system. And the better you get at understanding the system, the less problematic it gets. Now, how did it become problematic in the first place? Well, there are two ways of answering that question. One, and I know this is not going to please everyone, but the tradition has created some problems. And two, when you approach something you don't understand as it, as an individual, it does look problematic. And the problem lies in your inability to make sense of it. And then so you work, I suppose, you work on it, and eventually it all starts making sense. Eventually. So none of the rules composed by Panini are inherently problematic. Of course, early commentators have pointed out here and there that a particular rule could have been composed better. So there's that. But I don't think any of them would argue either that any of these rules are inherently problematic. The funny thing is, any of these people who worship the Paninian grammatical tradition will not be willing to say that any of these rules are problematic. But have they treated some of Panini's rules as problematic? Yes, they most certainly have, but they don't want to say it. And that might be a feature of the commentarial tradition, that might be a feature of a more anthropological feature of how commentaries work, how honor and pride and respect operate in traditional cultures. We can get into all of that. But to go back to my simple answer to your question, none of the rules are problematic in and of themselves.

B (14:22)

Yes. So while this is very much in the periphery of my own research and I suppose Sanskrit narrative for the most part, there is certainly some fluency in this. Having studied Sanskrit for a while, my sense is that there have been long standing indological quibbles with particular reasons, particularly the one that you are reframing today. But having said that, it very much seems like black dots on a white page where the rules work fairly well, they're fairly consistently, the system is fairly cogent and insightful, and then you have potential quibbles here and there. So it doesn't strike me as that there are a great many upon any rules, certainly not half that people are struggling with.

C (15:13)

I agree with you. The thing is though, that there are different types of rules. There are the operational rules, there are the definition rules, there are the meta rule rules, which are called Paribhasha sutras, and then there are Atidesha sutras and so on. The thing is, if a rule is merely an operational rule, if it is problematic, or if it has been poorly understood, it will cause problems in a set number of places where that rule applies in the derivation of a certain word. But if you have misunderstood a meta rule, which is a rule that essentially tells you how to interpret other rules, including operational rules, or God forbid, if there's a meta rule which essentially tells you how to deal with operational rules interacting with each other, and if you've got that meta rule wrong, then the amount of damage it can do is exponentially higher than the sort of damage that individual operational rules can do. So it is not so much a matter of how many rules are problematic or not. It is a matter of which ones of those are problematic or have been received as such. Well, I don't know if we should call it unfortunate or. Well, it is unfortunate in a way that one of the rules that has been misunderstood by the tradition is this meta rule. And that's what I find so fascinating, because one would think that, that you'd get the most important things right considering just how much attention to detail is paid by the tradition. So this is a bit of an enigma for me and I'm still thinking of ways to make sense of it, to be very honest with you.

B (17:01)

Is it fair to say that on the ground all of his rules pan out, that the language functions, it accords with the rules he sets out, but that the problem is that how the rules are understood? Is that correct or would you say that no, it's more germane a problem than that?

C (17:19)

No, absolutely not. The problem is not with Barney's grammar at all. The problem is with how it came to be received and framed.

B (17:27)

Okay, great. So in my understanding, the rules are formidably pristine. They're pristine, they're astonishingly pristine insofar as they succeed in describing the language fully.

C (17:43)

And, and, and, and, and you know, in, in just, in life as, as people who do academic work, as intellectuals, or just as ordinary human beings who observe patterns, systems, infrastructures all around us. You know, it's, it's very rare that one comes across something as perfectly functional. And imagine a time 2,500 years ago that some of us might look down upon and say, oh, that was primitive in this way or that way. But prime has done an extraordinary job. The funny thing is we've made all of this progress in all these fields and we're speaking in English and in an indological context, or at least in a modern global context. And not one scholar has been able to produce a system like Varini's for any language. And that tells you everything you need to know about how extraordinary this feat is. Now, to some extent that can be attributed to the fact that Paarni system was, as I'm arguing, quite poorly understood. But in large part that can also be, I mean, let's just say equally can be attributed to the fact that it is not easy to build something like this. It really takes you to have an extraordinary brain and extraordinary aptitude to do something like this. And that's why Pani's drama remains unseconded and unrivaled.

B (19:16)

Well, just to underscore for our audience, if his rules perfectly describe the language and there's no issue on that order, then just contextualize for us where the locus of the issues and then you can go into the same question that you're reframing.

C (19:34)

