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OCTOBER, 1926 )
CHRONOLOGY OF PANINI AND THE PRATISAKHYAS
183
As to the Vajasaneyi Prátisåkhya Weber I St, IV, 65, states that it is a work of Katyayana's school. Even assuming that there existed more than one Katyayana, nobody surely would believe the Prátisakhya to belong to the latter one of the two, thus automatically referring it to a time far posterior to Påņini. But, if the argument invoked by Müller implies what he thinks, it must amount to the contradictory absurdity that Katydyana was not only prior, but also posterior, to himself. The argument is obviously fallacious.
The expression průrudcdryas is used also in the Rk Prátisakhya and the Atharva Pratiśâkhya (I. 11. 94) and thus seems to have been a technical term of the sikşds.
The Vedânga argument. Goldstücker asserted that the Prátisakhyas could not be regarded as the Vedånga vydkaranam. Max Müller retorted, that they did not pretend to be go; but the Rk Prâti. sAkhya, being a fikrd, called itself a Veda nga.
This latter fact cannot be denied. But does it prove that it was a Vedânga? The Bible never calls itself the Bible, nor does the Rg Veda call itself the Rg Veda.
Now Påņini never mentions the Veda as such, and on examining the special chandas rules of Panini, I have reached the conclusion, that they do not apply to the Veda as a whole but only to the Rg Veda. The Sivasútras still bear the mark of an influence prior to Pâņini.3 He never mentions, or even alludes to the Pada pâthas. And in the places, where he uses the word samhita, it has quite another and earlier sense (from which that of sanhita text is derived): his own definition of the word (I. 4. 109) is parah sannikarşah samhita, and Böhtlingk therefore rightly translates this word in Pâņini by 'ein ununterbrochener Verlauf der Rede'.
Now the task of the Prátisakhyas is to describe the relation of the samhita and the pada texts to one another. But we know very well, that in the eyes of early Indian authors the pada text possesses no share whatever in the holiness of the samhita text. And Patanjali, whom nobody would dare to place earlier than Påņini, directly denies its authoritatwe force (to Panini III, 1, 109). But if this be the case, this way of regarding the Padapathas ought to apply even more forcibly to the Prátisakhyas, whose very existence presupposes the pada text.
As to the Kramapatha, to the description whereof the Rk Prâtiśâkhya devotes so great a space, an allusion to it could be found in Påņini IV. 2. 61, kramadibhyo vun teaching the formation of kramaka from krama, etc. But this sûtra is not found in Patañjali. (The other words of the gana are pada, Siksd, mimd8d, sdman.)
And it is indeed remarkable, as was pointed out already by Goldstücker (p. 195), that native tradition, which made Pånini an îşi of yore and his work the vyákarana of the Vedå igas, knows nothing of the sacred character of the Prátiśåkhyas. To quote Goldstücker's own words : " Tradition even in India, and on this kind of tradition probably the most squeamish critic will permit me to lay some stress,-does not rank amongst the most immediate offsprings of Vaidik literature those works which apparently stand in the closest relation to it,
-which have no other object than that of treating of the Vaidik texts of the Samhitâs ;-but it has canonized Panini's Vyakarana, which, on the contrary, would seem to be more concerned with the language of common life than with that of the sacred hymns."
Our conclusion should rather be the exact opposite of that urged by Max Müller, viz., that the RK Prátisakhya's own claim to be a Vedänga proves it to be a comparatively late work, for it presupposes the existence already of the Vedangas; the elaboration of the Veddngas being a
This has been surmised already by Goldstücker who identified the commentator of Panini with the author of this Pratisakhya, and Max Mällor himself endorsed that opinion, of, the introduction to his edition of the Rk Pratiba khya, p. 6. Liebich, op. laud, p. 35, also believes Katyayana really to have been its author.
3 Cf. Skold, Papers on Panini and Indian Grammar in general (Lunds Universitets Azobkrift, 1925), pp. 8 899
