Is it mere coincidence that in India Pāṇini's invention of grammar had preceded that of decimal notation and negative numbers, and that later on, both grammar and algebra reached the unparalleled heights for which the medieval civilization of the Arabic-speaking world is known?

Panini’s grammar is the earliest scientific grammar in the world, the earliest extant grammar of any language, and one of the greatest ever written. It was the discovery of Sanskrit by the West, at the end of the 18th century, and the study of Indian methods of analyzing language that revolutionized our study of language and grammar, and gave rise to our science of comparative philology … The study of language in India was much more objective and scientific than in Greece or Rome. The interest was in empirical investigation of language, rather than philosophical and syntactical. Indian study of language was as objective as the dissection of a body by an anatomist.

Panini's grammar is the earliest scientific grammar in the world, the earliest extant grammar of any language, and one of the greatest ever written. It was the discovery of Sanskrit by the West, at the end of the 18th century, and the study of Indian methods of analyzing language that revolutionized our study of language and grammar, and gave rise to our science of comparative philology... The study of language in India was much more objective and scientific than in Greece or Rome.

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”.

In the fifteenth century Rāmachandra, in his Prakriyā-kaumudī, or "Moonlight of Method," endeavoured to make Pāṇini's grammar easier by a more practical arrangement of its matter. Bhaṭṭoji's Siddhānta-kaumudī (seventeenth century) has a similar aim; an abridgment of this work, the Laghu-kaumudī, by Varadarāja is commonly used as an introduction to the native system of grammar. Among non-Pāṇinean grammarians may be mentioned Chandra (about 600 A.D.), the pseudo-Çākaṭāyana (later than the Kāçikā), and, the most important, Hemachandra (12th century), author of a Prākrit grammar.

The most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition—and the most original and independent—is that of India, which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century BCE. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship.

If not even the Arabs, the Muslims all, of whatever nation they were, had the pride in the Middle Ages of finesse and splendor in life, of skill sought in everything that touches pomp and luxury, from the fantastically crafted palaces to the most delicate essences and scents, of all costs they owe to the Persians from whom they took it and appropriated Even the science that came to us from Asia in the Middle Ages, in great part was Persian; and Persians are almost all philosophers, doctors, astronomers, mathematicians, whose names we read in the pages of our middle age, such as Agazel and Alrasi, Albatenio, Avicenna, Alfarabi. They wrote their works in Arabic, this being the learned language of the Muslim empire; and we therefore, with manifest error, called them Arabs and yet we consider them to be so.

Grammar is the mistress of words, the embellisher of the human race; through the practice of the noble reading of ancient authors, she helps us, we know, by her counsels. The barbarian kings do not use her; as is well known, she remains unique to lawful rulers. For the tribes possess arms and the rest; rhetoric is found in sole obedience to the lords of the Romans.

In the preface to his Grammar of the Persian Language (1771), Jones again feels the need to plead for wider cultural sympathies: "Some men never heard of the Asiatick writings, and others will not be convinced that there is anything valuable in them; some pretend to be busy, and others are really idle; some detest the Persians, because they believe in Mahomed, and others despise their language, because they do not understand it: we all love to excuse, or conceal, our ignorance, and are seldom willing to allow any excellence beyond the limits of our own attainments: like savages, who thought the sun rose and set for them alone, and could not imagine that the waves, which surrounded their island, left coral and pearls upon any other shore."8'

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.

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.

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.

The descriptive Grammar of Sanskrit, which Panini, brought to its high- est perfection, is one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence and (what concerns us more) an indispensable model for description of languages. The only achievement in our field, which can take rank with it is the historical linguistics of the nineteenth century and this indeed owed its origin largely to Europe’s acquaintance with the Indian Grammar. One forgot that the Comparative Grammar of the Indo- European languages got its start only when the Paninian analysis of an Indo-European language became known in Europe. . . . If the accen- tuation of Sanskrit and Greek, for instance had been unknown, Verner could not have discovered the Pre-Germanic sound change, that goes by his name. Indo-European Comparative Grammar had (and has) at its service, only one complete description of a language, the grammar of Panini. For all other Indo-European languages it had only the traditional grammars of Greek and Latin woefully incomplete and unsystematic. (1933: 267–76)

Scholars from Sir William Jones by way of the brothers Grimm and Max Muller produced not merely the genealogy of the Indo-European languages but the atmosphere in which Aryan language could be identified with an Aryan culture and even an Aryan race in whose names crimes could be committed ... much mid - nineteenth century philological speculation is already tinged with racial ideology.