Sure. So what happens, as Raj knows very well, but for our audiences, I think it's worth spelling out is that these specific texts are written in ancient societies or they're composed orally, actually many of them, then what happens is naturally there are students of these great compositions. They can be poems, grammars, plays, epics, who try to make sense of them. And they might, many of them might want to write them down in the form of one line comments or long commentaries or questions or other ways of intellectually engaging with the text. And then someone else comes along and writes a commentary about that commentary, and then someone else comes along and might produce a different genre of commentary literature. But what that does eventually is it gives birth to an intellectual tradition where over centuries you have very many texts, most of them commenting on what their predecessor wrote and so on. And that's what happened with Parini's grammar as well. That is what gave birth to the Parinian grammatical tradition. Now in that tradition there are certain figures that are worth mentioning here. The first person to comment on Pani's drama that we know of at least now we will not get into the debate of whether it is an unbroken tradition or not. But the first commentarial work to which we have access is that of Kathyana. And then there was someone called Patanjali who commented on those brief concise statements that Katyayana wrote about each of Parani's rules and that that person commenting on Katyayana's vartikas, Katyayana's brief statements is a man called Patanjali. In fact, we have access to Katyayana's vartikas only through Patanjali's Mahabhasya. But if you want to keep it simple, there was Panini who wrote this 4000 rule long Rama. And then comes along Kathyara, the first commentator. And there comes along the second commentator, Patanjali, who comments on Panini's rules only through Katyayana's vartikas. So Katyayana comments on Panini's rules and then Patanjali comments on Katyayana's comments. That's how it looks. Now the problem arises already in Katyayana's interpretation of Panini's grammar. But this is by no means to suggest that Katyayana is a bad student or bad scholar. Quite on the contrary, he is. He goes into hair splitting detail and yet has a very good overview of the system. And that is very well reflected in his vartikas in his writings. The problem though is that all of us are susceptible to making mistakes. We're all human and so is Katyayana. So we have to bear that in mind. We don't have to worship him, but we have to give credit where he is due. He's extraordinary and we are in his eternal debt because had it not been for for his very astute observations, we would not have known a lot of the things we know about Pani's grammar. In the same breath. I want to rush to add that one must study Panini's rules without looking at Katyana's comments, because one's own fresh perspective can only truly be sort of engaged with or exploited or activated if one looks at the original text without looking at the commentary. So there is, there is merit in doing that as well. But coming back to Katyayana, he knew that there was a problem in the way that he understood the system. One of the core challenges he was facing is when two rules became simultaneously applicable at any step of the derivation, he had to pick one. But more precisely, he had to make the system pick one. And he was fully aware of that. The problem is the way he understood Parini's instructions about dealing with that often led him to the grammatically incorrect form at the end of the derivation. Now, what do I mean by Parini's instructions? For, for better or worse, fortunately or unfortunately, Panini has given us only one meta rule to deal with the problem of rule conflict. Which is? Which is the colonial way to describe a situation in. Sorry, which is a. A colloquial way. Sorry. To describe a situation in which two rules are simultaneously applicable to the same linguistic context at a particular step, at the same step in a derivation. So what do you do? Panini has given us the rule 1, 4 2. Notice it is A. I've spoken about types of rules. Now, this one is an important one because it's not an operational rule. It's actually a meta rule which tells you how to deal with two operational rules interacting with each other, two or more so one another. Now, Panini says viprati shedhe param karyam. Viprati shedhe param karyam in the event of a viparadesheda can be now interpreted as mutual opposition or mutual conflict, something like that. So let's not get too technical for now. Viprati shedha is some kind of opposition which is mutual viprati shedha. So in the case of such mutual opposition between two operational rules or just two rules, let's keep it two rules for now. Param karyam. The karya or the operation that is param or later prevails. Now that prevails. You just have to add that because that's elided in Sanskrit. A lot of rules don't have like finite verbs. You're just supposed to assume they exist. But in translation, the rule that comes later wins param. I'm translating as later, and I hope you will allow that. Raj. The thing is, what does later mean? What does param mean? In what context? Later. Now, Kathyana knew this was this. This meta rule 1,4 2 was creating problems. But Kathyana had to choose one of two roads. Either he could say that he has not understood 142, or he could say that 142 is not good enough. And so Parani's only meta rule, which deals with rule conflict, which is such a big part of the system, is not able to tackle the problem of full conflict. So here we have to realize that there is only One of two things that you can choose as someone who's intellectually honest, either you admit bani system is not good enough or you admit your interpretation of the system is lacking is one thing. For me, there's no third way of doing this. For the tradition there is, and I will go into that later. But Katyana unfortunately. So going back to the two options, Katyana unfortunately chose the option where he decided that Panini's rule is not good enough. So he tried first to restrict the scope of application of Panini's Meta Rule 142 to a certain set of cases. And how he did that is he excluded certain types of cases from the ambit or the jurisdiction of 142. Now, Raj, I'll let you tell me how detailed you want the discussion to be, because I can get into certain technicalities, but I don't know if I should.

B (27:54)

I think we always err on the side of keeping it accessible. Also, if you are, for example, you know, a key here is we can all follow the idea that there are rules that govern whatever's on the ground, and then there are rules that govern when those rules collide. And so you were framing that. So I think we can share it in a way that will land for most of the audience and of course, with the grammar, in order to already have the book, we know exactly what you're talking about. So let's proceed along those lines.

C (28:25)

