A Guide to Panini

This is a rough draft of a book in which it is intended to offer the essence of Panini’s aphorisms on Sanskrit Grammar. The claims of this language are now universally acknowledged. Though its grammatical intricacies seem at first sight formidable, there can be no doubt that they can be thoroughly mastered by a critical study of Panini’s excellent system. But his work called Ashtadhyayi seems rather an index for reference than a treatise from which one not familier with his system cen hope easily to learn it. Nor does the Siddhanta Koumudi of Bhattoji Dikshit, valuable as it is in its own way, appear to help us better to a connected and clear view of the system. Nay, our difficulties become greater in the latter. The aphorisms which we find given together in one place in the former, and which collectively contribute to furnish a clear idea of the scope of a rule with its exceptions and limitations are found in the latter scattered about in different places and thus we often meet not only with rules without their exceptions but also with the exceptions before the rules, while there is nothing to show that they are exceptions to rules, not rules themselves…..The work is divided into six parts.