________________ хуі the case of that of other systems of grammar the situation is miserable; and all the Sanskrit grammarians have to fall back on the Ganaratna-mahodadhi of Vardhamana (12th cent. A. D.) for the knowledge about the Ganapatha 64. 3.6. In contrast to the attempt of Vamana-Jayaditya in the proper direction of reinstating the system with all the five texts in his Kasika commentary on the Astadhyayi, Bhojadeva of Dhara tried to overcome the difficulty by adopting as many sutras of the Panini's Sabdanusasana as possible in toto, and by framing fresh sutras to incorporate the essence of the material in the auxiliary texts. But since the resulting work, entitled the 'Sarasvatikanthabharana Vyakarana' could not gain much popularity among the educational centres in his days and subsequently due to the introduction of the Prakriya texts of the Paninian system within a century or so after Bhojadeva, the damage done so far could not be stalled65. 3.7. The still surviving evidence of the ancient practice, as attempted to be preserved by the tradition, apart from the Kasika, is that in almost all the post-Paninian system of Sanskrit Vyakarana, the authors of the auxiliary texts are the same as those of the Sabdanusasana texts, except in the case of the Katantra system. In the case of Paninian one all the four khila texts are extant with different commentaries. 3.8. Panini describes in his grammar two closely related varieties of the language, namely the language of the Vedic literature and Standard Colloquial (sista-bhasa) of his times. The language of the Vedic texts, studied and recited in various Vedic sakhas, is referred to variously after the genera of texts as Chandas (1.2.36), Brahmana (2.3.60), Mantra (2.4.80), Nigama (6.3.112), Yajus Kathaka (7.4.38). The other variety, called Bhasa (3.2.108) is the standardized one spoken natively over eastern and northern India further towards north-west. Being a native speaker of Standard Colloquial and well-read in Vedic literature, Panini was well-conversant with both the varieties and had full control over various aspects of their structure, use and pronunciation. Overwhelming similarities in their structure were too apparent to the grammarian in him. He thus found it more economical to treat the two varieties together rather than to deal with them separately. His treatment is built around the structural description of Bhasa. Peculiarities of the Vedic are generally fitted into this description as deviations from it. Grammatical statements, not specified otherwise, of course, hold good for both varieties. The scope of the Vedic usage, however, is not specified by him. It is left indeterminate by the use of the term bahulam diversely'. The facts of Vedic
