________________
[ 14 ]
There were grammarians before Panini, but the latter's indisputable supremacy has resulted in his predecessors being consigned to oblivion. Amongst the few post - Paninian grammarians who attempted to present the system in a revised form aiming at simplicity, Hemachandra occupies the foremost place. His chief contribution to simplicity is the adoption by him of symbolic terminology which is more direct in its denotative reference than that used by Panini. To give a few instances, Hemachandra uses the self-explanatory terms rati, GEAH, 719:, 37879: respectively instead of 374, m, at, at which are the symbols used by Panini.
A peculiar noteworthy feature of Indian grammatic literature, which is witout a parallel in other countries, is the composition of poems which, while they conform to the essential nature of poetry, serve at the same time to supply in each verse an apposite illustration of a grammatical sutra. Such is the Rama-Charitra, better known as Bhatti-Kavyam, written by the poet Bhatti to illustrate Panini's Sutras.
Acharya Hemachandra similarly composed two poems to provide apposite illustrations for the
