“Паспашя” Дандіна: вплив санскритської граматичної традиції на санскритську поетику

Abstract

The thesis of this essay is straightforward, even if its implications are reaching: Daṇḍin knew Pāṇinian grammatical works, in particular Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya, and he wished conceptually to mirror and emulate the Sanskrit grammatical tradition in his own analysis of language while simultaneously opening a new dimension of linguistic analysis. Most simply put: Pāṇini and in particular Patañjali offered a model for Daṇḍin’s treatment of language, a model that Daṇḍin self-consciously modified.  

The evidence for this influence has always been to hand, but to see it requires one to read Sanskrit works across genres, this in a mode more accommodating to the curricular habits that were patterned in premodern South Asia than to those of the disciplinary mode of reading often, if not always, practiced today, which files subjects departmentally by mutually distinguishing philosophy, literature, linguistics, history, and the like. Reading Vyākaraṇa and the Alaṃkāraśāstra in parallel, one may recognize influences of the former on the latter in the introductory verses of the Kāvyādarśa, which seek to echo and borrow from Patañjali’s paspaśāhnika – thus the title of the present communication: Daṇḍin’s paspaśa: The influence of the Sanskrit Grammatical Tradition on Sanskrit Poetics.