Right. Okay, so let's just say he excluded certain groups from the ambit of 142. Now, how do you tackle those? Well, he gave his own answers to that question, none of which are to be found in Panni's grammar. Let's think about the philosophy of the discipline for a moment, shall we? The thing is, there is such a thing as the epistemology of a discipline, and there is such a thing as the ontology of a discipline. The ontology of the discipline essentially deals with the core items or categories that constitute it and how they relate with each other. What happens when you introduce new categories into the system is you are messing with, at least in my opinion, or tampering with or at least substantially altering the ontology of the Paranian system. And that's what Katyana thought it was right for him to do, for better or worse. And by introducing this first new category of savakasha and anavakasha, I won't go get into that. But he introduced this pair of categories, and that's where the problems begin, because they might not be very problematic in and of Themselves. I argue that they are in the book for those who, who want to read more about it. But the problem isn't just the fact that they are in and of themselves problematic categories. The bigger problem is that you are introducing new categories which Parni doesn't talk about and which which you yourself struggle sometimes to then make sense of, because that's not where it stops. Then Katya Ayana goes on to introduce a couple more categories. Now, they might not directly be related to rule conflict, but they essentially try to solve some of the problems created by the by Katyayana's rather misinterpretation of 142viprati sede paramkaryam. Then Patanjali continues in the tradition to do what Katyayana did. He introduces even more. Wait, so. So you see, what's going on is everyone, including Katyayana, Patanjali and the people that follow are introducing new things into the system effectively to counter and reduce the effect of or the problems created by what they think is a problematic meta rule. One for two. So they're trying to hide that monster, if you will, with all kinds of curtains, but they're failing because you can't, you know, you can't cure cancer by applying cream on one of your legs and expect that it will get better. It only gets worse. So, so with so what they're trying to do is without understanding the problem fully and without admitting that there is the possibility that they have misunderstood Panini's meta rule, they're trying to inserts tens and really dozens if not hundreds of materules into Panini's system, which as you can imagine, makes it more, more and more complex without doing anything. In fact, if anything, it made it much more cumbersome and worse. I'm reminded of too many cooks spoil the broth here. I don't think that's always true, actually. But if the. If the cook who started cooking the broth is dead and you don't know the recipe and you don't know what he's trying to make, and if you try to introduce all kinds of ingredients into it, then sure you're going to make a mess. So that's what happened. Now, if you look at the Paribhashendu Shekhara, which is one of the more recent texts produced by the tradition of the same kind of repute as Patanjali's Mahabharshya, you see an entire series of paribhashas or meta rules that have been injected into Parini system essentially without Panini's approval. Because he's long dead as you can imagine, not alive in the 18th century anyway. And all of those meta rules have to do with rule conflict. Now I'm not saying all the rules of the Paribashindu Shekhara are about rural conflict but a substantial portion are so and that is not to mention all the so called meta rules or precepts you find in Katyana's work, Patanjali's work, in the work of Jayaditha and Vamana who wrote the Kashika and so on and so forth. So all of those meta rules are being written and introduced into pioneer system to tackle the problem of rule conflict but it's not being solved. So what's going on? And this is really. When I was an undergraduate student I was actually studying economics and this is a story for another time but I ended up learning Panini's grammar from a retired professor who lived not very far from where we did in, in suburban Bombay. And she taught, she taught Pani's grammar to me and, and several others without charging a penny. It was great. My parents said okay fine, go, go learn it if you like. I had done Sanskrit in high school so it was a perfect setting for me. I was just, I was just enjoying Pani's drama. But already six or eight months into it I was fed up because I was like what is going on? Why are we introducing all these new meta rules that Parini hasn't taught? Actually it was only later that I realized that these are called Paribharsha's or meta rules. Back then my teacher was saying oh no, no, this is just something Katyana has said. Bear it in mind and we've got to use it right now because we can't move ahead if we don't. And there were a couple of times in those three years of college when I studied Parni's gram or outside college where I was doing economics and politics, there were a couple of times at least when I literally quit the class I said this is madness, I'm not doing this because as an economist, as, as, as the son of a maths teacher, I was always looking at, looking for structure, for regularity, for universal application. And I was not finding it in Pani's grammar and Pani's Rules. And I was really disappointed because my teacher, who's one of the most innovative teachers that I come across had sold it to me as being one of the most extraordinary grammars. So I was expecting too much I thought and I left with a great sense of sorrow and Disillusionment because I was personally invested. But I would always go back because I would think, no, no, there's something more here that I don't understand. Obviously I don't know enough at that point, I thought. So I went back and she was a very persuasive and good teacher, and there are very few teachers. That's all that one comes across in one's life. So I kept going back. But already I was in a state of great frustration over those three years, which was coupled with great excitement. It was a very interesting time. But. But I had begun to realize already as an undergrad doing Parni's Grammar outside college, that something is wrong here. Because if so many materials have to be committed to memory and more importantly, to be allowed to essentially walk all over what Parini has constructed, then what good is Parani's gramma? Actually, there was a point when I was willing to admit as an undergraduate, as an innocent student of Pani's Rama, that Parni's work is at best mediocre. But the moment I would suggest such a thing, everyone would get really angry. So I said, either you admit that it is mediocre or you don't. But you can't make me be duplicitous. It doesn't work for me. I don't enjoy it because I go back and I look at two parents who do math, who insist that rules have to apply systematically. That is my background, you know, I can't negate it. I can't give it up. That's a part of me now, you know, as. As. As. As a consequence of. Of my upbringing, of who I am. So now, Raj, if. If you have any comments, please share them or questions and then we can go into 1, 4, 2, more specifically.

B (36:55)

Yeah, no, it makes. What you're describing makes sense insofar as to whether or not the system is either complete or cogent or universal, or whether or not it is perfect but it needs 81 supplements. And then if we squint and look at a certain angle, then it'll be perfect. But of course, I think you've described it. What I would love for you to do is just simply say how the tradition reads it and how you read it.

