The grammatical compendium of which this is a translation is current among the Pandits of the north-west provinces, and of most of the other provinces of India. The translation is one of a, series of attempts to encourage and facilitate the interchange of ideas between the Pandits and the senior English students of the government colleges. How different the arrangement of a Sanskrit treatise on grammar is from that of an English treatise of the subject, may be inferred from the facts stated in the subjoined extract from the preface to the Hindi version of the same compendium. The groundwork of the grammatical literature of the Sanskrit is comprised in Panini’s eight lectures, entitled "The Astadhyayi". Each of the lectures is divided into four sections, and each section into a number of sutras, or succinct aphorisms. On these Mr. Colebrooke remarks:–"The studied brevity of the Paniniya sutras renders them in the highest degree obscure; even with "the knowledge of the key to their interpretation, the student finds them ambiguous. In the application of them when understood, he discovers many seeming contradictions; and with every "exertion of practised memory, he must experience the utmost difficulty in combining rules dispersed in apparent confusion through different portions of Panini’s eight lectures…..
ABOUT THE AUTHOR S.N. Sharma
Sudhindra Nath Sharma, M.Sc., FRHS, is a nature scientist with over four decades of varied experiences in the field of applied life sciences. Environmental protection, pest control operations, horticultural landscaping as well as the culture and cultivation of orchids, and other useful herbal flora of the Northeast Indian States have sustained his interest all along. After obtaining his M.Sc. degree from A.M.U. in 1951 he initially taught life sciences in Cotton College, Cuwahati, and later at the Assam Agricultural College (now University), until 1959. Here he was closely associated with some research projects and published several papers and articles. Thereafter, between 1960 and 1987, he served as a Senior Executive of the erstwhile Assam Oil Company/Burmah Oil Company Ltd., Digboi (Assam), which later became IOC Ltd. (Assam Oil Division) in 1981. Here he served in various departments like Marketing, Administration, Industrial Relations and Refinery Operations. Associated with the Horticultural and Orchid Societies of Digboi and Duliajan (Oil India) and the tea circles of the Upper Assam districts. Widely travelled abroad between 1992 and 2001, he and his wife jointly acquired adequate knowledge in USA and the UK on the culture and propagation of orchids and some useful aromatic and medicinal plants of those countries. He is a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society of London, besides, he and his wife are also members of the Horticultural Societies of UK and India. He is presently working on another publication entitled-"Some Beautiful Orchids of Assam and other Northeast Indian States.
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