[INDOLOGY] Rule selection in the Aṣṭādhyāyī (vipratiṣedha, paratva, etc.)

Sat Dec 24 04:16:13 UTC 2022

The following review was shared on BVP list :

  नमस्ते !

On the onset, I would like to specifically thank all those Sanskrit lovers
(novices as well as scholars), who reached out to me asking for my views on
this topic.  I also thank this scholarly BVP group for allowing me to post
my views.

Coming to the topic, I have gone through the entire thesis of Dr. Rishi
Rajpopat , except for the Appendix. I have captured my detailed
critical assessment of this thesis in this document
<http://bit.ly/neelesh-critique-on-in-panini-we-trust>.  The document is
open for comments to everyone.

The summary is as follows -

1) I believe that Dr. Rishi's new interpretation of the पर word, which is
only relevant for the DOI cases, has some potential for further research.
However, it needs to be molded a lot, and also needs more exhaustive
testing, before we can call it "sound". I have enumerated a few cases in my
document where his DOI as well as SOI does not work.  In fact, Dr. Rishi's
treatment of SOI is appears ad-hoc at places. He also mentions that it is
not based on Panini's system directly. I believe it needs to be replaced by
something more concrete.

2) In many examples, Dr. Rishi has also stated his understanding of the
tradition.  Unfortunately, Dr. Rishi's understanding of the tradition is
pretty weak at places. I have elaborated this with numerous examples. Of
course, none of these are directly going to change his discovery, but it
would have been much better if Dr. Rishi would have spent some more time in
learning and understanding the tradition, before proposing something
outside its framework.

3) Dr. Rishi has interpreted some sutras in his own way.  Some of these are
flawed interpretations, and I have shown them with examples.

Anyway, irrespective of all this feedback, it cannot be denied that
the thesis enumerates some brilliant techniques, and is worthy of further
investigation. While the discovery has its own lacunas / shortcomings /
loopholes,  the way in which the whole topic of बाध्यबाधकभाव has been
approached in this thesis definitely opens up new doors for further
research in Paninian grammar.

*For the record -*  I neither support, nor believe, nor encourage
statements like “2500 year old puzzle solved” or “Katyanana chose wrong
interpretation” and so on. This is not a competition between modern
academia and our divine tradition. Instead, we must bring the two together
to take the shastra to newer heights. FWIW, the the claim that "Cambridge
student solved 250 year old mystery" is fake, baseless and only shows the
immaturity of the people involved therein. I sincerely wish Dr. Rishi was
more careful with his words in his media interactions, and was
extra-cautious while talking about the tradition, which is deeply respected
by millions of Sanskrit lovers, including myself.

*Finally, a disclaimer. *I am just a passionate student of Sanskrit
grammar, with no formal training. I am far from being called a scholar.
Therefore please excuse me if there are any gaps in my analysis.  More than
anything else, I have been looking at this opportunity purely as an
intellectual exercise for me,  and I must admit that my understanding of
some of the prakriyas became much stronger after reading this thesis, for
which I wholeheartedly thank Dr. Rishi Rajpopat.

Once again here is the link my analysis -
https://bit.ly/neelesh-critique-on-in-panini-we-trust

Regards
Neelesh Bodas

PS: On a lighter note, in the last few days, I have manually worked out so
many prakriyas in the DOI / SOI system that I feel like I have started
forgetting how I'd do prakriyas in the usual traditional way !!

On Sat, Dec 24, 2022 at 2:58 AM Peter Scharf via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear Madhav, Sharon, and other colleagues,
> I believe that rather than responding to social media, public news
> announcements, and wild claims made therein, the most responsible way to
> respond to the claims that Dr. Rajpopat made in his dissertation is to read
> the dissertation and write a comprehensive review of it.  I have done so in
> the first PDF attached to this email.  I include there a bibliography of
> work that I and a few others have done on rule selection and conflict
> resolution as well as formalization of the *Aṣṭādhyāyī*.  I attach PDFs
> of several of these papers to this email as well.
> While the wild claims and inordinate attention that Rajpopat’s work has
> drawn in the past couple of weeks may be irritating to many, it has also
> drawn attention to the fascinating issues involved in
> understanding Pāṇini’s linguistic treatise and its tradition.  We would
> like to invite those who are interested in learning about the Pāṇinian
> tradition to join Dr. Tanuja Ajotikar’s course, “Introduction to the
> Pāṇinian tradition” taught online through The Sanskrit Library.  A
> description of the course can be found on The Sanskrit Library website
> (sanskritlibrary dot org) under “Courses” and from there under “Continuing
> education courses”.  Dr. Ajotikar also teaches a course “Readings in the
> सिद्धान्तकौमुदी described under “University equivalent courses”.  These
> courses will be offered again beginning 21 January.
> Yours sincerely,
> ******************************
> Peter M. Scharf, President
> The Sanskrit Library
> scharf at sanskritlibrary.org
> https://sanskritlibrary.org
> ******************************
> Peter Scharf
> scharfpm7 at gmail.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> INDOLOGY mailing list
> INDOLOGY at list.indology.info
> https://list.indology.info/mailman/listinfo/indology
>

-- 
Nagaraj Paturi

Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.

Senior Director, IndicA
BoS, MIT School of Vedic Sciences, Pune, Maharashtra
BoS Kavikulaguru Kalidasa Sanskrit University, Ramtek, Maharashtra
BoS Veda Vijnana Gurukula, Bengaluru.
Member, Advisory Council, Veda Vijnana Shodha Samsthanam, Bengaluru
BoS Rashtram School of Public Leadership
Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Studies in Public Leadership
Former Senior Professor of Cultural Studies,
FLAME School of Communication and FLAME School of  Liberal Education,
Hyderabad, Telangana, INDIA.
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