C (37:26)

Yes, that's a good idea. Indeed. So, viprati shede param karyam. The part of the translation that everyone's in agreement on is as follows. In the case of mutual opposition between two simultaneously applicable rules, apply the one that comes later, or choose the operation that comes later. What does later Mean, that is, that is the question. Now there are two answers to that question. One is later in the serial order of rules. So if you have rule number one to rule number 4,000, rule number 4,000 will. Well, rule number 300 will defeat rule number 280 and so on. Rule N plus K, where K is a positive integer, will defeat rule end. That is the interpretation that Katyayana proposed and that was accepted by Patanjali and so on and so forth all the way to this day. That is the tradition, that is a traditional interpretation of 14 2. Now that one was clearly not working. It was creating several problems. And Katyayano onwards, that was well known, which is why they started introducing new tools into the system to tackle the problem of rule conflict and to effectively clear the mess being created by what they thought was 14 2. You know, the way they saw it. Now the other possible interpretation of 142 is later in the rule that comes later wins is later, not in the serial order of rules, but going from beginning to end in a word, or if we think about it in a written context, going from left to right, because we write Sanskrit from left to right. So the rule that is the more right, so the rightmost rule or the right hand side rule wins. But then arises the question, how do we decide which of these is the correct interpretation? One of the ways to do it obviously is to start seeing which meta rule helps you resolve rule conflicts consistently. Such that of course the the answer you get at the end of the derivation is grammatically correct. That's one way. And I did a lot of that and a lot of my book is about that. But actually it took me a couple of months, by the way, to realize that there was a simpler, more convincing and compelling way. And that is the way of the philologist. That's what philology is all about. You assume that a particular word has been used in a text to mean the same thing everywhere it has been used, unless there is a very good explanation as to why it has been used to mean two different things in two different places. But you start with the assumption that word X means a particular thing throughout the text, especially in a technical text like this one. So I realized, oh wait a minute, I should look at every place in Palnis grammar where the word later or param in Sanskrit has been used. Now, fortunately for me, There are almost 50 to 60 places, all of which I've listed in my book, where parani has used the word param. And lo and behold, and this is what confirmed My. My initial finding. Lo and behold, every time Panini uses the word param, he uses it to mean right hand side. How, how ironic that in the one place that the correct interpretation of param as right hand side matter the most, Kathyan and everyone else misinterpreted that term. And funnily enough, everywhere else, where it probably did not matter as much as they did in 142, they correctly interpreted it as right hand side. How? I mean, some of these are. Are perpetual enigmas, I suppose, which you know, answers or good explanations to which have been lost to time. But be that as it may, the fact is that gave me, that really gave me a boost and that that allowed me to then basically write up my doctoral thesis. And that has evolved into this book eventually, of course. So One4Two has two possible interpretations, but one of them creates a complete mess and the other solves all the problems. And I'm not exaggerating. I wish I were, but I'm not. Because it really is that simple. It took me a while to digest the fact that it could be so simple. In fact, some of the. Some of my critics, often traditional Brahmins from India, say it could not be that simple. How could it be so simple? Because if it was so simple, surely someone would have figured it out. But it turns out that if you don't ask the question, then you can't find the answer. So the problem is not whether the problem does not lie in whether the answer is a simple or a complex one. The problem lies in whether or not you are even curious enough to ask the question. So to acknowledge the existence of a problem and to ask a question about it is, it turns out, far more important often than finding the answer. The answer can be simple and the answer can help you apply the meta rule universally, as we are now able to do. And for that I'm a fan of Panini's.

B (43:10)

Great. So just two clarifying questions. The way in which you now read the param as latest in the sentence.

C (43:21)

Not in a sentence, inside the peripheries of a word, of an inflected word, not sentence.

B (43:28)

Pardon me, latest in the utterance. You can say the reason I'm phrasing it that way is because I went out of question in a moment about writing versus non writing. So let's. Let's bracket out the furthest. Right, but we can mean the most. Just as the first one implies later in the serial order of his rules. Your interpretation also implies later in the series of utterances.

C (43:58)

Yes, within, within, within A word within a word.

B (44:01)

Yes, yes, yes, of course, of course, yes, of course. So does that truly solve the problem?

C (44:09)

When I proposed this, and when it received a lot of attention, the media, this was in 2022, I got pushback from the tradition, as. As I had expected. I did not expect the sort of pushback I got. And, and yet, of course, you know, you have all kinds of Brahmins, you have all kinds of human beings in each community. And so I also received a certain type of feedback which was interesting and some of it was useful as well, because there were certain cases of paranian derivations that were brought to my notice where my interpretation, I was told, did not work. And I thought, yes, actually you're right, this is an exception. What does it mean? So it took me a while to figure it out actually afterwards. Firstly, there were very, very few cases which were actual exceptions. Some of it was trickery, some of it was just poor doing panini badly. But there were some exceptions, and I have discussed all of them in the book, actually, because there aren't all those many. And it is worth talking about them because those exceptions were used by certain scholars in India and elsewhere to argue that I was wrong, that I did not know what I was talking about, and so on and so forth. So I made it a point to look into that because I was willing to concede that I was wrong, you know. But what I found out was remarkable. Now, there is one set of rules, for example, in Parni's grammar, which were involved in a lot of those exceptions. And I realized that, of course, after I started studying them, I realized, wait a minute, there is a problem with one of these rules in that someone has tampered with a version that Parni had produced and we have a slightly different version of that available to us. So in Parni's grammar there's something called anuvrutti. So what happens is you can carry forward words from previous rules into subsequent rules. Now, you can't just do that with any word. There is a system in place for what kinds of words can be carried forward into or continued into the following rule through anuvrutti. But again, I must mention that actually anuravuti is not fully understood to this day. And sometimes we struggle to explain why a certain word was carried forward by anuruti by us and why certain words were not. But if we can park that aside for the moment, it is fairly non controversial that if a word is available to you right in the previous yule, you don't Repeat it. And. And that does happen in some places in Paniz Ram. And that's where you realize, okay, no, someone's tampered with it here because this is obviously a case of. Of an interpolation or a tampering of some sort. And so it is in. It is in that. So I found something like that in that sort of rules. In fact, I found two or three other highly unusual things over there. So I realized that there is a problem, and I've talked about it in detail in my book about it. And so that is why those rules were appearing in those three or four exceptions that were being discussed. And so I said, the problem is not with my interpretation of 1, 4, 2 or with 1 for 2. It is with this set of rules, the series of rules that someone's obviously tampered with. That solved the big problem for me, to my. To my delight. There are one or two other examples which I had already mentioned in my thesis, and those have to do with Vedic and post Vedic forms. So I don't remember the term. I. Sorry, I mean, I don't remember the form, but there is one word which has a Vedic genitive plural and also post Vedic genitive plural. And there. If you try to make by. By. By interpolating certain rules into Pani's grammar, if you try to make Pani's grammar construct a post Vedic genitive plural, then one for two doesn't work. If you allow the system to produce only what is a Vedic genitive plural, then the system works. So that's very interesting. But that, again, that is an exception. But now, apart from these two, nothing. And I've spent three years thinking about this and looking at this, and I've corresponded with a variety of people, including those who are harsh critics. And no, they've not been able to come up with anything else.

