New Delhi: An Indian Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge has solved a Sanskrit grammatical puzzle that has perplexed scholars for 2500 years. The 5th Century BC text was written by Sanskrit philologist, scholar, and grammarian Pāņini who lived in ancient India circa the 4th- 6th century BCE.
The grammatical problem is finally solved and the credit goes to Mr. Rishi Atul Rajpopat who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from St. John’s College of the Cambridge varsity.
The Sanskrit puzzle was based on a ‘meta rule’ created by the colossal scholar Panini. The traditional interpretation of the Meta rule, which was widely accepted by contemporary scholars, was that in case of a conflict of two rules of equal alike strength, the rule that comes later in serial order wins. However, this led to grammatical errors of various kinds in the usage of the Sanskrit Language.
“I had a eureka moment at Cambridge!”
The world’s greatest grammatical puzzle that had defeated scholars for centuries has been cracked by #Sanskrit PhD student @RishiRajpopat.
Read how he did it ?@stjohnscam @CambridgeFames @HCI_London
— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) December 15, 2022
Rishi Atul Rajput rejected the traditional interpretation with the argument that Panini meant that the rule is applicable to the right and left sides of a word. Panini wanted the rule applied on the right side to overrule.
He further argued that the meta-rule produced grammatically perfect words every time with no exception.
Ph.D. student Raj Popat told that it took him a long time of 9 months to crack this puzzle. He went ahead to say that he almost quit and gave up on books for a month. To take his mind off the puzzle he enjoyed summer activities like cycling, cooking, and meditation.
But Rishi’s mind didn’t want to leave the mystery so albeit reluctantly, he went back. And within minutes he began to see the patterns. Suddenly, it all made sense and he finally demystified the 5BCE grammatical puzzle.
Sanskrit Experts valued Rajpopat’s discovery as revolutionary. What it means for Sanskrit students is that Panini’s grammar can now be taught on computers in the forthcoming days.
