Page:Systems-of-Sanskrit-Grammar-SK Belvalkar.pdf/9

 AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIETERENT EXISTEAG SYSTEMS ©F SANSKRIT GRAMMAR

i. Grammatical speculations in India: Thelr oxtent and vatue.— It would be hardly an cxaggeration to say that in no other country has the science of grammar been studied with such a zeal and carried to such a perfection as it has been in India. Even a bare catalogue of the names of grammurians unciont and modern and of such of their works as ure still preserved to us can amply bear out the truth of this assertion. On the lowest caiulation there are yet current in various parts of India nearly a dozen different schools of Sanskrit grammar, at least three hundred writers in the field including those that are known to us only from quotations, and more than a thousand separate treatises original as well as explana- tory. And it is not merely the quantity—for that need not be a source of unalloyed pride to any people—but the quality of the work produced that has won for it a recognition and an honorable mention even at the hands of the rigorously scientific philologists of our own day, who are not ashamed to own their obligations to works and authors of over twenty-five hundred years old.

Early grammatical speculations

2. Grammatical speculations in the Vedas.—Thie earliest spe- culations of a grammatical nature are to be met with in the later portions of the Rigveda itself; for, even if we condemn Pataiijali’s explanation (Mahibhashya: Kielhorn, Vol. 1, p. 3) of qearft arg by armreararensiitarat: or his explanation (Ibid. p. 4; Rigveda viii. 69.12) of ae fieaq: by ax fare: as being too subtle for the Vedic [Sk Gr} �