B (49:05)

Fascinating. You know, as with all of the works that we feature, my role is to present the contours of the work and the audience. And of course, your colleagues, specialists will judge for themselves. It is a really fascinating and innovative idea. The one nuance or point I'd like to touch on is, you know, what we're talking about is when there's three sort of arcs and you're arguing for param, meaning the right hand most, is it necessarily that business occurring within the context of the written word? Or could this also operate in. Within, speaking without writing, referring to the last, the latest utterance.

C (49:55)

Now, I say write most because most audiences are. I mean, I don't. I don't want to assume on their behalf. But a lot of the times that I've. A lot of the times what happens is I found people thinking about language as something that is written.

B (50:11)

Oh, of course, yeah.

C (50:14)

Because of our times.

B (50:16)

Our times, our culture. I mean, of course it is. I do a weekly Bhagavad Gita. I have many texts. Texts gave you, Martin. Bhagavad Gita. And it is a feat to communicate to very intelligent, really, on board modern adult learners of the idea of a text, the idea of a printed text on a shelter to be read individually. This is a completely foreign idea to, you know, the genesis of these. Of these works. But yes, so of course I understand the modern predilection, which is why I'm asking you if this is also an historical reality.

C (50:57)

No, no. There is considerable debate about whether Banini had access to the gift of writing. At least some of us like to think of it as a gift. Whether he had access to writing or whether he used the aid of writing or not is controversial. Now, I personally think that he did have access to writing, but that is besides the point that I'm trying to make here, so I won't go into that. My doctoral supervisor, Professor Vincenzo Virgiani, has quite brilliantly argued his case on this topic. So. And I agree with him that he did have access to writing. But be that as it may, the point is Panini is not saying in this metaroo left or right. He is not. He hasn't produced this metaroor in the context of writing at all. It is entirely about utterance, as Raj has very astutely pointed out. It is just param, and that means later. So it's not left to right, it's just what is produced later, what is uttered later in the sequence of syllables that one produces. We just happen to write left to right in Western society and also in India for the most part, except of course, Urdu. But. And so that is why one says rhs. And you know, we're used to using RHS as a convention in mathematics as well, so it's just convenient right hand side. But Raj is absolutely right to point out that Paris not use the word left or right. It's always what is relatively before and what is relatively after. Obviously, because we're talking about language relatively produced before, Relatively produced after. It could be a syllable, it could be a part of a syllable, even for that matter. So in fact, there are times when one rule applies to one syllable and the other to another. There are times when one rule applies to One part of the syllable, the other to another part of the syllable. There are times when both rules apply to the same syllable or same part of the syllable. So there's that as well.

B (53:18)

Yeah, part of the reason why I raised that nuance is not so much to engage the kind of worms as to whether or not there are all kinds of assumptions involved and convect, maybe a bit of evidence as well, but there's a can of worms as to whether or not he possibly could have, quote, unquote, could have done this without writing. I think that frame needs to be nuanced. I don't really know enough to have an opinion on that, but I'm well aware of the debate. But what I mean to say is, even after the advent of writing texts, works in South Asia are geared towards utterance, right? Utterance first, letters inscription second. This is a radically different way of viewing texts in across different cultures and a radically different way those of us who are fortunate enough to study various traditions. It means we've done a ton of reading throughout various degrees, and we're interpreting a lived world through the lens of written, written, secondary and primary sources. So the emphasis on utterance is crucial. And also in thinking of it as the latest utterance, you see, you see the closer resonance or elision between the latest of his rules and the latest, or what you're saying with the latest of the utterances, rather than being right hand necessary. So I only make that distinction for the sake of not having this right hand side sound too much of a modern sort of, what can we say, injection into the.

