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,