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. 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.
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 !!