C (54:59)

Yes, absolutely. And for someone who's arguing vehemently against interpolations, I for one certainly must be careful not to. Not to be guilty of the same, doing the same thing. So going back now, if I may, to this problem, and this really goes to the heart of the Indian comment area tradition, where scholars, because they respect their predecessors, who often happen to be their teachers so much, don't necessarily want to produce a new idea, at least not explicitly, because that might be viewed as disagreeing with the teacher and consequently disobeying the teacher or falling out of line or being too heretical, something of that sort. What they end up doing though, is of course they are brimming with creativity, as most scholars or people who just deal with books are, I suppose, or ideas even, not, not necessarily books. They end up nevertheless injecting their new ideas, fresh new ideas, which are different, at least to some extent, from what their predecessor wrote. And they inject them into, of course, Their commentaries, which they're commenting on what their predecessor, slash, teacher, wrote. But what they do is they try to make that new idea sound as though it is merely a paraphrasing of what the teacher said or taught. Now, yes, you can do that out of respect, but at least to my modern mind, that is highly problematic. The fact that you respect your teacher or that this operates within a certain culture of honor and almost wearing on worship is not a problem. The problem is that it becomes terribly difficult for us scholars of the modern day to then, you know, untangle those. Those threads which become highly intertwined and interwoven with each other. You don't know what the author is saying and what the commentator is saying. See, commentator does a brilliant job, actually, of shrouding his own opinions as mere reframings of what the author said now. And yet I think that is also beautiful when we're talking about stories, poetry, drama, because that gives you a sense of how the culture is evolving and how new ideas are being produced and how a tradition can entertain and engage with new ideas without necessarily breaking from older ones. There are good sides to this, most certainly, but when you do that with things which are technical, and when you do that to a degree that is dishonest, then that becomes a problem. And I think we see a little bit of that in the Painian, a little bit of both of that in the Painian tradition, unfortunately. So firstly, when you ask scholars, do you agree with Katya ayna's interpretation of 142, or do you agree with what he has said? He said. Yeah, yeah, but he's given evidence that Panini meant this, you know, and. And for this, in the Paninin tradition, they use a very, well, problematic, in my opinion, but highly useful in theirs, I suppose, tool they. I. I don't want to get into the. I mean, I don't want to get into this too much, but they essentially proved that Pani meant this, Opani meant that, you know, and. But the evidence they give is often not evidence at all. So that creates a big problem. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is they are not willing to admit that Katyana has said something different from what Parini says. I think that's the bigger problem, actually. They say they all agree with each other. They might have added new ideas as generations went on, but they all agree with each other. So the idea of disagreement is viewed with great suspicion. And especially when an outsider like myself, who is not Brahmin and who speaks English, points out that there are disagreements that is taken to be a hostile attack when it is merely an innocent intellectual observation at best.

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B (60:09)

See terms that'll be the case with any system of power, any system of knowledge, you name it globally, whether the one in which we live in a work or various other traditions. Because what happens with paradigm shifting work or alleged paradigm shifting work, Whichever it is, either one is pointing out massive blind spots of tradition, which would be difficult, or one is repelled by their own massive blind spots. So whenever there's a paradigm or purported paradigm shift, there's no such thing as having that occur. Not as a tectonic shift, shift of beliefs and perspectives and blind spots. And that's very difficult. I've seen this a thousand times. Individuals confronting a paradigm shift of their own self understanding in their own lives. And I see this all the time at the academy. I'm not making a value judgment as to whether or not your work is a bona fide paradigm shift or it's problematic. I don't make such value judgments on the podcast. The podcast is an introspace for the engagement of all ideas. But it's unsurprising. It's certainly unsurprising if what you're saying is, by the way guys, you may have gotten this wrong for 2300 years. This might be, you know, and perhaps there's a way to frame the argument without that provocative piece, whether it's maybe provocative or not. But at the end of the day, I think the proof is in the pudding of utility. You know, if however controversial an idea is, if it's useful, it will gain momentum.

C (61:47)

