Though its fame is much restricted by its specialized nature, there is no doubt that Panini's grammar is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of any ancient civilization, and the most detailed and scientific grammar composed before the 19th century in any part of the world.

The author of the oldest extant Sanskrit grammar was Panini, a native of extreme north-west India, ... His work consists of nearly 4000 aphorisms, each of which owing to the extreme conciseness of the style, generally consists of not more than two or three words. Hence, the whole grammar could be printed within the compass of about thirty-five octavo pages. Yet it describes the entire Sanskrit language with a completeness which has never been equalled elsewhere. Thus it is at once the shortest and the fullest grammar in the world.

The most successful, hence most prominent amongst these grammarians was Panini. His grammar, surpassing all others in tightness and precision, became the standard and remained so undisputedly until today. Panini was able to joint the original devanagari language into an exact framework of rules, thus preserving it for the posterity. Since his time, this language is called Sanskrit, “joined together, refined”.

Ashtadhyayi Sanskrit treatise on grammar was written in the 6th to 5th century BCE by the Indian grammarian Panini. This work set the linguistic standards for Classical Sanskrit. It sums up in 4,000 sutras the science of phonetics and grammar that had evolved in the Vedic religion. Panini divided his work into eight chapters, each of which is further divided into quarter chapters, beyond defining the morphology and syntax of Sanskrit language.