Page:Systems-of-Sanskrit-Grammar-SK Belvalkar.pdf/25

Systems of Sanskrit Grammar [ - § 12 Panini: His Date 17 But there is also independent evidence to prove that Panini lived before Alexander's invasion. The internal evidence which compels us to presuppose at least a couple of hundred years between Patanjali and Katyayana, and Katyayana and Panini-an evidence which even Vincent Smith finds himself compelled to accept(Early Hist. 3rd. ed., p. 451, note 4)-has been indicated in note 1, page 28 below. The most important of external evidence that has been lately brought forward (by Mr. Vishvanath Kashinath Rajaväde in the 'Kesari' for 30th August 1910) is Pāṇini's mention of the town Sangala (Gr. Sángala, Sk. Sankala) in the sutra (iv. 2. 75). Pāņini derives the name of the town from the proper name Sankala. Sänkala is a city completed by (Prince?) Sankala. This city Alexander razed to the ground as a punishment for the stout resist- ance of its defenders (Vincent Smith, loc. cit., page 75), and Panini could not have thereafter spoken of it in the manner in which he does. Panini, therefore, must have lived before Alexander's invasion. Another independent evidence furnished by the satra Tantsust (v. 3.117). Here the Parsus or the Persians (and the Asuras or the Assyrians) are men- tioned as an eng or an organization of mercenary fighters, similar to the Greeks of the fourth century B.C., or the Germans of the seventeenth century. The Persians were blotted out as a political power in B. C. 329, and the Assyrians in B. C. 538. Panini's references to these people belong, therefore, probably to a time anterior to these dates. Lastly, reverting once more to Katyāyana's vārtika to iv. 1.175, if the word w forms a genuine part of the n, it will be necessary to suppose that Panini did not know that the Sakas or Skythians had a country or a kingdom of their own. Now the first King of the 3 [ Sk. Gr. ]