Indian scholar Rishi Atul Rajpopat solves 2,400-year-old Sanskrit grammar problem from Panini's text
There are a lot of mysteries and unsolved riddles posing answers to modern problems in our ancient texts, including in the Indian classical language of Sanskrit. Now, 2,400 years later, one Indian scholar from Cambridge has solved one of the riddles in Sanskrit grammar.
Rishi Atul Rajpopat, a PhD scholar from St John's College, Cambridge, just solved a grammar problem in the ancient Sanskrit texts written by ancient scholar Panini that had perplexed modern researchers for centuries.
What are we talking about? Panini was a scholar in ancient India, sometime between the 6th and the 4th century BC. One of his most popular works that's survived through the times and has interested linguists around the world for centuries is called the Ashtadhyayi.
- Ashtadhyayi is a manual that defines Sanskrit grammar and rules to derive new words.
- Ashtadhyayi has interested many around the world because it is the oldest and most complete work that describes a language algorithmically; meaning that the rules form a machine-like element for forming new words and understanding a language.
What was the problem? One of the puzzles in Panini's Ashtadhyayi that scholars weren't able to understand was the conflict of rules and the rules written by Panini to resolve such conflicts called the meta-rule.
[READ: Indian mathematician Neena Gupta solves Zariski's Problem to win Ramanujan Prize 2021]
What is the latest discovery? Rajpopat argued in his research paper that the meta-rule was historically misunderstood, which resulted in researchers not being able to derive words and phrases that made sense.
- So far, scholars thought that in case of conflict between rules of equal strength, the one that comes later was applicable.
- However, Rajpopat argued that between the rules that were applicable to the left and right side of a word, Panini wanted readers to choose the one on the right side.
- For example: In the sentence jñanam diyate guruna, there is a rule conflict in the last word guruna.
- Meaning of the sentence: Knowledge (jñanam) is given (diyate) by the guru (guruna).
- To derive a word from the root words 'guru' and 'a' which means "by the guru", two rules are supposed to be applied.
- But according to Rajpopat, the rule applicable to the right side 'a' will be used, which will give the correct word, guruna.
How did Rajpopat solve the problem? He said that he had his "eureka" moment while researching.
Why is this research important? Ancient texts and languages aren't just for the history books. At times, they hold the answers to our modern problems.
- Panini's Ashtadhyayi could perhaps help in training NLP (natural language processing) models for our computers and AI to understand the context and nuances.
- Since Ashtadhyayi defines a language based on a set of rules, this approach could help train AI systems for NLP.