Yes, yes, and that's what that. What gives me solace. Anyway, this is now actually thing is, I have said that this is the algorithm that runs Bani system. And the most universal phenomenon of rules interacting with each other in bani drama is that of conflict. Because, you know, the, the, the easiest way to deal with bani's rules is you think about only one step without worrying about what happens in the previous step or in the future, in the. In the next step. And that is a boon because when you. And if you start trying to figure out the present step in the context of what happened before and what might happen after, that opens a whole can of worms. Fortunately, with Pani's Rama, we don't have to do that and there is no benefit to be accrued from doing that. In fact, there are only complications to be, to be derived from that sort of approach. So, so you have to only worry about what happens at that step. And when two rules interact, it is it. I, I call it conflict colloquially. So that's so. So, so that is a very, very important part of the system. Now the problem is. Sorry, let me finish my first point first. Now, for the first time, we actually have what can be called an algorithm that can be used to teach Pani's drama to the computer. So so far what we used to do is we used to take, you know, you're familiar of course with the Siddhanta Kaumudi, so we used to take certain sections of Panini's rules, certain types of rules that can be put together in chapters if you are willing to, to disturb the original ordering, you know, and then we used to try to teach those to the computer so that the computer could, you know, deal with Sandhi, for example, you know, so for logical rules and such, or it could deal with compound construction. And so we were trying to take certain types of Paninian rules and teach those to the computer. Now we can just trust Panini for once, now that we have the correct understanding of 142 and teach the whole thing to the computer. So this is really important and I really hope that computer, that computational linguists, computer scientists who are interested in Panini will take this up and do it seriously, irrespective of whether I found the correct meaning of 142 or they did. I hope this doesn't become a battle of egos. I hope most certainly that it doesn't become battle of caste because unfortunately, the way at least some orthodox pundits have received this in India is, oh, this guy's at Cambridge. He speaks English and he doesn't tire choti. And yes, I'm not a Brahmin either actually. And this guy is up to no good. So that's one problem. But I really hope that my identity or where I wrote this or which language I wrote it in does not influence what happens next. I really hope that we can teach this rule based system to the computer. It will change how computationalists, informaticians look at the usefulness of rules and rule based systems to teach things to the computer. Because what happens is during the second World War we were trying to use rule based systems to teach language to what was then a very primitive version of the computer and that failed. And so subsequently computer scientists have moved towards more statistical and eventually more machine learning based approaches, which is what our computer scientists do now today. And I'm not trying to suggest that we need to go back to the rule based system. I don't have the expertise to make that sort of a comment anyway. But certainly we will be able to demonstrate the power of rule based, the resilience of rule based systems and also the genius that is Panini and what he's produced. So I really hope that a project is undertaken at the earliest to start teaching Pani Sigma now to the computer. Would it, now let's ask the question, would it have been possible to use the traditional method to teach Pani's rules to the computer? No, because how do you resolve rule conflict using the traditional method? Well, you try 100 different tricks and every time a trick fails you produce one more frustrating exception, meta rule and say oh, actually in this case it's actually like this. Oh no, but here it is like this. You can't teach the computer to act like a human and use all these, you know, tricks. I don't want to call them disingenuous, but, but, oh, but then, then, then that is another ball game altogether. Yeah, if it's AI, it's going to convince you to go get the panini sandwich. You know, in five minutes it will change the topic and take you there. That's a different can of worms to open. But the whole problem with the tradition has been, and more so today than before. I think the predecessors of current traditional scholars were much more open minded. I'm sorry I have to say this, but they were. The thing is, scholars today are faced with a challenge which is accepting and this is a challenge for them. I don't see it as a challenge at all. Accepting that their ancestors got something wrong. And why is that a challenge for them? Because they associate their pride, their self worth, the value of who they are and what they bring to modern India with being descendants of people of certain, of a certain stature, of a certain Varna and so on. That's not my problem and I don't think they should because I think we must evaluate ourselves on the basis of what we bring, you know, who we've helped, whose life we've brought love and kindness to, whose lives we've been able to touch. Positively not what our ancestors did and so on. But there is this tendency in India, whenever we are told by outsiders or by our own folks about what's not working or what's gone wrong, we immediately go back to ancient. But our ancestors were great. Well, then that makes you look even worse because you haven't even been able to keep up with what your ancestors were doing. So this is the problem now. And I really hope this will again, I really hope this too, alongside other factors, will not come in the way of Indian computer scientists, many of whom might be Brahmins, taking this up and actually teaching Pani's grammar to the computer with this new interpretation. Because without this interpretation of 1, 4, 2, you have no algorithm at all. How can you teach Pani's drama to the computer without the algorithm that runs the grammar? Earlier, you had hundreds of meta rules. And you see, the funny thing is, whenever I've spoken with pundits, they say, oh, we love the antaranga bahiranga paribhashas. Now, those are some of the most complicated matter rules dealing with rule conflict that have been introduced much later, which Parni doesn't talk about at all. But they are so complex that the pundits pride themselves upon being able to memorize, internalize and then subsequently apply them. And I'm not talking about a couple of rules here. Six or seven rules. No, no, no. There's one tool which is framed as a meta rule. Yeah. And then there are 10 exceptions to that, some of which are exceptions to other meta rules. It's a big web, a big network of meta rules which has been interpolated shamelessly into Panee's infrastructure. So what we need to do is ask the question, well, are you willing to admit that Paranese system is mediocre and you're just shoving all of this stuff into it, or are you willing to admit that his system is perfect? In which case, why are you tampering with it? So my question remains, you know, and I feel, in that sense vindicated, because as an innocent undergraduate, I was. That is precisely why I was running away from Panini twice or thrice. I just said, I'm giving up. I called quits because it was so frustrating. Either you call it perfect and don't tamper with it, or you admit that it is imperfect, which is fine with me, and then you can tamper with it. But you can't both call it perfect and tamper with it. It makes no sense at all. You know, and that's the whole point I'm trying to make through this book as well, by offering mountains worth of evidence to show that we must use common sense and logic and, and, and just go where the evidence takes us. Not our castes and not our educational qualifications or, or the strata of society that we come from and so on.

B (71:19)

Oh, our job is to put the work out there. I mean, one of my guests, their work has been publication. The work is out there. Part of my task of seats on this podcast is to boost the signal of what is being produced by reputable presses. So it is not. I do peer review, obviously, when I get approached by presses all the time. It is not my role to do peer review here. It is not my role to adjudicate. It's my role to boost the signal of what is being produced so that interested audiences, academics, endologists, endophiles and traditional learners, whomever might engage the ideas, one will encounter various pushback from various systems of power, whether, whether radical pedigree, whether academic pedigree. You know, for various reasons at various times, and in my mind, our job is to produce the work and allow the work to speak for itself. I mean, I don't know about you, but my work is not perfect. It's certainly not nothing. And so if, perhaps if it needs to be critiqued, to be brought into focus, great.

C (72:34)

I appreciate, I actually I do appreciate your podcast and the work you do. And I, as I told you, I've heard you interview indologists and a wide variety of scholars and authors. Actually, I appreciate it very much. And no, my work is not perfect either. I am a human being and to add is human. The only argument I'm making is Parni's work is actually perfect. And I say that, but I think.

