Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/281

 authority, Pāṇini superseded all his predecessors, whose works have consequently perished. Yāska alone survives, and that only because he was not directly a grammarian; for his work represents, and alone represents, the Vedānga "etymology."

Yāska's Nirukta is in reality a Vedic commentary, and is older by some centuries than any other exegetical work preserved in Sanskrit. Its bases are the Nighaṇṭus, collections of rare or obscure Vedic words, arranged for the use of teachers. Yāska had before him five such collections. The first three contain groups of synonyms, the fourth specially difficult words, and the fifth a classification of the Vedic gods. These Yāska explained for the most part in the twelve books of his commentary (to which two others were added later). In so doing he adduces as examples a large number of verses, chiefly from the Rigveda, which he interprets with many etymological remarks.

The first book is an introduction, dealing with the principles of grammar and exegesis. The second and third elucidate certain points in the synonymous nighaṇṭus; Books IV.-VI. comment on the fourth section, and VII.-XII. on the fifth. The Nirukta, besides being very important from the point of view of exegesis and grammar, is highly interesting as the earliest specimen of Sanskrit prose of the classical type, considerably earlier than Pāṇini himself. Yāska already uses essentially the same grammatical terminology as Pāṇini, employing, for instance, the same words for root (dhātu), primary, and secondary suffixes. But he must have lived a long time before Pāṇini; for a considerable number of important grammarians' names are mentioned between them. Yāska must, therefore, go back to the fifth century, and