B (73:04)

One of the questions I had earlier, but I thought it'd be too off topic when you brought it up, I thought surely someone has fed these rules. I'm not a computer science individual by any stretch of the imagination. It's a minor miracle that I can, that I can, that I can use a computer. But my penance in this life is being working online. It's challenging. But anyhow, it dawned on me. Could one not simply feed these rules into various computer programs or what have you and check or the consistency and see if, if, see if they compute, see if it's a coherent system? I'm sure their technology is well, capable of doing that. And I think it's only a matter of time until someone does, actually, I'm sure someone else already has. And you'll probably be receiving some correspondences from such people, I have no doubt.

C (73:52)

I hope so. I definitely hope so. I think that to do a very good job with all 4000 roles without tampering with them and without trying to inject your own understanding into it is something that desperately needs to be done. But you are absolutely right that there's no reason why we should not be able to do it now. Has it already been done? Well, if so, it has not been published or not brought to my attention at any rate. Have people been trying to teach Fani's rules to the computer? Yes, they have been. And the problem though, as I said earlier, is that they try to teach little paths here and there. Now that's not, that's not devoid of all value, certainly not. At the same time there is merit in teaching the whole system to the computer because that will produce something much more awe inspiring and will have much more significant impact, you know. So I'm looking forward to that. And you're absolutely right that it's only a matter of time that someone does it. And as we say in Hindi, dudka dood or pani ka pani, it's only a matter of time. The, the evidence will speak for itself. But for now, if one does not have access to a computer, or as you said, if you're not particularly the sort of, you know, software engineer that can, that can execute all of this, there's no reason to be dejected. There's no reason certainly to say I can't do anything about it. All you have to do is first try to learn a couple of pian rules and try to do some derivations if you want to check through that route, what's right and what's wrong, who's right, who's wrong. I think any interested Sanskritist or linguist can look into this for themselves and I invite them to do so through the medium of my book, if I may. Because in my book, if I may talk a little bit about specific chapters, the first chapter lays all of this out and acts as a very friendly introduction. So even if one is not trained in the binding system, but if one is merely a linguist or someone interested in languages, that should suffice to give them the lay of the land and help them understand what exactly it is that is at stake here or what it is that I'm talking about and what the linguistic question is and why it's so juicy and fascinating and I'm sure it will interest them. And then the second chapter onwards I start discussing the problem more technically. So the first chapter allows specialists and non specialists alike actually to make sense of it. Actually what I should say is the whole book has been written in such a way that although there are chapters which are quite technical, if you've read the first chapter and if you're reading the second chapter after the first chapter, you're likely to be able to make sense of it, even if you are not an advanced Sanskritist or an undergrad in Sanskrit studies. So I think that is the good thing about the book. It is quite approachable, although its contents might seem specialized in certain chapters especially. And then in the seventh chapter I discuss the whole question from the perspective of intellectual history. So it might be interesting to historians or people who study culture and how thought evolves or how traditions evolve. In the eighth chapter I discuss, and I've touched on this a little bit in the beginning I discuss the philosophy of Panin studies as a discipline and then go on to discuss how what I found affects or engages with other disciplines such as Paninian computational linguistics, or let's just call it Sanskrit, computational linguistics and computational theory. So the question of how complex are languages are natural languages? How complex is one natural language relative to another? So there is something called the Chomsky hierarchy, which was actually put together to to check how complex formal languages are. But then linguists were curious enough to then start trying to situate natural languages in that hierarchy. And I've tried to show that based on what we know about Sanskrit, thanks to Pani's grammar, we can try to situate Sanskrit too, like other languages in that hierarchy. And what does that tell us about how complex natural languages are? So there's that. I've already spoken about computational linguistics and about teaching Pani's grammar to the computer, so I won't belabor that. Then of course there's also the question of rule based grammars and theoretical phonology. How do we look at rule based systems? Chomsky and Hal, for example, who pioneered this in the 20th century in what is now modern generative linguistics, have a certain way of doing it. But Pani's way is different. And how is it different? I discussed that in the eighth chapter as well. So Raj, going back to your original point, I do not expect readers to go away thinking I'm right and the tradition is wrong. But what I really hope is that they will go away thinking I want to think more about this and I want to talk to the author or something like that. Something that piques their imagination and that makes them want to look at Indian intellectual traditions and thus Sanskrit language with interest. So if I'm able to light that spark in them, spark of genuine curiosity, and if I'm able to animate their imagination, then I suppose I will have succeeded as an author.

B (79:59)

I suppose that's an excellent thought upon which to conclude virtually. So thank you very much for being on the podcast.

C (80:05)

Thank you so much for having me. Rajan, thank you for patiently listening to me as I, you know, sort of go about discussing a variety of things. I assume I could have been more coherent, but and I do apologize if I've sort of jumped from one topic to another. But thank you so much for this opportunity. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

B (80:27)

You're welcome. For those listening, we have been speaking with Rishi Rajpopat on a brand new Harvard University Press publication, Harmony's Perfect Rule. You know, at some point after reading this book I thought it was a bit of a fun where was his rule, his sovereignty, his the perfection of his reign? But here we are, the modern solution to an ancient problem in sans with grammar. Until next time, keep all keep listening and keep contemplating the Sanskrit and perhaps how delicious both Khaninis and Fahnini might be for you. Back for.

C (81:12)

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